Best Supporting Actor: My Picks From Each Lineup
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One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in Manhattan, New York City, to artists Virginia (Admiral) and Robert De Niro Sr. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, and his other ancestry is Irish, English, Dutch, German, and French. He was trained at the Stella Adler Conservatory and the American Workshop. De Niro first gained fame for his role in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), but he gained his reputation as a volatile actor in Mean Streets (1973), which was his first film with director Martin Scorsese. He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Godfather Part II (1974) and received Academy Award nominations for best actor in Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Cape Fear (1991). He received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980).
De Niro has earned four Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, for his work in New York, New York (1977), opposite Liza Minnelli, Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). Other notable performances include Brazil (1985), The Untouchables (1987), Backdraft (1991), Frankenstein (1994), Heat (1995), Casino (1995) and Jackie Brown (1997). At the same time, he also directed and starred in such films as A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). De Niro has also received the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2010.
As of 2022, De Niro is 79-years-old. He has never retired from acting, and continues to work regularly in mostly film.Killers Of The Flower Moon- Actor
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Ke Huy Quan, also known as Jonathan Ke Quan, is a Vietnamese-born Chinese-American actor and stunt choreographer. Quan played Short Round in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984) and Data in "The Goonies" (1985). In 1990 and 1991, he co-starred as Jasper Kwong in the sitcom "Head of the Class" over two seasons. Quan stopped acting due to a lack of opportunity in the late 1990s, when he received his film degree from USC School of Cinematic Arts. He went on to work as a stunt coordinator and assistant director. He returned to acting as Waymond Wang in the film "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (2022), a role for which he received critical acclaim, and which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.Everything Everywhere All At Once- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Script and Continuity Department
Troy Kotsur has been acting and directing for over 20 years. Deaf since birth, he was raised in Mesa, AZ. In his career he has had critically acclaimed performances in major films, a lead role in the Broadway run of a Tony Award-winning play, and numerous memorable roles on Television.
Troy has garnered rave reviews for his leading role in the 2021 feature CODA, which was awarded Best Ensemble Cast at Sundance. He is credited with being one of the prime reasons for the feature's festival success, which lead to its $25 million sale to Apple. Previous to this, Troy had a supporting role in The Number 23 starring Jim Carrey, and in subsequent years became known for stand-out performances in indie features.
In television, Troy made headlines in 2019 for his acting role in The Mandalorian on Disney+ because along with acting, he choreographed an adapted form of sign language for the series. Other notable television roles include guest star appearances on Criminal Minds, Scrubs, CSI: NY, and a fan favorite recurring character on PAX's Sue Thomas: FB-Eye.
Much of Troy's success has stemmed from his highly respected career on stage. This includes a role in the Tony Award-winning run of Big River on Broadway, performing at the Mark Taper Forum, and the 2015 LA Drama Critics Circle Award nominee Spring Awakening.CODA- Actor
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Daniel Kaluuya is a British actor and writer. He is best known for Get Out (2017), Black Panther (2018) and for portraying Fred Hampton in Judas & The Black Messiah (2021).
He had a supporting role in Sicario (2015).
He also starred in the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits".
For his work in Get Out he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Kaluuya also had minor roles in Johnny English Reborn (2011) and Kick-Ass 2 (2013).
His film debut was Shoot the Messenger (2006).Judas & The Black Messiah- Actor
- Soundtrack
Compact Italian-American actor Joe Pesci was born February 9, 1943 in Newark, New Jersey, to Mary (Mesce), a part-time barber, and Angelo Pesci, a bartender and forklift driver. Pesci first broke into entertainment as a child actor, and by the mid-1950s, was starring on the series "Star Time Kids". In the mid-1960s, he released a record under the stage name Joe Ritchie titled "Little Joe Sure Can Sing", and was also playing guitar with several bands, including Joey Dee and The Starliters. He even joined with his friend Frank Vincent to start a vaudeville-style comedy act, but met with limited success (interestingly, Pesci and Vincent would later go on to co-star in several gangster films together, including Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995).
Pesci's first film role was as an uncredited dancer in Hey, Let's Twist! (1961) and then he had to wait another 15 years for a minor role in The Death Collector (1976). His work in the second film was seen by Robert De Niro, who convinced director Martin Scorsese to cast him as Joey LaMotta in the epic boxing film Raging Bull (1980), which really got him noticed in Hollywood. He played opposite Rodney Dangerfield in Easy Money (1983), was with buddy DeNiro again in Once Upon a Time in America (1984), nearly stole the show as con man Leo Getz in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) and scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar playing the psychotic Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas (1990).
His comedic talents shone again in the mega-popular Home Alone (1990), and he put in a terrific performance as co-conspirator David Ferrie in JFK (1991). Pesci was back again as Leo Getz for Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), and was still a bumbling crook in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), and had a minor role in the Robert De Niro-directed A Bronx Tale (1993). He was lured back by Scorsese to play another deranged gangster named Nicky (based on real-life hood Tony Spilotro [aka "The Ant"]) in the violent Casino (1995), and starred in the comedies 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997) and Gone Fishin' (1997), although both failed to fire at the box office.
Pesci returned again as fast-talking con man Leo Getz in Lethal Weapon 4 (1998). In 1999, he announced his retirement from acting and since then, he appeared only occasionally in films, including a cameo appearance in The Good Shepherd (2006). He also appeared in the music documentary I Go Back Home: Jimmy Scott (2016).The Irishman- Actor
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Richard E. Grant is an actor and presenter. He made his film debut as Withnail in the comedy Withnail and I (1987). Grant received critical acclaim for his role as Jack Hock in Marielle Heller's drama film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), winning various awards, including the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male. He has also received Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.Can You Ever Forgive Me?- Actor
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Having made over one hundred films in his legendary career, Willem Dafoe is internationally respected for bringing versatility, boldness, and daring to some of the most iconic films of our time. His artistic curiosity in exploring the human condition leads him to projects all over the world, large and small, Hollywood films as well as Independent cinema.
In 1979, he was given a role in Michael's Cimino's Heaven's Gate, from which he was fired. Since then, he has collaborated with directors who represent a virtual encyclopedia of modern cinema: James Wan, Robert Eggers, Sean Baker, Kenneth Branagh, Kathryn Bigelow, Sam Raimi, Alan Parker, Walter Hill, Mary Harron, Wim Wenders, Anton Corbijn, Zhang Yimou, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, William Friedkin, Werner Herzog, Lars Von Trier, Abel Ferrara, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Anthony Minghella, Theo Angelopoulos, Robert Rodriguez, Phillip Noyce, Hector Babenco, John Milius, Paul Weitz, The Spierig Brothers, Andrew Stanton, Josh Boone, Dee Rees and Julian Schnabel.
Dafoe has been recognized with four Academy Award nominations: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Platoon, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Shadow Of The Vampire, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Florida Project, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, and most recently, Best Leading Actor for At Eternity's Gate, for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination. Among his other nominations and awards, he has received two Los Angeles Film Critics Awards, a New York Film Critics Circle Award, a National Board of Review Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup, as well as a Berlinale Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.
Willem was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Muriel Isabel (Sprissler), a nurse, and William Alfred Dafoe, a surgeon. He is of mostly German, Irish, Scottish, and English descent. He and his wife, director Giada Colagrande, have made three films together: Padre, A Woman, and Before It Had A Name.
His natural adventurousness is evident in roles as diverse as Marcus, the elite assassin who is mentor to Keanu Reeves in the neo-noir John Wick; in his voice work as Gil the Moorish Idol in Finding Nemo and Ryuk the Death God in Death Note; as Paul Smecker, the obsessed FBI agent in the cult classic The Boondock Saints; and as real life hero Leonhard Seppala, who led the 1925 Alaskan dog sled diphtheria serum run in Ericson Core's Togo. That adventurous spirit continues with upcoming films including Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, Abel Ferrara's Siberia, and Paul Schrader's The Card Counter.
Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He created and performed in all of the group's work from 1977 thru 2005, both in the U.S. and internationally. Since then, he worked with Richard Foreman in Idiot Savant at The Public Theatre (NYC), with Robert Wilson on two international productions: The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic and The Old Woman opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov and developed a new theatre piece, directed by Romeo Castellucci, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil. He recently completed work on Marina Abramovic's opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas.The Florida Project- Actor
- Producer
Mahershala Ali is fast becoming one of the freshest and most in-demand faces in Hollywood with his extraordinarily diverse skill set and wide-ranging background in film, television, and theater.
He can be seen in the independent feature film, Moonlight, as well as reprising his role in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, Gary Ross's civil war era drama The Free State of Jones, and Netflix's award-winning series House of Cards as well as Marvel's Luke Cage.
Ali's previous feature film credits include Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines, Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over, John Sayles' Go For Sisters, and David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Again on television, he appeared opposite Julia Ormond in Lifetime's The Wronged Man for which he subsequently received an NAACP Nomination for Best Actor. Ali also had a recurring role on Syfy's Alphas, as well as the role of Richard Tyler, a Korean War pilot, on the critically acclaimed drama The 4400 for three seasons.
On the stage, Ali appeared in productions of Blues for an Alabama Sky, The School for Scandal, A Lie of the Mind, A Doll's House, Monkey in the Middle, The Merchant of Venice, The New Place and Secret Injury, Secret Revenge. His additional stage credits include appearing in Washington, D.C. at the Arena Stage in the title role of The Great White Hope, and in The Long Walk and Jack and Jill. In February 2016, Ali made his New York Broadway debut in Kenny Leon's Smart People.
Born in Oakland, California and raised in Hayward, Ali received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communications at St. Mary's College. He made his professional debut performing with the California Shakespeare Festival in Orinda, California. Soon after, he earned his Master's degree in acting from New York University's prestigious graduate program.Moonlight- Actor
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Mark Rylance was born in Ashford, Kent, the son of Anne (née Skinner) and David Waters, both English teachers. His grandmother was Irish. His parents moved to Connecticut in 1962 and Wisconsin in 1969, where his father taught English at the University School of Milwaukee. Rylance attended this school. He starred in most of the school's plays with the theatre's director, Dale Gutzman, including the lead in a 1976 production of Hamlet. He played Romeo in the school's production of Romeo and Juliet.
Mark was the first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, from 1995 to 2005. Rylance made his professional debut at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in 1980. He went on to win the Olivier Award for Best Actor for Much Ado About Nothing in 1994 and Jerusalem in 2010, and the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Boeing Boeing in 2008 and Jerusalem in 2011. He won a third Tony Award in 2014 for Twelfth Night. On television, he won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor for his role as David Kelly in the 2005 Channel 4 drama The Government Inspector and was nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and BAFTA TV Award for playing Thomas Cromwell in the 2015 BBC Two miniseries Wolf Hall.
In 2007, Rylance performed in Boeing-Boeing in London. In 2008, he reprise the role on Broadway and won Drama Desk and Tony Awards for his performance. In 2009, Rylance won the Critics' Circle Theatre Award Best Actor, 2009 for his role of Johnny Byron in Jerusalem written by Jez Butterworth at the Royal Court Theatre in London. In 2010, Rylance starred in a revival of David Hirson's verse play La Bête. The play ran first at London's Comedy Theatre before transferring to the Music Box Theatre on Broadway, on 23 September 2010. Also in 2010, he won another Olivier award for best actor in the role of Johnny Byron in Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre in London. In 2011, he won his second Tony Award for playing the same role in the Broadway production. He played Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall (2015), BBC Two's adaptation of Hilary Mantel's historical novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. For his performance, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. Rylance was featured as the castaway on the BBC radio program Desert Island Discs on 15 February 2015.
Rylance co-starred in the biographical drama Bridge of Spies, released in October 2015, directed by Spielberg, and starring Tom Hanks, Amy Ryan and Alan Alda. The film is about the 1960 U-2 Incident and the arrest and conviction of Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel and the exchange of Abel for U-2 pilot Gary Powers. Rylance plays Abel and has received unanimous universal acclaim for his performance with many critics claiming it as the best performance of 2015. The St. Louis Post-Depatch quoted, "As the deeply principled Donovan, Hanks deftly balances earnestness and humor. And Rylance's spirited performance is almost certain to yield an Oscar nomination." David Edelstein from New York cited 'It's Rylance who keeps Bridge of Spies standing. He gives a teeny, witty, fabulously non-emotive performance, every line musical and slightly ironic - the irony being his forthright refusal to deceive in a world founded on lies." Rylance won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and New York Film Critics Circle Award in the Best Supporting Actor categories, as well as receiving Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, among other wins and nominations.Bridge Of Spies- Actor
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J.K. Simmons is an American actor.
He was born Jonathan Kimble Simmons in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, to Patricia (Kimble), an administrator, and Donald William Simmons, a music teacher. He attended the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; University of Montana, Missoula, MT (BA in Music).
He had originally planned to be a singer and studied at the University of Montana to become a composer.
He starred as Captain Hook and Mr. Darling opposite gymnastics champ Cathy Rigby in the Broadway and touring revivals of Peter Pan.
He played Benny South-street in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls and can be heard on the cast recording.
He did a commercial voice-over work, including the voice of the yellow M&M in the candy's TV ads.
He appeared as police psychiatrist Emil Skoda on Law & Order (1990), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001).
As of 2011, has made five films with director Sam Raimi: For Love of the Game (1999); The Gift (2000); Spider-Man (2002); Spider-Man 2 (2004); and Spider-Man 3 (2007).
He won many awards from 2005 to 2007 in Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2014 won Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. 2015 won a Golden Globe for his Best Performance as an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture, BAFTA Film Awards Best Supporting Actor, Independent Spirit Awards Best Supporting Male.Whiplash- Barkhad Abdi was born on 10 April 1985 in Mogadishu, Somalia. He is an actor, known for Captain Phillips (2013), Eye in the Sky (2015) and Good Time (2017).Captain Phillips
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Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport to Marilyn (Loucks), a lawyer and judge, and Gordon Stowell Hoffman, a Xerox employee, and was mostly of German, Irish, English and Dutch ancestry. After becoming involved in high school theatrics, he attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a B.F.A. degree in Drama in 1989.
He made his feature film debut in the indie production Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole (1991) as Phil Hoffman, and his first role in a major release came the next year in My New Gun (1992). While he had supporting roles in some other major productions like Scent of a Woman (1992) and Twister (1996), his breakthrough role came in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997).
He quickly became an icon of indie cinema, establishing a reputation as one of the screen's finest actors, in a variety of supporting and second leads in indie and major features, including Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998), Flawless (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), Almost Famous (2000) and State and Main (2000). He also appeared in supporting roles in such mainstream, big-budget features as Red Dragon (2002), Cold Mountain (2003) and Mission: Impossible III (2006).
Hoffman was also quite active on the stage. On Broadway, he has earned two Tony nominations, as Best Actor (Play) in 2000 for a revival of Sam Shepard's "True West" and as Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) in 2003 for a revival of Eugene O'Neill (I)'s "Long Day's Journey into Night". His other acting credits in the New York theater include "The Seagull" (directed by Mike Nichols for The New York Shakespeare Festival), "Defying Gravity", "The Merchant of Venice" (directed by Peter Sellars), "Shopping and F*@%ing" and "The Author's Voice" (Drama Desk nomination).
He was the Co-Artistic Director of the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York, for which he directed "Our Lady of 121st Street" by Stephen Adly Guirgis. He also directed "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Jesus Hopped the A Train" by Guirgis for LAByrinth, and "The Glory of Living" by Rebecca Gilman at the Manhattan Class Company.
Hoffman consolidated his reputation as one of the finest actors under the age of 40 with his turn in the title role of Capote (2005), for which he won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award as Best Actor. In 2006, he was awarded the Best Actor Oscar for the same role.
On February 2, 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in an apartment in Greenwich village, New York. Investigators found Hoffman with a syringe in his arm and two open envelopes of heroin next to him. Mr. Hoffman was long known to struggle with addiction. In 2006, he said in an interview with "60 Minutes" that he had given up drugs and alcohol many years earlier, when he was age 22. In 2013, he checked into a rehabilitation program for about 10 days after a reliance on prescription pills resulted in his briefly turning again to heroin.The Master- Actor
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Kenneth Charles Branagh was born on December 10, 1960, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to parents William Branagh, a plumber and carpenter, and Frances (Harper), both born in 1930. He has two siblings, William Branagh, Jr. (born 1955) and Joyce Branagh (born 1970). When he was nine, his family escaped The Troubles by moving to Reading, Berkshire, England. At 23, Branagh joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he took on starring roles in "Henry V" and "Romeo and Juliet". He soon found the RSC too large and impersonal and formed his own, the Renaissance Theatre Company, which now counts Prince Charles as one of its royal patrons. At 29, he directed Henry V (1989), where he also co-starred with his then-wife, Emma Thompson. The film brought him Best Actor and Best Director Oscar nominations. In 1993, he brought Shakespeare to mainstream audiences again with his hit adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (1993), which featured an all-star cast that included, among others, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves. At 30, he published his autobiography and, at 34, he directed and starred as "Victor Frankenstein" in the big-budget adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein (1994), with Robert De Niro as the monster himself. In 1996, Branagh wrote, directed and starred in a lavish adaptation of Hamlet (1996). His superb film acting work also includes a wide range of roles such as in Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Valkyrie (2008) and his stunning portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn (2011), where once again he offered a great performance that was also nominated for an Academy Award.My Week With Marilyn- Actor
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- Editorial Department
Christian Charles Philip Bale was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK on January 30, 1974, to English parents Jennifer "Jenny" (James) and David Bale. His mother was a circus performer and his father, who was born in South Africa, was a commercial pilot. The family lived in different countries throughout Bale's childhood, including England, Portugal, and the United States. Bale acknowledges the constant change was one of the influences on his career choice.
His first acting job was a cereal commercial in 1983; amazingly, the next year, he debuted on the West End stage in "The Nerd". A role in the 1986 NBC mini-series Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986) caught Steven Spielberg's eye, leading to Bale's well-documented role in Empire of the Sun (1987). For the range of emotions he displayed as the star of the war epic, he earned a special award by the National Board of Review for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor.
Adjusting to fame and his difficulties with attention (he thought about quitting acting early on), Bale appeared in Kenneth Branagh's 1989 adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V (1989) and starred as Jim Hawkins in a TV movie version of Treasure Island (1990). Bale worked consistently through the 1990s, acting and singing in Newsies (1992), Swing Kids (1993), Little Women (1994), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), The Secret Agent (1996), Metroland (1997), Velvet Goldmine (1998), All the Little Animals (1998), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999). Toward the end of the decade, with the rise of the Internet, Bale found himself becoming one of the most popular online celebrities around, though he, with a couple notable exceptions, maintained a private, tabloid-free mystique.
Bale roared into the next decade with a lead role in American Psycho (2000), director Mary Harron's adaptation of the controversial Bret Easton Ellis novel. In the film, Bale played a murderous Wall Street executive obsessed with his own physicality - a trait for which Bale would become a specialist. Subsequently, the 10th Anniversary issue for "Entertainment Weekly" crowned Bale one of the "Top 8 Most Powerful Cult Figures" of the past decade, citing his cult status on the Internet. EW also called Bale one of the "Most Creative People in Entertainment", and "Premiere" lauded him as one of the "Hottest Leading Men Under 30".
Bale was truly on the Hollywood radar at this time, and he turned in a range of performances in the remake Shaft (2000), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), the balmy Laurel Canyon (2002), and Reign of Fire (2002), a dragons-and-magic commercial misfire that has its share of defenders.
Two more cult films followed: Equilibrium (2002) and The Machinist (2004), the latter of which gained attention mainly due to Bale's physical transformation - he dropped a reported 60+ pounds for the role of a lathe operator with a secret that causes him to suffer from insomnia for over a year.
Bale's abilities to transform his body and to disappear into a character influenced the decision to cast him in Batman Begins (2005), the first chapter in Christopher Nolan's definitive trilogy that proved a dark-themed narrative could resonate with audiences worldwide. The film also resurrected a character that had been shelved by Warner Bros. after a series of demising returns, capped off by the commercial and critical failure of Batman & Robin (1997). A quiet, personal victory for Bale: he accepted the role after the passing of his father in late 2003, an event that caused him to question whether he would continue performing.
Bale segued into two indie features in the wake of Batman's phenomenal success: The New World (2005) and Harsh Times (2005). He continued working with respected independent directors in 2006's Rescue Dawn (2006), Werner Herzog's feature version of his earlier, Emmy-nominated documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997). Leading up to the second Batman film, Bale starred in The Prestige (2006), the remake of 3:10 to Yuma (2007), and a reunion with director Todd Haynes in the experimental Bob Dylan biography, I'm Not There (2007).
Anticipation for The Dark Knight (2008) was spun into unexpected heights with the tragic passing of Heath Ledger, whose performance as The Joker became the highlight of the sequel. Bale's graceful statements to the press reminded us of the days of the refined Hollywood star as the second installment exceeded the box-office performance of its predecessor.
Bale's next role was the eyebrow-raising decision to take over the role of John Connor in the Schwarzenegger-less Terminator Salvation (2009), followed by a turn as federal agent Melvin Purvis in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009). Both films were hits but not the blockbusters they were expected to be.
For all his acclaim and box-office triumphs, Bale would earn his first Oscar in 2011 in the wake of The Fighter (2010)'s critical and commercial success. Bale earned the Best Supporting Actor award for his portrayal of Dicky Eklund, brother to and trainer of boxer "Irish" Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg. Bale again showed his ability to reshape his body with another gaunt, skeletal transformation.
Bale then turned to another auteur, Yimou Zhang, for the epic The Flowers of War (2011), in which Bale portrayed a priest trapped in the midst of the Rape of Nanking. Bale earned headlines for his attempt to visit with Chinese civil-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, which was blocked by the Chinese government.
Bale capped his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012); in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, Bale made a quiet pilgrimage to the state to visit with survivors of the attack that left theatergoers dead and injured. He also starred in the thriller Out of the Furnace (2013) with Crazy Heart (2009) writer/director Scott Cooper, and the drama-comedy American Hustle (2013), reuniting with David O. Russell.
Bale will re-team with The New World (2005) director Terrence Malick for two upcoming projects: Knight of Cups (2015) and an as-yet-untitled drama.
In his personal life, he devotes time to charities including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Foundation. He lives with his wife, Sibi Blazic, and their two children.The Fighter- Actor
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Christoph Waltz is an Austrian-German actor. He is known for his work with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, receiving acclaim for portraying SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained (2012). For each performance, he won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Additionally, he received the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Landa.
Christoph Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria, into a theatrical family, his mother Elisabeth Urbancic, an Austrian-born costume designer, and Johannes Waltz, a German-born stage builder. He has three siblings. His maternal grandmother was Viennese Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was fellow Burgtheater actor Emmerich Reimers. His maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychologist and psychiatrist who wrote the 1949 book "Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness".
Waltz attended the Theresianium and Billrothstrasse in Vienna. Upon graduation, he attended the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar before going to New York to the Lee Strasberg Institute. While in New York, Christoph met his first wife, and moved back to Vienna, then to London.
During the 80s, Christoph worked primarily in theatre, commuting from his home in London to Germany. Slowly Waltz began to work in TV, taking one-off roles in series, and TV movies. Film roles soon followed. Attempts to break into English-speaking film and TV were, however, unsuccessful. Waltz has expressed his gratitude to have been able to make a living and support his family through acting. For thirty years he worked steadily, tirelessly, in this manner.
It was not until he met Quentin Tarantino that his career in Hollywood took off. The role of Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) catapulted Waltz from a lifetime working in German TV/film to the new life of an international superstar and Academy Award-winning actor. He won 27 awards for his performance as Hans Landa, including the Cannes prix d'interpretation Masculin for 2009, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, the BAFTA Best Supporting Actor award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (which he won again for 2012's Django Unchained (2012)).
He also has portrayed computer genius Qohen Leth in the film The Zero Theorem (2013), American plagiarist Walter Keane in the biographical film _Big Eyes (2014), and 007's nemesis and head of SPECTRE Ernst Stavro Blofeld in _Spectre (2015)_. In Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, Waltz portrayed SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa, aka "The Jew Hunter". Clever, courteous, and multilingual - but also self-serving, cunning, implacable, and murderous. Waltz played gangster Benjamin Chudnofsky in The Green Hornet (2011). That same year, he starred in Water for Elephants (2011), Roman Polanski's Carnage (2011), and a remake of The Three Musketeers (2011). He played German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), a role Tarantino wrote specifically for Waltz.
Waltz resides in Berlin and Los Angeles. His wife is costume builder Judith Holste.Inglorious Basterds- Actor
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When hunky, twenty-year-old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of little depth. He spent several years trying desperately to sway this image, but this was a double-edged sword. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001), Ned Kelly (2003), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Casanova (2005), Candy (2006), I'm Not There (2007), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
Heath Ledger was born on the fourth of April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally (Ramshaw), a teacher of French, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer who also raced cars. His ancestry was Scottish, English, Irish, and Sephardi Jewish. As the story goes, in junior high school it was compulsory to take one of two electives, either cooking or drama. As Heath could not see himself in a cooking class he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, however the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent. When he was seventeen he and a friend decided to pack up, leave school, take a car and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams were made or, at least, where actors could possibly get their big break. Upon arriving in Sydney with a purported sixty-nine cents to his name, Heath tried everything to get a break.
His first real acting job came in a low-budget movie called Blackrock (1997), a largely unimpressive cliché; an adolescent angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He only had a very small role in the film. After that small role Heath auditioned for a role in a T.V. show called Sweat (1996) about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He was offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. Heath accepted the latter because he felt to really stand out as an actor one had to accept unique roles that stood out from the bunch. It got him small notice, but unfortunately the show was quickly axed, forcing him to look for other roles. He was in Home and Away (1988) for a very short period, in which he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay. Then came his very brief role in Paws (1997), a film which existed solely to cash in on guitar prodigy Nathan Cavaleri's brief moment of fame, where he was the hottest thing in Australia. Heath played a student in the film, involved in a stage production of a Shakespeare play, in which he played "Oberon". A very brief role, this offered him a small paycheck but did nothing to advance his career. Then came Two Hands (1999). He went to the U.S. trying to audition for film roles, showcasing his brief role in Roar (1997) opposite then unknown Vera Farmiga.
Then Australian director Gregor Jordan auditioned him for the lead in Two Hands (1999), which he got. An in your face Aussie crime thriller, Two Hands (1999) was outstanding and helped him secure a role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a young hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama The Patriot (2000).
What followed was a stark inconsistency of roles, Ledger accepting virtually every single character role, anything to avoid being typecast. Some met with praise, like his short role in Monster's Ball (2001), but his version of Ned Kelly (2003) was an absolute flop, which led distributors hesitant to even release it outside Australia. Heath finally had deserved success with his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005). For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in in the film, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills near-by. It was concluded weeks later that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that included pain-killers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight (2008) and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).
Posthumously, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There (2007), which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in 'The Dark Knight (2008). His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production. Ledger received more than thirty posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance as the Joker, the psychopathic clown prince of crime, in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he is the second actor to win an acting award posthumously after Peter Finch who won an Oscar for Network (Best Actor 1977)), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.The Dark Knight- Actor
- Producer
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Javier Bardem belongs to a family of actors that have been working on films since the early days of Spanish cinema.
He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, to actress Pilar Bardem (María del Pilar Bardem Muñoz) and businessman José Carlos Encinas Doussinague. His maternal grandparents were actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, and his uncle is screenwriter Juan Antonio Bardem. He got his start in the family business, at age six, when he appeared in his first feature, "El picaro" (1974) (A.K.A. The Scoundrel). During his teenage years, he acted in several TV series, played rugby for the Spanish National Team, and toured the country with an independent theatrical group. Javier's early film role as a sexy stud in the black comedy, Jamón, Jamón (1992) (aka Ham Ham) propelled him to instant popularity and threatened to typecast him as nothing more than a brawny sex symbol. Determined to avert a beefcake image, he refused similar subsequent roles and has gone on to win acclaim for his ability to appear almost unrecognizable from film to film. With over 25 movies and numerous awards under his belt, it is Javier's stirring, passionate performance as the persecuted Cuban writer, Reynaldo Arenas, in Before Night Falls (2000) that will long be remembered as his breakthrough role. He received five Best Actor awards and a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal.No Country For Old Men- Actor
- Director
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Alan Arkin was an Academy Award-winning American actor who was also an acclaimed director, producer, author, singer and composer.
He was born Alan Wolf Arkin on March 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. His family were Jewish emigrants from Russia and Germany. In 1946, the Arkins moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, California. His father, David I. Arkin, was an artist and writer, who worked as a teacher, and lost his job for merely refusing to answer questions about his political affiliation during the 1950s Red Scare. His father challenged the politically biased dismissal and eventually prevailed, but unfortunately it was after his death. His mother, Beatrice (Wortis) Arkin, a teacher, shared his father's views. Young Arkin was fond of music and acting, he was taking various acting classes from the age of 10. He attended Franklin High School, in Los Angeles, then Los Angeles City College from 1951 - 1953, and Bennington College in Vermont from 1953 - 1954. He sang in a college folk-band, and was involved in a drama class. He dropped out of college to form the folk music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin was the lead singer and played guitar. He co-wrote the 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song" - a Jamaican calypso folk song, which became better known as Harry Belafonte's popular version, and reached #4 on the Billboard chart. At that time Arkin was a struggling young actor who played bit parts on television and on stage, and made a living as a delivery boy, repairman, pot washer and baby sitter. From 1958 - 1968 he performed and recorded with the children's folk group, The Babysitters. He has also recorded an entire album for the Elektra label titled "Folksongs - Once Over Lightly."
In 1957 Arkin made his first big screen appearance as a lead singer with The Tarriers in Calypso Heat Wave (1957). Then he made his Off-Broadway debut as a singer in "Heloise" (1958). Next year he joined the Compass Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri. There he caught the eye of stage director Bob Sills and became the original member of the "Second City" troupe in Chicago. In 1961 Arkin made his Broadway debut in musical "From the Second City", for which he wrote lyrics and sketches, then starred as David Kolowitz in the Broadway comedy "Enter Laughing" (1963), for which he won a Tony Award. He starred in a Broadway musical "From the Second City production, then returned to Broadway as Harry Berlin in "Luv" (1964). Arkin made his directorial debut with an Off-Broadway hit called "Eh?" (1966), which introduced the young actor, named Dustin Hoffman. He won a Drama Desk Award for his direction of the Off-Broadway production of "Little Murders" (1969), and another Drama Desk Award for "The White House Murder Case" (1970). He also directed the original version of Neil Simon's hilarious smash, "The Sunshine Boys" (1972), which ran over 500 performances.
Arkin earned his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor for his feature acting debut in a comedy The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), by director Norman Jewison, co-starring as Lt. Rozanov, a Soviet submariner who is mistaken for a spy after his boat accidentally wrecks aground in New England. Arkin demonstrated his dramatic range as the psychopathic killer Roat in suspense film Wait Until Dark (1967), opposite Audrey Hepburn. He reinvented himself as the sensitive deaf-mute in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), for which he received his second Academy Award Nomination as Best Actor in the Leading role. He followed with what remained his best known role as Captain Yossarian in Catch-22 (1970), directed by Mike Nichols and based on the eponymous anti-war novel by Joseph Heller. In it Arkin arguably gave his strongest performance, however, his career suffered because the film initially did not live up to expectations. After a few years of directorial work on television, Arkin made a comeback with an impressive portrayal of doctor Sigmund Freud in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976). In the early 1980s he acted in three movies that were family affairs, written by his wife, Barbara Dana, and co-starring his son, Adam Arkin.
During the 1990s he turned out several notable performances, such as a bitter former baseball player in TNT's Cooperstown (1993), and as a hilarious psychiatrist opposite John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). He won raves for his portrayal of a divorced father who struggles to keep his kids enrolled in the Beverly Hills school system in Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). Arkin gave a brilliant performance opposite Robin Williams in Jakob the Liar (1999), a film about the Nazi occupation of Poland. He also returned to the New York stage co-starring with his son, Tony Arkin and Elaine May in "Power Plays", which he also co-authored. His most recent comeback as a heroin-snorting, sex-crazed, foul-mouthed grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), earned him his third Academy Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and his first Academy Award.
Alan Arkin had been a modern Renaissance man. In addition to his achievements as an actor, director, and producer, he made his mark as a singer-songwriter with his popular-song compositions "Banana Boat Song", "Cuddle Bug," "That's Me," and "Best Time of the Year." Arkin also authored several books, including science-fiction and some children's stories, such as "The Clearing", "The Lemming Condition" and "Cassie Loves Beethoven" among his other publications. He was a father of three sons, Adam Arkin, Matthew Arkin, and Anthony Arkin, and a grandfather of Molly Arkin.
Alan Arkin was a strong supporter of an organic way of living and also a proponent for preservation of the environment and natural habitat. He avoided the show-biz-milieu and was known as an actor who does not really care about prestigious awards, but values having a good job and being acknowledged by his peers. In Arkin's own words he wanted to "Stay home for three months. Living as quietly as humanly possible." Arkin was given an Indian name, Grey Wolf, by his Native American friends in New Mexico.
Alan Arkin died in California on June 29, 2023 at the age of 89. He is survived by his three sons - Adam, Matthew, and Anthony Dana Arkin, and with Dana, Alan Arkin is survived by third wife, Suzanne Newlander Arkin, whom he married in 1999.Little Miss Sunshine- Actor
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- Camera and Electrical Department
Jake Gyllenhaal was born on December 19, 1980 in Los Angeles, California as Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal, the son of producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner and director Stephen Gyllenhaal, and the younger brother of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. He is of Ashkenazi Jewish (mother) and Swedish, English, and German (father) descent.
He made his movie debut at 11 in City Slickers (1991). From the late 1990s through the early 2000s, he starred in October Sky (1999) & Donnie Darko (2001), receiving an Independent Spirit Award Best Actor nomination for the latter. He followed up w/ roles in Bubble Boy (2001), The Good Girl (2002), Moonlight Mile (2002) & The Day After Tomorrow (2004).
He made his theater debut in a revival of This Is Our Youth in London. The play was well-received & played for 8 weeks on West End. He then starred in Jarhead (2005) & Proof (2005). However, it was his performance in Brokeback Mountain (2005) that won him critical acclaim. He won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role while also being nominated for the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role SAG Award, the Best Supporting Actor-Motion Picture Satellite Award & the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. Afterwards, he starred in Zodiac (2007), Brothers (2009), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) & Love & Other Drugs (2010). For Love & Other Drugs (2010), he was nominated for the Best Actor-Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Golden Globe Award.
In the 2010s, he starred in Source Code (2011), End of Watch (2012), Prisoners (2013), Nightcrawler (2014), Southpaw (2015) & Demolition (2015). For Nightcrawler (2014), he was nominated for the Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama Golden Globe, the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role SAG & the Best Actor in a Leading Role BAFTA Award. Leading Role BAFTA Award.Brokeback Mountain- Actor
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Thomas Haden Church was born Thomas Richard McMillen in Yolo, California, to Maxine (Sanders) and Carlos Richard McMillen, who was a U.S. marine and surveyor. He was raised in Texas. His mother remarried George Quesada, a widowed WWII veteran who served in Guam, in 1969. He adopted this surname Quesada. He changed it to Haden Church after "nobody could pronounce Quesada". Church began his show business career in front of a microphone instead of a camera, first as a radio deejay and then as a voice-over announcer. After landing a role in the independent film, Stolen Moments, Church moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career.Sideways