The Oscars

Film legend Charlton Heston dead at 84

2008-04-06T21:03:00.002+02:00

Charlton Heston, the Oscar winner who portrayed Moses and other heroic figures on film in the '50s and '60s and later championed conservative values as head of the National Rifle Association, has died. He was 84. The actor died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia at his side, family spokesman Bill Powers said. He declined to comment on the cause of death or provide further details.

Heston lent his strong presence to some of the most acclaimed and successful films of the midcentury. "Ben-Hur" won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent "Titanic" (1997) and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003). He won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing "Ben-Hur."Heston's other hits include: "The Ten Commandments," "El Cid," "55 Days at Peking" and "Planet of the Apes." He liked to cite the number of historical figures he had portrayed, including Moses ("The Ten Commandments"), John the Baptist ("The Greatest Story Ever Told") and Michelangelo ("The Agony and the Ecstasy"). Heston made his movie debut in the 1940s in two independent films by a college classmate, David Bradley, who later became a noted film archivist. He had the title role in "Peer Gynt" in 1942 and was Marc Antony in Bradley's 1949 version of "Julius Caesar," for which Heston was paid $50 a week.

Film producer Hal B. Wallis ("Casablanca") spotted Heston in a 1950 television production of "Wuthering Heights" and offered him a contract. When his wife reminded him that they had decided to pursue theater and television, he replied, "Well, maybe just for one film to see what it's like." Heston earned star billing from his first Hollywood movie, "Dark City," a 1950 film noir. Cecil B. DeMille next cast him as the circus manager in the all-star "The Greatest Show On Earth," named by the Motion Picture Academy as the best picture of 1952. More movies followed. Most were forgettable low-budget films, and Heston seemed destined to remain an undistinguished action star. His old boss DeMille rescued him. The director had long planned a new version of "The Ten Commandments," which he had made as a silent in 1923 with a radically different approach that combined biblical and modern stories. He was struck by Heston's facial resemblance to Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses, especially the similar broken nose, and put the actor through a long series of tests before giving him the role. The Hestons' newborn, Fraser Clarke Heston, played the role of the infant Moses in the film. More films followed: the eccentric thriller "Touch of Evil," directed by Orson Welles; William Wyler's "The Big Country," costarring with Gregory Peck; a sea saga, "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" with Gary Cooper.

Then his greatest role: "Ben-Hur." Heston wasn't the first to be considered for the remake of 1925 biblical epic. Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster and Rock Hudson had declined the film. Heston plunged into the role, rehearsing two months for the furious chariot race. The huge success of "Ben-Hur" and Heston's Oscar made him one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood. He combined big-screen epics like "El Cid" and "55 Days at Peking" with lesser ones such as "Diamond Head," "Will Penny" and "Airport 1975." In his later years he played cameos in such films as "Wayne's World 2" and "Tombstone."

Actor Paul Scofield dies at 86

2008-03-20T20:19:00.002+01:00

Paul Scofield may have turned down a knighthood, but his place among British acting royalty is nonetheless assured. The legendary stage actor, who won an Academy Award for A Man for All Seasons, made only a handful of films, but he made them count. Scofield died Wednesday at age 86 in a hospital in southern England. He had been suffering from leukemia. On stage, Scofield brought his physical gifts — a craggy face and a powerful, rumbling voice — to roles from Shakespeare and Shaw to Steinbeck and Chekhov. Richard Burton, once regarded as the theatrical heir to Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, said it was Scofield who deserved that place. "Of the 10 greatest moments in the theater, eight are Scofield's." Even A Man for All Seasons, perhaps his greatest film role, was an adaptation of a play that won him a Tony Award in 1961. He reprised his role as Sir Thomas More, who was executed after clashing with King Henry VIII, in the 1966 film. In 1979, he received acclaim for another great historical stage role, as composer Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. For all the fame, Scofield remained a family man who lived most of his life a few miles from his birthplace. Scofield received his second Oscar nomination for Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1994). His other films included Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance (1973), Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989) and The Crucible (1996).

Oscar-winning director Minghella dies at 54

2008-03-18T16:46:00.002+01:00

Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella, who turned such literary works as "The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain" into acclaimed movies, has died. He was 54. The death was confirmed Tuesday by his agent, Judy Daish. No other details were immediately available. "The English Patient," the 1996 World War II drama, won nine Academy Awards, including best director for Minghella, best picture and best supporting actress for Juliette Binoche. Based on the celebrated novel by Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje, the movie tells of a burn victim's tortured recollections of his misdeeds in time of war. Minghella also was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay for the movie and for his screenplay for "The Talented Mr. Ripley." His 2003 "Cold Mountain," based on Charles Frazier's novel of the U.S. Civil War, brought a best supporting actress Oscar for Renee Zellweger. The 1999 "The Talented Mr. Ripley," starring Matt Damon as a murderous social climber, was based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith. It earned five Oscar nominations. Among his other films were "Truly, Madly, Deeply" (1990), and last year's Oscar-nominated "Michael Clayton," on which he was executive producer. Minghella was recently in Botswana filming an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." It is due to air on British television this week. The book is the first in a series about the adventures of Botswanan private eye Precious Ramotswe; a 13-part television series was recently commission by U.S. network HBO.
Producer David Puttnam said Minghella was "a very special person." "He wasn't just a writer, or a writer-director, he was someone who was very well-known and very well-loved within the film community," Puttnam told the BBC. "Frankly he was far too young to have gone." Minghella also turned his talents to opera. In 2005, he directed a highly successful staging of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" at the English National Opera in London. The following year, he staged it for the season opener of New York's Metropolitan Opera. It was the first performance of the Met's new era under general manager Peter Gelb. Jeff Ramsay, press secretary to Botswanan President Festus Mogae, called Minghella's death a "shock and an utter loss." He said the director had been coming to the country ahead of the detective film and learning about Botswana. Born the second of five children to southern Italian emigrants, Minghella came to moviemaking from a flourishing playwriting career on the London "fringe" and, in 1986, on the West End with the play, "Made in Bangkok," a hard-hitting look at the sexual mores of a British tour group in Thailand. He worked as a television script editor before making his directing debut with "Truly, Madly, Deeply," a comedy about love and grief starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. According to reports, Mingella died of a hemorrhage after a routine operation on his neck.

The Academy

2008-03-13T20:49:00.003+01:00

It's time we dedicate a moment of attention to the Institution that gives away the annual awards. Founded on May 11, 1927 in Los Angeles, California, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is a professional honorary organization ostensibly dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures.

The Academy is composed of over 6,000 motion picture professionals. While the great majority of its members are based in the United States, membership is open to qualified filmmakers around the world.

All members must be invited to join. Invitation comes from the Board of Governors. Membership eligibility may be achieved by a competitive nomination or a member may submit a name based on other significant contribution to the field of motion pictures. New membership proposals are considered annually. The Academy does not publicly disclose its membership, although past press releases have announced the names of those who have been invited to join. Academy membership is divided into 15 branches, representing different disciplines in motion pictures. Members may not belong to more than one branch. Members whose work does not fall within one of the branches may belong to a group known as "Members At Large."

The academy's branches are:

Actors
Art Directors
Cinematographers
Directors
Documentary
Executives
Film Editors
Makeup
Music
Producers
Public Relations
Short Films and Feature Animation
Sound
Visual Effects
Writers

Presidents are elected for one-year terms and may not be elected for more than four consecutive terms. The current president of the Academy is Sid Ganis, an American motion picture executive and producer who has produced such films as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Big Daddy, Mr. Deeds, The Master of Disguise and Akeelah and the Bee. On August 23, 2005 he was elected President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Ganis began his film career in marketing and publicity at several studios, eventually joining Lucasfilm, where he served as Senior Vice President of the company for several years. He later became President of Paramount Pictures during the 1980s, and then Vice President, and president of marketing and distribution, at Columbia Pictures.

Former Presidents: Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was the first president. Others presidents include William de Mille, M.C. Levee, Conrad Nagel, J. Theodore Reed, Frank Lloyd, Frank Capra, Walter Wanger, Bette Davis, Jean Hersholt, Charles Brackett, George Seaton, George Stevens, B.B. Kahane, Valentine Davies, Wendell Corey, Arthur Freed, Gregory Peck, Daniel Taradash, Walter Mirisch, Howard W. Koch, Fay Kanin, Gene Allen, Robert E. Wise, Richard Kahn, Karl Malden, Arthur Hiller, Robert Rehme, Frank Pierson and Sid Ganis, who has been president since August 2005.

From its founding until 1946, when it moved into a building at 9038 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, the Academy occupied a number of rented offices. In December of 1975, the Academy dedicated a seven-story headquarters at 8949 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. For the first time in the organization’s history, its administrative offices, the Academy Players Directory, the Margaret Herrick Library, the Samuel Goldwyn Theater and other facilities were all located under one roof. Within a decade, however, the rapid growth of the holdings of both the Herrick Library and the Academy Film Archive necessitated the search for a new, separate facility. In 1988 a 55-year lease was arranged with the City of Beverly Hills for the conversion of its historic Waterworks building in La Cienega Park into the new home of the Academy’s library and film archive, to be called the Center for Motion Picture Study. The library and film archive occupied the structure in 1991, but by 1997 the crush of growing collections resulted once more in the need for additional off-site storage. In May of 2001 the Academy bought the former Don Lee-Mutual Broadcasting studios on Vine Street in Hollywood and began converting them into the new home of the Academy Film Archive and the Academy Players Directory. In 2006 the Academy Players Directory published its final edition, and the Directory was sold to a private concern. The building currently houses offices for the Academy Film Archive, the Academy’s Science and Technology Council, the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting program, and the planning staff for the proposed Academy museum, as well as four temperature- and humidity-controlled vaults (three for film, one for photos and documents) and the 286-seat Linwood Dunn Theater.

80th Academy Awards

2008-02-25T21:41:00.007+01:00

The 80th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best in film for 2007, was broadcast from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST/8:30 p.m. EST (01:00 February 25 UTC). It was the seventh time that the Kodak Theatre hosted the ceremonies since its construction, and the 33rd time that the ceremony was televised by ABC, which is under contract through 2014. Gil Cates was the producer, making it his 14th show, a record. Jon Stewart hosted the show, his second time. He previously presided over the 78th Academy Awards.

No Country for Old Men is an Academy Award-winning 2007 film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, and Javier Bardem. Faithfully adapted from the well-received Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, No Country for Old Men draws heavily on McCarthy's themes of chance and fate; it tells the story of a drug deal gone wrong and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama as three men crisscross each other's paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. No Country for Old Men was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture. Additionally, Javier Bardem won Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role; the Coen Brothers won Achievement in Directing (Best Director) and Best Adapted Screenplay. Other nominations included Best Film Editing (Roderick Jaynes), Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.

Joel and Ethan Coen, known collectively as The Coen Brothers, are four-time Academy Award winning American filmmakers. For more than 20 years, the pair have written and directed numerous successful films, ranging from screwball comedies (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy) to film noir (Miller's Crossing, Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country For Old Men), to movies where those two genres blur together (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink). The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly. Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984. They have adopted a son from Paraguay named Pedro McDormand Coen (Frances and all her siblings are adopted themselves). McDormand has starred in five of the Coen Brothers' films, including a minor appearance in Miller's Crossing, a supporting role in Raising Arizona, and lead roles in Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, and her Academy Award winning role in Fargo. Ethan is married to film editor Tricia Cooke. In 1984 the brothers wrote and directed Blood Simple, their first film together. Set in Texas, the film tells the tale of a shifty, sleazy bar owner who hires a private detective to kill his wife and her lover. The next film written and directed by the brothers was the 1987 release Raising Arizona. The film is the story of the unlikely married couple ex-convict Hi (played by Nicolas Cage) and ex-cop Ed (played by Holly Hunter) who long for a baby but are unable to conceive. Fortune smiles on them when a local furniture tycoon appears on television with his five newly born quintuplets that he jokes 'are more than we can handle'. Seeing this as a 'sign' and an opportunity to redress the natural balance, Hi and Ed steal one of the quintuplets and start to bring up the child as their own. Miller's Crossing was released in 1990, a straight-ahead homage to the gangster movie genre. Starring Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne and future Coen brothers' staple John Turturro, the film is set during the prohibition era of the 1930s and tells the tale of feuding mobs and gangster capers. The Coen brothers' reputation was seemingly enhanced with every subsequent release, but it took a massive leap forward with their next movie, 1991s visually stunning Barton Fink. Barton Fink is set in 1941 and is the story of a New York playwright (the eponymous Barton Fink) who moves to Los Angeles to write a B-movie. He settles down in his hotel apartment to commence the writing but all too soon gets writer's block and allows himself to receive some inspiration from the amiable man in the room next door, together with some industry associates. Inspiration comes from the strangest places, and the hotel is definitely unusual and a magnet for the bizarre. Barton Fink was a critical success, garnering Oscar nominations plus winning three major awards at Cannes Film Festival, including the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm). The brothers returned to more familiar ground in 1996 with the low-budget noir thriller Fargo. Set in the Coen brothers' home state of Minnesota, the movie tells the tale of Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), a man with a money problem, who works in his father-in-law's car showroom. Jerry is anxious to get hold of some money to move up in the world and hatches a plan to have his wife kidnapped so that his wealthy father-in-law will pay the ransom that he can split with the kidnappers. Inevitably, his best laid plans go wrong when the bungling kidnappers deviate from the agreed non-violent plan and local cop Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) starts to investigate the whole affair. A critical and commercial success, with particular praise for its dialogue and McDormand's performance, the film received several awards including a BAFTA Award and Cannes award for direction and two Oscars, one for best screenplay and a best Actress Oscar for McDormand. The Coens' next film would build upon this success and in 1998 The Big Lebowski was released. With its story about "The Dude," an LA slacker (played by Jeff Bridges), used as an unwitting pawn in a fake kidnapping plot with his bowling buddies (Steve Buscemi and John Goodman), the Coens had hit on a film that would provide a mainstream accessibility that they had not enjoyed since Raising Arizona. The Coen brothers' next film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) was yet another critical success. Based loosely on Homer's "Odyssey" (complete with a cyclops, sirens, et al.) the story is set along the Mississippi River in the 1930s and follows a trio of escaped convicts who have absconded from a chain gang and who journey home in an attempt to recover the loot from a bank heist that the leader has buried. But they have no idea what the journey is that they are undertaking. The film also highlighted the comic abilities of George Clooney who starred as the oddball lead character of Ulysses Everett McGill (ably assisted by his sidekick, the now ubiquitous John Turturro). The film's Bluegrass soundtrack, offbeat humor and, yet again, stunning cinematography, meant it was a critical and commercial hit. Intolerable Cruelty, arguably the Coens' most mainstream release, was released in 2003 and starred George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The film was a throwback to the romantic comedies of the 1940s with a story based around Miles Massey, a hot shot divorce lawyer, and a beautiful divorcee whom Massey had managed to stop getting any money from her divorce. She sets out on a course to get even with him while he becomes smitten with her. The Coens' latest movie No Country for Old Men was released in November 2007. Based on the 2005 novel by the author Cormac McCarthy, the film tells the tale of a man named Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) living on the Texas / Mexico border who stumbles upon two million dollars in drug money that he decides to pocket. He then has to go on the run to avoid those looking to recover the money, including a sinister killer (Javier Bardem) who confounds both Llewelyn and the local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones). This plot line is a return to the dark, noir themes which have provided the Coens with some of their most successful material, but it also marks a notable departure, including a lack of regular Coen actors (with the exception of Stephen Root), a less pronounced comedic element and minimal use of music. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, all of which were received by the Coens, as well as Best Supporting Actor received by Bardem. The Coens recently completed filming on Burn After Reading, a dark comedy starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney. The film is due to be released in Fall 2008.

The ceremony continued trends of recent years, with no film winning more than four awards, the honors for non-documentary features being spread among 13 different films, and major acting honors going to a biographical film. All four major acting awards went to European actors and actresses. The Best Actor award went to Daniel Day Lewis for There Will Be Blood. It was his second Oscar.

Marion Cotillard is an Academy Award-, BAFTA-, Golden Globe- and double César-winning French actress, best known for her landmark role as Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose (2007). After Claudette Colbert in 1934 and Simone Signoret in 1959, she is the third French actress to win an Academy Award for Best Actress (though Juliette Binoche won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress). She is the first Best Actress winner in a non-English language performance since Sophia Loren's win in 1961 for her performance in Two Women. She is also the first and so far only winner of an Academy Award for a performance in the French language.

Javier Bardem is an Academy Award-winning Spanish actor. He has made over two dozen films in his native country, but became an international star with his starring role in the critically acclaimed Before Night Falls. With this role, he became the first ever Spanish actor to receive an Academy Award nomination. Bardem won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for his performance as the antagonist Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Bardem starred in his first major motion picture, The Ages of Lulu, when he was 20. In 1992, he made his first international hit with Jamón, Jamón, which also starred Penélope Cruz. After starring in roughly two dozen films in his native country, he would eventually land his international breakthrough performance role in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls in 2000, as Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role, the first time for a Spaniard. This also marked Bardem's first English language speaking role. In 2002 he starred in John Malkovich's directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs. Bardem won the Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role in 2004's Mar Adentro, released in the United States as The Sea Inside, in which he portrayed assisted-suicide activist Ramón Sampedro. That year he also made a brief appearance as a vicious crime lord who summons Tom Cruise's hitman to do the dirty work of dispatching witnesses, in Michael Mann's crime drama Collateral, which also starred Jamie Foxx. In 2007 Bardem acted in two film adaptations; the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, based upon the novel of the same name and the adaptation of the classic Colombian novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. In No Country for Old Men, he plays chilling sociopath hitman Anton Chigurh. For that role, he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award for Best Supporting Actor and also won the Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor as well as the 2008 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Tilda Swinton is an Academy Award- and BAFTA- winning and Golden Globe-nominated British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. Her early film work included several film roles for director Derek Jarman, notably War Requiem (1989) playing a nurse opposite Sir Laurence Olivier as an old soldier. Swinton also played the title role in Orlando, Sally Potter's film version of the novel by Virginia Woolf. Recent years have seen Swinton move towards more mainstream projects, including the leading role in the well-reviewed American film The Deep End (2001), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. She appeared as the scheming archangel Gabriel in Constantine with Keanu Reeves, as a supporting character in films such as Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, and The Beach, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. Swinton has also appeared in the British films The Statement (2003) and Young Adam (2004), and sat on the jury of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, Swinton's performance as the sinister, seductive villainess, the White Witch Jadis, in the film version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe garnered critical praise as did her portrayal of Audrey Cobb in the Mike Mills film adaptation of the novel Thumbsucker. Swinton's performance as Karen Crowder in Michael Clayton also drew favorable reviews, for which she earned her second Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. After winning a BAFTA award in the same category at the 61st British Academy Film Awards, Swinton won an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role.

The Counterfeiters is an Academy Award winning 2007 Austrian / German film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by the Nazis during the Second World War to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England currency. The film centers on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the Nazi operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The film is based on a memoir written by Adolf Burger, a professional printer who was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1942 for political dissension and later interned at Sachsenhausen to work on Operation Bernhard. It won an Oscar Best Foreign Language Film at the 2008 Academy Awards.

"Falling Slowly" is an Academy Award-winning song, written and performed by personal and professional partners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. It appeared in the couple's 2006 film Once. The film was eligible for the 2007 Academy Awards, awarded on February 24, 2008. It was chosen as Best Original Song over the choral gospel song Raise It Up from August Rush and three songs from the postmodern Disney musical Enchanted. For some time, the song's eligibility for an Oscar was in dispute, as it had appeared on a 2006 CD issued by Hansard's band, The Frames, and it had been performed by the couple in various European venues. The Academy ruled that because the song had been composed for the movie, and the prior public exposure during the long period that the movie took to produce had been minimal, it remained eligible.

79th Academy Awards

2008-02-19T21:49:00.008+01:00

The 79th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best in film for 2006, took place on March 5, 2006 5:00 p.m. PT/8:00 p.m. ET at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. Ellen DeGeneres hosted the ceremony for the first time. The producer was Laura Ziskin. The nominees were announced on January 23 at 5:38 a.m. PST (13:38 UTC) by Academy president Sid Ganis and actress Salma Hayek, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in the Academy's Beverly Hills headquarters. Bolstered by three nominations for Best Song, the musical Dreamgirls received eight nominations, becoming the first film ever to receive the most nominations in a particular Academy Awards ceremony without being nominated for Best Picture. Babel received the second highest number of nominations with seven.

The Departed is an Academy-Award winning 2006 crime thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg. It is an American remake of the 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs. This film takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, where notorious Irish Mob boss Francis "Frank" Costello (Nicholson) plants his protégé Colin Sullivan (Damon) as an informant within the Massachusetts State Police. Simultaneously, the police assign undercover cop William Costigan, Jr. (DiCaprio) to infiltrate Costello's crew. When both sides of the law realize the situation, each man attempts to discover the other's true identity before being found out. The film won four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Martin Scorsese) (The latter was thought to be long overdue, and some entertainment critics subsequently referred to it as Scorsese's "Lifetime Achievement" Oscar), Best Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), and Best Adapted Screenplay (William Monahan). Mark Wahlberg was also nominated for the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance.

Martin Scorsese is an American Academy Award-winning film director, writer, and producer. Also affectionately known as "Marty", he is the founder of the World Cinema Foundation and a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema and has won awards from the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Directors Guild of America. Championed by influential movie critic Pauline Kael, Mean Streets was a breakthrough for Scorsese, De Niro, and Keitel. By now the signature Scorsese style was in place: macho posturing, bloody violence, Catholic guilt and redemption, gritty New York locale, rapid-fire editing, and a rock soundtrack. In 1974, actress Ellen Burstyn chose Scorsese to direct her in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. Although well regarded, the film remains an anomaly in the director's early career, as it focuses on a central female character. Two years later, in 1976, Scorsese sent shockwaves through the cinema world when he directed the iconic Taxi Driver, an unrelentingly grim and violent portrayal of one man's slow descent into insanity in a hellishly conceived Manhattan. The critical success of Taxi Driver encouraged Scorsese to move ahead with his first big-budget project: the highly stylized musical New York, New York. This tribute to Scorsese's home town and the classic Hollywood musical was a box-office and critical failure. New York, New York was the director's third collaboration with Robert De Niro, co-starring with Liza Minnelli. The film is best remembered today for the title theme song, which was popularized by Frank Sinatra. By many accounts (Scorsese's included), Robert De Niro practically saved his life when he persuaded him to kick his cocaine addiction to make what many consider his greatest film, Raging Bull (1980). Convinced that he would never make another movie, he poured his energies into making this violent biopic of middleweight boxing champion Jake La Motta, calling it a Kamikaze method of film-making. Scorsese's next project was his fifth collaboration with Robert De Niro, The King of Comedy (1983). An absurdist satire on the world of media and celebrity, it was an obvious departure from the more emotionally committed films he had become associated with. Along with the iconic 1987 Michael Jackson music video Bad, in 1986 Scorsese made The Color of Money, a sequel to the much admired Paul Newman film The Hustler (1960). It won actor Paul Newman a belated Oscar and gave Scorsese the clout to xcv dyxfinally secure backing for a project that had been a long time goal for him: The Last Temptation of Christ. Looking past the controversy, The Last Temptation of Christ gained critical acclaim and remains an important work in Scorsese's canon: an explicit attempt to wrestle with the spirituality which had under-pinned his films up until that point. The director went on to receive his second nomination for a Best Director Academy Award (again unsuccessfully, this time losing to Barry Levinson for Rain Man). After a decade of mostly mixed results, gangster epic Goodfellas (1990) was a return to form for Scorsese and his most confident and fully realized film since Raging Bull. A return to Little Italy, De Niro, and Joe Pesci, Goodfellas offered a virtuoso display of the director's bravura cinematic technique and re-established, enhanced, and consolidated his reputationScorsese earned his third Best Director nomination for Goodfellas but again lost to a first-time director, Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves). The film also earned Joe Pesci an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actor). 1991 brought Cape Fear, a remake of a cult 1962 movie of the same name, and the director's seventh collaboration with De Niro. The opulent and handsomely mounted The Age of Innocence (1993) was on the surface a huge departure for Scorsese, a period adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about the constrictive high society of late-19th Century New York.1995's expansive Casino, like The Age of Innocence before it, focused on a tightly wound male whose well-ordered life is disrupted by the arrival of unpredictable forces. Sharon Stone was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance. In 1999 Scorsese also produced a documentary on Italian filmmakers entitled Il Mio Viaggio in Italia, also known as My Voyage to Italy. The documentary foreshadowed the director's next project, the epic Gangs of New York (2002), influenced by (amongst many others) major Italian directors such as Luchino Visconti and filmed in its entirety at Rome's famous Cinecittà film studios. Gangs of New York was Scorsese's biggest and arguably most mainstream venture to date. Like The Age of Innocence, it was a 19th century-set New York movie, although focusing on the other end of the social scale (and like that film, also starring Daniel Day-Lewis). The production was highly troubled with many rumors referring to the director's conflict with Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein. Gangs of New York earned Scorsese his first Golden Globe for Best Director. In February 2003, Gangs of New York received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis. This was Scorsese's fourth Best Director nomination, and many thought it was finally his year to win. Ultimately, however, the film took home not a single Academy Award, and Scorsese lost his category to Roman Polanski for The Pianist. Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), was a lavish, large-scale biopic of director, producer, legendary eccentric, multi-millionaire, and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes. The film received highly positive reviews, The film also met with widespread box office success and gained Academy recognition. In January 2005, The Aviator became the most-nominated film of the 77th Academy Award nominations, nominated in 11 categories including Best Picture. The film also garnered nominations in nearly all of the other major categories, including a fifth Best Director nomination for Scorsese, Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett), and Alan Alda for Best Supporting Actor. Despite having a leading tally, the film ended up with only five Oscars: Best Supporting Actress, Art Direction, Costume Design, Film Editing and Cinematography. Scorsese lost again, this time to director Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby (which also won Best Picture). Scorsese returned to the crime genre with the Boston-set thriller The Departed, based on the Hong Kong police drama Infernal Affairs. The film reunited the director with Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor he has worked with for three consecutive projects. The Departed also brought Scorsese together with Jack Nicholson. Martin Scorsese's direction of The Departed earned him his second Golden Globe for Best Director, as well as a Critic's Choice Award, his first Director's Guild of America Award, and the Academy Award for Best Director. It was presented to him by his longtime friends and colleagues Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas, all fellow members of the New Hollywood generation. The Departed also received the Academy Award for the Best Motion Picture of 2006, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing by longtime Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker, her third win for a Scorsese film. Scorsese has been married to Helen Morris since 1999; she is his fifth wife. They have a daughter, Francesca, who appeared in The Departed and The Aviator. He has a daughter, Catherine, from his first marriage to Laraine Brennan, and a daughter, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, who is an actress, from his second marriage to Julia Cameron. Scorsese was also married to actress Isabella Rossellini from 1979 to their divorce in 1982. He married producer Barbara De Fina in 1985; their marriage ended in divorce as well.

Forest Whitaker is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, and Emmy-winning American actor, producer, and director. For his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film, The Last King of Scotland, Whitaker won several major awards, including an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA. He became the fourth African American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, following in the footsteps of Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx. Whitaker immersed himself in the details of Amin's life to prepare himself for the part. He has earned a reputation for this kind of intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Whitaker has a long history of working with well-regarded film directors and fellow actors. In his first onscreen role of note, he played a football player in Amy Heckerling's 1982 coming-of-age teen-comedy, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He co-starred alongside Nicolas Cage, Phoebe Cates, and Sean Penn. In 1986, he appeared in Martin Scorsese's film, The Color of Money (with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise), and in Oliver Stone's Platoon. The following year, he co-starred with Robin Williams in the comedy Good Morning, Vietnam. In 1988, Whitaker played the lead role of musician Charlie Parker in the Clint Eastwood-directed film, Bird. To prepare himself for the part, he sequestered himself in a loft with only a bed, couch, and saxophone, having also conducted extensive research and taken alto sax lessons. His performance, which has been called "transcendent," earned him the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Globe nomination. Whitaker continued to work with a number of well-known directors throughout the 1990s. Neil Jordan cast him in the pivotal role of "Jody" in his 1992 film, The Crying Game. In 1994, he was a member of the cast that won the first ever National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble for Robert Altman's film, Prêt-à-Porter. He gave a "characteristically emotional performance" in Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's 1995 film, Smoke. Whitaker played a serene, pigeon-raising, bushido-following, mob hit man in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, a 1999 film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Whitaker's greatest success to date is the 2006 film, The Last King of Scotland. To prepare for his role as dictator Idi Amin, Whitaker gained 50 pounds, learned to play the accordion, and immersed himself in research. He read books about Amin, watched news and documentary footage, and spent time in Uganda meeting with Amin's friends, relatives, generals, and victims; he also learned Swahili and mastered Amin's East African accent. His performance earned him the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, making him the fourth African-American actor in history to do so. In 1996, Whitaker married fellow actress Keisha Nash, whom he met on the set of Blown Away. The Whitakers have four children: two daughters together (Sonnet and True), his son (Ocean) from a previous relationship, and her daughter (Autumn) from a previous relationship.

Helen Mirren is an English stage, film and television actress. She has won an Oscar, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes and four Emmy Awards during her career. Mirren has made numerous appearances in an array of films. Some of her earlier film appearances include Caligula, Excalibur, 2010: The Year We Make Contact (in which she speaks Russian), The Long Good Friday, White Nights and The Mosquito Coast. After those appearances she received roles in Belfast-born director Terry George's film Some Mother's Son, which was about the 1981 Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland, opposite Irish actress Fionnuala Flanagan, Painted Lady, The Prince of Egypt and The Madness of King George. One of Mirren's other film roles was in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, as the eponymous thief's wife, opposite Michael Gambon. Mirren continued her successful film career when she starred more recently in Gosford Park with Maggie Smith and Calendar Girls where she starred with Julie Walters. Other more recent appearances include The Clearing, Pride, Raising Helen, and Shadowboxer. Mirren also provided the voice for the supercomputer "Deep Thought" in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. During her career, she has portrayed three British queens in different films and television series. These include Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), Elizabeth II in the film The Queen (2006), and Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, in The Madness of King George (1994). Her role in The Queen gained her numerous awards including a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar for Best Actress. During her acceptance speech at the Academy Award ceremony, Mirren praised and thanked Elizabeth II and stated that she had maintained her dignity and weathered many storms during her reign as Queen. Mirren married American director Taylor Hackford (her partner since 1986), in the Scottish Highlands on 31 December 1997, his 53rd birthday. It was her first marriage, and his third (he has two children from his previous marriage). Mirren has no children.

Alan Arkin is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning and four-time Emmy nominated American actor and director. He is best-known for starring in such films as Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Glengarry Glen Ross and Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2007. He is the father of actor Adam Arkin. Arkin is one of only eight actors to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his first screen appearance (for The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming in 1966). Two years later, he was again nominated, for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Arkin is equally comfortable in comedy and dramatic roles. Among those for which he has garnered the most favorable critical attention are his Oscar-nominated turns above; Wait Until Dark, as the erudite killer stalking Audrey Hepburn; director Mike Nichols' Catch-22; The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (where he played Sigmund Freud); writer Jules Feiffer's Little Murders, which Arkin directed; the The In-Laws, co-starring Peter Falk; Glengarry Glen Ross; and Little Miss Sunshine, for which he received his third Oscar nomination, in the category of Best Supporting Actor. On the 11th February 2007 he received a BAFTA Film Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of Grandfather Edwin in Little Miss Sunshine. On February 25, 2007, upon winning the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Arkin, who plays a foul-mouthed grandfather with a taste for heroin said, "More than anything, I'm deeply moved by the open-hearted appreciation our small film has received, which in these fragmented times speaks so openly of the possibility of innocence, growth and connection". At 72 years old, Arkin became the sixth oldest winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Arkin has been married three times. He and Jeremy Yaffe, to whom he was married from 1955 to 1960, have two sons: Adam Arkin, born Aug. 19, 1956 or 1957 (accounts differ), and Matthew Arkin, born in 1960. In 1967, Arkin had son Anthony (Tony) Dana Arkin with actress-screenwriter Barbara Dana (born 1940), to whom he was married from June 16, 1964 to the mid-1990s. In 1996, Arkin married a psychotherapist, Suzanne Newlander.

Jennifer Hudson is an Academy Award-winning American actress and singer. She first gained notice as one of the finalists on the third season of the FOX television series American Idol. She went on to star as Effie White in the 2006 motion picture musical Dreamgirls for which she won numerous awards including an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, and a SAG Award. In November 2005, Hudson was cast in the prized role of Effie White, the role originally created in a legendary Broadway performance by Jennifer Holliday, for the film adaptation of the musical Dreamgirls, which also starred Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, and Eddie Murphy. This role marked Hudson's debut screen performance. Hudson won the role over hundreds of professional singers and actresses, including American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino. On February 25, 2007, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in this film. At 25 years old, Hudson became the eighth-youngest winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Upon winning this award, Hudson also became one of the very few performers ever to win an Oscar for a debut screen performance. As of 2007, she is also the only person to have gone from participating in a reality television series to becoming an Academy Award winner.

The Lives of Others is an Academy Award-winning German film, marking the feature film debut of writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. With The Lives of Others Donnersmarck won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film had earlier won seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards including best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor and best supporting actor, after having set a new record with 11 nominations. It was also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Golden Globe Awards.

"I Need to Wake Up" is an Academy Award-winning song by Melissa Etheridge, written for the 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth. It is the first instance of a documentary film winning the Best Song category. Etheridge received the 2006 Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I Need to Wake Up."

78th Academy Awards

2008-02-18T10:40:00.009+01:00

The 78th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 2005, were held on March 5, 2006 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. They were hosted by The Daily Show host Jon Stewart. The ceremony was pushed back from its newly established February date because of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. The nominees were announced on January 31, 2006. Ang Lee's drama Brokeback Mountain had the most nominations of the year's films, receiving eight. Its nominations included Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. Paul Haggis' Crash, George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, and Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha each received six nominations.

Crash is an Academy Award-winning drama film directed by Paul Haggis. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2004, and was released internationally in 2005. The film is about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles. A self-described "passion piece" for director Paul Haggis, Crash was inspired by a real life incident in which his Porsche was carjacked outside a video store on Wilshire Boulevard in 1991. It won three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing of 2005 at the 78th Academy Awards. The film depicts several characters living in Los Angeles during a 36-hour period and brings them together through car accidents, shootings, and carjackings. Most of the characters depicted in the film are racially prejudiced in some way and become involved in conflicts which force them to examine their own prejudices. Through these characters' interactions, the film seeks to depict and examine not only racial tension, but also the distance between strangers in general. There has been much criticism over Crash winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, as an underdog over front-runner Brokeback Mountain. Brokeback Mountain led the pre-Oscar award season by winning most of the key precursor awards, particularly at the Golden Globes as well as earning the most Academy Award nominations (8).

Ang Lee is an Academy Award-winning film director from Taiwan. While The Wedding Banquet (1993) became a break-out hit for Lee as the most proportionately profitable film of 1993, it was Sense and Sensibility (1995) that brought Lee his first true international acclaim. Following that, both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) (nominated for Academy Award for Best Director), and Brokeback Mountain (2005) (which won the Academy Award for Best Director), became cultural touchstones, sweeping awards ceremonies, and, in the case of Brokeback Mountain, sparking intense critical debates. In 2007, Lee's film Lust, Caution earned him a second Golden Lion, making him one of only two directors to have ever won Venice's most prestigious award twice. The 2005 movie about the forbidden love between two Wyoming sheepherders immediately caught public attention and initiated intense debates. The film was critically acclaimed at major international film festivals and won Lee numerous Best Director and Best Film awards worldwide. In addition, "Brokeback" became a cultural phenomenon and a box office hit. "Brokeback" was nominated for a leading eight Oscars and was the frontrunner for Best Picture heading into the March 5 ceremony, but lost out to Crash, a story about race relations in Los Angeles, in a controversial upset. There was speculation that the film's depiction of homosexuality might have been the reason for that upset.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is an Academy Award-and Golden Globe-winning American actor. One of Hoffman's earliest major roles was as a defendant in a 1990 episode of the television series Law & Order. He made his film breakthrough in 1992 when he appeared in four feature films, with the most successful film being Scent of a Woman, in which he played a backstabbing classmate of Chris O'Donnell's character. He had been stocking shelves at a city grocery at the time before landing the role and credits the film to kickstarting his career. Hoffman has established a successful and respected film career playing diverse and idiosyncratic characters in supporting roles, working with a wide variety of noted directors, including Paul Thomas Anderson, The Coen Brothers, Cameron Crowe, Spike Lee, David Mamet, Robert Benton, Todd Solondz and Anthony Minghella; notably, he has appeared in four out of five of Anderson's feature films to date (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love). Hoffman has continued to play supporting parts in such films as Cold Mountain, as a carnally obsessed preacher, Along Came Polly, as Ben Stiller's crude has-been actor buddy, and Mission: Impossible III, as villainous arms dealer Owen Davian out to kill Ethan Hunt. Hoffman has distinguished himself by playing a wide contrast of characters including gay characters (Boogie Nights, Flawless and Capote), lonely losers (Happiness), spoiled rich brats (Scent of a Woman, Patch Adams and The Talented Mr. Ripley), caring and nurturing figures (Magnolia and Almost Famous), vicious thugs (Punch-Drunk Love and Mission: Impossible III), sensitive artists (State and Main), outlandish CIA agents (Charlie Wilson's War), and so on. In 2005, Hoffman won widespread acclaim for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote in the film Capote. His performance received numerous high-profile accolades and awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture, and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In 2007, Hoffman was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for playing Gust Avrakotos, a CIA agent who helps Congressman Charlie Wilson support a covert war in Afghanistan in the movie Charlie Wilson's War. In 2008, he was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the same role. Hoffman is in a relationship with costume designer Mimi O'Donnell. They met while working on the 1999 play In Arabia We'd All Be Kings, which Hoffman directed. They have a son, Cooper Alexander, born in March 2003, and a daughter, Tallulah, born in November 2006.

Reese Witherspoon is an American actor who has won an Academy Award and established herself as one of the highest-paid female Hollywood actors in recent years. Witherspoon landed her first feature role as the female lead in the movie The Man in the Moon in 1991; later that year she made her television acting debut, in the cable movie Wildflower. In 1996, Witherspoon's performance in Freeway established her as a rising star and led to roles in three major 1998 movies: Overnight Delivery, Pleasantville, and Twilight. The following year, Witherspoon appeared in the critically acclaimed Election, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. 2001 marked her career's turning point with the breakout role as Elle Woods in the box office hit Legally Blonde, and in 2002 she starred in Sweet Home Alabama, which became her biggest commercial film success to date. 2003 saw her return as lead actress and executive producer of Legally Blonde 2. In 2005, Witherspoon received worldwide attention and praise for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, which earned her an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. Witherspoon married actor and Cruel Intentions co-star Ryan Phillippe in 1999; they have two children, Ava and Deacon. The couple separated at the end of 2006 and divorced in October 2007.

George Clooney is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, who gained fame as one of the lead doctors in the long-running television drama, ER (1994–99), as Anthony Edwards's best friend and partner, Dr. Douglas "Doug" Ross, but is best known for his subsequent rise as an "A-List" movie star in contemporary American cinema. Winner of an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, Clooney has balanced his glamorous performances in big-budget blockbusters with work as a producer and director behind commercially riskier projects, as well as social and political activism. On January 18, 2008, the United Nations announced Clooney's appointment as a United Nations peace envoy. Clooney continued to star in movies while appearing in ER, his first major Hollywood role being From Dusk Till Dawn, directed by Robert Rodriguez. He followed its success with One Fine Day with Michelle Pfeiffer and The Peacemaker with Nicole Kidman, the latter being the initial feature length release from Dreamworks SKG studio. Clooney was then cast as the new Batman in Batman & Robin. In 1998, he starred in Out of Sight, opposite Jennifer Lopez. This was the first of many collaborations with director Steven Soderbergh. He also starred in Three Kings during the last weeks of his contract with ER. After leaving ER, Clooney starred in major Hollywood successes, such as Three Kings, The Perfect Storm, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?. In 2001, he teamed up with Soderbergh again for Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the 1960s Rat Pack film of the same name. Alongside Clooney, the film also starred Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, and Julia Roberts. To this day, it remains Clooney's most commercially successful movie, earning approximately US$444,200,000 worldwide. The film spawned two sequels, Ocean's Twelve in 2004 and Ocean's Thirteen in 2007. He made his directorial debut in the 2002 film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, an adaptation of the autobiography of TV producer Chuck Barris. Though the movie didn't do well at the box office, Clooney's direction was praised among critics and audiences alike. In 2005, Clooney starred in Syriana, which was based loosely on former Central Intelligence Agency agent Robert Baer and his memoirs of being an agent in the Middle East. The same year he directed, produced, and starred in Good Night, and Good Luck, a film about 1950s television journalist Edward R. Murrow's famous war of words with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Both films received critical acclaim and decent box-office returns despite being in limited release. At the 2006 Academy Awards, Clooney was nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Good Night, and Good Luck, as well as Best Supporting Actor for Syriana. As with tradition, last year's acting winners present an acting award for the opposite sex. Cate Blanchett won Best Supporting Actress the previous year but was contractually signed to star in a play in New York City, therefore unable to present the award for Best Supporting Actor; Nicole Kidman was recruited to fill in. He became the first person in Oscar history to be nominated for directing one movie and acting in another in the same year. He would go on to win for his role in Syriana. On January 22, 2008, Clooney was nominated for Best Actor for his role in Michael Clayton. Clooney has only been married once, to actress Talia Balsam from 1989 to 1993.

Rachel Weisz is an Academy Award-winning English actress. She became well-known after her roles in the Hollywood films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, and has since continued appearing in major film roles. Weisz started her cinema career in 1995 with Chain Reaction and then appeared in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. She followed this work with more English films including My Summer with Des, Swept from the Sea, The Land Girls, and Michael Winterbottom's I Want You. Although she received favourable critical recognition for her work to this point, her breakout into wide audience recognition came from a popular serio-comic horror movie The Mummy, in which she played the lead female role. Since then she has starred in a number of films including The Mummy Returns (2001), which grossed higher than the original, as well as Enemy at the Gates (2001), About a Boy (2002), Runaway Jury (2003) and Constantine (2005).In 2005, Weisz starred in The Constant Gardener, a film adaptation of a John le Carré thriller of the same title set in the slums of Kibera and Loiyangalani, Kenya. For this role, Weisz won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and the 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. Weisz is engaged to American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. They have been dating since 2004. They have a son, Henry Chance, born on May 31, 2006 in New York City.

Tsotsi is a 2005 Academy Award-winning film directed by Gavin Hood and set in a Soweto slum, near Johannesburg, South Africa. It is based on a novel of the same name by Athol Fugard. The soundtrack features Kwaito music performed by the popular South African artist Zola as well as a score by Mark Kilian and Paul Hepker featuring the voice of South African protest singer/poet Vusi Mahlasela.Tsotsi won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards. In 2005, Gavin Hood was nominated for the Screen International Award at the European Film Awards for his work on the movie. Tsotsi received a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006. The film also won at least five "audience" or "people's choice" awards at various film festivals.

"It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" is a 2005, Academy Award winning song written for the film Hustle & Flow by Memphis hip hop artists Paul Beauregard and Jordan Houston (both from rap group Three 6 Mafia), and Cedric Coleman. It was performed in the film by stars Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson. Three 6 Mafia made history as they became the first African-American hip-hop group to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song and also became the first hip-hop artists to ever perform at the ceremony. However, it was the second hip hop song to win an Oscar, after Eminem's "Lose Yourself", from the film 8 Mile, won in 2002.

77th Academy Awards

2008-02-17T14:48:00.009+01:00

The 77th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 2004, were held on February 27, 2005, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. They were hosted by comedian Chris Rock. The nominees were announced on January 25, 2005. Martin Scorsese's biopic of the eccentric Howard Hughes, The Aviator, led the pack with eleven nominations including Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. Marc Forster's Finding Neverland and Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby each had seven nominations. Ray and Sideways rounded out the nominees for Best Picture.

Million Dollar Baby is an Academy Award winning 2004 dramatic film directed by Clint Eastwood. The film stars Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman. It is the story of an under-appreciated boxing trainer, his elusive past and his quest for atonement in helping an underdog amateur female boxer (the film's title character) achieve her fragile dream of becoming a professional. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The screenplay was written by Paul Haggis, based on short stories by F.X. Toole, the pen name of fight manager and "cutman" Jerry Boyd. Originally published under the title Rope Burns, the stories have since been republished under the movie's title. Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a female amateur who aspires to prove her worth by becoming a successful boxer, is taken in by Frank Dunn (Clint Eastwood), a down-and-out boxing trainer who has been cast aside by most of society, including his estranged daughter Katie. Dunn aids Maggie in realizing her goal while developing a stronger-than-blood bond. Initially, Dunn is dispassionate toward Maggie because she is a 31-year-old female. Maggie, however, perseveres in her attempts to gain Dunn's favor by training each day in his gym, even when others discourage her. Frank's friend and employee, ex-boxer Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris (Morgan Freeman) narrates the story in non-dialogue scenes. Million Dollar Baby received the award for Best Picture of 2004 at the 77th Academy Awards. Eastwood was awarded his second Directing Oscar for the film and also received a Best Actor nomination. Swank and Freeman received Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor Oscars, respectively. The film was also nominated for the Film Editing and Writing Adapted Screenplay awards. The film beat what many thought to be the front-runner, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, which had won the Golden Globe and the BAFTA for Best Drama.

Jamie Foxx is an American actor, singer, and stand-up comic. Foxx is possibly best known for his portrayal of musician Ray Charles in Ray, and for his collaborations with director Michael Mann. With Ray, he became one of the few African-Americans to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Foxx's first dramatic role came in Oliver Stone's 1999 film Any Given Sunday, where he played a heavy-partying football player. He was cast in the role in part because of his background as a football player. Foxx has since evolved into a respected dramatic actor. Following Any Given Sunday, Foxx was featured as taxi driver Max Durocher in the film Collateral alongside Tom Cruise, for which he received outstanding reviews and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His standout performance, however, was his portrayal of Ray Charles in the biopic Ray (2004), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Foxx is the second male, and the first African American, in history to receive two acting Oscar nominations in the same year for two different movies, Collateral and Ray. The only other male actor to achieve this was Al Pacino. Following this success, Foxx appeared in three more movies: Jarhead, Miami Vice, and Dreamgirls which were hits at the box office and lifted Foxx even higher as a bankable star in Hollywood. 2007 brought him the lead role in the film The Kingdom, opposite Chris Cooper and Jennifer Garner.

Morgan Freeman is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning American actor, film director, and film narrator. Noted for his reserved demeanor and authoritative speaking voice, Freeman has become one of Hollywood's most popular and respected actors. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Freeman began playing prominent supporting roles in many feature films, earning him a reputation for depicting wise and fatherly characters. As he gained fame, he went on to bigger roles in films such as the chauffeur Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy, and Sergeant Major Rawlins in Glory (both in 1989). In 1994 he portrayed Red, the redeemed convict in the acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption. His star power was already confirmed as he starred in some of the biggest films of the 1990s, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Se7en, and Deep Impact. After three previous nominations – a supporting actor nomination for Street Smart (1987), and leading actor nominations for Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) – he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Million Dollar Baby. Freeman is recognized for his distinctive voice, making him a frequent choice for narration. In 2005 alone, he provided narration for two of the most successful films of the year, War of the Worlds and the Academy Award-winning documentary film March of the Penguins. Freeman has recently been well known for his role as God in the hit movie Bruce Almighty and its sequel, Evan Almighty, as well as his role as Lucius Fox in the critical and commercial success Batman Begins and its upcoming sequel, The Dark Knight. He starred in Rob Reiner's 2007 film The Bucket List, opposite Jack Nicholson, playing terminal cancer patients who must fulfill their lists of goals. Freeman was married to Jeanette Adair Bradshaw from October 22, 1967, until 1979. He has been married to Myrna Colley-Lee since June 16, 1984. He has two sons, Alfonso and Saifoulaye, from previous relationships. He adopted his first wife's daughter, Deena, and the couple also had a fourth child, Morgana.

Cate Blanchett, is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe Award-winning Australian actress. She has won various other awards, most notably two SAGs and two BAFTAs, as well as the Volpi Cup at 64th Venice International Film Festival. She came to international attention in the 1998 film Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, in which she played Elizabeth I of England. She is also well known for her portrayals of the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a role which brought her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Blanchett is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women of all time. Blanchett made her international film debut as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese in a production of Paradise Road directed by Bruce Beresford, co-starring Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. Her first high-profile role was as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 movie Elizabeth, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Blanchett lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow for her role in Shakespeare in Love but won a British Academy (BAFTA) Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama. The following year, Blanchett was nominated for another BAFTA Award for her supporting role in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. She played the role of the High Elf Queen Galadriel in all three films, which hold the record as the highest grossing film trilogy of all time. In 2005, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. This made Blanchett the first person ever to garner an Academy Award for playing a previous Oscar-winning actor/actress. In 2006 she starred in both Babel opposite Brad Pitt, and Notes on a Scandal playing Sheba Hart opposite Dame Judi Dench. Coincidentally, Dench won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for playing Elizabeth I, the same year Blanchett lost for playing the same historical figure, albeit in a different category. Blanchett received her third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film (Dench was also Oscar nominated). In 2007, she won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for portraying one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' feature film I'm Not There and also reprised her role as Elizabeth I in the sequel to Elizabeth entitled Elizabeth: the Golden Age. Cate Blanchett received double Oscar nominations on January 23, 2008, including Best Actress for her regal performance in Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting actress for her portrayal of music legend Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, putting the Australian actress on track to make Academy Awards history. Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 while she was performing in a production of The Seagull. The two were married on December 29, 1997. Their first child, Dashiell John, was born on December 3, 2001; their second child, Roman Robert, was born on April 23, 2004. She is now currently pregnant with her third child, who is due in April 2008.

The Sea Inside (Spanish: Mar adentro) is a 2004 film by the Spanish/Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar. It is based on the real-life story of Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem), a Spanish ship mechanic left quadriplegic after a diving accident who fought a 28-year campaign in support of euthanasia and his right to end his own life.The Sea Inside won the 2004 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the 2004 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and 14 Goya Awards.

"Al otro lado del río" (English: On the other side of the river) is a song written and performed by Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler for the film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004). Beside the film's soundtrack, it can also be found in Drexler's seventh album Eco, in the soundtrack the great bassist and double bassist Jeff Eckels preformed. "Al otro lado del río" received the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 77th ceremony, becoming the first song in Spanish and the second in a foreign language to receive such an honor.

76th Academy Awards

2008-02-16T20:40:00.011+01:00

The 76th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 2003, were held on February 29, 2004 (the first ceremony in 62 years to occur at a different date rather than its longtime March or April date) at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. They were hosted by comedian Billy Crystal. The big contenders for the 76th Academy Awards (for the best achievement in film in 2003) included The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Lost in Translation, and in the highly competitive Best Actor category, strong work from Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Jude Law.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept all 11 categories in which it was nominated. It matched the record 11 wins of Titanic and Ben-Hur and beat the previous record of Gigi and The Last Emperor for the largest sweep of every nominated category, both of which had achieved nine-for-nine. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is an epic fantasy film directed by Peter Jackson. It is primarily based on the third volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (but also includes material from the second volume), and it is the concluding film in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. It follows The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers and was filmed simultaneously with them. As Sauron launches the final stages of his conquest of Middle-earth, Gandalf the Wizard and Théoden King of Rohan step up their forces to help defend Gondor's capital Minas Tirith from this threat. Aragorn must finally take up the throne of Gondor and summons an army of ghosts to help him defeat Sauron. Ultimately, even with full strength of arms, they find they cannot win; it comes down to the Hobbits Frodo and Sam, who themselves face the burden of the Ring and the treachery of Gollum, to finally destroy the One Ring in Mordor. Released on December 17, 2003, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King became one of the most critically acclaimed films and greatest box-office successes of all time. It swept all eleven Academy Awards it was nominated for, which ties it with only Titanic and Ben-Hur for most Academy Awards ever won. It also won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the only time in history a fantasy film has done so. It also became the second highest grossing movie worldwide of all time behind Titanic, unadjusted for inflation and the most successful film in the series.

Peter Jackson is an Academy Award-winning New Zealand filmmaker best known as the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which he, along with Fran Walsh, his long time partner, and Philippa Boyens, adapted from the novels by J. R. R. Tolkien. He is also known for his 2005 remake of King Kong. Jackson first gained attention with his "splatstick" horror comedies, and came to prominence with success and critical acclaim for Heavenly Creatures, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen with Walsh. Jackson's eldest son Billy (born 1995), has had cameo appearances in every one of his parents' films since his birth, namely The Frighteners (1996), The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and King Kong. His daughter Katie (born 1996) appeared in all the above films, except The Frighteners.

Sean Penn is an Academy Award-winning American film actor and director, known for playing intense and unsympathetic characters. He was awarded an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Mystic River. Penn has also been nominated for three other Academy Awards in recognition of his roles in I Am Sam, Sweet and Lowdown and Dead Man Walking. Penn launched his career with the 1981 film Taps, followed a year later with the comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High in the role of Jeff Spicoli and has since starred in over forty movies. In 1985, Penn gave a memorable performance in the role of Andrew Daulton Lee in The Falcon and the Snowman. Lee was a former drug dealer by trade, convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union and was originally sentenced to life in prison. Penn's personal life began to attract media attention when he married pop star Madonna in 1985. The relationship was marred by violent outbursts against the press,Penn and Madonna divorced in 1989. He soon began a relationship with Robin Wright, and their first child, Dylan Frances, was born in 1991. Their second child, Hopper Jack, was born in 1993. Penn and Wright married in 1996 and live in Ross, California. On December 27, 2007, the couple's representative announced that the Penns were divorcing.

Charlize Theron is a South African actress and former fashion model with American citizenship. She is well-known for her portrayal of the serial killing lesbian Aileen Wuornos in the film Monster, for which she won an Academy Award. She was cast in her first film part, a non-speaking role in the direct-to-video film Children of the Corn III. Larger roles in widely released Hollywood films followed, and her career skyrocketed in the late 1990s with box office successes like The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules. After appearing in a few notable films, Theron starred as the lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003). For this role, Theron won the Best Actress Oscar at the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, as well as the SAG Award and the Golden Globe Award. She is the first South African to win an Oscar for Best Actress. Theron now resides in Los Angeles in the home of late 1930's actress Helen Twelvetrees, with her long-time boyfriend Stuart Townsend, with whom she starred in the 2004 film Head in the Clouds, as well as in the 2002 film Trapped.

Tim Robbins is an Academy Award-winning American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist, and musician. He is the longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon, with whom he shares liberal political views. He received critical acclaim and won the Best Actor Award at Cannes for his starring role as an amoral movie executive in Robert Altman's 1992 film The Player. He made his directorial and screenwriting debut with 1992's Bob Roberts, a mockumentary about a right-wing senatorial candidate. Robbins then starred alongside Morgan Freeman in the critically acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which was based on Stephen King's short story. Robbins has written, produced, and directed several films with strong social content, such as the critically acclaimed capital punishment saga Dead Man Walking (1995), starring Sarandon and Sean Penn. The film earned him a Oscar nomination for Best Director. His next directorial effort was 1999's Depression-era musical Cradle Will Rock. Robbins has also appeared in mainstream Hollywood thrillers, such as 1999's Arlington Road (as a terrorist) and 2001's Antitrust (as a malicious computer tycoon). Robbins has also acted in and directed several Actors' Gang theater productions. Robbins won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and the SAG Award for his work in Mystic River (2003), as a man traumatized from having been molested as a child.

Renée Zellweger is an American actress who has won an Academy Award and established herself as one of the highest-paid female Hollywood actors in recent years. While still in Texas, Zellweger appeared in several films. In 1993, she made a brief appearance in the comedy-drama film Dazed and Confused, then had a minor role in ABC TV mini series named Murder in the Heartland. The following year, she appeared in Reality Bites, the directorial debut of Ben Stiller and the biopic film 8 Seconds, directed by John G. Avildsen. Zellweger's first main part in a movie came with the 1994 horror movie Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in which she acted alongside Matthew McConaughey. She played Jenny, a teenager who leaves a prom early with three friends and ended up getting into a car accident, which leads to their meeting a murderous family. In her next movie was Love and a .45, in which she played the role of Starlene Cheatham, a woman who plans a robbery with her boyfriend. The performance earned her an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. She subsequently moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting, winning roles in the films Empire Records, The Whole Wide World. Zellweger first became widely known to audiences around the world with her role in 1996's Jerry Maguire, where she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character. She won the role over Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei. Since then, Zellweger has won acclaim in roles such as One True Thing opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep, and in Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman. The role garnered the actress her first of three Golden Globe Awards. In 2001, Zellweger gained the prized lead role as Bridget Jones, playing alongside Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, in the British romantic comedy film Bridget Jones's Diary, a film that is based on the 1996 novel Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, amid much controversy since she was neither British nor overweight. As a result of her considerable efforts to effect author Helen Fielding's character, Zellweger caught the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and received her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination. In 2002, she starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander and in Rob Marshall's Academy Award for Best Picture winning film Chicago opposite Catherine Zeta Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, and John C. Reilly. Zellweger earned her second Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, as well as the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Award. In 2004, Zellweger finally received an Academy Award, this time as Best Supporting Actress in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain opposite Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Zellweger has since starred in the sequel to Bridget Jones' Diary in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, lent her voice to the DreamWorks animated features Shark Tale and Bee Movie, and starred in the 2005 Ron Howard film Cinderella Man opposite Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti. On May 9, 2005, Zellweger married singer Kenny Chesney in a ceremony at the island of St. John. They had met in January at a tsunami relief benefit concert. On September 15, 2005, after only four months of marriage, they announced their plans for an annulment. The annulment was finalized in late December 2005.

The Barbarian Invasions is a French Canadian comedy/drama film directed by Denys Arcand. It is the sequel to Arcand's earlier award-winning film The Decline of the American Empire and is followed by Days of Darkness. The film was produced by companies from both Canada and France, including Téléfilm Canada, Société Radio-Canada and Canal+. It was released in 2003 and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards in 2004.

"Into the West" is a song written by Fran Walsh, Howard Shore and Annie Lennox, and performed by Lennox herself during the closing credits of the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. It has also been recorded by New Zealand singers Hayley Westenra and Yulia Townsend. The song was conceived as a bittersweet Elvish lament sung by Galadriel for those who have sailed across the Sundering Sea. Several phrases from the song are taken from the last chapter of Return of the King. The song won the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 76th Academy Awards, one of the movie's 11 Academy Awards.

75th Academy Awards

2008-02-15T11:49:00.007+01:00

The 75th Academy Awards ceremony was originally intended to be an especially festive celebration of the ceremony's 75th anniversary. However, it was muted five days before the show by the onset of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which coincided almost exactly with the ceremony. As a result, the hype and tone of the show were scaled back, and some Award winners (notably Adrien Brody and Michael Moore) took the opportunity to voice their opposition to the invasion. The ceremony received very low ratings, falling to second place in the Nielsen Ratings behind American Idol.

Chicago is a 2002 musical film released by Miramax Films. First released in limited cities on June 27, 2002, Chicago opened in wide release on January 24, 2003. An adaptation of the satirical stage musical Chicago, the film explores the themes of celebrity and scandal in Jazz age Chicago. Directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall, and adapted for film by screenwriter Bill Condon, Chicago won six Academy Awards in 2003, including Best Picture. The film was the first musical film to win the Best Picture Oscar since Oliver! (1968). Chicago centers around Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart, two murderesses who find themselves on death row together in 1920s Chicago. Velma, a professional vaudevillian, and Roxie, a housewife with aspirations of being a star, fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows. The film stars Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, and Richard Gere, also featuring Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly, Lucy Liu, Taye Diggs, Colm Feore, and Mýa.

Roman Polanski is an Academy Award-winning French-born Polish film director, writer, actor, and producer. After beginning his career in Poland, Polanski became a celebrated arthouse filmmaker, and Hollywood director of such films as Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974). He is also known for his tumultuous personal life. In 1969, his wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. In 1978, after pleading guilty to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen year old girl, Polanski fled to France, where he now resides and is considered by US authorities to be a fugitive from justice. Because he faces jail time if he returns to the United States, he has continued to direct films in Europe, including Frantic (1988), Death and the Maiden (1994), the Academy Award-winning and Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winning The Pianist (2002), and Oliver Twist (2005). In May 2002, Polanski won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival for The Pianist, for which he also took Césars for Best Film and Best Director, and later won the 2002 Academy Award for Directing. He did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. After the announcement of the "Best Director Award", Polanski received a standing ovation from most of those present in the theater.

Adrien Brody is an American actor. Brody hovered on the brink of stardom, receiving an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his role in the 1998 film Restaurant and later praise for his roles in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. He received widespread recognition when he was cast as the lead in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). To prepare for the role, Brody withdrew for months, gave up his apartment and his car, learned how to play Chopin on the piano, and lost 29 lbs (13 kg). The role won him an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the youngest actor ever to win the award. He also won a César Award for his performance, becoming the only American actor to win one. Throughout his career, Brody has been compared to Al Pacino for his unique looks and method acting. He is also widely known for giving presenter Halle Berry a back-breaking kiss after winning his Best Actor Oscar, and as the spokesman for fashion brand Ermenegildo Zegna. After The Pianist Brody has appeared in three very different movies. He played Noah Percy, a mentally disabled young man in the movie The Village by M. Night Shyamalan, shell-shocked war veteran Jack Starks in The Jacket, and writer Jack Driscoll in the 2005 King Kong remake.

Nicole Kidman is an Academy Award-winning Australian actress and occasional singer. In 2006, she became the highest paid actress in the film industry. After making various appearances in film and television, Kidman received her breakthrough role in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Since then, Kidman's acting career has developed greatly. Her performances in several films, such as To Die For (1995), Moulin Rouge! (2001), and The Hours (2002), have won her not only critical acclaim but also many film awards. She is also well-known for her former high-profile marriage to Tom Cruise, as well as her current marriage to singer Keith Urban. In 1990, she appeared opposite Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, a stock car racing movie. After this, Kidman starred with Cruise in Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992). In 1995, Kidman featured in the ensemble cast of Batman Forever. In 2002, Kidman received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 2001 musical film Moulin Rouge!, in which she played the courtesan Satine opposite Ewan McGregor. Consequently, Kidman received her second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The same year, she had a well-received starring role in the horror film The Others. The following year, Kidman won critical praise for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, in which the prosthetics applied to her made her almost unrecognizable. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role, along with a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and numerous critics awards. Kidman became the first Australian actress to win an Academy Award.

Chris Cooper is an Academy Award-winning American film actor. He became well known in the late 1990s, having appeared in supporting performances in several major Hollywood films, including American Beauty, Capote, and Seabiscuit. Some of his standout performances include Money Train as a psychotic pyromaniac who terrifies toll booth operators, Lone Star in a rare leading role as a Texas sheriff charged with solving a decades old case, and American Beauty as a homophobic Colonel of the United States Marine Corps. Cooper won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe Award in 2003 for playing the role of John Laroche in Adaptation. Cooper also appeared in The Bourne Identity in 2002 as a ruthless CIA special ops director, a role he reprised (in flashbacks) in The Bourne Supremacy. Cooper is often typecast as a government/military character. Cooper was busy in 2005, having appeared in three well-received and acclaimed films: Jarhead (reuniting him with American Beauty director Sam Mendes and October Sky actor Jake Gyllenhaal), Capote and Syriana. He was in the thriller Breach, playing real-life FBI operative and spy Robert Hanssen.

Catherine Zeta-Jones is an Academy Award-winning Welsh actress based predominantly in the United States. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of UK and US television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as The Phantom, The Mask of Zorro, and Entrapment in the late 1990s. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of Chicago, making her the first and only Welsh actress to do so in that category. In 2003, she voiced Marina in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas opposite Brad Pitt, as well as starring in Intolerable Cruelty with George Clooney. In 2004 she was in The Terminal, as well as Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to Ocean's Eleven. In 2005, she reprised her role as Elena in The Legend of Zorro, the sequel to The Mask of Zorro. In 2007, she starred in the romantic comedy No Reservations, a remake of the German film Mostly Martha. Zeta-Jones is married to Michael Douglas, with whom she shares a birthday. They have two children - Dylan (named after Dylan Thomas) and Carys.

Nowhere in Africa is an epic 2001 German film directed by Caroline Link and based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Stefanie Zweig. It tells the story of a Jewish family that emigrates to Kenya during World War II to escape the Nazis and run a farm. The film won an 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

"Lose Yourself" is an Academy Award and Grammy Award winning hip hop song written and produced by Eminem. It was released in 2002 as part of the soundtrack to the Academy Award-winning film 8 Mile, also starring Eminem. The song had additional production by Luis Resto and Jeff Bass. The song achieved significant success, reaching the top of many charts around the world, including the Billboard Hot 100, the UK Singles Chart, and the United World Chart, among others. It won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, two Grammy Awards, and two other Grammy nominations.

74th Academy Awards

2008-02-14T22:00:00.007+01:00

The 74th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 2001, were held on March 24, 2002, for the first time at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. They were hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. The ceremony was historically notable for honoring two African American actors for their Leading Roles. Laura Ziskin (Spider-Man producer) was executive producer for the first time making her the first woman to solo produce the telecast. She also produced the 2007 telecast. The telecast, which was shown in the United States on ABC, is currently the longest to date. Furthermore the tone of this show was quieted by the recent occurrence of the attacks on September 11. Just as the 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards were postponed in 2001, and the Oscar nominations were supposed to come out just two months after the attacks, many wondered if the Oscars would be postponed as well. Frank Pierson, then president of the Academy stated that the Oscars would proceed as scheduled, and to postpone would mean that "the terrorists have won". However, the red carpet festivities prior to the awards were severely curtailed.

A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American biographical film about John Forbes Nash, the Nobel Laureate (Economics) mathematician. The film was directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman. It was inspired by a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1998 book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar. The film stars Russell Crowe, along with Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris and Paul Bettany. The story begins in the early years of Nash's life at Princeton University as he develops his "original idea" that will revolutionize the world of mathematics. Later, Nash develops schizophrenia and endures paranoid and delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on his wife and friends. The film opened in US cinemas on December 21, 2001. It was well received by critics, and went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress. It was also nominated for Best Leading Actor, Best Editing, Best Makeup, and Best Score. The film has been criticized for its inaccurate portrayal of some aspects of Nash's life.

Ron Howard is an American actor and Academy Award-winning film director and producer, known for his roles on sitcoms, movies and television. The naturally red-headed Howard came to prominence in the 1960s as Andy Griffith's son, Opie Taylor, on The Andy Griffith Show, and later in the 1970s as Tom Bosley's son and Henry Winkler's best friend, Richie Cunningham, on Happy Days (a role he played from 1974 to 1980). He attained film success with his role as Steve Bollander in George Lucas' teen movie American Graffiti. Before leaving Happy Days in 1980, Howard made his directing debut with the 1977 project "Grand Theft Auto" (Howard went on to direct several TV movies. His big theatrical break came in 1982 with Night Shift featuring soon-to-be stars such as Michael Keaton and Shelley Long, as well as reuniting Howard with "Happy Days" co-star Henry Winkler. He has since directed a number of high-visibility films, the most acclaimed of which include "Splash", "Willow", "Cocoon", "Apollo 13" (nominated for several Academy Awards), "A Beautiful Mind" (for which he won the Oscar for "Best Director"), and Cinderella Man. His latest film, "The Da Vinci Code", rejoining with "Splash" and "Apollo 13" star Tom Hanks, has been a box office hit earning more than $700 million at the box office, but a critical letdown. On June 7, 1975, Howard wed his high-school sweetheart, Cheryl (née Alley), a writer with a degree in geriatric psychology. They have four children; daughters Bryce Dallas Howard (b. 1981), Jocelyn Carlyle (twin, b. 1985), Paige Carlyle (twin, b. 1985), and son Reed Cross (b. 1987). Their daughters Bryce Dallas Howard and Paige Howard are actresses. In February 2007, Howard became a grandfather when his daughter, Bryce, gave birth to a son.

The ceremony also saw both the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars awarded to African-American actors for the first time in Academy Award history: Denzel Washington for Training Day and Halle Berry for Monster's Ball. Berry has received Emmy and Golden Globe awards for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, and an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in Monster's Ball, becoming the only woman of African-American descent to have won the award for Best Actress. She is one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and also a Revlon spokeswoman. She is attempting to expand into the production side of Hollywood. Before becoming an actress, Berry entered several beauty contests, finishing runner-up in Miss USA (1986), and winning the Miss USA World 1986 contest. Her breakthrough feature film role was in the 1991 Jungle Fever. This led to roles in The Flintstones (1994), Bulworth (1998), X-Men (2000) and its sequels, and Die Another Day. She also won a worst actress Razzie award in 2005 for Catwoman, and accepted the award in person. Berry has been married twice. Her first marriage, in 1992 to former baseball player David Justice, ended in divorce in 1996. Berry's second marriage was to musician Eric Benét. They had met in 1997, and married in 2001. The couple separated in 2003. The divorce was finalized in January 2005. In November 2005, she began dating French-Canadian supermodel Gabriel Aubry, who is ten years her junior. The couple met at a Versace photoshoot. Berry confirmed in September 2007 that she was three months pregnant with Aubry's child.

Jim Broadbent won as Best Supporting Actor. Broadbent made his film debut in 1978 with a tiny role in Jerzy Skolimowski's The Shout, and made his television debut the following year. He went on to work with Stephen Frears (for television, and in The Hit (1984)) and Terry Gilliam (in Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985) before establishing himself in Mike Leigh's Life Is Sweet (1990). He proved his ability as a character actor in films including The Crying Game (1992), Enchanted April (1992), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), The Borrowers (1997) and Little Voice (1998) before taking a leading role in another Mike Leigh film, Topsy-Turvy (1999). In 2001, Broadbent starred in three of the year's most successful films: Bridget Jones's Diary, Moulin Rouge!, for which he won a BAFTA and Iris, for which he won an Oscar for his portrayal of John Bayley. He is regarded as one of cinema's most reliable character actors and has a reputation of being very easy to work with. On September 17, 2007 it was announced that he will play Horace Slughorn in the sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Jennifer Connelly is an American film actress and former child model. Although she has been working in the film industry since she was a teenager and catapulted to fame on the basis of her appearances in films like Labyrinth and Career Opportunities, she did not receive wide exposure for her work until the 2000 drama Requiem for a Dream, and the 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind, for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Connelly starred in two films in 2003: Hulk and House of Sand and Fog. Hulk was something of a box office disappointment, but afforded Connelly the chance to work with noted director Ang Lee. House of Sand and Fog, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III, was reminiscent of much of her independent film work of the late 1990s. Connelly appeared in the 2005 horror film Dark Water, which was based on a Japanese film. In 2006, Connelly appeared in two films, both of which were nominated for multiple Academy Awards. She played a major role in an adaptation of the novel Little Children alongside Kate Winslet. Though her role as Kathy Adamson was very important in the novel, the director gave her character less screen time, instead focusing on the characters played by Winslet and Patrick Wilson. She also played a journalist in Blood Diamond opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. She is married to well-known English actor Paul Bettany (born 1971), whom she met while working on A Beautiful Mind. The couple's son, Stellan, was born on August 5, 2003. She also has a son, Kai (born 1997), from her relationship with photographer David Dugan.

No Man's Land is a war drama that is set in the midst of the Bosnian war in 1993. The film is a parable with a tone of ironic black comedy. The film marked the debut of writer and director Danis Tanović. The film is a co-production between companies in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK. No Man's Land won Prix du scénario at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by numerous awards, including the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001, while in competition with French Amélie. Tanović was presented the Oscar by John Travolta and Sharon Stone. Briefly after, Tanović thanked everyone who worked with him on the film and supported its creation. He ended his acceptance speech by saying, "This is for my country".

If I Didn't Have You is a song from the Pixar and Disney movie, Monsters Inc., written by songwriter and singer Randy Newman. Sung by John Goodman and Billy Crystal, the song helped Newman to win his very first Oscar. Prior to this Oscar win, Randy Newman had previously been nominated for 15 Oscars in the Best Score and Best Song categories, without a single win.

73rd Academy Awards

2008-02-13T13:30:00.007+01:00

The 73rd Academy Awards ceremony was the last to take place at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium. It was hosted by first-time host Steve Martin, who was nominated for an Emmy Award for his presentation. Notable films receiving Academy Awards at the ceremony included Gladiator, which received 12 nominations and 5 awards, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which received 10 nominations and 4 awards. After a three-year streak of high ratings, the annual ceremony received very low ratings for the first time in four years. This is partially due to the popularity of CBS's Survivor which was number one on the Nielsen Weekly Ratings. The awards show dropped to second place for the first time in broadcasting history (42.93 million viewers; with 21.1% of households watching). The second time the ceremony placed below the top happened in 2003 when it was surpassed by American Idol. The Icelandic pop singer Björk arrived in a gown with a fake swan draped across her. It caused an audience reaction that led to several comments by those participating in the Awards Ceremony.

Gladiator is a 2000 epic film. It is directed by Ridley Scott and stars Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Djimon Hounsou, Derek Jacobi and Richard Harris. Crowe portrays General Maximus Decimus Meridius, friend of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who is betrayed and murdered by the emperor's ambitious son, Commodus (Phoenix). Captured and enslaved along the outer fringes of the Roman empire, Maximus rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murder of his family and his Emperor. The film won five Academy Awards in the 73rd Academy Awards ceremony, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film's epic scope and intense battle scenes, as well as the emotional core of its performances, received much praise. The film's success may have helped to revive the historical epic genre, with subsequent films such as Troy, Alexander, 300, and Scott's own Kingdom of Heaven.

Steven Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and Academy Award-winning director. It wasn't until Soderbergh came back to Baton Rouge that he conceived the idea for sex, lies, and videotape (1989), which he wrote in eight days. The independent film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, became a worldwide commercial success and greatly contributed to the 1990s independent film revolution. His commercial slump ended in 1998 with Out of Sight, a stylized adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, written by Scott Frank and starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The film was widely praised, though only a moderate box-office success. It reaffirmed Soderbergh's potential, sparking the beginnings of a lucrative artistic partnership between Clooney and Soderbergh. Soderbergh followed up on the success of Out of Sight by making another crime caper, The Limey (1999), from an original screenplay by Lem Dobbs and starring veteran actors Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda. The film was well-received, but not as much as Erin Brockovich (2000), a "Rocky movie" he directed, written by Susannah Grant and starring Julia Roberts in her Oscar-winning role as a single mother taking on industry in a civil action. Later that year, Soderbergh released his most ambitious project yet (with a running time of 147 minutes, the film had 135 speaking parts set in eight different cities), Traffic, a social drama written by Stephen Gaghan and featuring an ensemble cast. Traffic became his most acclaimed movie since sex, lies, videotape, and earned him an Academy Award for Best Director. He was also nominated that same year for Erin Brockovich. He is the only director to have been nominated in the same year for Best Director for two different films by the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America. It was the first time it had happened at the Oscars in 60 years. Ocean's Eleven (2001), featuring an all-star cast and flashy aesthetics, is Soderbergh's highest grossing movie to date, grossing more than $183 million. The film's star, George Clooney, subsequently appeared in Solaris (2002), marking the third time the two have headlined a film. In the same year, Soderbergh made Full Frontal which was shot mostly on digital video in an improvisional style that deliberately blurred the line between which actors were playing characters and which were playing fictionized versions of themselves. Following up Full Frontal stylistically was Soderbergh next project, K Street (2003), a ten-part political HBO series he co-produced with Clooney. Ocean's Twelve (2004), a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, has followed. The Good German a romantic drama set in post-war Berlin starring Cate Blanchett and Clooney was released in late 2006. The sixth pairing of Clooney and Soderbergh, Ocean's Thirteen, was released in June of 2007.

Russell Crowe is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning New Zealand-born Australian actor. His acting career began in the early 1990s with roles in Australian TV series such as Police Rescue and films such as Romper Stomper. In the late 1990s, he began appearing in US films such as the 1997 movie L.A. Confidential. In the 2000s, he was nominated for three Oscars, and in 2001, he won the Academy Award as Best Actor for his starring role in the film Gladiator. After initial success in Australia, Crowe began acting in American films. He first co-starred with Denzel Washington in Virtuosity in 1995. He went on to become a three-time Oscar nominee, winning the Academy Award as Best Actor in 2001 for Gladiator. Crowe received three consecutive best actor Oscar nominations for The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. Crowe won the best actor award for A Beautiful Mind at the 2002 BAFTA award ceremony. However he failed to win the Oscar that year, losing to Denzel Washington. Within the six year stretch from 1997-2003, he also starred in two other best picture nominees, L.A. Confidential and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, though he was nominated for neither. In 2005 he re-teamed with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for Cinderella Man. In 2006 he re-teamed with Gladiator director Ridley Scott for A Good Year, the first of two consecutive collaborations (the second being American Gangster co-starring again with Denzel Washington, released in late 2007). On 7 April 2003, his 39th birthday, Crowe married Australian singer and actress Danielle Spencer. Crowe met Spencer while filming The Crossing (1990). Crowe and Spencer have two sons: Charles "Charlie" Spencer Crowe (born 21 December 2003) and Tennyson Spencer Crowe (born 7 July 2006).

Julia Roberts is an Academy Award-winning American film actress and former fashion model. She shot to fame during the early 1990s after starring in the romantic comedy, Pretty Woman, opposite Richard Gere, which grossed US$463 million worldwide. She won the Best Actress Academy Award in 2001 for her critically acclaimed turn as the title character in Erin Brockovich and earned Oscar nominations as Best Supporting Actress for Steel Magnolias (1989) and Best Actress for Pretty Woman (1990). Her films, which also include The Pelican Brief, My Best Friend's Wedding, Mystic Pizza, Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, and Ocean's Eleven, have collectively earned box office receipts well over US$2 billion. Roberts's two films released in 2006, The Ant Bully and Charlotte's Web, were both animated features for which she provided only voice acting. Her next film, Charlie Wilson's War, with Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Mike Nichols and based on the book by former CBS journalist George Crile was released on December 21, 2007. On June 27, 1993, she married country singer Lyle Lovett; the couple had met only three weeks earlier. The wedding took place on 72-hours' notice and was held in Marion, Indiana, near where Lovett was appearing on tour with his band. Less than two years later, in March 1995, the couple announced their separation. They subsequently divorced. Roberts met her current husband, cameraman Daniel Moder, on the set of her movie The Mexican in 2000 and they began an affair. He and Roberts wed on Fourth of July 2002, at her ranch in Taos, New Mexico. On November 28, 2004, they became the parents of fraternal twins, daughter Hazel Patricia and son Phinnaeus Walter. Their third child, son Henry Daniel Moder, was born on June 18, 2007 in Los Angeles.

Benicio del Toro is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning Puerto Rican actor and film producer. He is best known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects, Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez in Traffic and Jack 'Jackie Boy' Rafferty in Sin City. In Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, a complex dissection of the North American drug wars - as Javier Rodriguez — a Mexican border cop struggling to remain honest amid the corruption and deception of illegal drug trafficking — del Toro, who spoke most of his lines in Spanish, gave a performance that dominated the film and earned him his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Marcia Gay Harden is an Academy Award-winning American actress.For her film work, she won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for Pollock (2000), and was nominated in the same category for Mystic River (2003). She is currently shooting a film called Home, in which she will be playing the role of a mother (to her real daughter, Eulala Scheel) as she did in Felicity: An American Girl Adventure (2005). Other notable films include The Imagemaker (1986), her first screen role, in which she played a stage manager; the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing (1990), a 1930s mobster drama in which she gained her first wide exposure; the Disney sci-fi comedy Flubber (1997), a popular hit in which she co-starred with Robin Williams; the supernatural drama Meet Joe Black (1998); Labor of Love (1998), a Lifetime Television movie in which she starred with David Marshall Grant; and an all-star adventure-drama of aging astronauts, Space Cowboys (2000). Harden is married to Thaddaeus Scheel, with whom she worked on The Spitfire Grill (1996), and the couple have three children: a daughter, Eulala Grace Scheel, and twins Julitta Dee Scheel and Hudson Harden Scheel.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an Academy Award winning Chinese-language film in the wuxia (chivalric and martial arts) style, released in 2000. A China-Hong Kong-Taiwan-United States co-production, the film was directed by Ang Lee and featured an international cast of ethnic Chinese actors, including Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen. The movie was based on the fourth novel in a pentalogy, known in China as the Crane-Iron Pentalogy, by Wang Dulu. The martial arts and action sequences were choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping. Made on a mere US$15 million budget, with dialogue in Mandarin, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became a surprise international success. It grossed US$128 million in the United States alone, becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film in American history. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and three other Academy Awards, and was nominated for six other Oscars, including Best Picture.

"Things Have Changed" is a song from the film Wonder Boys, written and performed by Bob Dylan. The song won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Director of Wonder Boys Curtis Hanson also created a music video for "Things Have Changed," filming new footage of Bob Dylan on the film's various locations and editing it with footage used in Wonder Boys as if Dylan were actually in the film.

72nd Academy Awards

2008-02-12T12:41:00.006+01:00

The 72nd Academy Awards ceremony (also known as Oscars 2000) took place at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium, and was Billy Crystal's seventh time hosting the Awards. The ceremony attracted 46.53 million viewers, an audience 3.7% bigger the previous ceremony. The Academy Award ceremony was dominated by the movie American Beauty, which was nominated in 8 categories, and won 5 awards (including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture). This was the first to receive a noteworthy certification TV-14 partially due to the showing of many American Beauty clips featuring scenes of sex, innuendo, and violence. Also the Oscar nominated song "Blame Canada" (from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut) was performed though it had offensive material (performer Robin Williams cleverly "hid" the single word). The first Oscar show to have a TV rating was 1997 but was rated TV-PG. This was also one of the longest Oscar productions on record clocking in at just over four hours. Twenty-two cameras covered the event for ABC Television, including six jib arms, two steadicams, one akela crane, and for the first time a rail-cam. There were nearly 200 microphones and over 600 moving light fixtures. The show had nine days of rehearsals. This was the first time a woman held the title of producer on an Oscar telecast. Producer Laura Ziskin would helm the show in 2002 and 2007.

American Beauty is a 1999 comedy/drama film that explores themes of romantic and paternal love, freedom, sexuality, beauty, self-liberation, existentialism, the search for happiness, and family against the backdrop of modern American suburbia. It was the feature film debuts for writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes, and starred Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening; all four were nominated for Oscars, and the film won five in total including Best Picture.

Sam Mendes won as Best Director. As a film director, he is best known for his debut film, American Beauty, for which he won an Academy Award for Directing. His other movies as Director include Road to Perdition and Jarhead. After a string of romances with actresses, including Cameron Diaz, Calista Flockhart, Jane Horrocks, and Rachel Weisz, Mendes married English actress Kate Winslet on May 24, 2003 in Anguilla in the Caribbean. Their first child, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, was born on December 22, 2004. Mendes also has a stepdaughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, from Winslet's first marriage to assistant director Jim Threapleton.

The male awards for acting went to Kevin Spacey as Best actor for American Beauty and Michael Caine as Best Supporting Actor for The Cider House Rules. The Best Actress Oscar went to Hilary Swank. Her Hollywood film career began with a small part in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and then a major part in The Next Karate Kid (1994), where she played Julie Pierce, the first female protégé of the sensei Mr. Miyagi. She has become known for her two Academy Award-winning performances: first as Brandon Teena, a transgender man in the movie Boys Don't Cry, and a struggling waitress-turned-boxer, Maggie Fitzgerald, in Million Dollar Baby. In September 1997, Swank was cast as single mother Carly Reynolds on Beverly Hills, 90210. She was initially promised it would be a two-year role, but saw her character written out after 16 episodes in January 1998. As it turned out, the firing was the best thing to happen to Swank, as it freed her to audition for the role of Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry. Swank dropped her body fat down to seven percent in preparation for the role. Many critics hailed hers as the best female performance of 1999; her co-star of the film, Chloë Sevigny, had her performance singled out for praise also, Swank and Sevigny were often ranked as the best two leads of 1999 in film. The performance ultimately won her the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Actress. She subsequently won the Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe again for playing a boxer in 2004's Million Dollar Baby, a role for which she underwent training and gained 19 pounds of muscle. Swank's Oscar success meant that she had joined the ranks of Vivien Leigh, Helen Hayes, Sally Field, and Luise Rainer as the only actresses to have been nominated twice and win both times (both times she won over fellow actress and nominee Annette Bening). She is also the third-youngest double Best Actress Oscar winner (after Luise Rainer and Jodie Foster.)Swank married actor Chad Lowe on September 28, 1997. The two met in 1992, on the set of Quiet Days in Hollywood, a direct-to-video film. Swank infamously forgot to thank Lowe during her acceptance speech after winning her first Oscar in 2000, and she spent nearly every public appearance afterward making up for it. Upon winning her second Oscar in 2005, Lowe was the first person she thanked. However, in January 2006, the couple separated.

Angelina Jolie is an American film actress and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She is often cited by popular media as one of the world's most beautiful women and her off-screen life is widely reported. She has received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award. Though she made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out, Jolie's acting career began in earnest a decade later with the low budget production Cyborg 2 (1993). Her first leading role in a major film was in Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999). Jolie achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of videogame heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and since then has established herself as one of the best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. She had her biggest commercial success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as a biological daughter, Shiloh. Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted for her work with refugees through UNHCR.

All About My Mother (Spanish: Todo sobre mi madre) is an award-winning 1999 film written and directed by the Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar. The film deals with complex issues such as AIDS, transvestitism, sexual identity, gender, religion, faith, and existentialism, but always with his classical tragicomedy touch, the film presents these serious issues with an edge of dark humour. All About My Mother was widely regarded as Almodóvar's finest and most mature film to date. It won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Foreign-language Film and seven Goya Awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress in a Leading Role for Argentinean actress Cecilia Roth.

"You'll Be in My Heart" was the main single from the 1999 Disney animated feature Tarzan. Written and performed by Phil Collins, it appears on Tarzan: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack as well as various other Disney compilations. A version of the single performed by Glenn Close also appears on the soundtrack."You'll Be in My Heart", eventually peaking at #21, was Collins's first appearance to the American Top 40 charts since 1994's "Everyday". The track went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Collins performed the song live at that year's ceremony.

71st Academy Awards

2008-02-11T10:56:00.000+01:00

The 71st Academy Awards ceremony was the last to take place at Los Angeles County Music Center, held on March 21st 1999, and was Whoopi Goldberg's third time hosting the Awards. It was the first time the ceremony took place on a Sunday. The ceremony ran extremely long, due largely to extended acceptance speeches. Notable films included Shakespeare in Love, which received 13 nominations and won 7 awards, Saving Private Ryan, which received 11 nominations and won 5 awards, and Life Is Beautiful, which received 7 nominations and won 3 (including Best Actor and Best Foreign Language Film). The 71st Academy Awards saw the show's first "official" pre-show, as the Academy attempted to compete with the likes of E!'s Joan Rivers and other red carpet denizens. The show attracted 45.61m viewers, a 18% decline to the previous years 57.25 million, yet a high rating compared to most other ceremonies. This was the first time that two people have been nominated for Academy Awards for playing the same person in different films - Queen Elizabeth I - played by Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth and Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love. This would mark the final time the show would originate from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, a venue the Academy Awards called home for nearly thirty-years.

Shakespeare in Love is an award-winning 1998 romantic comedy film. The film was directed by John Madden and co-written by playwright Tom Stoppard, whose first major success was with the Shakespeare-influenced play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. The film is largely fictional, although several of the characters are based on real people. In addition, some of the characters, lines, and plot devices are references to Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare in Love won a number of Academy Awards in 1998, including Best Picture and Best Actress (for Gwyneth Paltrow). It was the first comedy to win the Best Picture award since Annie Hall (1977).

The Best Director award went to Steven Spielberg for Saving Private Ryan. The Best Actor award went to Roberto Benigni. Benigni's first film as director was Tu mi turbi (You upset me, 1983). On the set he met the Cesenate actress Nicoletta Braschi, who was to become his wife, and who has starred in most of the films he directed. In 1984, he played in Non ci resta che piangere ("Nothing left to do but cry") with the very popular comic actor Massimo Troisi. The story was a fable in which the protagonists are suddenly thrown back in time to the 15th century, just a little before 1492. They start looking for Columbus in order to stop him from discovering the Americas (although for very personal love reasons), but are not able to reach him. Beginning in 1986, Benigni starred in three films by American director Jim Jarmusch. Down By Law (1986) Night on Earth, (1991) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). In 1993, he starred in Son of the Pink Panther, directed by veteran Blake Edwards. There, he played Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau's illegitimate son who is assigned to save the Princess of Lugash. A serious role was in Federico Fellini's last film, La voce della luna (1989). In earlier years Benigni had started a long-lasting collaboration with screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami, for a series of films which scored great success in Italy: Il piccolo diavolo ("The little devil", with Walter Matthau), Johnny Stecchino ("Johnny Toothpick"), and Il Mostro ("The Monster"). Benigni is probably best known outside Italy for his 1997 tragicomedy Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), filmed in Cortona and Arezzo, also written by Cerami. The film is about an Italian Jewish man who tries to protect his son's innocence during his internment at a Nazi concentration camp, by telling him that the Holocaust is an elaborate game and he must adhere very carefully to the rules to win. Benigni's father had spent two years in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, and La Vita è bella is based in part on his father's experiences. In 1998, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and Benigni personally won the Best Actor. The Best Foreign Language Film is awarded to the film itself, but Academy rules stipulate that the director will accept the award. The score by Nicola Piovani also won an Oscar. Famously, in the midst of being so giddy with delight, he climbed on the back of the seat for his procession to the stage and applauded the audience after he was told he had won one of his Oscars. The next year's ceremony, when he read the nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actress, host Billy Crystal playfully appeared behind him with a large net to restrain Benigni if he got excessive with his antics again. Benigni played one of the main characters in Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar as Detritus, a corrupted Roman tax collector who wants to kill the Caesar and claim the throne of the Roman Empire.

Gwyneth Paltrow is an Academy Award-winning American actress. Paltrow starred in Se7en (1995), opposite Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. The film was hugely successful commercially and critically. Then in 1996 she starred in Emma, where she received strongly positive critical acclaim, particularly in the UK for her impressive English accent, as well as in Europe and Asia. Two years later, Paltrow starred in Shakespeare in Love, a fantasy of how William Shakespeare might have written Romeo and Juliet. The film received critical acclaim, earned more than US$100 million in domestic box office receipts, and received numerous awards. Shakespeare in Love won the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay, as well as the Academy Award for Best Picture. Paltrow also won the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role from the Screen Actors Guild. Later that year, Paltrow won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. After her Oscar win Paltrow starred in other movie roles such as A Perfect Murder. In 2000 Paltrow starred in The Talented Mr. Ripley which earned over $80 million domestically, and received positive reviews. She then starred in Bounce with Shakespeare in Love costar Ben Affleck, which was moderately successful, both critically and commercially. Since then, she has had a relatively low-profile, yet steady, film career with a few critically acclaimed film roles, including Proof (2005) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). On December 5, 2003, she married Chris Martin of the British rock group Coldplay in a secret wedding ceremony in Southern California. Paltrow gave birth to their first child, Apple Blythe Alison Martin, five months later, on May 14, 2004, in London. Her second child, Moses Bruce Anthony Martin, was born on April 8, 2006 in New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital.

James Coburn was an Oscar-winning American actor. Coburn became famous in the 1960s and 1970s as the "tough guy" in a variety of films, first mostly with his friends Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn and Charles Bronson (with whom he co-starred in The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape). A villainous part in the hugely successful Charade (1963) and a character role as a one-armed Indian tracker in Major Dundee (1965) gained him much notice. In 1966, he finally became a bona-fide star with the release of Our Man Flint, a James Bond spoof released by 20th Century Fox as competition. In 1973 he teamed up with radical director Sam Peckinpah for the film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (they had first worked together in 1965 on Major Dundee). But an MGM producer tried to sabotage the production causing the film to be drastically edited when it opened. Both Peckinpah and Coburn were disappointed and delved into Cross of Iron, a critically-acclaimed war epic which performed poorly in the US but was a huge hit in Europe. He then appeared in films such as Young Guns II (1990), Sister Act 2 (1993), Maverick (1994), The Nutty Professor (1996), and Payback (1999), mostly in small but memorable roles. For appearing as the abusive father of protagonist Nick Nolte in Affliction, he received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1998. He died suddenly on November 18, 2002 at the age of 74, of cardiac arrest, while listening to the radio. He was survived by his wife Paula Murad, a son, and a stepdaughter.

Judi Dench is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, Tony-, three-time BAFTA-, and six-time Laurence Olivier Award-winning English actress. In 1995 she became known to an international audience after taking over the role of 'M' (James Bond's boss) with the James Bond films, starting with GoldenEye. It could be argued that she helped reinvigorate the franchise with her fresh, sharp, and unexpected interpretation of the role. She has won multiple awards for performances on the London stage, including a record six Laurence Olivier Awards. She also won the American Tony award for her 1999 Broadway performance in the role of Esme Allen in David Hare's Amy's View. Alongside her numerous award winning performances, she has also managed to take on the role of Director for a number of stage productions. Dench won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Elizabeth I in the film Shakespeare in Love. Judi Dench has frequently appeared with her close friend Geoffrey Palmer, in the series As Time Goes By and in the films Mrs. Brown and Tomorrow Never Dies, both filmed in 1997. Judi Dench has also lent her incredible voice to many animated characters, narrations, and various other voice work. Dench's more recent film career has been extremely successful. She successfully garnered six Oscar nominations in nine years for Mrs Brown in 1997; her Oscar-winning turn in Shakespeare in Love in 1998; for Chocolat in 2000; for the lead role of writer Iris Murdoch in Iris in 2001 (with Kate Winslet playing her as a younger woman); for Mrs Henderson Presents (a romanticised history of the Windmill Theatre) in 2005; and for 2006's Notes on a Scandal, a film for which she received critical acclaim, including Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations. In 1971, Dench married British actor Michael Williams and they had their only child, Tara Cressida Williams (aka "Finty Williams"), on 24 September 1972, who has followed the family's theatrical tradition to become an accomplished actress in her own right.

Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian language film which tells the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice (played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who must learn how to use his fertile imagination to help his son survive their internment in a Nazi concentration camp. The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic comedy and often slapstick. Guido (Roberto Benigni), a young Italian Jew, arrives in Arezzo where he sets up a bookstore. Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances Dora (Italian, but not Jewish), portrayed by Benigni's actual wife Nicoletta Braschi), whom he steals – at her engagement – from her rude and loud fiancé. Several years pass, in which Guido and Dora have a son, Joshua (written Giosuè in the Italian version. Portrayed by Giorgio Cantarini). In the film, Joshua is around five years old. However, both the beginning and ending of the film is narrated by an older Joshua. In the second half of the movie, Guido, Guido's uncle, and Joshua are taken to a concentration camp on Joshua's birthday. Dora demands to join her family and is permitted to do so. In an attempt to keep up Joshua's spirits, Guido convinces him that the camp is just a game – a game in which the first person to get 100 points wins a tank. He tells Joshua that if you complain for hunger you lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn points. He convinces Joshua that the camp guards are mean because they want the tank for themselves and that all the other children are hiding in order to win the game. He puts off every attempt of Joshua ending the game and returning home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank. Despite being surrounded by rampant death and people and all their sicknesses, Joshua doesn't question this fiction both because of his father's convincing performance and his own innocence. Guido maintains this story right until the end, when – in the chaos caused by the American advance drawing near – he tells his son to stay in a sweatbox until everybody has left, this being the final test before the tank is his. After trying to find Dora, Guido is caught, taken away, and is shot by a Nazi guard, but not before making his son laugh one last time. Joshua manages to survive, and thinks he has won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp, and he is reunited with his mother.The movie made the Cannes Film Festival in 1998, winning the Grand Prize of the Jury. It then went on to win Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score and Best Foreign Language Film. Benigni won Best Actor in both the foreign film category and overall for his role. The film was additionally nominated for Academy Awards for Directing, Film Editing, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay.

"When You Believe" is an Academy Award-winning song composed by Stephen Schwartz for the DreamWork's animated feature The Prince of Egypt, and produced as a single with additional music by writer-producer Babyface. It was the main theme of the film and was released as a single by American divas Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey as the soundtrack's first single in 1998"When You Believe" won the 1999 Academy Award for "Best Original Song" and was nominated for a Golden Globes for "Best Original Song".

70th Academy Awards

2008-02-10T13:03:00.000+01:00

The 70th Academy Awards, held at the Shrine Auditorium on March 23rd 1998, were noted for their high ratings and the 11 wins racked up by the Best Picture, Titanic. Billy Crystal hosted the ceremony for the sixth time, and received an Emmy award for his performance. Although the evening was dominated by Titanic, the picture notably did not receive any awards for its actors' performances. Other pictures picked up the acting awards; Good Will Hunting, which was nominated for 9 awards and won 2; L.A. Confidential, which was nominated for 9 awards and won 2; and As Good As It Gets, which was nominated for 7 awards and won 2. Due to the popularity of Titanic, which was still the #1 movie at the box office at the time, the show earned its highest ratings ever in history based on audience size (57.25 million), though the highest rated show based on percentage of households watching was in 1970.

Titanic is a 1997 American romantic drama film directed, written, produced and edited by James Cameron about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as two members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ill-fated 1912 maiden voyage of the ship. The main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some supporting characters (such as members of the ship's crew) are based on real historical figures, and shots of the real wreck lying at the bottom of the Atlantic are used in the film's opening sequences. The film was both a critical and commercial success, winning eleven Academy Awards including Best Picture, and became the highest grossing film of all time, with a total worldwide gross of US$1.8 billion. Titanic holds the record for the highest-grossing film of all time in North America, with $600 million. The previous North American record holder, Star Wars (another 20th Century Fox film), earned a total of $461 million. Adjusted for inflation, Titanic is in sixth place. The film also holds the record as the highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide with $1.8 billion. The second-place worldwide holder, Return of the King, is over $700 million short of Titanic's record. It tied All About Eve for having the most Oscar nominations in history, with 14. It won Best Picture and Best Director. It also picked up best costume design, visual effects, sound, sound effects, original dramatic score, film editing, song, art direction, and cinematography. Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart and the make-up artists were the three nominees that failed to win. James Cameron's original screenplay and Leonardo DiCaprio were not nominees. It was the second movie to win eleven Academy Awards, after Ben-Hur.

James Cameron is an Academy Award-winning Canadian/American director, producer and screenwriter. He is noted for his action/science fiction films, which are often highly innovative and financially successful. Thematically, James Cameron's films generally explore the relationship between man and technology. Cameron directed the film Titanic, which went on to become the top-grossing film of all time, with a worldwide gross of over US$1.8 billion. He also created the Terminator franchise. He started in the film industry as a screenwriter, then moved into art direction and effects for films such as Battle Beyond the Stars and Escape from New York. Working with producer Roger Corman, Cameron landed his first directorial job in 1981 for the film Piranha II: The Spawning, shot at Grand Cayman Island for the underwater diving sequences, and in Rome, Italy for most of the interior scenes. During his stay in Rome, he fell ill and had a nightmare about a machine emerging from a fire to kill him. While recovering, Cameron materialized the idea for The Terminator. He finally completed a screenplay, and decided to sell it so that he could direct the movie. However, the production companies he contacted, while expressing interest in the project, were unwilling to let a first-time director make the movie. Finally, Cameron found a company called Hemdale Pictures, which was willing to let him direct. Initially, for the role of the Terminator, Cameron wanted someone who wasn't exceptionally muscular, and who could "blend into" a normal crowd. Lance Henriksen, who had starred in Piranha II: The Spawning, was considered for the titular role, but when Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cameron first met over lunch to discuss Schwarzenegger playing the role of Kyle Reese, both came to the conclusion that the cyborg villain would be the more compelling role for the Austrian bodybuilder; Henriksen got the smaller part of LAPD detective Hal Vukovich and the role of Kyle Reese went to Michael Biehn. In addition, Linda Hamilton first appeared in this film in her iconic role of Sarah Connor, and later married Cameron. During the early 1980s, Cameron wrote three screenplays simultaneously: The Terminator, Aliens, and the first draft of Rambo: First Blood Part II. While Cameron would continue with The Terminator and with Aliens, Sylvester Stallone eventually took over the script of Rambo: First Blood Part II, creating a final draft which differed radically from Cameron's initial version. Cameron next began the sequel to Alien, the 1979 film by Ridley Scott. Cameron would name the sequel Aliens, and would again cast Sigourney Weaver in the iconic role of Ellen Ripley (the sole survivor from the first film). Cameron's next project stemmed from an idea that had come up during a high school biology class. The story of oil-rig workers who discover otherworldly underwater creatures became the basis of Cameron's screenplay for The Abyss, which cast Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn. For the film Titanic, Cameron cast Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and Billy Zane. Cameron's budget for the film reached about $200 million, and it became the most expensive movie ever made. Before its release, the film was widely ridiculed for its expense and protracted production schedule. During the 1998 Academy Awards, the film won a record-tying 11 Oscars. Among them were Best Picture and Best Director. Unable to make Spiderman, Cameron moved to television and created the story of Max Guevara, a new superheroine. Dark Angel, was influenced by cyberpunk, biopunk, current superhero genres, and third-wave feminism. Co-produced with Charles H. Eglee, Dark Angel starred Jessica Alba as Max Guevara, a genetically enhanced transgenic super-soldier created by the super-secretive Manticore organization. It also starred Michael Weatherly as Logan Cale, and noted actor John Savage (of The Deer Hunter) as Colonel Donald Michael Lydecker. While a success in its first season, low ratings in the second led to its cancellation. Cameron himself directed the series finale, a two-hour episode wrapping up many of the series' loose ends. Cameron has been married five times: Sharon Williams (1978-1984), Gale Anne Hurd (1985-1989), Kathryn Bigelow (1989-1991), Linda Hamilton (1997-1999, one daughter), Suzy Amis (2000-, one son, two daughters).

Jack Nicholson won as Best Actor and Helen Hunt as Best Actress, both for the movie As good as it gets. Helen Hunt is an Emmy-, Golden Globe-, and Academy Award-winning American actress, widely known for her role in the television sitcom Mad About You and her Academy Award-winning role in As Good As It Gets. In the 1990s, after the lead female role in the short-lived My Life and Times, Hunt became well-known to television audiences in Mad About You, winning Emmy Awards for her performance in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. Hunt has also had a successful film career, with roles in movies such as Cast Away and the 1996 blockbuster Twister. After winning an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1998 for her performance in As Good as It Gets, she took time off from movie work to play Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Lincoln Center in New York City. In 2000, Hunt returned to the screen in four films: Dr. T & the Women with Richard Gere, Pay It Forward with Kevin Spacey & Haley Joel Osment, What Women Want with Mel Gibson, and Cast Away with Tom Hanks. Hunt was married to actor Hank Azaria from 1999 until 2000. She has been in a relationship with Matthew Carnahan since 2001 and they have a daughter, Måkena Lei Gordon Carnahan, born in 2004.

Robin Williams is an American actor and comedian who has done television, stage and film work. In part, his big break was from playing Mork from Ork, which was highlighted on Mork & Mindy. Soon afterward he became a film star who is still active as an actor and headlining comic. His first starring roles, Popeye (1980) and The World According to Garp (1982), were both considered flops, but his performance in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) got Williams nominated for an Academy Award and established a screen identity. Many of his roles have been comedies tinged with pathos, for example The Birdcage and Mrs. Doubtfire. Williams has also starred in dramatic films, earning himself two subsequent Academy Award nominations: First for playing an unorthodox and inspiring English teacher in Dead Poets Society (1989), and later for playing a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King (1991); that same year, he played an adult Peter Pan in the movie Hook. Other acclaimed dramatic films include Awakenings (1990), What Dreams May Come (1998), and Jakob the Liar (1999). In 1997, he won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role as a psychologist in Good Will Hunting. However, by the early 2000s, he was thought by some to be typecast in films such as Patch Adams (1998) and Bicentennial Man (1999) that critics complained were excessively maudlin. This apparently prompted Williams to take radically unconventional roles, beginning with a role as a lowlife kiddie show host in the dark comedy Death to Smoochy, followed by One Hour Photo in a watershed performance as an obsessed film developer, Insomnia as a sociopathic writer, and The Final Cut, which is more in tune with Williams as a protagonist. In 2006 Williams starred in The Night Listener, a thriller. His first marriage was to Valerie Velardi on June 4, 1978, with whom he has one child, Zachary Pym (Zak) (born April 11, 1983). The marriage ended in 1988. On April 30, 1989, he married Marsha Garces. They have two children, Zelda Rae (born July 31, 1989) and Cody Alan (born November 25, 1991).

Kim Basinger is an Academy Award-winning American film actress and former fashion model. In 1976, after a five-year stint as a cover girl, Basinger decided to put her modeling career on hold and move to Los Angeles to begin a career in acting. After appearing in small parts on a few TV shows such as "McMillan & Wife" and "Charlie's Angels", her first starring role was a made-for-TV movie, Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold (1978) in which she played a small town girl who goes to Hollywood to become an actress and winds up becoming a famous centerfold for a men's magazine. She was a Bond girl in Never Say Never Again (1983), where she starred opposite Sean Connery. She did a famous pictorial for Playboy magazine in 1983, which Basinger has said led to good opportunities, such as Barry Levinson's The Natural (1984), co-starring Robert Redford, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Academy Award winning writer-director Robert Benton cast her in the title role for the film Nadine (1987). Other directors repeated her in their films, such as Blake Edwards for The Man Who Loved Women (1983) and Blind Date (1987)) and Robert Altman for Fool for Love (1985) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994). Her most prominent appearances include 9½ Weeks (1986), Batman (1989) and Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997) for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, as well as the Golden Globe and Screen Actor's Guild Award. Hanson would cast her once more as Eminem's mother in the hit film 8 Mile (2002). Basinger married makeup artist Ron Snyder-Britton in 1980. They met on the film Hard Country, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1988. She met her second husband actor Alec Baldwin when both played romantic lovers in the 1991 flop, The Marrying Man. They married on August 19, 1993 and appeared in another flop, the remake of The Getaway (1994). They also played themselves on an 1998 episode of the The Simpsons (which also includes Ron Howard), where Basinger corrects Homer Simpson on the pronunciation of her last name and also polishes her Oscar statutette. They have a daughter, Ireland Eliesse "Addie" Baldwin (born October 23, 1995), but the couple separated in 2000.

Character is a 1997 Dutch/Belgian film, based on the best-selling novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk and directed by Mike van Diem. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 70th Academy Awards. The film stars Fedja van Huêt, Jan Decleir, and Betty Schuurman.

"My Heart Will Go On" is the theme song of the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic. With music by James Horner and lyrics by Will Jennings, it was recorded by Céline Dion. Originally released in 1997 on Dion's album Let's Talk About Love, it went to number one all over the world, including the United States, United Kingdom and Australia."My Heart Will Go On" won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song. It dominated the Grammy Awards of 1999, winning Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television. "My Heart Will Go On" won also the Golden Globe Award in 1998.

69th Academy Awards

2008-02-09T20:51:00.000+01:00

The 69th Academy Awards, held at the Shrine Shrine Auditorium on March 24th 1997 and hosted by Billy Crystal, were dominated by movies produced by independent studios, financed outside of mainstream Hollywood, leading to 1997 being dubbed "The Year of the Independents". All but one of the nominees for Best Picture were low-budget independent movies The big winner at the ceremony was Anthony Minghella's The English Patient, which had received 12 nominations and won 9 awards including Best Picture. Other notable movies to be honoured at the ceremony included Fargo, which had been nominated for 7 awards and won 2, Shine, which had been nominated for 7 awards and won just one, and Jerry Maguire, which had been nominated for 5 awards and also won just one. The Awards marked one of the greatest upsets in Oscar History as most had predicted Lauren Bacall would win Best Supporting Actress for "The Mirror Has Two Faces." Instead, the Oscar went to Juliette Binoche for "The English Patient." The ceremony attracted a low 40.83m, the lowest audience without dipping below the 40 million mark (later surpassed by the 40.54m who watched in 2002).

The English Patient is a 1996 film adaptation of the novel by Michael Ondaatje. The film, directed by Anthony Minghella, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Ondaatje worked closely with the filmmakers to preserve his artistic vision, and has stated that he is happy with the film as an adaptation. The film garnered widespread critical acclaim and was a major award winner as well as a box office success; its awards included the Academy Award for Best Picture, the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Film. Juliette Binoche won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, nosing out Lauren Bacall for The Mirror Has Two Faces (it would have been Bacall's first Oscar win, and in her acceptance speech Binoche commented that Bacall ought to have won). Anthony Minghella took home the Oscar for Best Director. Kristin Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actress and Best Actor. In all, The English Patient was nominated for an impressive 12 awards and ultimately walked away with 9.

Anthony Minghella is an Academy Award-winning British film director, playwright and screenwriter. He is currently the chairman of the British Film Institute. His 1990 feature Truly, Madly, Deeply, a drama he had written and directed for the BBC's Screen Two anthology strand, bypassed its expected TV broadcast and received a cinema release. In order to make the film, he had turned down an offer to direct another episode of Inspector Morse, which he had thought would be a much higher-profile assignment. In 1996, he won the Academy Award for Directing for The English Patient. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay for 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley and 2003's Cold Mountain. Minghella is married to Hong Kong-born choreographer Carolyn Choa.

Geoffrey Rush is a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Emmy, AFI and Academy Award winning Australian actor. He is the first Australian-born person to win an Academy Award for acting. Rush's film debut was in the Australian film Hoodwink in 1981. His next film was in Gillian Armstrong's Starstruck, the following year. In 1996, he starred in Shine, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the first Australian actor to win an Oscar since Peter Finch. From that point on, his film career skyrocketed. In 1998, he appeared in three major films: Les Misérables, in which he played Inspector Javert; Elizabeth, in which he played the suspicious Sir Francis Walsingham; and Shakespeare in Love in which he played Philip Henslowe, the acting company manager who remained calm in the midst of chaos (and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor). In 1999, Rush departured from his usual dramatic stint and took the lead role as Steven Price in the horror flick House on Haunted Hill. In 2000, he received his third Academy Award nomination, for Quills, in which he played the Marquis de Sade. Rush's career continued at a fast pace, with nine films released from 2001 through 2003. He starred in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, as Captain Hector Barbossa, also appearing in its sequels, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Rush played actor Peter Sellers in the television film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. For this performance, he won an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Mini-series or Movie. In 2005, he starred in Steven Spielberg's film Munich as Ephraim, a cold Mossad officer. Since 1988, Rush has been married to actress Jane Menelaus, with whom he has a daughter, Angelica (b. 1992) and a son, James (b. 1995).

Frances McDormand is an Academy Award-winning American film, stage, and television actress. McDormand's film debut was in Joel and Ethan Coen's first film, 1985's Blood Simple. In 1985, McDormand, the Coen brothers, Holly Hunter, and director Sam Raimi shared a house in the Bronx. McDormand appeared in several theatrical and television roles during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. She has gained renown and critical acclaim for her dramatic work, and is a respected actress, having been nominated for Academy Awards four times. In 1988, she was nominated for a Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Mississippi Burning; in 1996, she won the Academy award for Best Actress for her performance as police chief Marge Gunderson in Fargo; in 2000, she earned her second nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her portrayal of a concerned mother in Almost Famous. In 2006, McDormand received her third Best Supporting Actress nod for her performance in 2005's North Country, although she lost to Rachel Weisz. She also had a role in the film Friends with Money, a dark comedy co-starring Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener and Joan Cusack, and directed by Nicole Holofcener. McDormand has been married to director Joel Coen since 1984, and the two adopted a son from Paraguay, Pedro McDormand Coen, in 1994. They live in New York City. McDormand has starred in five of the Coen Brothers films, including a minor appearance in Miller's Crossing, a secondary role in Raising Arizona and lead roles in Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There and Fargo, for which she won an Academy Award.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. is an Academy Award-winning American actor. Gooding first appeared in a commercial for the clothing line Bugle Boy during the 1980's. His first major film role was in director John Singleton's 1991 film, Boyz N The Hood, a well-reviewed film about inner city youths. Prior to this, he appeared in many TV shows, including a recurring role on MacGyver. He also had a very minor part in the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America. Following the success of Boyz N The Hood, he was cast in a series of roles, both leading and supporting, including the 1996 film, Jerry Maguire, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Gooding produced the murder mystery, A Murder of Crows, with longtime friend and partner Derek Broes, and the movie has gained cult status among murder mystery buffs. Gooding's subsequent career has included box office successes like Men of Honor (2000), Snow Dogs (2002), and a supporting role as Navy Cross awardee Dorie Miller in the 2001 film, Pearl Harbor. In 2006, Gooding appeared in the crime drama Dirty, which received a limited theatrical release, as well as the direct-to-DVD, 24-esque political drama End Game, playing a Secret Service agent who uncovers a conspiracy after a presidential assassination. Gooding has been married to Sara Kapfer since 1994; the two have known each other since 1986. Together, they have three children: sons Spencer Gooding (born in 1994)and Mason Gooding (born in 1996), and a daughter, Piper Gooding (born in 2005).

Juliette Binoche is an Academy Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated French film actress. Affectionately nicknamed "La Binoche" by the French press, Binoche is well known worldwide for her roles in popular, award-winning films such as The English Patient (1996) and Chocolat (2000) as well as internationally successful arthouse films including Three Colors: Blue (1993) and Caché (2005). In August 1986, she portrayed Tereza in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being based on the Milan Kundera novel. This was Binoche's first English language role and was a worldwide success with critics and audiences alike. After this success, Binoche decided to return to France rather than pursue an international career. In 1996, Binoche appeared in A Couch in New York by Chantal Akerman. The film was a flop, but another 1996 film, The English Patient, based on the acclaimed novel and directed by Anthony Minghella, was a worldwide hit. It garnered nine Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Binoche. 2000 saw Binoche appear in four successful, but different, roles. Firstly was La Veuve de Saint-Pierre by Patrice Leconte which saw Binoche nominated for a César Award for best actress. Next she appeared in Michael Haneke's Code Unknown, a film which was made following Binoche's approach to the Austrian director. Back on screen, Binoche was the heroine of the Lasse Hallstrom film Chocolat for which she won a European Film Award for Best Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA. Binoche then teamed up with Michael Haneke again for Caché in 2005. The film was an immediate success, winning best director at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Binoche was nominated for a European Film Award for Best Actress for her role. Binoche's next film was Bee Season with Richard Gere. Mary (2005) saw Binoche collaborate with Abel Ferrara for an investigation of modern faith and Mary Magdalene's position in the Catholic Church. The film was an immediate success, winning the Grand Prix at the 2005 Venice Film Festival. Binoche has two children: Raphaël (born on September 2, 1993), whose father is André Halle, a professional scuba diver, and Hana (December 16, 1999), whose father is fellow French actor Benoît Magimel, with whom Binoche starred in the 1999 film Children of the Century. Binoche is currently romantically involved with Argentine writer/director Santiago Amigorena.

Kolya is an award-winning 1996 Czech film drama about a man whose life is reshaped in an unexpected way. The action takes place during the last years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, at a time when the Soviet bloc begins to disintegrate. František Louka, a middle-aged Czech man dedicated to bachelorhood and the pursuit of women, is a concert cellist struggling to eke out a living by playing funerals at the Prague crematorium. He has lost his previous job at the philharmonic orchestra due to having been half-accidentally blacklisted as "politically unreliable" by the authorities. A friend offers him a chance to earn a great deal of money through a sham marriage to a Russian woman to enable her to stay in Czechoslovakia. However, the woman uses her Czechoslovak citizenship to emigrate and join her boyfriend in West Germany. Due to a concurrence of circumstances that remain partly unclear, she has to leave behind her Russian-speaking five-year-old son, Kolya, for the disgruntled Czech musician to look after. Gradually, a bond forms between Louka and Kolya. The movie won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

"You Must Love Me" is a song by American singer Madonna from the 1996 soundtrack to the film Evita. The song was released as a single in October 1996. The track is the only new song for the movie that was not included on the original stage version of the musical. The song united lyricist Tim Rice and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber after thirteen years of not working together on any new songs. The song was written specifically for the film and was included in the stage production for the first time when the musical was revived in June 2006 at London's Adelphi Theatre. The song won an Academy Award for Best Original Song From A Motion Picture at the Oscars in March 1997. Madonna also performed the song at the awards. The song also won a Golden Globe Award as Best Original Song.

68th Academy Award

2008-02-08T12:04:00.000+01:00

The 68th Academy Awards was held on March 25, 1996 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California. The show was hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. The ceremony was watched 48.28 million viewers, with 30.0% households watching. Despite controversy from the NAACP concerning what was deemed as a lack of attention to African-American actors by the Academy, this show was one and only time an African-American was hired to produce the show to date. Key moments in this presentation included Christopher Reeve making his first public appearance onstage after becoming paralyzed, the performance of the troupe Stomp, the sextet Take 6, and a lifetime achievement award to Kirk Douglas recovering from a stroke. A special tribute to Gene Kelly was also produced.

Braveheart won 5 Oscars including Best Picture. Braveheart is a 1995 historical action-drama movie produced and directed by Mel Gibson, who also starred in the title role. The film was written for screen and then novelized by Randall Wallace. Gibson portrays a legendary Scot, William Wallace, who gained recognition when he came to the forefront of the First War of Scottish Independence by opposing Edward I of England (portrayed by Patrick McGoohan) and subsequently abetted by Edward's daughter-in-law Princess Isabelle (played by Sophie Marceau) and a claimant to the Scottish throne, Robert the Bruce (played by Angus Macfadyen). The film won five Academy Awards at the 68th Academy Awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director, and had been nominated for an additional five. Produced by Icon Productions for Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, the film's success may have helped to revive the historical epic genre, with subsequent films such as Gladiator, The Patriot, Alexander, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven and 300.

Mel Gibson is an American-Australian actor, director, producer and screenwriter. Born in the United States, Gibson moved to Australia when he was 12 years old and he later studied acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. After establishing himself as a household name with the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon series, Gibson went on to direct and star in the Academy Award-winning Braveheart. Gibson's direction of Braveheart made him the sixth actor-turned-filmmaker to receive an Oscar for Best Director. In 2004, he directed and produced The Passion of the Christ, a blockbuster movie that portrayed the last hours of the life of Jesus. Gibson's good looks made him a natural for leading male roles in action projects such as the "Mad Max" series of films, Peter Weir's Gallipoli, and the "Lethal Weapon" series of films. Later, Gibson expanded into a variety of acting projects including human dramas such as Hamlet, and comedic roles such as those in Maverick and What Women Want. His greatest artistic and financial success came with films where he expanded beyond acting into directing and producing, such as 1993's The Man Without a Face, 1995's Braveheart, 2004's Passion of the Christ and 2006's Apocalypto. Gibson got his breakthrough role as the leather-clad post-apocalyptic survivor in George Miller's Mad Max. In 1984, he starred as Fletcher Christian in The Bounty. Gibson moved into more mainstream commercial filmmaking with the popular buddy cop Lethal Weapon series, which began with the 1987 original. In the films he played LAPD Detective Martin Riggs, a recently widowed Vietnam veteran with a death wish and a penchant for violence and gunplay. He is partnered with a reserved family man named Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover). Gibson stated that when the Braveheart script arrived and was recommended by his agents, he rejected it outright because he thought he was too old to play the part. After careful thought, he decided to not only act in the film, but to direct it as well. Gibson received five Academy Awards, Best Director and Best Picture, for his 1995 direction of Braveheart. In the movie, Gibson starred as Sir William Wallace, a 13th century martyr of Scottish nationalism. In 2004 Gibson directed The Passion of the Christ which was based on the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus Christ according to the Four Evangelists and Roman Catholic Sacred Tradition. It was rendered multilingually in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin. Gibson co-wrote the screenplay with writer Benedict Fitzgerald and financed the film himself. The filming took place on location in Matera, Italy and Cinecittà Studios in Rome. Prior to making the film, Gibson constructed a traditionalist Catholic chapel on his California estate. It became the eighth highest-grossing film in history and the highest-grossing rated R film of all time. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Music Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Makeup at the 77th Academy Awards and won the People's Choice Award for Best Drama. Gibson's next historical epic, Apocalypto, was released to theaters on December 8, 2006. The film is set in Mesoamerica, during the fifteenth century. It focuses on the decline of the Maya civilization which reached its zenith around 600 AD, collapsed around 900 AD, and fell into a period of competing city states until the Conquistadors invaded. Dialogue is spoken in the Yucatec Maya language. It features a cast of actors from Mexico City, the Yucatán, and some Native Americans from the United States. Gibson met his wife Robyn Moore in the late 1970’s soon after filming Mad Max when they were both tenants at the same house in Adelaide. At the time, Robyn was a dental nurse and Mel was an unknown actor working for the South Australian Theatre Company. On June 7, 1980, they married in a Catholic Church in Forestville, New South Wales. They have one daughter, six sons, and one grandchild. Their seven children are Hannah (born 1980), twins Edward and Christian (born 1982), William (born 1985), Louis (born 1988), Milo (born 1990), and Thomas (born 1999).

Nicolas Cage is an Academy Award-winning American actor and an exemplar of method acting. He has also worked as a director and producer, through his production company Saturn Films. As of 2007, Cage has been nominated twice for an Academy Award as Best Actor in a Leading Role, winning the award for his performance in Leaving Las Vegas. Through his father, Cage is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, as well as the cousin of director Sofia Coppola and actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman. Cage's two brothers are Christopher Coppola, a director, and Marc "The Cope" Coppola, a New York radio personality. His other nomination was for playing real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and Kaufman's fictional twin Donald in Adaptation. Most of his financial successes have come from his forays into the action-adventure genre. In his second highest grossing film to date, National Treasure, he played an eccentric historian who goes on a dangerous adventure to find treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers of the United States. Other action hits in which Cage has starred include The Rock, in which he played a young FBI chemical weapons expert who infiltrates Alcatraz Island in hopes of neutralizing a terrorist threat, Face/Off, a John Woo film where he played both a hero and a villain, and World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone's film regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks. Cage has been married three times: Patricia Arquette (married on April 8, 1995 – divorce finalized May 18, 2001) Cage proposed to her on the day he met her in the early 80s. Arquette thought he was strange, but played along with his antics by creating a list of things Cage would have to do to "win her hand", including obtaining the autograph of reclusive author J.D. Salinger. However, when he seriously started working through the list of demands, Arquette became scared and avoided him. They met again many years later and went on to marry. Lisa Marie Presley (married on August 10, 2002 and separated after four months in December 2002; their divorce was finalized on May 16, 2004) — the daughter of Elvis Presley, of whom Cage is a fan and based his performance in Wild at Heart on. He later said they shouldn't have been married in the first place. Alice Kim, a former waitress who previously worked at the Los Angeles restaurant Kabuki, met Cage at Los Angeles based Korean Nightclub, Le Privé. She is mother to his son, Kal-El (born October 3, 2005). She had a minor role in the 2007 movie Next which he produced.

Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1970 and has won an Academy Award for her role in Dead Man Walking. She is also noted for her political activism for liberal causes. In 1969, Sarandon went to a casting call for the motion-picture Joe with her then husband Chris Sarandon. Although he did not get a part, she was cast in a major role of a disaffected teen who disappears into the seedy underworld (the film was released in 1970). Five years later, she appeared in the cult favorite The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That same year, she also played the female lead in The Great Waldo Pepper, opposite Robert Redford. Her most controversial film appearance was in The Hunger in 1983, a modern vampire story which turned out to be a critical and box office flop. The film has gained some cult status for a rather graphic lesbian love scene between Sarandon and co-star Catherine Deneuve. It was the first mainstream American film to feature such a scene between two star actresses. However, Sarandon did not become a "household name" until her breakthrough in the 1988 film Bull Durham. which became a huge commercial and critical success. Sarandon received five Academy Award nominations for best actress, in Atlantic City (1981), Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), and The Client (1994), finally winning in 1996 for Dead Man Walking. Her other movies include Stepmom (1998), Anywhere but Here (1999), Cradle Will Rock (1999), The Banger Sisters (2002), Shall We Dance (2004), Alfie (2004), Romance & Cigarettes (2005) and Elizabethtown (2005). While in college, she met and married fellow student Chris Sarandon in 1967. They divorced in 1979 and she retained her married name as her stage name. In the mid-1980s, Sarandon dated director Franco Amurri, with whom she had a daughter in 1985, actress Eva Amurri. Since 1988, Sarandon has been in a relationship with actor Tim Robbins, whom she met while filming Bull Durham. The couple have two children: Jack Henry (born 1989) and Miles Guthrie (born 1992). Sarandon and Robbins are often involved in the same social and political causes.

Kevin Spacey is an American actor (film and stage) and director. Spacey grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s, culminating in his first Oscar for 1995's The Usual Suspects (Supporting), followed by a Best Actor Oscar win for 1999's American Beauty. Spacey has since spent time working on stage productions in London, and has remained in the public eye, starring in several major Hollywood films, including Se7en, Pay It Forward, L.A. Confidential, and his portrayal of Lex Luthor in Superman Returns. Some of Spacey's earlier roles include a widowed eccentric millionaire on L.A. Law, the made-for-television film The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988) opposite Jack Lemmon, and the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder-starring comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989). Spacey earned an avid fan following after playing the criminally insane arms dealer Mel Profitt on the television series Wiseguy. He quickly developed a reputation as a character actor, and was cast in bigger roles, including one-half of the bickering Connecticut couple in the dark comedy The Ref (1994), a malicious Hollywood studio boss in the satire Swimming with Sharks, and the put-upon office manager in the all-star ensemble film Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), gaining him positive notices by critics. In 1995, Spacey appeared in Se7en, and as the enigmatic criminal Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects. His role in The Usual Suspects launched him to A-list status and won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 1996, he played an egomaniacal district attorney in A Time to Kill. Spacey won universal praise and an Best Actor Oscar for his role as a depressed suburban father who re-evaluates his life in 1999's American Beauty; He played a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher in Pay It Forward, a patient in a mental institution who may or may not be an alien in K-Pax, and singer Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea. Spacey's most recent film role is as the villainous Lex Luthor in the Bryan Singer-directed superhero film, Superman Returns. It has recently been confirmed that he will reprise the role in the upcoming sequel, scheduled for 2009.

Mira Sorvino is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe Award-winning American actress. She recently guest starred on an episode of House M.D. When the 1993 film Amongst Friends entered pre-production, she was hired as third assistant director, then was promoted to casting director, then to assistant producer, and was finally offered a lead role. Positive reviews opened doors for her. After small but showy roles in Robert Redford's Quiz Show and Whit Stillman's Barcelona, her portrayal of a squeaky-voiced, foul-mouthed prostitute in Woody Allen's 1995 film Mighty Aphrodite won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Other credits include Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (opposite Lisa Kudrow) and At First Sight with Val Kilmer. In recent years, she has starred in lower budget and independent films. In 2005, she received a Golden Globe nomination for her role as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Lifetime film Human Trafficking. She met actor Christopher Backus—fourteen years her junior—at a friend's charades party in August 2003: they were engaged within a month. On June 11, 2004, they married in a private civil ceremony at a Santa Barbara, California courthouse, then later had a hilltop ceremony in Capri, Italy. Their daughter, Mattea Angel, was born on November 3, 2004 and their son, Johnny Christopher King, was born on May 29, 2006.

Antonia (released as Antonia's Line in the English-speaking world) is a 1995 film by Dutch director, writer, and feminist Marleen Gorris. The film, described by its director as a "feminist fairy tale," tells the story of the matronal Antonia (Willeke van Ammelrooy) who, after returning to the anonymous Dutch village of her birth, establishes and nurtures a close-knit matriarchal community. Spanning nearly forty years, it follows Antonia as she takes over the family farm, befriends a recluse, takes in the village simpleton, and provides a home for a retarded young woman who has been raped by a brother. The film covers a breadth of liberal topics, with themes ranging from death and religion to sex, intimacy, and love. It won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice award, and the Nederlands Film Festival Golden Calf award.

"Colors of the Wind" by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz was the 1995 Oscar-winner for Best Original Song from the Disney animated feature film Pocahontas. It also won the Golden Globe in the same category as well as the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Movie. The song poetically presents the Native American viewpoint that the earth is a living entity where mankind is connected to everything in nature. The song was performed within the movie's narrative by Judy Kuhn as the singing voice of Pocahontas. Singer/actress Vanessa Williams recorded a version for the end credits which was successfully released as a single and became one of Williams' biggest hits in 1995, earning a gold single for sales of 500,000 copies.

67th Academy Awards

2008-02-07T11:14:00.000+01:00

The 67th Academy Awards, honoring the best movies of 1994, were held on March 27, 1995 at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, California. They were hosted by well-known comedian and talk show host David Letterman. The ceremony is perhaps best remembered for Letterman's performance as the host. Although some thought of him as different but good, most critics labelled his performance as terrible and vowed for him never to host the Oscars again. This negative criticism arose from Letterman's absurdist brand of comedy, and it would lead to Late Show with David Letterman losing in the ratings to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno by the summer of 1995. Around Academy Award season, Letterman frequently references his lackluster appearance at the Academy awards on his show in a humorous tone.

Forrest Gump won Best Picture, and 6 Oscars, including Tom Hanks' second straight Academy Award for Best Actor.The film tells the story of a man with an IQ of 75 and his epic journey through life, meeting historical figures, influencing popular culture and experiencing first-hand historic events while largely unaware of their significance, due to his lower than average intelligence. The film differs substantially from the book on which it was based.

Robert Zemeckis is an Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future films as well as the live-action/animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994's Forrest Gump, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director. His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the early use of match moving in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (2004). The director was jobless until Michael Douglas hired him in 1984 to film Romancing the Stone. A romantic adventure starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner, Romancing was expected to flop (to the point that, after viewing a rough cut of the film, the producers of the then-in-the-works Cocoon fired Zemeckis as director), but the film became a sleeper hit. While working on Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis met composer Alan Silvestri, who has scored all of his subsequent pictures. After Romancing, the director suddenly had the clout to direct his time-traveling screenplay, which was titled Back to the Future. Starring Michael J. Fox, the 1985 movie was wildly successful upon its release, and was followed by two sequels, released in 1989 and 1990. Before the Back to the Future sequels were released, Zemeckis directed another film, the madcap 1940s-set mystery Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which painstakingly combined traditional animation and live action; the film was both a financial and critical success, and won four Academy Awards. In 1992, Zemeckis directed the black comedy Death Becomes Her, starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. Although his next film would have some comedic elements, Zemeckis' next film was his first with dramatic elements, and was also his biggest commercial and critical success to date, 1994's Forrest Gump. Starring Tom Hanks in the title role, and borrowing heavily from Woody Allen's Zelig, Forrest Gump tells the story of a mentally handicapped man who unwittingly participates in some of the major events of the twentieth century, falling in love, and interacting with several major historical figures in the process. The film grossed $677 million worldwide and became the top grossing U.S. film of 1994; it won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Hanks as Best Actor, and Zemeckis as Best Director. In 1997, Zemeckis directed Contact, a long-gestating project based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel of the same name. The film centers around Eleanor Arroway, a scientist played by Jodie Foster, who believes she has made contact with extraterrestrial beings. In 1996, Zemeckis had begun developing a project titled The Castaway with Tom Hanks and writer William Broyles Jr., about a man who becomes stranded on a desert island and undergoes a profound physical and spiritual change. While working on The Castaway, Zemeckis also became attached to a Hitchcockian thriller titled What Lies Beneath, the story of a married couple experiencing an extreme case of empty nest syndrome that was based on an idea by Steven Spielberg. Because Hanks' character needed to undergo a dramatic weight loss over the course of The Castaway (which was eventually retitled Cast Away), Zemeckis decided that the only way to retain the same crew while Hanks lost the weight was to shoot What Lies Beneath in between. He shot the first part of Cast Away in early 1999, and shot What Lies Beneath in fall 1999, completing work on Cast Away in early 2000. What Lies Beneath, starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, was released in July 2000 to mixed reviews, but did well at the box office, grossing over $155 million domestically. Cast Away was released in that December and grossed $233 million domestically; as Chuck Noland, Hanks received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. In 2004, Zemeckis reteamed with Hanks and directed The Polar Express, based on the children's book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg. The Polar Express utilized the computer animation technique known as performance capture, whereby the movements of the actors are captured digitally and used as the basis for the animated characters. Zemeckis used the performance capture technology again in his latest film, Beowulf, which retells the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of the same name and stars Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, and Anthony Hopkins. In the early 1980s, Zemeckis married actress Mary Ellen Trainor, with whom he had a son, Alexander. He described the marriage as difficult to balance with filmmaking, and his relationship with Trainor eventually ended in divorce. In 2001, he married actress Leslie Harter Zemeckis.

Tom Hanks won as Best Actor and Jessica Lange won her second award, this time as Best Actress, for Blue Sky. Martin Landau is an Academy Award-winning American film and television actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the television series Mission: Impossible (1966–1969) and Space: 1999 (1975–1977). He received a Golden Globe Award in 1969 for his performance in the former, playing the role of mission specialist Rollin Hand. In 1968 and 1969 he received Emmy award nominations for best actor in a dramatic series for his Mission: Impossible work. In 1994 several awards, including the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Ed Wood, having already received two previous Oscar nominationsIn 1959, Landau made his first major film appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest at the age of 28. A few years later, after turning down the role of Spock in Star Trek, Landau took the role of master of disguise Rollin Hand in Mission: Impossible, becoming one of the show's best-known stars.He co-starred in the series with his then-wife, Barbara Bain, and the two left the series after the third season. In the late-1980s, Landau staged a major career comeback by winning an Academy Award nomination for his role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream. He later received a second nomination for Crimes and Misdemeanors and won the 1994 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his uncanny portrayal of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. Upon accepting the award, he was visibly frustrated by the orchestra's attempt to cut short his speech. When the music level rose, he pounded his fist on the podium and yelled "No!" He later stated that he had intended to thank Lugosi and dedicate the award to him and his frustration was that he didn't get to mention the man whom he had been honoured for playing. Landau has two daughters, Susan and Juliet, from his marriage to Barbara Bain. Landau and Bain married on January 31, 1957 and divorced in 1993.

The Best Supporting Actress award went to Dianne Wiest for Bullets over Broadway, her second award. Burnt by the Sun is a 1994 film by Russian director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov. The film received the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, among many other honours.

"Can You Feel the Love Tonight" is an Academy Award-winning song from Disney's 1994 animated film The Lion King, composed by Elton John with lyrics by Tim Rice. It was described by Don Hahn (the film's producer), Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff (the film's directors) as having "the most diverse history" in the film. The song was performed in the film by Kristle Edwards, Joseph Williams, Sally Dworsky, Nathan Lane, and Ernie Sabella, while the end title version was performed by Elton John. It won the 1994 Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. It also earned Elton John the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

66th Academy Awards

2008-02-06T12:50:00.000+01:00

The 66th Academy Awards were presented March 21, 1994 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The show was landmark in that it featured a female African American host for the first time, Whoopi Goldberg, and represented a direct contrast in edgy style from Billy Crystal who had hosted the show the previous four years.

Schindler's List is a 1993 biographical film directed by Steven Spielberg, telling the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of over one thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust. It was based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, and starred Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as the SS officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's accountant Itzhak Stern. The film was a box office success, and won several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Score. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively, but did not win. The American Film Institute voted it #9 on their AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies series, and in 2007 was voted in at #8 for the tenth anniversary list. In addition, the American Film Institute voted Liam Neeson's Schindler as the 13th greatest movie hero of all time, while Ralph Fiennes' Göth was voted the 15th greatest villain in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains series. In 2006 it was selected as the 3rd most inspiring movie of all time by AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers. In 2004, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Steven Spielberg is an American film director and producer. Spielberg is a three-time Academy Award winner and is the highest grossing filmmaker of all time; his films having made nearly $8 billion internationally. As of 2006, Premiere listed him as the most powerful and influential figure in the motion picture industry. In a career that spans almost four decades, Spielberg's films have touched many themes and genres. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, three of his films, Jaws, E.T., and Jurassic Park became the highest grossing films for their time. During his early years as a director, his sci-fi and adventure films were often seen as the archetype of modern Hollywood blockbuster film-making. In recent years, he has tackled emotionally powerful issues such as the Holocaust, slavery, war, and terrorism. Based on the strength of his work, Universal signed Spielberg to do three TV movies. The first was a Richard Matheson adaptation called Duel about a monstrous tanker truck which tries to run a small car off the road. Special praise of this film by the influential British critic Dilys Powell was highly significant to Spielberg's career. Another TV film (Something Evil) was made and released to capitalize on the popularity of The Exorcist, then a major best-selling book which had not yet been released as a movie. He fulfilled his contract by directing the TV movie length pilot of a show called Savage, starring Martin Landau. Spielberg's debut theatrical feature film was The Sugarland Express, about a married couple who are chased by police as the couple tries to regain custody of their baby. Studio producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown offered Spielberg the director's chair for Jaws, a horror film based on the Peter Benchley novel. The film about a killer shark won three Academy Awards (for editing, original score and sound), and grossed $470,653,000 at the box office, setting the domestic record for box office gross and leading to what the press described as "Jawsmania". Jaws made him a household name, as well as one of America's youngest multi-millionaires, and allowed Spielberg a great deal of autonomy for his future projects. It was nominated for Best Picture and featured Spielberg's first of three collaborations with actor Richard Dreyfuss. Spielberg and actor Richard Dreyfuss re-convened to work on a film about UFOs, which became Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). One of the rare movies both written and directed by Spielberg, Close Encounters… was a critical and box office hit, giving Spielberg his first Best Director nomination from the Academy as well as earning six other Academy Awards nominations. It won Oscars in two categories (Cinematography, Vilmos Zsigmond, and a Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing, Frank E. Warner). This second blockbuster helped to secure Spielberg's rise. Spielberg teamed with Star Wars creator and friend George Lucas on an action adventure film. Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first of the Indiana Jones films, was his homage to the cliffhanger serials of the Golden Age of Hollywood, with Harrison Ford (whom Lucas had previously cast in his Star Wars films) as the archaeologist and adventurer hero Indiana Jones. The biggest film at the box office in 1981, and recipient of numerous Oscar nominations including Best Director (Spielberg's second nomination) and Best Picture (the second Spielberg film to be nominated for Best Picture), Raiders is still considered a landmark example of the action genre. One year later, Spielberg returned to his science fiction genre, with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the story of a boy and the alien whom he befriends, who is trying to get back home to outer space. E.T. went on to become the top-grossing film of all time until it was beaten by another of his films, Jurassic Park, in 1993. E.T. was also nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Next, Spielberg and George Lucas made another Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The film was plagued with uncertainty for the material and script. The reviews were less positive than they were for its predecessor, though the film was a blockbuster hit in 1984. Between 1982 and 1984, Spielberg produced three high-grossing movies: Poltergeist (for which he also co-wrote the screenplay), a big-screen adaptation of The Twilight Zone and The Goonies. In 1985, Spielberg released The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, which is about a generation of empowered African-American women (Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey) during depression-era America (Danny Glover played the abusive patriarch). The film was a box office smash and critics hailed Spielberg's successful foray into the dramatic genre. The film received eleven Academy Award nominations, including two for Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. However, Spielberg did not get a Best Director nomination. In 1987, as China began opening to the world, Spielberg shot the first American movie in Shanghai since the 1930s, an adaptation of J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun. The film garnered much praise from critics and was nominated for several Oscars, but did not yield substantial box office revenues. After two forays into dramatic films, Spielberg directed another Indiana Jones film titled Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with actor Sean Connery in a supporting role. The film earned positive reviews and big box office receipts. Next, he re-united with actor Richard Dreyfuss for the drama Always, about a daredevil pilot who extinguishes forest fires. In 1991, Spielberg directed Hook, about a middle-aged Peter Pan (played by Robin Williams), who returns to Neverland. In 1993, Spielberg returned to the adventure genre with the Japanese Godzilla movie-inspired version of Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park, about dinosaurs. With revolutionary special effects provided by friend George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic, the film would eventually become the highest grossing film of all time. Spielberg's film Schindler's List was based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a man who risked his life to save 1,100 people from the Holocaust. Schindler's List earned Spielberg his first Academy Award for Best Director (it also won Best Picture). In 1997, Spielberg helmed the sequel to 1993's Jurassic Park with The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which generated nearly $230 million in domestic box office despite its mixed reviews. Amistad was based on a true story (like Schindler's List), specifically about an African slave rebellion. Despite decent reviews from critics, it did not do well at the box office. Spielberg released Amistad under his new studio DreamWorks Pictures, which has released all of his movies since Amistad. In 1998, Spielberg released the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan, about a squad of U.S. soldiers led by Capt. Miller (Tom Hanks) who try to find a missing soldier in France. Spielberg won his second Academy Award for his direction. In 2001, Spielberg filmed fellow director and friend Stanley Kubrick's final project, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence which Kubrick was unable to begin during his lifetime. Spielberg and actor Tom Cruise collaborated for the first time for the futuristic neo-noir Minority Report, based upon the sci-fi short story written by Philip K. Dick about a Washington, D.C., police captain who has been foreseen to murder a man he has not yet met. Spielberg's 2002 film Catch Me if You Can is about the daring adventures of a youthful con artist (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). It earned Christopher Walken an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The film is known for John Williams's score and its unique title sequence. The film was a hit both commercially and critically. Spielberg collaborated again with Tom Hanks along with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci in The Terminal, a warm-hearted comedy about a man of Eastern European descent who is stranded in an airport. In 2005, Spielberg did a modernized adaptation of War of the Worlds (a co-production of Paramount and DreamWorks), based on the H.G. Wells book of the same name, featuring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. As with past Spielberg films, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) provided the visual effects. Unlike E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which depicted friendly alien visitors, War of the Worlds had violent alien invaders. Spielberg's film Munich, about the events following the 1972 Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games, was his second film essaying Jewish relations in the world (the first being Schindler's List). The film is based on Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas. The film received strong critical praise, but underperformed at the U.S. and world box-office; it remains one of Spielbergs most controversial films to date. Munich received five Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture, Film Editing, Original Music Score (by John Williams), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director for Spielberg. It was Spielberg's sixth Best Director nomination and fifth Best Picture nomination. A year later he received his sixth Best Picture nomination for producing Letters from Iwo Jima. To date, seven films that Spielberg personally directed have been nominated for this award. From 1985 to 1989 Spielberg was married to actress Amy Irving. Following the divorce, Spielberg and Irving shared custody of their son, Max. Spielberg subsequently developed a relationship with actress Kate Capshaw, whom he met when he cast her in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They married on October 12, 1991. Capshaw is a convert to Judaism. There are seven children in the Spielberg-Capshaw family: Jessica Capshaw (1976) — daughter from Capshaw's previous marriage to Robert Capshaw Max Samuel Spielberg (June 13, 1985) — son from Spielberg's previous marriage to Amy Irving Theo (1988) — adopted by Capshaw before her marriage to Spielberg; adopted by Spielberg Sasha (May 14, 1990) Sawyer (March 10, 1992) Mikaela George (February 28, 1996) — adopted with Capshaw Destry Allyn (December 1, 1996).

Tom Hanks is a two-time Academy Award and Emmy-winning and four-time Golden Globe Award winning American film actor, director, voice-over artist writer and film producer. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies before achieving notable success as a dramatic actor in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. He is also one of only three actors in the history of film to have seven consecutive US$100 million blockbusters, the two other being Tom Cruise and Will Smith. It was Bosom Buddies and a guest appearance on a 1982 episode of Happy Days ("A Case of Revenge") where he played a disgruntled former classmate of The Fonz that drew director Ron Howard to contact Hanks. Howard was working on Splash (1984), a romantic comedy fantasy about a mermaid who falls in love with a human. At first, Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, a role which eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks got the lead role and a career boost from Splash, which went on to become a box-office hit, grossing more than $69 million. Hanks succeeded with the fantasy Big (1988), both at the box office and within the industry, establishing Hanks as a major Hollywood talent. It was followed by the 1989 movie Turner and Hooch. Hanks’s choice of roles continued to land him in trouble. He had another string of box-office failures. First, there was The 'Burbs (1989), then Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and finally The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), which saw Hanks as a greedy Wall Street type who gets enmeshed in a hit-and-run accident. Hanks again climbed back to the top with his portrayal of an unsuccessful baseball manager in A League of Their Own (1992). This "modern era" welcomed in a spectacular 1993 for Hanks, first with Sleepless in Seattle and then with Philadelphia. The former was a blockbuster success about a widower who finds true love (in the character of Meg Ryan) over the airwaves. In Philadelphia Hanks played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination (Hanks lost thirty-five pounds and thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role.) Hanks won the 1994 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia. During his acceptance speech he revealed that his high school drama teacher was gay. Hanks followed Philadelphia with the 1994 summer hit Forrest Gump, where the lead character moves in and out of cultural events in American history from the 60's onward. Hanks won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Forrest Gump, becoming only the second actor to have accomplished the feat of winning back-to-back Best Actor Oscars. (Spencer Tracy was the first, winning in 1937-38. Hanks and Tracy were the same age at the time they received their Academy Awards: 37 for the first and 38 for the second.) Hanks’s next project reunited him with Ron Howard in the movie Apollo 13, in which he played astronaut and commander James Lovell. The movie also earned nine nominations for an Academy Award in 1996, winning two. For Saving Private Ryan he teamed up with Steven Spielberg to make a film about D-Day, the landing at Omaha Beach, and a quest through war-torn France to bring back a soldier who has a ticket home. It earned the praise and respect of the film community, critics, and the general public; it was labeled one of the finest war films ever made, earning Spielberg his second Academy Award for direction and Hanks a Best Actor nomination. Later in 1998, Hanks re-teamed with his Sleepless in Seattle co-star Meg Ryan for another romantic comedy, You've Got Mail, a remake of 1940's The Shop Around the Corner, which starred Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. In 1999, Hanks starred in an adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Green Mile. He also returned as the voice of Woody in Toy Story 2. The following year he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor and an Academy nomination for his portrayal of a shipwrecked FedEx systems analyst in Robert Zemeckis's Cast Away. Next he teamed up with American Beauty director Sam Mendes for the adaptation of Max Allan Collins's and Richard Piers Rayner's graphic novel Road to Perdition, in which he played an anti-hero role as a hitman on the run with his son. That same year, Hanks collaborated with director Spielberg again, starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the hit crime comedy Catch Me if You Can, based on the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. The same year, he and wife Rita Wilson produced the hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Hanks was absent from the screen in 2003; in 2004, he appeared in three films: The Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers, another Spielberg helmed film, The Terminal, and The Polar Express, a family film from Robert Zemeckis. In August 2005, Hanks was voted in as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Hanks next starred in the highly anticipated film The Da Vinci Code, based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown. The film was released May 19, 2006 in the US and grossed over USD$750 million worldwide. Hanks next appeared in a cameo role as himself in The Simpsons Movie, in which he appears in an advertisement claiming that the US government has lost its credibility and is hence buying some of his. In 2007, Hanks starred in Mike Nichols' film Charlie Wilson's War in which he plays Democratic Texas Congressman Charles Wilson (Texas politician). Hanks was married to Samantha Lewes from 1978 to 1987. The couple had two children, son Colin Hanks (now also an actor) and daughter Elizabeth Ann. In 1988, Hanks married actress Rita Wilson; raised in several different Christian denominations, Hanks converted from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity when marrying Wilson. The two first met on the set of Hanks’s television show Bosom Buddies but later developed a romantic interest while working on the film Volunteers. They have two sons, Chester (Chet) and Truman.

Holly Hunter is an Academy Award-winning American actress. Hunter's first starring role in films came in 1987's Raising Arizona. That year, she also starred in Broadcast News, for which she earned an Oscar nomination for the Best Actress. In 1993, she won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Best Actress Oscar for The Piano and showcased her skill with the piano by playing all the elaborate pieces on the score herself. That year, Hunter was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Firm. In 2004, she earned another Best Supporting Actress nomination for Thirteen and voiced a star role (Helen Parr/Elastigirl) in the animated film The Incredibles. Hunter has also appeared in several television films and has earned two Emmys. She is currently starring in and producing Saving Grace, a crime series on TNT portraying an Oklahoma City Police Department detective. For many years, Hunter was in a relationship with actor Arliss Howard. She was married to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski from May 20, 1995 until their divorce on December 21, 2001. Since 2001, she has been in a relationship with American actor Gordon MacDonald. In January 2006, Hunter's publicist announced that the couple had welcomed twins; Entertainment Weekly later reported that the twins were boys.

Tommy Lee Jones is an Academy Award-winning American actor and director. He is perhaps best known for his roles in The Fugitive (and its sequel, U.S. Marshals), JFK, No Country for Old Men, In the Valley of Elah, Batman Forever, Men in Black and its sequel, Men in Black II. He made his debut in movies in Love Story, in 1970. In 1981, he played a drifter opposite Sally Field in Back Roads, a comedy that received middling reviews and grossed $11 million at the box office. In 1983, he received an Emmy for Best Actor for his performance as murderer Gary Gilmore in a TV adaptation of Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. In the same year he also starred in pirate adventure Nate and Hayes, playing the heavily bearded Captain Bully Hayes. In the 1990s, movies such as The Fugitive co-starring Harrison Ford, Batman Forever co-starring Val Kilmer, and Men in Black with Will Smith brought him tens of millions of dollars and made him one of the top actors of Hollywood. 1991 brought him his first Academy Award nomination for JFK. His role in The Fugitive won him wide acclaim and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. When he accepted his Oscar, his head was shaved for his role in the film Cobb, a situation he made light of in his speech by saying "All a man can say at a time like this is 'I am not really bald.'" In 2005, he released his first feature-film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, that was presented at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. It won him the Best Actor Award. His first film as director was in 1995, a made-for-television movie. Two strong performances in 2007 have marked a resurgence in Jones' career, with his portrayal of a beleaguered father looking for his son in In the Valley of Elah and as a sheriff hunting an assassin in the critically acclaimed No Country for Old Men. For the former, he was nominated for an Academy Award. Jones was married to Kate Lardner, the daughter of Ring Lardner Jr. from 1971 to 1978. Jones has two children from his second marriage to Kimberlea Cloughey: Victoria Kafka (born 1991) and Austin Leonard (born 1982). On March 19, 2001, he married his third wife, Dawn Laurel.

Anna Paquin is an Academy Award-winning and Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated New Zealand actress. Her breakthrough performance was in The Piano, which earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting actress and made her the second youngest winner in history at the age of 11. She is also the first Canadian-born actress to win Best Supporting Actress. Paquin's big-screen debut happened when she attended the open audition for Flora for The Piano along with her sister. The director was impressed by nine-year-old Paquin's performance of the monologue about Flora's father, and she was chosen from among the 5000 candidates. When the The Piano was released in 1993 it was lauded by critics, won prizes at a number of film festivals, and eventually became a popular movie among a wide audience. Paquin's debut performance in the film earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of eleven, making her the second-youngest Oscar winner in history after Tatum O'Neal. The Piano was made as a small independent movie and wasn't supposed to be widely known, and Paquin and her family didn't plan to continue in the acting circles. However, she was invited to the prestigious William Morris Agency, and she kept receiving offers for new roles. In 1996, she appeared in two movies. The first role was a smallish one as young Jane in Jane Eyre. The other was a lead part in Fly Away Home playing a young girl who, after her mother dies, moves in with her father and finds solace in taking care of orphaned goslings. As a teenager, she had roles in several small films, such as The Member of the Wedding, Amistad, Hurlyburly and She's All That. Paquin returned to worldwide prominence with her role as Rogue in the blockbuster X-Men movie in 2000, its sequel X2: X-Men United in 2003, and its third installment X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006.

Belle Époque is a 1992 Spanish film directed by Fernando Trueba. The title derives from the period French history known as the Belle Époque ('The beautiful Era'). It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

"Streets of Philadelphia" is an Academy Award-winning song written and performed by American singer Bruce Springsteen for the 1993 film Philadelphia. It is a slow, mournful, but melodic dirge about life with AIDS, set against synthesizers and a drum machine. Because of the song's sterling achievements in the awards world, Springsteen played the song live in three high-visibility, prime-time awards show broadcasts: at the 66th Academy Awards in March 1994, at the MTV Video Music Awards in September 1994, and at the Grammy Awards of 1995 in March 1995. Between this, Philadelphia's good box office, and the single being a top 10 pop hit, "Streets of Philadelphia" became one of Springsteen's best-known songs to the general music audience.

65th Academy Awards

2008-02-05T14:16:00.000+01:00

The 65th Academy Awards were presented March 29, 1993 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The show was hosted by Billy Crystal.

Unforgiven won four awards including Best Picture. Unforgiven 1992 is a Western film which tells the story of a retired gunslinger who takes on one more job. The film was directed by Clint Eastwood and the screenplay was by David Webb Peoples. A Western that deals frankly with the uglier aspects of violence and the myth of the Old West, it stars Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris, Jaimz Woolvett, Saul Rubinek and Frances Fisher. Eastwood dedicated the movie to former directors and mentors Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. The film won four Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gene Hackman), Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Picture. Unforgiven was inducted into the United States National Film Registry in 2004.

Clint Eastwood, an American actor, film director, producer, and composer, has won an Academy Award five times - twice each as Best Director and as producer of the Best Picture; he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1995. While his work as a director, on recent films like Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, have received a high degree of critical acclaim, Eastwood is best known for his tough guy, anti-hero acting roles typically in western films, most notably as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's "Dollars trilogy" of Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, and Inspector 'Dirty' Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series of the 1970s and 1980s. Eastwood, who stands at 6 ft 4 inches (193 cm), found lead roles as the mysterious Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's loose trilogy of westerns: A Fistful of Dollars / Per un pugno di dollari (1964), For a Few Dollars More / Per qualche dollaro in più (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly / Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966). In 1970, war movie Kelly's Heroes and Don Siegel directed western Two Mules for Sister Sara, costarring Shirley MacLaine, both combined tough-guy action with offbeat humor. In The Beguiled, again directed by Siegel, he played a cad - as close to an outright villain as he has come. 1971 proved to be a professional turning point for his career. His own production company, Malpaso, was new but gave Eastwood the control he desired, allowing him to direct and star in the thriller Play Misty for Me. But it was his portrayal of the hard-edged police inspector Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry that propelled Siegel's most successful movie at the box-office and arguably established Eastwood's most memorable character. The film has been credited with inventing the "loose-cannon cop genre" that is imitated to this day. Eastwood's tough, no-nonsense cop touched a cultural nerve with many who were fed up with crime in the streets. Dirty Harry led to four sequels: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988), as well as sparking numerous imitators such as Charles Bronson's Death Wish (1974) and its four sequels.In 1979, Eastwood played yet another memorable role as the prison escapee Frank Morris in the fact-based movie Escape from Alcatraz, which was also his last collaboration with Don Seigel. Morris was an escape artist who was sent to Alcatraz in 1960, which was, at the time, one of the toughest prisons in America. Morris devised a meticulous plan to escape from "The Rock" and, in 1962, he and two other prisoners broke out of the prison and entered San Francisco Bay. They were never seen again, and although the FBI believes that the escapees drowned, to this day their actual fate is unknown.Eastwood rose to prominence yet again in the early 1990s. He revisited the western genre one final time in the self-directed 1992 film, Unforgiven, taking on the role of an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime. The film, also starring such esteemed actors as Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and Richard Harris, laid the groundwork for such later westerns as Deadwood by re-envisioning established genre conventions in a more ambiguous and unromantic light. A great success both in terms of box office and critical acclaim, it was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Actor for Eastwood and Best Original Screenplay for David Webb Peoples. It won four, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. The following year, Eastwood played a guilt-ridden Secret Service agent in the thriller In the Line of Fire (1993) directed by Wolfgang Petersen. This film was a blockbuster and among the top 10 box-office performers in that year. Eastwood directed and starred with Kevin Costner in A Perfect World the same year. He continued to expand his repertoire by playing opposite Meryl Streep in the love story The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Based on a best-selling novel, it was also a hit at the box-office. Afterward, Eastwood turned to more directing work — much of it well received — including Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). In 2003 he directed Mystic River for which he garnered a Best Director nomination. In Space Cowboys, which also starred Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, and James Cromwell, he plays Frank Corvin, a retired engineer NASA calls upon to save a dying Russian Mir satellite. He found critical acclaim with Million Dollar Baby in 2004, winning 4 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and Eastwood was nominated for Best Actor (the award went to Jamie Foxx). In 2006, he directed two movies about the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. The first one, Flags of Our Fathers, focused on the men who raised the American Flag on top of Mount Suribachi. The second one, Letters from Iwo Jima, dealt with the tactics of the Japanese soldiers on the island and the letters they wrote to family members. Both films were highly praised by critics and garnered several Oscar Nominations, including Best Director and Picture for Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood, who has been married twice, has five daughters and two sons by five different women: Kimber (born 1964), with Roxanne Tunis; Kyle (born in 1968) and Alison (born on May 22, 1972), with ex-wife Maggie Johnson; Scott (born March 21, 1986) and Kathryn (born February 2, 1988), with airline hostess Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Ruth (born August 7, 1993), with Frances Fisher, his co-star in Unforgiven; and Morgan (born December 12, 1996), with current wife Dina Ruiz.

The Best Actor award went to Al Pacino. He made his first screen appearance in an episode of the television series N.Y.P.D. in 1968, and his largely unnoticed movie debut in Me, Natalie came the following year. It was the 1971 film The Panic in Needle Park, in which he played a heroin addict, that would bring him to the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola. Pacino's rise to fame came after portraying Michael Corleone in Coppola's blockbuster 1972 Mafia film The Godfather and Frank Serpico in the eponymous 1973 movie. In 1973 Pacino starred in the very successful Serpico and the less popular Scarecrow alongside Gene Hackman. In 1974, Pacino reprised his role as Michael Corleone in the very successful sequel The Godfather Part II, acclaimed as being comparable to the original. In 1975, he enjoyed further success with the release of Dog Day Afternoon, based on the true story of a bank robber John Wojtowicz. In 1977, Pacino starred as a race-car driver in Bobby Deerfield, directed by Sydney Pollock and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama, for his portrayal of Bobby Deerfield, but lost out to Richard Burton, who ultimately won for Equus. During the 1970s, Pacino had four Oscar nominations for Best Actor for his performances in Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and ...And Justice for All. However, 1983's Scarface, directed by Brian DePalma, proved to be a career highlight and a defining role. Pacino earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in Scarface as a Cuban drug gangster. Pacino received an Oscar nomination as Big Boy Caprice in the box office hit Dick Tracy (1990) followed by a return to arguably his most famous character, Michael Corleone, in The Godfather Part III (1990). In 1991, Al Pacino starred in Frankie and Johnny with Michelle Pfeiffer, who also co-starred with Pacino in Scarface. He would finally win an Oscar for Best Actor, for his portrayal of the depressed, irascible, and retired blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman (1992). That very year, he was also nominated for the supporting actor award for Glengarry Glen Ross, making Pacino the first male actor ever to receive two acting nominations for two different movies in the same year, and to win for the lead role (as did Jamie Foxx in 2005). Pacino has since turned acclaimed performances in such crime dramas as Carlito's Way (1993), Donnie Brasco (1997), the multi-Oscar nominated The Insider (1999) and Insomnia (2002).In 1995, Pacino starred in Michael Mann's Heat, in which he and fellow film icon Robert De Niro appeared onscreen together for the first time. (Though both Pacino and De Niro starred in The Godfather Part II, they did not share any scenes. The pairing drew much attention as the two actors have long been compared). In 1996, Pacino starred in his theatrical feature Looking for Richard, and was lauded for his role as Satan in the supernatural drama The Devil's Advocate in 1997. Pacino also starred in Oliver Stone's critically acclaimed Any Given Sunday in 1999, playing the team coach. The speech he performs in the film has become known world-wide as "the Al Pacino Speech" which is used to inspire many athletes around the world. With his box office earnings relatively modest of late, Pacino looks to be gearing up with several new projects. He starred in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean's Thirteen alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Andy Garcia as the villain Willy Bank, a casino tycoon who is targeted out of revenge by Danny Ocean and his crew. While Pacino has never married, he has three children. The first, Julie Marie, (b. 1989) is his daughter with acting coach Jan Tarrant. He also has twins, Anton James and Olivia Rose (b. January 25, 2001), with ex-girlfriend Beverly D'Angelo, whom he was with from 1997-2001.

Emma Thompson is an Emmy-, BAFTA-, Golden Globe- and two time Academy Award-winning English actress, comedian, and screenwriter. Thompson's first major film role was in a romantic comedy, The Tall Guy. Her career took a more serious turn with a series of critically acclaimed performances and films, beginning with 1992's Howards End (for which she received an Oscar for Best Actress), the part of Gareth Peirce, the lawyer for the Guildford Four, in In the Name of the Father, The Remains of the Day opposite Anthony Hopkins, and as the British painter Dora Carrington in the film Carrington. She won her next Oscar in 1996, for Best Adapted Screenplay for her screenplay adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, a film in which she also played the Oscar-nominated lead actress role. Most recently, Thompson appeared in supporting roles in films of a lighter nature, including her role as Sybill Trelawney in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She has also appeared in the comedy Love Actually. Thompson married Kenneth Branagh, with whom she appeared in Fortunes of War, on August 20, 1989. They appeared together several times, in hit films such as Dead Again, Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, but were eventually divorced in October 1995. In 2003, Thompson married actor Greg Wise (who starred with her in Sense and Sensibility) with whom she has a daughter, Gaia Romilly, born in 1999.

Marisa Tomei is an Academy Award-winning American film and stage actress. Tomei followed up As the World Turns in 1987 with a role on the sitcom A Different World. Her breakthrough performance came in My Cousin Vinny (1992), for which she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. After her Oscar win, she received a Screen Actor's Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Female Supporting Actor for Unhook the Stars. Next, she received an American Comedy Award nomination for Funniest Supporting Actress for Slums of Beverly Hills. She was nominated for a Satellite Award as Best Supporting Actress for What Women Want. She received a second Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for In The Bedroom (2001). Tomei has also done substantial work in the theater, including taking lead roles on Broadway In the early 1990s, Tomei dated Robert Downey, Jr. (her co-star in Only You). In 1999, she dated actor Dana Ashbrook and had a relationship with Frankie Pugliese. She tends to keep her personal life away from the media.

Indochine is an 1992 Academy Award winning French film that tells the story of a young Indochinese woman named Camille. The title refers to the colony of French Indochina, of which modern Vietnam was once a part. The screenplay was written by Erik Orsenna, Louis Gardel Catherine Cohen and Régis Wargnier. It was directed by Wargnier. It stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc.The movie won the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Catherine Deneuve received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film.

"A Whole New World" was the featured pop single from the soundtrack to the 1992 Disney movie Aladdin. It was composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by Tim Rice. The song is a ballad between the primary characters Aladdin and Jasmine about the new world they're going to discover together. The single version was performed by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle and is heard over the end credits. The version heard during the narrative of the film was performed by Brad Kane and Lea Salonga, the singing voices for Aladdin and Princess Jasmine, respectively. They also performed the song in their characters at the 65th Academy Awards. "A Whole New World" won the 1992 Academy Award for Best Original Song, giving Alan Menken his third win and second consecutive after his 1991 award for "Beauty and the Beast". The song also won the 1992 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, also succeeding "Beauty and the Beast" in the award.

64th Academy Awards

2008-02-04T10:46:00.000+01:00

The 64th Academy Awards were presented March 30, 1992 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The show was the third consecutive to be hosted by Billy Crystal and also featured Jack Palance's infamous one-handed push ups. The Silence of the Lambs won five major awards, only the third film to do so after It Happened One Night (1934) and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975). As of 2007, it is also the only horror movie to ever win Best Picture. This year's ceremony made Academy Award History as Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture, the first (and, so far, only) time an Animated Feature Film was bestowed with such honor. The Picture garnered a total of six nominations in four different categories, eventually collecting two awards for its Music (Best Original Score and Original Song, for "Beauty and the Beast").

The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 Academy Award-winning horror/thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. It is based on the novel by Thomas Harris, his second to feature Dr. Hannibal Lecter, brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. In the film, Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, seeks the advice of the imprisoned Lecter on catching serial killer Buffalo Bill. The film won five Academy Awards including Best Picture. Anthony Hopkins gained huge acclaim with his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, even though his screen time in the entire film is just over 16 minutes. His portrayal won him an Academy Award in 1992, and as of 2008 remains the shortest lead role to ever win an Oscar. The film received widespread critical acclaim. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster also received praise for their performances. Roger Ebert specifically mentioned the "terrifying qualities" of Hannibal Lecter. Not surprisingly, both actors won Academy Awards for their performances.

Jonathan Demme is an Academy Award winning American film director, producer and writer. Demme broke into feature film directing working for Roger Corman. His first mainstream feature Melvin and Howard caught the eye of Hollywood and he was signed to direct the Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell vehicle Swing Shift. The compromised production saw Demme withdraw for a time from major feature films making a notable series of 'concert films' with Stop Making Sense and Swimming to Cambodia. He continues to alternate making feature films with documentaries and concert/performance films. For instance, he was the executive producer for his longtime friend Nancy Savoca's Household Saints. In 1991, Demme won the Academy Award for The Silence of the Lambs—one of the few films to win all the major categories (best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor, and best actress). Demme directed an Oscar-winning turn from Tom Hanks in his next feature, Philadelphia.

Anthony Hopkins is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, double Emmy-, triple BAFTA- and Saturn Award-winning Welsh film, stage and television actor, arguably best known for his portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter in 1991 blockbuster The Silence of the Lambs. Other notable film credits include The Elephant Man, Dracula, Legends of the Fall, The Mask of Zorro and Fracture. Hopkins was born and raised in Wales, and also became a U.S. citizen on April 12, 2000. Despite his success at the National, Hopkins tired of repeating the same roles nightly and yearned to be in movies. In 1968, he got his break in The Lion in Winter playing Richard I, along with future James Bond star Timothy Dalton, who played Philip II of France. Although Hopkins continued in theatre (most notably in the Broadway production of Peter Shaffer's Equus, directed by John Dexter) he gradually moved away from it to become more established as a television and film actor. He made his small-screen debut in a 1967 BBC broadcast of A Flea in Her Ear. He has since gone on to enjoy a long career, winning many plaudits and awards for his performances. Hopkins's most famous role is the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1992) opposite Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, who also won for Best Actress. In addition, the film won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It is the shortest lead performance to win an Oscar, as Hopkins only appears for about seventeen minutes. Hopkins went on to reprise his role as Lecter twice (Hannibal in 2001 and Red Dragon in 2002). His original portrayal of the character in The Silence of the Lambs has been labelled by the American Film Institute as the number-one film villain. Hopkins has been married three times. His first two wives were Petronella Barker (1967 – 1972) and Jennifer Lynton (1973 – 2003). He is now married to Colombia-born Stella Arroyave. He has a daughter from his first marriage, Abigail Hopkins (born 1967), an actress and singer.Besides his win for The Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins has been Oscar-nominated for The Remains of the Day (1993), Nixon (1995) and Amistad (1997). Hopkins won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in 1973 for his performance as Pierre Bezukhov in the BBC's production of War and Peace, and additionally for The Silence of the Lambs and Shadowlands. He received nominations in the same category for Magic and The Remains of the Day and as Best Supporting Actor for The Lion in Winter. He won Emmy Awards for his roles in The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case and The Bunker, and was Emmy-nominated for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Great Expectations.

Jack Palance was an Academy Award-winning American film actor. With his rugged facial features, Palance was best known to modern movie audiences as both the characters of Curly and Duke in the two City Slickers movies, but his career spanned half a century of film and television appearances.In 1947, Palance made his Broadway debut, and this was followed three years later by his screen debut in the movie Panic in the Streets (1950). The very same year, he was featured in Halls of Montezuma about the U.S. Marines in World War II, where he was credited as "Walter (Jack) Palance". Palance was quickly recognized for his skill as a character actor, receiving an Oscar nomination for only his third film role, as Lester Blaine in Sudden Fear.The following year, Palance was again nominated for an Oscar, this time for his role as the evil gunfighter Jack Wilson in Shane. Appearances in Young Guns (1988) and Tim Burton's Batman (1989) reinvigorated Palance's career, and demand for his services kept him involved in new projects each year right up to the turn of the century.Four decades after his film debut, Palance won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1992 for his performance as cowboy Curly Washburn in the 1991 comedy City Slickers. Stepping onstage to accept the award, the intimidatingly fit 6' 4" (1.93 m) actor looked down at 5' 7" (1.70 m) Oscar host Billy Crystal (who was also his co-star in the movie), and joked — mimicking one of his lines from the film — "Billy Crystal... I crap bigger than him." He then dropped to the floor and demonstrated his ability, at age 73, to perform one-handed push-ups. Crystal then turned this into a running gag. At various points in the broadcast, he announced that Palance was backstage on the Stairmaster; had "just bungee-jumped off the Hollywood sign"; had rendezvoused with the Space Shuttle in orbit; had fathered all the children in a production number; had been named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive; and had won the New York primary election. At the end of the broadcast, Crystal told everyone he'd like to see them again "but I've just been informed Jack Palance will be hosting next year." (The following year, host Crystal arrived on stage atop a giant model of the Oscar statuette, being towed by Palance using his teeth.). Palance's first wife was Virginia Baker from 1949 to 1966. They had three children: Holly (born in 1950), an actress, Brooke (born in 1952) and Cody (1955 – 1998). An actor himself, Cody Palance appeared alongside his father in the film Young Guns, and was 42 when he died from a malignan melanoma in 1998. He married Elaine Rogers in May 1987. Palance died at the age of 87, of natural causes, at his home in Montecito in Santa Barbara County.

Mercedes Ruehl is a Golden Globe, Tony and Academy Award-winning American theater and film actress. Her most acclaimed film role was in The Fisher King; her performance in the film earned her the 1991 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as an American Comedy Award, a Boston Society of Film Critics Award, a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, and a Golden Globe. Earlier she had won the 1989 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Married to the Mob. She played KACL station manager Kate Costas in five episodes of Frasier, and had a major role in the made-for-TV film All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story. She is the first Cuban American female Academy Award winner. She is married to painter David Geiser, with whom she adopted a son, Jake (born 1997). She had another son, Christopher, whom she placed in adoption in 1976; Christopher later became Jake's godfather.

Mediterraneo is an Italian film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991. The film is set during World War II, and regards a group of Italian soldiers who become stranded on a Greek island and are left behind by the war. They each find their own niche on the island and decide that being stranded is not necessarily a bad thing. The filming took place on the island of Kastellórizo.

"Beauty and the Beast" is the leading single from the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack and the first hit single from Céline Dion's eponymous album. It was performed in the movie by Angela Lansbury and sung over the movie's closing credits by Céline Dion and Peabo Bryson. The Dion-Bryson single was released on December 30, 1991 in the United States and the next year in the rest of the world. The song is a ballad about the love developing between Belle and the Beast. It was written by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman. It was one of Ashman's last works before he died of AIDS in 1991"Beauty and the Beast" won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1992, marking Menken and Ashman's (posthumously) second win after the 1989 award for "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. A couple of months before, it had also won the 1992 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.

63rd Academy Awards

2008-02-03T17:48:00.000+01:00

The 63rd Academy Awards were presented March 25, 1991 at the Shrine Civic Auditorium, Los Angeles. The show was hosted by Billy Crystal. The prominent winner was the film Dances with Wolves which earned three major awards. Kevin Costner was the movie's director and leading actor. Whoopi Goldberg made history in becoming the second African-American actress to ever win an Academy Award (the first being Hattie McDaniel in 1939).

Dances with Wolves is an Academy award winning 1990 epic film which tells the story of a United States cavalry officer from the Civil War who travels alone into the frontier near a Sioux tribe. Developed by director/star Kevin Costner over 5 years, the film (released 21 November 1990) has high production values and won 7 Academy Awards (1990) and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama. Much of the dialogue is in the Lakota language with English subtitles, unusual for a film at the time of its release. In 2007, Dances with Wolves was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

Kevin Costner is an American film actor, director and producer. One of Costner's most successful films was Dances with Wolves (1990), which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Costner made his film debut at age 19, in the 1974 film, Sizzle Beach, U.S.A., although the film was not released until 1986. Costner then appeared in a commercial for the Apple Lisa in 1983. He was cast in the hit The Big Chill (1983).Costner was a friend of director Lawrence Kasdan, who later promised the actor a role in a future project, which became the 1985 film Silverado and became a breakout role for Costner. He also starred that year in the smaller, but interesting films, Fandango and American Flyers.1987 marked full-blown movie star status for Costner as he starred as Eliot Ness in The Untouchables and played the protagonist in No Way Out. In 1988 he solidified his A-list status in the comedy Bull Durham and in Field of Dreams in 1989. Costner's biggest success was the epic Dances with Wolves (1990). He directed and starred in the film and served as one of two producers. The film was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won seven, including two for him personally (Best Picture and Best Director). Costner followed this with Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (1991), the Oliver Stone-directed JFK (1991), The Bodyguard (1992), and Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World, (1993), all of which provided huge box office takings or critical acclaim.He then took the title role in the biopic Wyatt Earp (1994), directed by established collaborator Lawrence Kasdan, which fizzled at the summer 1994 box office. The science fiction epics Waterworld (1995) and The Postman (1997), the latter of which Costner also directed, were both initially considered major disappointments at the box office. Costner then starred in the comedic film Tin Cup (1996), before developing the film Air Force One. He was set to play the lead role in the film, but ultimately decided to concentrate on finishing The Postman instead. He personally offered the project to Harrison Ford. Costner's career revived somewhat in 2000 with Thirteen Days. Open Range, in which he directed and starred, received high critical acclaim in 2003 as a Revisionist Western, though it was only a minor success commercially. Costner starred in The Guardian and in Mr. Brooks, where he portrayed a serial killer. On September 25, 2004, after 10 years of being single, Costner married his girlfriend of four years, the German model and handbag designer Christine Baumgartner, at his ranch in Aspen, Colorado. Guests, including Oprah Winfrey, Oliver Stone, and Bruce Willis, were treated to activities including horse riding and baseball during the weekend festivities. Costner took his new bride for a canoe ride on a lake following the ceremony. The couple honeymooned in Scotland. Their first child, Cayden Wyatt Costner, was born on May 6, 2007 at 10:30 p.m. at a Los Angeles hospital.

Jeremy Irons is an Academy Award, Tony Award, Screen Actors Guild, two-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning English film, television and stage actor. After several appearances on British television, including the children's television series Playdays, and an adaptation of the H.E. Bates novel Love for Lydia in 1977, his film debut came in 1980 in Nijinsky. The role which brought him fame was that of Charles Ryder in the television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited in 1981. Brideshead reunited him with Anthony Andrews, with whom he had appeared in The Pallisers seven years earlier. Also in 1981, he starred in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman opposite Meryl Streep. He is also known for playing the evil wizard Profion, along with Bruce Payne as Damodor, in the 2000 film, Dungeons and Dragons, from Time Warner studio New Line Cinema. The film was also based on the Tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons. In 1984 Irons won a Tony Award for his Broadway performance opposite Glenn Close in The Real Thing. He appeared sporadically in films during the 1980s, including the Cannes Palme d'Or winner The Mission in 1986, and in the dual role of twin physicians in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers in 1988. Other films include Reversal of Fortune (1990), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, Kafka (1991), Damage (1993), The House of the Spirits (1993) appearing again with Glenn Close and Meryl Streep, Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995), Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996), the 1997 remake of Lolita and as the musketeer Aramis opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the 1998 film version of The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), and he played the Über-Morlock from the movie The Time Machine (2002). One of his best known film roles has turned out to be the voice of Scar in The Lion King (1994). In 2005, he appeared in the films Casanova opposite Heath Ledger, and Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. Irons is married to Irish actress Sinéad Cusack and is the father of two sons, Samuel James Brefni Irons, who works as a photographer and Maximilian Paul Diarmuid Irons (October 17, 1985), who appeared in the 2006 Burberry fashion campaign.

Kathy Bates is an Academy Award-winning American theatrical, film, and television actress, and a stage and television director. One of her first films was the Dustin Hoffman film Straight Time. In 1990, she would appear again with Hoffman in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy as a stenographer who couldn't understand the mumbling of Hoffman's character, Mumbles. Bates appeared off-Broadway in Terrence McNally's 1987 play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, performed in little-seen films such as Summer Heat and The Morning After, and guest-starred in television shows such as L.A. Law before landing the role of obsessed fan Annie Wilkes, who holds her favorite author (played by James Caan) captive, in the 1990 thriller Misery, which was based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. She received her first Academy Award nomination for that role, winning Best Actress. Soon after, she starred with Jessica Tandy in the acclaimed 1991 movie Fried Green Tomatoes. In 1995, she turned in another applauded portrayal as the title character in Dolores Claiborne, although she was surprisingly not nominated for an Oscar.She also excelled in her role as the acid-tongued "dustbuster" political advisor Libby Holden in the 1998 Primary Colors, which was adapted from the book in which political journalist Joe Klein recounted his experiences on the Presidential campaign trail in 1991-1992. For this performance, she received her second Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actress, though she did not win. She was nominated again, in 2002, for About Schmidt, though again, she was denied the award. In 1991, Bates married actor Tony Campisi, with whom she had lived for 12 years previously. They divorced in 1997.

Joe Pesci is an American Academy Award-winning actor, taxidermist comedian and singer. His breakthrough as an actor came in 1980 alongside Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's boxing film Raging Bull. Subsequently, he performed with De Niro in the films Once Upon A Time In America (in which he was cast at the behest of his friend De Niro), Goodfellas (for which he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), and Casino. Pesci co-starred in Home Alone (1990), playing one of two bumbling burglars (along with good friend, Daniel Stern) who attempt to rob the house of the character played by Macaulay Culkin. In 1992, he appeared in Home Alone 2. He also played the non-gangster role of David Ferrie in JFK and finally My Cousin Vinny released in 1991 and 1992 respectively. He appeared in three Lethal Weapon films as the sleazy but likeable Leo Getz. Pesci has been married three times, the first to Claudia Martha (Marty) Haro, with whom he has a daughter, Tiffany. Pesci has been linked with companion Angie Everhart, but rumours that they are engaged have so far yet to be confirmed.

Whoopi Goldberg is an American actress, comedian, radio host, TV personality, game show host, and author. She is one of only ten individuals who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award, counting Daytime Emmy Awards. She is the second African American female performer to win an Academy Award for acting (the first being Hattie McDaniel). She has won two Golden Globe Awards and two Saturn Awards for her performances in Star Trek Generations and Ghost. While performing on Broadway, Goldberg's performance caught the eye of director Steven Spielberg. He was about to direct the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple written by Alice Walker. Having read the novel, she was ecstatic at being offered a lead role in her first motion picture. Goldberg received compliments on her acting from Spielberg, Walker, and music consultant Quincy Jones. The Color Purple was released in the late autumn of 1985 and was a critical and commercial success. It was later nominated for 11 Academy Awards including a nomination for Goldberg as Best Leading Actress. The movie did not win any of its Academy Award nominations, but Goldberg won the Golden Globe Award. Goldberg starred in Penny Marshall's directorial debut, 1986's Jumpin' Jack Flash, and she began a relationship with David Claessen, a director of photography on the set, and the couple married later that year. The movie was a success and during the next two years three additional motion pictures featured Goldberg, Burglar, Fatal Beauty, and The Telephone. The 1988 movie, Clara's Heart, was critically acclaimed and featured a young Neil Patrick Harris. In January 1990, Goldberg starred with Jean Stapleton in the TV situation comedy Bagdad Café. The show ran for two seasons on CBS. Simultaneously, Goldberg starred in The Long Walk Home, portraying a woman in the Civil Rights Movement. She played a psychic in the 1990 film Ghost, and became the first African-American female to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in nearly 50 years. Premiere Magazine named her character, Oda Mae Brown, the 95th best movie character of all time. Goldberg starred in Soapdish and had a recurring role on Star Trek: The Next Generation as Guinan which she would reprise in two Star Trek movies. On May 29, 1992, Sister Act was released. The motion pictured grossed well over $100 million dollars and Goldberg was nominated for a Golden Globe. Next, she starred in Sarafina!. During the next year, she hosted a late-night talk show, The Whoopi Goldberg Show and starred in two more motion pictures Made In America and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. From 1994 to 1995, Whoopi appeared in Corrina, Corrina, The Lion King (voice), The Pagemaster (voice), Boys on the Side, and Moonlight and Valentino. Goldberg became the first African-American female to host the Academy Awards in 1994. She hosted the Awards again in 1996, 1999, and 2002. Goldberg released four motion pictures in 1996: Bogus (with Gerard Depardieu and Haley Joel Osment), Eddie, The Associate "the Americanized remake is l'associe with Michel Serrault (French film)" with Dianne Wiest) and Ghosts of Mississippi (with Alec Baldwin and James Woods). During the filming of Eddie, Goldberg began dating co-star Frank Langella, a relationship which lasted until early 2000. From 1998 to 2001, Goldberg took supporting roles in the Angela Bassett vehicle How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Kingdom Come. She starred in the successful ABC versions of Cinderella, A Knight in Camelot, and the TNT Original Movie, Call Me Claus. On September 4, 2007 Goldberg became the new moderator and co-host of The View, replacing Rosie O'Donnell. At age 18, following Goldberg's marriage to Alvin Martin (who was 26), their first and only child Alexandrea was born c.1973. After Goldberg's divorce from Martin, she moved to California Goldberg later went on to marry David Claessen, but they divorced in 1988. Whoopi later married Lyle Trachtenberg, but their marriage lasted only one year. In 2000, Whoopi broke up with her boyfriend of five years, Frank Langella. Goldberg has three grandchildren through her daughter, Alexandrea Martin. The eldest, named Amarah Skye, was born on November 13, 1989, Goldberg's birthday.

Journey of Hope is a 1990 film directed by Xavier Koller. It tells the story of a Kurdish family from Turkey who try to illegally emigrate to Switzerland, a country they know only from a postcard. The film is a co-production between companies in Switzerland, Turkey and the UK. The film won the 1990 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film was submitted to the Academy by the Swiss government, resulting in that nation's second Oscar win.

"Sooner or Later" is a song recorded by American pop superstar Madonna and written by American composer Stephen Sondheim for the 1990 film Dick Tracy. Released that same year on Madonna's album I'm Breathless, the song won Sondheim an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1991. The song's title as listed in the film credits, and in the official Academy Award records, includes the subtitle "(I Always Get My Man)"; however, this subtitle is not shown on I'm Breathless.

62nd Academy Awards

2008-02-01T20:03:00.000+01:00

The 62nd Academy Awards were presented March 26, 1990 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. This was the first telecast hosted by Billy Crystal and debuted his famous nominee songs. He would go on to host the show seven more times over the next fifteen years. Since then, Crystal has opened every ceremony he has hosted with a song about the nominees for best picture concluding with the age of the Oscar (the 62nd ceremony means that the Oscar is 62 years old).

Driving Miss Daisy won four awards including Best Picture. It is a 1987 play by Alfred Uhry about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish lady shares with her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, over the span of several decades. The original off-Broadway production starred Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman. Ivey's performance garnered her an Obie Award as Best Actress. The play was the first in Uhry's "Atlanta Trilogy" dealing with Jewish residents of that city in the early 20th century. Uhry's most successful play, it won him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was performed in London's West End in 1988, with Dame Wendy Hiller as Miss Daisy Werthan. In 1989, the play was adapted for a Warner Brothers film with Morgan Freeman reprising his role and Miss Daisy played by Jessica Tandy (who went on to be the oldest winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role). The story defines Daisy and her point of view through a network of relationships and emotions by focusing on her home life, her synagogue, friends, family, fears, and concerns. Hoke is rarely seen out of Miss Daisy's presence, although the title implies that the story is told from his perspective. The film won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Picture. It is also, as of 2007, the last PG-rated film to win that title.The film is the only movie based on an off-broadway production to ever win an Academy Award for Best Picture. Then eighty-year old Jessica Tandy's winning of the Best Actress award was also a history making event, as she is the oldest person to ever win the award.

Director Oliver Stone won as Best Director for Born on the Fourth of July. Daniel Day-Lewis won as Best Actor. He has become known as one of the most selective actors in the film industry, having starred in only three movies in the last ten years. He has also been acknowledged for his constant devotion to his roles and copious amounts of research he performs. Often he will remain in character and speak in the accents he has used on screen throughout the entire shooting schedule. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest actors of his generation. Eleven years after his film debut, Day-Lewis continued his film career with a small part in Gandhi (1982) as Colin, a street thug who bullies the title character, only to be immediately chastised by his high-strung mother. In 1984, he had a supporting role as the conflicted, but ultimately loyal first mate in The Bounty. The actor was next featured on stage as "The Count" in the stage-play of Dracula where he appeared with his hair dyed blond in a throwback to Nosferatu. He later let his hair grow out to give a frosted "punk look" when he played half of a gay bi-racial couple in My Beautiful Laundrette. Day-Lewis gained further public notice when the film was released simultaneously with A Room with a View (1986), in which he played an entirely different character: the effete upper-class fiancé of the main character (played by Helena Bonham Carter).In 1987, Day-Lewis assumed leading man status by starring in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, co-starring Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche, as a Czech doctor whose hyperactive and purely physical sex life is thrown into disarray when he allows himself to become emotionally involved with a woman.Day-Lewis put his personal version of "method acting" into full use in 1989 with his performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot which won him numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. During filming, his eccentricities came to the fore, due to his refusal to break character. Playing a severely paralyzed character onscreen, offscreen Day-Lewis had to be wheeled around the set in his wheelchair, and crew members would curse at having to lift him over camera and lighting wires, all so that he might gain insight into all aspects of Christy Brown's life, including the embarrassments. In 1992, three years after his Oscar win, The Last of the Mohicans was released. Day-Lewis' character research for this film was well-publicized; he reportedly underwent rigorous weight training and learned to live off the land and forest where his character lived, camping, hunting and fishing.While the film carried him to new heights of stardom, Day-Lewis preferred less "Hollywood" films such as The Age of Innocence co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer and directed by Martin Scorsese. He ultimately returned to work with Jim Sheridan on In the Name of the Father, in which he played Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four who were wrongfully convicted of a bombing carried out by the Provisional IRA. In 1996, Day-Lewis starred in a film version of The Crucible based on the play by Arthur Miller and co-starring Winona Ryder. He followed that with Jim Sheridan's The Boxer as a former boxer and IRA member recently released from prison.After a three-year absence from filming, Day-Lewis returned to act in Gangs of New York, a film directed by Martin Scorsese (with whom he had worked on The Age of Innocence) and produced by Harvey Weinstein. In his role as the villain gangleader "Bill the Butcher" (who, ironically, has a pure hatred for Ireland and the Irish people), he starred along with Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Bill's young protegé. His performance in Gangs of New York earned him his third Academy Award nomination and won him the BAFTA Award for Best Actor.In 2007, Day-Lewis appeared in director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, titled There Will Be Blood. Day-Lewis received a Screen Actors Guild Award for best actor (which he dedicated to the late Heath Ledger) for the role, and won both a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama and the Critic's Choice Award for Best Actor. He has also garnered a fourth Academy Award nomination for the film.In 1996, while working on the film version of the stage-play The Crucible, he visited the home of playwright Arthur Miller where he was introduced to the writer's daughter, Rebecca Miller. They fell in love and were married two weeks before the film's release. The couple have two sons, Ronan (born June 14, 1998), and Cashel (born May 2002).

Jessica Tandy won as Best Actress. After an acting career spanning some 65 years, Tandy found latter-day movie stardom in major studio releases and intimate dramas alike. From a young age she was determined to be an actress, and first appeared on the London stage in 1926. Following the end of her first marriage (to Jack Hawkins), she moved to New York and met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn, who became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen. She made her American film debut in The Seventh Cross (1944). She also appeared in The Valley of Decision (1945), The Green Years (1946, ironically enough as Cronyn's daughter!), Dragonwyck (1946) starring Gene Tierney and Forever Amber (1947). She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1952. For the next 30 years, she appeared sporadically in films such as The Light in the Forest (1958), The Birds (1963), The World According to Garp (1982, as Glenn Close's mother) and Cocoon (1985, the latter two opposite Cronyn). The beginning of the 1980s saw a resurgence in her film career, with character roles in The World According to Garp, Best Friends, Still of the Night (all 1982) and The Bostonians (1984), and the hit film Cocoon (1985), opposite Cronyn, with whom she reteamed for *batteries not included (1987) and Cocoon: The Return (1988). She and Cronyn had been working together more and more, on stage and television, to continued acclaim, notably in 1987's Foxfire which won her an Emmy Award (recreating her Tony winning Broadway role). However, it was her colorful performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), as an aging, stubborn Southern-Jewish matron, that made her a bona fide Hollywood star and earned her an Oscar. She was the oldest actor to ever win an Academy Award, beating out George Burns by less than a year.She earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her work in the grassroots hit Fried Green Tomatoes (1992), and co-starred in The Story Lady (1991 telefilm, with daughter Tandy Cronyn), Used People (1992, as Shirley MacLaine's mother), To Dance with the White Dog (1993 telefilm, with husband Hume Cronyn), Nobody's Fool (1994), and Camilla (also 1994, with Cronyn). Camilla was to be her last performance, and it was bold in one way that she, at the age of about 84 and knowing that she was dying, had a brief nude scene,Tandy married twice. Her first, to British actor Jack Hawkins, in 1932, produced one daughter, Susan Hawkins (born 1934). The couple divorced in 1942. Tandy remarried, to Canadian-American actor, Hume Cronyn, in 1942. The couple had two children, Tandy Cronyn, also an actress, and son Christopher Cronyn. Tandy and Cronyn remained together until her death in 1994.She died at home on September 11, 1994, in Easton, Connecticut, of ovarian cancer at the age of 85.

Denzel Washington, a two-time Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning American actor and director. He has garnered much critical acclaim for his portrayals of several real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Melvin B. Tolson, Frank Lucas, and Herman Boone. Shortly after graduating from Fordham, Washington made his professional acting debut in the 1977 made-for-television movie Wilma. He made his film debut in the 1981 film Carbon Copy. His big break came when he starred in the popular television hospital drama, St. Elsewhere from 1982 to 1988. In 1987, after appearing in several minor television, film and stage roles, Washington starred as South African anti-apartheid campaigner Steve Biko in Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom, a role for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1989, Washington won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for playing a defiant, self-possessed ex-slave in the film Glory. Also that same year, he gave a powerful performance as Reuben James, a Caribbean-born man who turned from a British Army paratrooper into a vigilante in For Queen and Country. Washington played one of his most critically acclaimed roles in 1992's Malcolm X, directed by Spike Lee. His performance as the Black Nationalist leader earned him an Oscar nomination. Malcolm X transformed Washington's career, turning him, practically overnight, into one of Hollywood's most respected actors. He turned down several similar roles, such as an offer to play Martin Luther King, Jr., because he wanted to avoid being typecast. The next year, in 1993, he took another risk in his career by playing Joe Miller, the homophobic lawyer of a homosexual man with AIDS in the movie Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks. During the early and mid 1990s, Washington became a renowned Hollywood leading man, starring in several successful thrillers, including The Pelican Brief and Crimson Tide, as well as comedies (Much Ado About Nothing) and romantic dramas (The Preacher's Wife). In 1999, Washington starred in The Hurricane, a movie about boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, whose conviction for triple murder was overturned after he had spent almost 20 years in prison. Various newspaper articles have suggested that the controversy over the film's accuracy may have cost Washington an Oscar for which he was nominated.In 2000, Washington appeared in the crowd-pleasing Disney film, Remember the Titans, which grossed over $100 million at the United States box office. He was nominated and won an Oscar for Best Actor for his next film, the 2001 cop thriller, Training Day, which was considered a change of pace for Washington, as he played a villainous character after many roles as a heroic lead. Washington was the second African-American performer ever to win an Academy Award in the category of Best Actor (for Training Day), the first being Sidney Poitier, who happened to receive an Honorary Academy Award the same night that Washington won for Best Actor. Washington holds the record for most Oscar nominations by an actor of African descent, so far he has earned five. Between 2003 and 2004, Washington appeared in a series of thrillers that performed generally well at the box office, including Out of Time, Man on Fire, and The Manchurian Candidate. In 2006 he starred in Inside Man, a Spike Lee-directed bank heist thriller co-starring Jodie Foster and Clive Owen, and Déjà Vu released in November 2006. Next, he co-starred with Russell Crowe in American Gangster and directed and starred in The Great Debaters. In 1983, Washington married actress Pauletta Pearson (now Pauletta Washington), whom he met on the set of his first screen role, Wilma. The couple has four children: John David (b. July 28, 1984), who signed a football contract with the St. Louis Rams in May 2006 after playing college football at Morehouse; Katia (b. November 1987), who is attending Yale University, and twins Olivia and Malcolm (b. April 10, 1991). In 1995, the couple renewed their wedding vows in South Africa with Archbishop Desmond Tutu officiating.

Brenda Fricker won as Best Supporting Actress. Fricker began her feature film career with a small uncredited part in the 1964 movie Of Human Bondage, based on the 1915 novel by William Somerset Maugham of the same name. Initially better known in the United Kingdom for her role as Megan Roach in the BBC One television drama series Casualty, she won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Christy Brown's mother in My Left Foot. She then co-starred in the 1990 film The Field. She then starred in the 1992 TV Movie Seekers alongside Josette Simon, produced by Sarah Lawson. She subsequently joined and remained with Casualty, before going on to star in a series of hit movies, including Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and So I Married an Axe Murderer, as a Weekly World News-obsessed Scottish immigrant. In 2004 she played nurse Eileen in the film Inside I'm Dancing.

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988) is an Italian film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It was internationally released as Cinema Paradiso in France, Spain the UK and the US. It was originally released in Italy at 155 minutes but poor box office performance in its native country led to it being shortened to 123 minutes for international release. It was an instant success. This international version won the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and the 1989 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. In 2002, the director's cut 173-minute version was released (known in the U.S. as Cinema Paradiso: The New Version). It stars Jacques Perrin, Philippe Noiret, Leopoldo Trieste, Marco Leonardi, Agnese Nano and Salvatore Cascio. It was produced by Franco Cristaldi and Giovanna Romagnoli, and the music was by Ennio Morricone along with his son Andrea Morricone.

"Under the Sea" is an Academy Award-winning song from Disney's 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid, composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by Howard Ashman and is heavily influenced by the Calypso style of the Caribbean. The song was performed in the film by Samuel E. Wright. The song is a plea by the crab Sebastian imploring Ariel to remain sea-bound, and resist her desire to become a human in order to spend her life with the prince she has fallen in love with. Sebastian warns of the struggles of human life while at the same time expounding the benefits of a care-free life underwater.

61st Academy Awards

2008-02-01T13:12:00.000+01:00

The 61st Academy Awards were presented March 29, 1989 at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. The producers of the ceremony attempted to change established Oscar traditions for this year's show. One noticeable difference was that instead of an award presenter saying, "and the winner is.." they'd say, "and the Oscar goes to...". Many however, continued announcing winners with the traditional line. In addition, there was no official host for the ceremony this year. The show's opening number consisted of an elaborate stage-show featuring Merv Griffin, Snow White (portrayed by actress Eileen Bowman), and Rob Lowe - the latter two singing a disastrous rendition of the song "Proud Mary". This debacle, in addition to the changes made by the producers, led to the television broadcast receiving a disastrous reception. Consequently, producer Allan Carr would not return to produce the ceremony again, and future ceremonies would not open with a lavish "Broadway-style" opening number until the 74th Academy Awards. Right before Cher was to present the award for Best Picture, she had an anxiety attack. Jack Nicholson was brought backstage to help calm her down and almost had to present the award with her. Best Actor winner Dustin Hoffman, upon realizing he'd forgotten to thank Tom Cruise and director Barry Levinson in his Best Actor acceptance speech asked Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn (who were presenting next) to please thank them for him before presenting their award, which Russell did. Then, when Hoffman and Cruise took the stage later in the show to present the Best Actress award, Hoffman said "In my nervousness, I left out the director's name and I left out Tom's name. Tom, thank you very much. I love you very much." This is one of the few years in history that the nominees for Best Song were not performed during the ceremony. This was the final public appearance of Lucille Ball who died less than one month later. Ball presented an Oscar with long-time friend Bob Hope.

Rain Man is an Academy Award winning, 1988 drama film directed by Barry Levinson which tells the story of an abrasive, selfish yuppie, Charlie Babbitt, who discovers that his father has left all of his multi-million dollar estate to his autistic brother Raymond whom he never knew existed. The movie stars Tom Cruise as Charlie Babbitt, Dustin Hoffman as Raymond, and Valeria Golino as Charlie's girlfriend, Susanna. The character of Raymond was inspired by a real-life savant, Kim Peek. Rain Man won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Dustin Hoffman), Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing, Original Screenplay. It was nominated for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography (John Seale), Best Film Editing, and Best Music, Original Score. The film also won the Golden Bear at the 1989 Berlin International Film Festival. To date Rain Man is the only film to have won both the Golden Bear and the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Barry Levinson won as Best Director for Rain Man. After some success as a screenwriter (Silent Movie, 1976, High Anxiety (in which he made a cameo appearance as a bellboy), 1977, and the Oscar-nominated script (co-written by then-wife Valerie Curtin) ...And Justice for All, 1979), he began his career as a director with Diner (1982), for which he had also written the script and which earned him a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination. Diner was the first of a series of films set in the Baltimore of Levinson's youth. The other films in this series were Tin Men (1987), starring Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito, and the turn-of-the-century immigrant family saga Avalon (which featured Elijah Wood in one of his earliest screen appearances), as well as the more recent Liberty Heights (1999). All four movies were written and directed by Barry Levinson himself; for the last two he also acted as producer.His biggest hit, both critically and financially, was Rain Man (1988) with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise (in which he also appeared as an antagonistic doctor). The film won four Academy Awards including Best Director for Levinson. Other notable films in his directing career were The Natural (which starred Robert Redford, who later directed Quiz Show, which included an appearance by Levinson playing Dave Garroway) (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) and Toys (1992), both with Robin Williams, and Bugsy (1991) with Warren Beatty. Apart from producing many of his own films, he has also been producer or executive producer for such major productions as The Perfect Storm (directed by Wolfgang Petersen, 2000), Analyze That (2002, starring Robert de Niro as neurotic mafia boss and Billy Crystal as his therapist), and Possession (2002, based on the bestselling novel by A. S. Byatt). Levinson married his writing collaborator Valerie Curtin in 1975. They would divorce seven years later. He later married Dianna Rhodes whom he met in Baltimore while filming Diner.

The Best Actor award went to Dustin Hoffman for Rain Man. It was his second Oscar. The Best Actress Award went to Jodie Foster, a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress, director, and producer. She has also won two Golden Globes, three BAFTA awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award, making her one of the few people to have won all four major motion picture acting awards. Although Foster's first acting appearance was at three years old, her first significant role came in 1976 as an underage prostitute in Taxi Driver, receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She won an Oscar for Best Actress in 1988 for playing a rape victim in The Accused. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs as Clarice Starling, a gifted FBI trainee, assisting in a hunt for a serial killer. This performance received international acclaim and her second Oscar for Best Actress. Her films and roles have spanned a wide variety of genres, including thrillers, crime, romance, comedy, children's movies, and science fiction. Popular later films include the box office successes Contact (1997), Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005) and Inside Man (2006).She began her career at age three as the Coppertone Girl in a television commercial and debuted as a television actress in a 1968 episode of Mayberry R.F.D. In 1969 she appeared in an episode of Gunsmoke where she was credited as "Jody Foster". She made her film debut in the 1970 TV movie Menace on the Mountain. Foster made a number of Disney movies, including Napoleon and Samantha (1972), One Little Indian (1973), Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977). She also co-starred with Christopher Connelly in the 1974 TV series version of Paper Moon and alongside Martin Sheen in the 1976 cult film The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. At age fourteen, Foster was nominated for the Academy Award For Best Supporting Actress for her role as Iris, a pre-teen prostitute in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver opposite Robert De Niro. De Niro's character, the psychotic Travis Bickle, intends to "save" her from life on the streets. When that does not succeed, he tries to assassinate a presidential candidate. After this fails, he shoots Iris' pimp, played by Harvey Keitel. John Hinckley Jr., a deranged fan, became obsessed with her after watching Taxi Driver a number of times, and he stalked her while she attended Yale, sending her love letters to her campus mail box and even talking to her on the phone. On March 30, 1981, he attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan, (shooting and wounding Reagan and three others) and claimed his motive was to impress Foster, then a Yale freshman. Foster successfully made the transition to adult roles, but not without initial difficulty. Several of her post-Taxi Driver works were financially unsuccessful, such as Foxes, The Hotel New Hampshire, Five Corners, and Stealing Home. She had to audition for her role in The Accused. She won the part and the first of her two Golden Globes and Academy Awards as Best Actress for her role as a rape survivor. She earned her second as FBI agent Clarice Starling, opposite Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, in the 1991 film, The Silence of the Lambs. She made her directorial debut in 1991 with Little Man Tate, a critically acclaimed drama about a child prodigy, in which she also co-starred as the child's mother. She also directed Home For The Holidays (1995), a black comedy starring Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. She began working as a producer in 1994 with the acclaimed Nell, the story of a young woman raised in an isolated place who has to return to civilization. Foster played Laural Sommersby in Sommersby and Annabelle Bransford in the 1994 film Maverick. In 1997, she starred alongside Matthew McConaughey in the sci-fi movie Contact, based on the novel by scientist Carl Sagan. She portrayed a scientist searching for extra-terrestrial life in the SETI project. She has two sons, Charles Bernard Foster (b. 1998) and Kit Bernard Foster (b. 2001); the actress has never identified or discussed their father.

Kevin Kline won as Best Supporting Actor. Kline finally ventured into film in 1982, winning the coveted role of the tormented and mercurial Nathan opposite Meryl Streep in Alan Pakula's Sophie's Choice. Streep won an Academy Award for her performance in the film, and Kline was nominated for a Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for best debut performance. During the 1980s and early-1990s, Kline made several films with director Lawrence Kasdan, including The Big Chill, Silverado, Grand Canyon, I Love You To Death, and French Kiss. In the mid-1990s, he was supposed to star as Mandrake the Magician in the movie of the same name, but the film never got off the ground. In 1989, Kline won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the British comedy A Fish Called Wanda, in which he played a caricature of a painfully stupid American ex-CIA thug opposite John Cleese's genteel British barrister. In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked the film twenty-first on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs. Kline married actress Phoebe Cates in 1989. The couple make their home in New York City and have three children: Owen Joseph Kline (born 1991), who had a featured role in The Squid and the Whale, and Greta Simone Kline (born 1994).

The Best Supporting Actress award went to Geena Davis. She was working as a model when director Sydney Pollack spotted her and cast her in Tootsie (1982) as a soap opera actress. She followed this up with roles in the short-lived television series Buffalo Bill (1983–1984), for which she also wrote an episode, and Sara (1985). Davis made her film breakthrough with The Fly and Beetlejuice. She received an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Accidental Tourist (1988) and a Best Actress nomination for her role in Thelma and Louise (1991). Davis replaced Debra Winger for the lead in A League of Their Own and received a Best Actress Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance. She then co-starred in Hero alongside Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia. Following this, Davis teamed up with then husband Renny Harlin for the films Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight. She and Harlin produced the films. Davis starred in the short-lived sitcom The Geena Davis Show (2000–2001). In early 2004, she guest-starred as Grace Adler's sister Janet on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. She most recently starred in the ABC television series Commander in Chief as the first female President of the United States.On September 1, 2001, Davis married Iranian-American Dr. Reza Jarrahy. They have three children: daughter Alizeh Keshvar (born April 10, 2002) and fraternal twins Kian William Jarrahy and Kaiis Steven Jarrahy on May 6, 2004. The marriage is Davis' fourth; she was previously married to Richard Emmolo (25 March 1982 - 26 February 1983); actor Jeff Goldblum, with whom she co-starred in three films, Transylvania 6-5000, The Fly and Earth Girls Are Easy (1987 to 1990); and Renny Harlin, who directed her in Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1993 to 1998).

Pelle the Conqueror is a 1987 film that tells the story of two Swedish immigrants to Denmark, a father and son, who try to build a new life for themselves. It stars Pelle Hvenegaard as the young Pelle, with Max von Sydow as his father. Pelle the Conqueror won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 1988; it was submitted to the Academy by the Danish government, giving Denmark its second consecutive win after Babette's Feast. Max von Sydow was nominated for, but did not win, the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film also won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival (1988) and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

"Let the River Run" is an Academy Award winning song first featured in the film Working Girl, with music and lyrics by Carly Simon. This song won the Academy Award for Best Song at the 61st Academy Awards in 1988.

60th Academy Awards

2008-01-31T18:00:00.000+01:00

The 60th Academy Awards were presented April 11, 1988 at the Shrine Civic Auditorium, Los Angeles. The ceremonies were presided over by Chevy Chase. This was the first ceremony to be held in the Shrine Auditorium since 1948 after nearly two decades at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Traffic caused major backup in and around the venue holding up some limos transporting several stars including nominees forcing them to leave their limousines and walk to the auditorium via no vehicle. In one instance, a then pregnant nominee Glenn Close was spotted frantically running across intersections. A segment in the show that was scheduled to feature stars from the past 59 best picture winners was cut from the ceremony due to the delay. Despite an impending strike which began a month earlier, much of the monologues and segments of for the ceremony were already written in anticipation for the strike.

The Last Emperor is an Academy Award-winning biopic about the life of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. The movie was written by Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci, directed by Bertolucci, and was released in 1987 by Columbia Pictures. Pǔyí is represented as the objectified plaything of powerful and mysterious forces, whether as an Emperor or as a war criminal.
The film stars John Lone as Puyi, with Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivian Wu, and Chen Kaige. It was the first feature film to be authorized by the government of China to be filmed in the Forbidden City. The film won all nine Academy Awards for which it was nominated.

Bernardo Bertolucci won the Best Director award for the film. In 1962, at the age of 21, he directed his first feature film, La commare secca (1962) The film is a short murder mystery, following a prostitute's homicide. Bertolucci uses flashbacks to piece together the crime and the person who committed it. The film which shortly followed was his acclaimed Before the Revolution (Prima della rivoluzione, 1964). Last Tango in Paris (1972), starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider exemplified the new trend for Italian movies to attempt to make more money by employing foreign actors in starring roles: Last Tango included only one Italian actor, Massimo Girotti, in a main role. Bertolucci's 1900 (1976), starring Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, Robert de Niro, and Gérard Depardieu, is often said to mark the point at which the Italian film industry's dependence on the international market began to contribute to the disintegration of its national identity, although the film itself is entirely focused on an Italian theme: it chronicles the lives of two men during the political turmoils that took place in Italy in the first half on the 20th century. The Conformist (1970) criticised Fascist ideology, touched upon the relationship between nationhood and nationalism, as well as issues of popular taste and collective memory, all amid an international plot by Mussolini to assassinate a professor of politics in Paris, France. The 1987 epic The Last Emperor (recently re-released at an extended 219 minutes) allowed Bertolucci to influence politics both through his characters and through the act of making the film itself. He was granted unprecedented permission to film in the Forbidden City of Beijing, and the film's central character Pu Yi undergoes a decade-long communist re-education under Mao which takes him from the peacock colours of the palace to the grey suit worn by his contemporaries to live out his life as a gardener.

Michael Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. Douglas's first television exposure was that of Karl Malden's young college educated partner, Insp. Steve Keller in the popular 1970s crime drama, The Streets of San Francisco, a role he played from 1972 to 1976. Douglas is a two-time Academy Award winner, first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of celebrated American actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian actress Diana Dill. Having a famous father opened many doors to Michael that would have been closed to other young Hollywood hopefuls. Douglas starred in the long-running TV series The Streets of San Francisco from 1972 to 1976. He received an Academy Award as producer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975. Although Douglas was a capable actor on Streets, his career was somewhat stagnant after the series, and he only appeared in occasional movies which were usually less than popular His fortunes changed when he starred in the 1984 romantic adventure comedy Romancing the Stone. The film was followed a year later in 1985 by a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile. In 1987, Douglas starred playing in Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and the film became a world-wide hit. In 1988, Douglas received an Academy Award for acting in the leading role of Wall Street which would lead to many roles playing characters much like Gordon Gekko. Douglas later starred as Mister Rose a successful lawyer similar to this character's personality in The War of the Roses, which featured previous co-stars Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. In 1989 he starred in the hit international police crime drama Black Rain opposite Andy Garcia and Kate Capshaw and was directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ridley Scott. In 1992, Douglas revived his slick, worldly character when he appeared alongside Sharon Stone in the film Basic Instinct. The movie was a huge hit, and sparked controversy over its depictions of bisexuality and lesbianism. Then in 1994 Douglas and Demi Moore starred in the hit movie Disclosure focusing on the hot topic of sexual harassment but from the man's perspective. Douglas's skill at character acting continued to make him one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood and commands a hefty sum for his roles. After the commercial failure of It Runs in the Family (2003), Douglas did not star in a movie for three years, until The Sentinel in 2006. Douglas married Diandra Luker on March 20, 1977. They had one son, Cameron (born December 13, 1978). In 2000, after 23 years of marriage, Diandra divorced Douglas. Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones on November 18, 2000; they were both born on September 25, though 25 years apart. They have two children, Dylan Michael (born August 8, 2000) and Carys Zeta (born April 20, 2003).

Cher is an American singer, actress, songwriter, author and entertainer. Among her many accomplishments in music, television and film, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, a Cannes Film Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and Billboard Music Awards, among others. Cher first rose to prominence in 1965 as one half of the pop/rock duo Sonny & Cher. She became a television star in the 1970s and a film actress in the 1980s. In 1987, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the romantic comedy Moonstruck. In 1982, at 36, Cher landed her first major role in a Broadway production of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Her performance was critically praised, and she was later cast in the film version, which was directed by acclaimed Hollywood director Robert Altman. She was next cast alongside Meryl Streep and Kurt Russell in the critically hailed drama Silkwood (1983) in which her character was a lesbian. She received her first Academy Award nomination, as Best Supporting Actress. She later won the Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama for her performance. Cher's next film was a starring role in the acclaimed Mask (1985), directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The film also starred Eric Stoltz, Laura Dern, Estelle Getty and Sam Elliott, and it was considered her first critical and commercial success as a leading actress. For her role as a mother of a severely disfigured boy, Cher won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1987, she starred in three films: the thriller Suspect with Dennis Quaid; the dark comedy/fantasy film The Witches of Eastwick with Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer; and the romantic comedy Moonstruck with Nicolas Cage and Olympia Dukakis. For Moonstruck, directed by Norman Jewison, she won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy, and the Favorite Film Actress award at the People’s Choice Awards. In the early 1960s Cher had a relationship with the actor Warren Beatty. Sonny & Cher first met in 1962. Though they had claimed to be married as early as 1963, and exchanged rings in Tijuana, Mexico, it is believed that they weren’t legally married until an impromptu ceremony in Las Vegas in 1969. Their first and only child is Chastity Sun Bono born March 4, 1969. Cher married her second husband, rock star Gregg Allman, in 1975. They later separated and were divorced in 1977. Their son is Elijah Blue Allman of the band Deadsy, who was born in 1976.

Sean Connery is a Scottish actor and producer who is perhaps best known as the first actor to portray James Bond in cinema, starring in seven Bond films. In 1988 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. Connery is known for retaining his Scottish accent in films, regardless of the nationality of the character played, and for his rugged good looks. He has repeatedly been named as one of the most attractive men alive by various magazines, though he is older than most sex symbols. Connery's breakthrough came in the role of secret agent James Bond. He acted in seven Bond films, six produced by EON, followed by an unofficial Warner Brothers Thunderball-remake: These include Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983) (unofficial). Apart from The Man Who Would Be King, most of Connery's successes in the next decade were as part of ensemble casts in films such as Murder on the Orient Express and A Bridge Too Far (in which he acted in a scene opposite Sir Laurence Olivier). His portrayal of Berber chieftain Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli in John Milius's The Wind and the Lion (1975) gained him considerable acclaim from critics and audiences and showed his range as an actor. Following the successful European production The Name of the Rose (1986), for which he won a BAFTA award, Connery's interest in more credible material was revived. That same year, a supporting role in Highlander showcased his ability to play older mentors to younger leads, which would become a recurring role in many of his later films. The following year, his acclaimed performance as a hard-nosed cop in The Untouchables (1987) earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Subsequent box-office hits such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) (in which he played Dr. Henry Jones, the father of Harrison Ford, actually only 12 years his junior), The Hunt for Red October (1990), (he was not the original actor for the film, and when that actor left the film, the producer/director who were good friends with Connery, called him in desperation and he agreed to do the movie out of friendship with two weeks notice, the media reported.) The Russia House (1990), The Rock (1996), and Entrapment (1999) re-established him as an actor capable of playing major parts. Just Cause (1995) drew attention to some of the issues surrounding race and the death penalty in America and controversially, serves as an endorsement for the practice.In more recent years, Connery's filmography has included several box office and critical disappointments such as The Avengers (1998), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) and First Knight (1995), but he also received positive reviews for films including Finding Forrester (2000). Connery was married to the Australian-born actress Diane Cilento from 1962 until 1973 (he was her second husband). They have one son, Jason Connery (born January 11, 1963), who was educated at Millfield School in Somerset, England, and the rigourous Gordonstoun boarding school in Scotland, before going on to become an actor. In 1975, Sean Connery married French artist Micheline Roquebrune, who is the grandmother of French television journalist Stéphanie Renouvin. He has one grandchild from his son Jason's marriage to actress Mia Sara, a grandson named Dashiell Quinn Connery.

Olympia Dukakis won as Best Supporting Actress for Moonstruck. Dukakis has starred in films, including Steel Magnolias, Mr. Holland's Opus, The Thing About My Folks, and Moonstruck, for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She also played the role of Anna Madrigal in the Tales of the City television mini-series, which garnered her an Emmy Award nomination, she also appeared on Search for Tomorrow as Dr. Barbara Moreno, who romanced Stu Bergman. Recent films include 3 Needles, The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines, In the Land of Women, and Away From Her. Dukakis has been married to actor Louis Zorich since 1962, with whom she has three children.

Babette's Feast is an Academy Award winning 1987 Danish movie. It was produced by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen, and Benni Korzen. Its screenplay was written by Gabriel Axel, who was also the director. It is based on a story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), who also wrote Out of Africa, which inspired the 1985 Academy Award winning film. Babette's Feast won the 1988 Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards; the other nominees were Asignatura aprobada of Spain, Au revoir, les enfants of France, La Famiglia of Italy and Ofelas of Norway. It also won a BAFTA Film Award for Best Film Not in the English Language and was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Language Film.

"(I've Had) The Time of My Life" is a song composed by Franke Previte, John DeNicola, and Donald Markowitz. It was recorded by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, after having been selected to be the finale song for the 1987 film Dirty Dancing by choreographer Kenny Ortega and his assistant Miranda Garrison (who also played Vivian in the film).

59th Academy Awards

2008-01-30T13:26:00.000+01:00

The 59th Academy Awards were presented March 30, 1987 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The ceremonies were hosted by Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, and Paul Hogan. The Academy awards show was broadcast on the ABC network at the same time as CBS network broadcast of the 1987 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament championship game between Indiana and Syracuse. Chevy Chase quipped later in the evening, "Is the game over yet?" The show would subsequently be scheduled around the tournament broadcast by moving it later in April for two years.

Platoon is an Academy Award winning 1986 Vietnam War film written and directed by Oliver Stone and starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Forest Whitaker, Kevin Dillon Keith David, John C. McGinley and Johnny Depp. The story is drawn from Stone's experiences as an Army combat infantryman in Vietnam and was written by him upon his return as a counter to the vision of the war portrayed in John Wayne's The Green Berets. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1986. Platoon was filmed on the island of Luzon in the Philippines between March and May of 1986. The production of the film on a scheduled date was almost cancelled due to the political upheaval in the country with then dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Oliver Stone won as Best Director. He has made three films about Vietnam —Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and Heaven & Earth (1993). He has called these films a trilogy, though they each deal with different aspects of the war. Platoon is a semi-autobiographical film about Stone's experience in combat. Born on the Fourth of July is based on the autobiography of Ron Kovic. Heaven & Earth is derived from the memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, the true story of Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese girl whose life is drastically affected by the war. During this same period, Stone directed Wall Street (1987), which earned Michael Douglas an Academy Award for Best Actor, Talk Radio (1988), and The Doors (1991), starring Val Kilmer. Stone has won three Academy Awards. His first "Oscar" was for Best Adapted Screenplay for Midnight Express (1978). He won Academy Awards for Directing Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. A distinctive feature of Oliver Stone's films is the use of many different cameras and film formats, from VHS to 8 mm film to 70 mm film. He sometimes uses several formats in a single scene, as in JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994). In the past decade, Stone has directed U-Turn (1997), which he describes as a small film that he would enjoy seeing as a teenager, Any Given Sunday (1999), a film about power struggles within and surrounding an American football team, and Alexander (2004), a biographical film about Alexander the Great. After Alexander, Stone went on to direct World Trade Center, which centered on two Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) cops during the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Paul Newman is an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Cannes Award, and Emmy Award-winning American actor and film director. He is also the founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donates all profits and royalties to charity. Newman made his Broadway theater debut in the original production of William Inge's Picnic with Kim Stanley. He later appeared in the original Broadway productions of The Desperate Hours and Sweet Bird of Youth with Geraldine Page. He would later star in the film version of Sweet Bird of Youth, which also starred Page. His first movie, The Silver Chalice (1954) has been described by Newman himself as the "worst movie of the entire 1950s decade," but he rebounded with acclaimed roles in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), as boxer Rocky Graziano, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) opposite Elizabeth Taylor and The Young Philadelphians (1959) with Barbara Rush and Robert Vaughn. Newman appeared in a screen test with James Dean for East of Eden (1955). Newman was testing for the role of Aron Trask, Dean was testing for the role of Aron's older brother Cal Trask (although Newman is older than Dean). Dean won the part of Cal, while the role Newman was up for went to Dick Davalos. The same year Newman would co-star with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra in a live - and color - television broadcast of the Thornton Wilder stage play Our Town. In 2003 Newman would act in a remake of Our Town, taking on Sinatra's role as the stage manager. Newman starred in Exodus (1960), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977) and The Verdict (1982). He teamed with fellow actor Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). He appeared with his wife, Joanne Woodward, in the feature films The Long, Hot Summer (1958), Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, (1958), From the Terrace (1960), Paris Blues (1961), A New Kind of Love (1963), Winning (1969), WUSA (1970), The Drowning Pool (1975), Harry & Son (1984) and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990). He won the Oscar for Best Actor for The Color of Money. In addition to starring in and directing Harry & Son, Newman also directed four feature films (in which he did not act) starring Woodward. They were Rachel, Rachel (1968), based on Margaret Laurence's A Jest of God, the screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972), the television screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Shadow Box (1980) and a screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (1987). Newman announced that he would entirely retire from acting on May 25, 2007. He stated that he doesn't feel he can continue acting on the level that he would want to. Detached from Hollywood, Newman makes his home in Westport, Connecticut with his wife Joanne Woodward. He has married twice. His first marriage was to Jackie Witte, and lasted from 1949 to 1958. Together they had a son, Scott, born in 1950, and two daughters, Susan Kendall (1953) and Stephanie. Scott Newman died in 1978 from an accidental drug overdose. He had appeared in such films as The Towering Inferno as a fireman, and in the 1977 film Fraternity Row. Newman married Joanne Woodward on January 29, 1958. They have three daughters — Elinor Teresa (1959), Melissa Steward (1961), and Claire "Clea" Olivia (1965). Newman directed his daughter Elinor (stage name Nell Potts) in the central role alongside her mother in the film The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

Marlee Matlin is an Academy Award-winning American actress who is almost completely deaf. Her film debut, 1986's Children of a Lesser God, brought her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama and an Academy Award for Best Actress (at age 21, the youngest actress ever to win in that category). Matlin was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her work as the lead female role in the television series Reasonable Doubts (1991–1993) and was nominated for an Emmy Award for a guest appearance in Picket Fences. She became a regular on the series during its final season. Matlin had recurring roles in Picket Fences, The West Wing, and Blue's Clues. Other television appearances include Seinfeld ("The Lip Reader"),The Outer Limits ("The Message"), ER, Desperate Housewives, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Matlin married law enforcement officer Kevin Grandalski on August 29, 1993. They have four children: Sarah Rose, born 1996; Brandon, born 2000; Tyler, born 2002; and Isabella Jane, born 2003.

Michael Caine, this year's winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, is a double Academy Award-winning English film actor. After several minor roles, Caine came into the public eye as an upper-class British army officer in the 1964 film Zulu. This proved paradoxical, as Caine was to become notable for using a regional accent, rather than the received pronunciation hitherto considered proper for film actors. Zulu was closely followed by two of his best-known roles: the spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965), and the woman-chasing title character in Alfie (1966). He went on to play Palmer in a further four films, Funeral in Berlin (1966), Billion-Dollar Brain (1967), Bullet to Beijing (1995) and Midnight in St. Petersburg (1995). Caine made his first movie in the United States in 1966, after an invitation from Shirley MacLaine to play opposite her in Gambit. After ending the 1960s with the equally iconic The Italian Job, with Noel Coward, and a solid role as an RAF fighter pilot, Squadron Leader Canfield, in the all-star cast of Battle of Britain (1969), Caine entered the 1970s with Get Carter, a British gangster film. Caine was busy throughout the 1970s, with successes including Sleuth (1972), opposite Sir Laurence Olivier and The Man Who Would Be King (1975), costarring Sean Connery. By the end of the decade, he had moved to the U.S., but his choice of roles was beginning to be criticised. Caine was averaging two films a year, but these included such failures as The Swarm (1978), Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), The Island (1980) and The Hand (1981). Although Caine also took better roles, including a BAFTA-winning turn in Educating Rita (1983) and an Oscar-winning one in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), he continued to appear in notorious duds like Jaws: The Revenge (1987) and Bullseye! (1990). The 1990s were a lean time for Caine, as he found good parts harder to come by. His early '90s output included playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the whimsical Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), a villain in the Steven Seagal flop On Deadly Ground (1994), two straight to video Harry Palmer sequels and a few television movies. However, Caine's reputation as a pop icon was still intact, thanks to his roles in films such as The Italian Job and Get Carter. His performance in 1998's Little Voice was seen as something of a return to form, and won him a Golden Globe Award. Better parts followed, including The Cider House Rules (1999), for which he won his second Oscar, Last Orders(2001), The Quiet American (2002) and others which helped rehabilitate his reputation.Caine has been Oscar-nominated six times, winning his first Academy Award for the 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters, and his second in 1999 for The Cider House Rules, in both cases as a supporting actorCaine is one of only two actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting (either lead or supporting) in every decade since the 1960s. The other is Jack Nicholson. He was married to actress Patricia Haines from 1955 to 1958; they had one daughter, Dominique. Caine has been married to actress and model Shakira Baksh since January 8, 1973; they have a daughter, Natasha.

Dianne Wiest is a double Academy Award-winning, Golden Globe Award-winning, Emmy Award-winning and BAFTA-nominated American actress. She has enjoyed a successful career on stage, television, and film, and has received several awards in her career.Once her film career took off with her work in Woody Allen's films, Wiest was available to the stage less frequently. Under Allen's direction, Wiest won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). She followed her Academy Award success with performances in The Lost Boys (1987) and Bright Lights, Big City (1988) before starring with Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Keanu Reeves and Martha Plimpton in Ron Howard's Parenthood, for which she received her second Oscar nomination. In 1990, Wiest starred in Edward Scissorhands. She returned to Woody Allen in 1994 for Bullets Over Broadway, a comedy set in 1920s New York City, winning her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Helen Sinclair, a boozy, glamorous, and neurotic star of the stage. She appeared in the film Practical Magic (1998) and the television mini-series The 10th Kingdom (2000). From 2000 to 2002, Wiest portrayed Nora Lewin in the long-running NBC crime drama Law & Order. Wiest has never married but has two adopted children born 1987 and 1991.

The Assault (Dutch: De Aanslag) is a 1986 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Harry Mulisch. The film was directed and produced by Fons Rademakers. The main character is played by both Derek de Lint (in the present) and Marc van Uchelen (as a youth), whereas Monique van de Ven plays two different roles, one in the present (his wife) and one in the past (a woman who participated in the assault and whom he meets later the same night in a dark police cell).The film won the 1986 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the Golden Space Needle of the Seattle International Film Festival.

"Take My Breath Away" is the name of a love song from the film Top Gun, written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock, performed by the band Berlin. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1987.

58th Academy Awards

2008-01-30T12:32:00.000+01:00

The 58th Academy Awards were held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on March 24th 1986 and honored film achievements of 1985. The hosts were Alan Alda, Jane Fonda and Robin Williams. During the ceremony actress Sarah Cunningham, wife of actor John Randolph, suffered an asthma attack in the lobby and died. Twelve people were nominated for Best Original Score for The Color Purple, the most ever nominated for a single award. They lost to John Barry for Out of Africa.

Out of Africa is a 1985 film based loosely on the autobiographical book by Isak Dinesen (pseudonym of Karen Blixen) published in 1937, as well as Dinesen's Shadows on the Grass and other sources. The movie received 28 film awards, including seven Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Score, Art Direction, Sound) and three Golden Globes (Best Picture, Supporting Actor, Original Score). The book describes events during 1914–1931 concerning European settlers and the native people in the bush country of Kenya (British East Africa), from seaside Mombasa to Nairobi, from Mount Kenya to Kilimanjaro, as told from the lyrical, poetic viewpoint of Danish Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The book was continually in print during the 20th Century, reprinted by many publishers. The film was adapted by Kurt Luedtke and directed by Sydney Pollack. It starred Meryl Streep, Robert Redford (as Denys), Klaus Maria Brandauer (as Baron Blixen), Michael Kitchen (as Berkeley Cole), Malick Bowens (as Farah), Stephen Kinyanjui (as Chief), Michael Gough (Delamere), Suzanna Hamilton (as Felicity who is based on famous aviatrix Beryl Markham), and supermodel Iman (in a cameo role as Mariammo).

Sydney Pollack is an Academy Award-winning American film director, producer and actor. He has directed over 21 films and 10 television shows, acted in over 30 films or shows, and produced over 44 films. Pollack is best known for directing films Out of Africa (Best Director Oscar, 1985), Tootsie (1982), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Way We Were and Jeremiah Johnson (1972), along with newer films The Interpreter (2005), Sabrina (1995 film), The Firm (1993) and Havana. He has appeared in over 15 films, including The Interpreter (2005), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Husbands and Wives (1992), The Player and The Electric Horseman (1979). Most recently he appeared opposite George Clooney in Michael Clayton (2007). Pollack has been married to Claire Griswold, a former student of his, since 1958. They had three children,Rachel Pollack, Rebecca Pollack and Steven Pollack (who died in a plane crash in 1993).

The Best Actor award went to William Hurt. Hurt appeared first on stage, only later turning to film. His first major role was in the sci-fi hit Altered States (1980) which gave him wide recognition for playing an emotionally obsessed scientist. He received the Best Male Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Actor for Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1985. He received three additional nominations, one for Children of a Lesser God (1986), one for Broadcast News (1987) and one for A History Of Violence (2005). Often cast as an intellectual, Hurt has put this to good use in many films like Lost in Space and The Big Chill, but he is also effective in other kinds of roles like I Love You to Death, and David Cronenberg's psychological drama A History of Violence (2005), wherein, with less than 10 minutes of screen time, he plays the creepy mob boss Richie Cusack. That same year, Hurt could be seen as a mysterious government operative in Stephen Gaghan's ensemble drama about the politics of Big Oil, Syriana. He recently appeared in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed film Into the Wild, the true story of Christopher McCandless and his life changing adventures. He has a daughter with actress Sandrine Bonnaire and a son, Alex, with Sandra Jennings. He was previously married to Mary Beth Hurt from 1971 to 1982 and lived with Marlee Matlin for a period of time in 1986. Hurt has two sons, named Sam and William Hurt, from his 1989-92 marriage to Heidi Henderson.

Geraldine Page was an Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated American actress. Although starring in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater. Page gave celebrated performances in films as well as her work on Broadway. Her film debut was in Out of the Night (1947). Her role in Hondo, garnered her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In all, despite her relatively small filmography, Page received eight Academy Award nominations. She finally won the Oscar for Best Actress in 1986 for a wonderful performance in The Trip to Bountiful, which was based on a play by Horton Foote. Had she not won for Trip to Bountiful, she would have held the record for most nominations without a single win. When she won, she received a standing ovation from the audience at the ceremony. She was surprised by her win (she openly talked about being a seven-time Oscar loser), and took a while to get to the stage to accept the award because she had taken off her shoes while sitting in the audience. She had not expected to win, and her feet were sore. Her other notable screen roles include Academy Award-nominated performances in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke (1961); Sweet Bird of Youth (1962); Toys in the Attic(1963) and Woody Allen's Interiors (1978). She also appeared in quirky and eccentric roles such as calculating murderer of old ladies in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969); a repressed schoolmistress in the Clint Eastwood film The Beguiled (1971); a charismatic evangelist (modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson) in The Day of the Locust (1975); and as Sister Walburga in Nasty Habits (1977). Page was married to violinist Alexander Schneider from 1954 to 1957. In 1963 she married actor Rip Torn, who was 7 years younger than Page. They remained married until her death. Page and Torn had three children, a daughter (actress Angelica Torn) and twin sons (actor Tony Torn, and Northern Arizona University professor Jon Torn). Page, who also suffered from kidney disease, died of a heart attack in 1987 aged 62.

The Best Supporting Actor award was won by Don Ameche. After the release of two 1970 comedies, The Boatniks and Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?, Ameche was absent from theatrical films for the next 13 years. His only appearance in cinema during that time was in F For Fake, Orson Welles' documentary on hoaxes, when 20th Century-Fox mistakenly sent Welles newsreel footage of Ameche misidentified as footage of Howard Hughes. Ameche and fellow veteran actor Ralph Bellamy were eventually cast in John Landis' Trading Places in 1983, playing rich brothers intent on ruining an innocent man for the sake of a one-dollar bet. Ameche's next role, in Cocoon (1985), won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He continued working for the rest of his life (including a role in the sequel, Cocoon: The Return). His last films were Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993) and Corrina, Corrina (1994), completed only days before his death. Ameche was married to Honore Prendergast from 1932 until her death in 1986. They had six children. Ameche died on December 6, 1993, of prostate cancer.

Anjelica Huston is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe Award-winning American actress and former fashion model. Huston won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in 1985's Prizzi's Honor. She later was nominated in 1990 and 1991 for her acting in Enemies, a Love Story and The Grifters respectively. Among her roles, she starred as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), receiving Golden Globe nominations for both. She is the the daughter of film director John Huston (1906-1987) and his fourth wife, a prima ballerina Enrica Soma (1930-1969). Two of Huston's first movies, Sinful Davey (1969) and A Walk with Love and Death (1969) were directed by her father. She would lose her mother in a car accident the same year; her father remarried Celeste Shane three years later. She appeared in only a few films over the next decade, moving to United States and pursuing a successful career in modeling. Huston would again retreat to familiar roots, taking on small roles in films in the early Eighties; one in which she would star alongside Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange in Bob Rafelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Frances (1982) which would also star Jessica Lange. Huston landed her big role, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Maerose Prizzi in Prizzi's Honor (1985), a film directed by her father, John Huston and starring opposite Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner. Huston collaborated with her father again in The Dead, a film for which she was awarded an Independent Spirit Award. It was John Huston's final film before passing away from emphysema in 1987. Huston was nominated for another Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Tamara Broder in Enemies, a Love Story (1989) and another for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her role as Lily Dillon in The Grifters (1990). She received three Saturn Award nominations for one of her most memorable roles, The Grand High Witch in The Witches (1990). Later she received nominations for her role as Morticia Addams in Addams Family Values (1993) and for her role as Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent in Ever After (1998). Huston lived with Jack Nicholson from 1973 to 1989. She married sculptor Robert Graham Jr. in 1992.

The Official Story (Spanish: La historia oficial) (1985) is a Argentine drama film directed by Luis Puenzo and written by Puenzo and Aída Bortnik. It has also been released as The Official Version in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The film features Norma Aleandro, Héctor Alterio, among others. The film is about a couple in Buenos Aires with an adopted child. The mother comes to realize that her daughter may be the child of a desaparecido, that is, a victim of the disappearances that occurred during Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s. The film won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

"Say You, Say Me" is a song recorded by Lionel Richie. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 21 in 1985. The Academy Award winning song was featured on the soundtrack of the movie White Nights featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. However, the song is not available on the movie soundtrack album.

57th Academy Award

2008-01-29T10:57:00.000+01:00

The 57th Academy Awards were presented March 25, 1985 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The ceremonies were presided over by Jack Lemmon.

Amadeus is a 1984 drama film directed by Miloš Forman. Based on Peter Shaffer's stage play Amadeus, the film is based very loosely on the lives of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, two composers who lived in Vienna, Austria, during the latter half of the 18th century. The film was nominated for 53 awards and received 40, including eight Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, 4 Golden Globes, and a DGA Award. In 1998, Amadeus was ranked the 53rd best American movie by the American Film Institute on its AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list. In the decade since, its reputation has somewhat diminished and the movie was dropped off the AFI's 10th anniversary edition of the list in 2007. In 1985, the film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, including a rare double nomination for Best Actor – Hulce and Abraham were each nominated for their portrayals of Mozart and Salieri. The movie won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Abraham), Best Director (Forman), Costume Design (Theodor Pistek), Adapted Screenplay (Shaffer), Art Direction, Best Makeup, and Best Sound. The film was nominated for but did not win Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Editing.

F Murray Abraham won as Best Actor. Abraham can be seen as one of the undercover cops along with Al Pacino in the film 'Serpico'. Prior to his acclaimed role in Amadeus, Abraham was perhaps best known to audiences as a talking leaf in a series of television commercials for Fruit of the Loom underwear. Abraham won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (1984). After Amadeus he has mainly focused on classical theatre, and has starred in many Shakespearean productions such as Othello and Richard III, as well as many other plays by the likes of Samuel Beckett and Gilbert and Sullivan. Abraham has been married to Kate Hannan since 1962; they have two children.

Sally Field won her second Oscar as Best Actress for her role in Places in the Heart and Milos Forman his second Best Director Oscar for Amadeus. The Best Supporting Actor award went to Haing S. Ngor, a Cambodian American physician, actor and author who is best known for winning the 1985 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the movie The Killing Fields, in which he portrayed journalist and refugee Dith Pran in 1970s Cambodia, under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Ngor, despite having no previous acting experience, was cast as Dith Pran in The Killing Fields, a role for which he later won three awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Ngor also appeared in other movies and TV shows, most memorably in Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth and the Vanishing Son miniseries. He also guest-starred in an episode of Miami Vice called "The Savage / Duty and Honor". On February 25, 1996, Ngor was shot to death outside his home in Chinatown, which is located in downtown Los Angeles. Charged with the murder were three reputed members of the "Oriental Lazy Boyz" street gang who had a prior history of snatching purses and jewelry.

Peggy Ashcroft won the Best Supporting Actress award. Ashcroft's film and television appearances were rare but memorable. One of her earliest film roles was the minor part of the crofter's wife in the Robert Donat version of The Thirty-Nine Steps. In 1937, she appeared in a 30 minute excerpt of Twelfth Night on the BBC Television Service, alongside Greer Garson, the first known instance of a Shakespeare play being performed on television. Possibly her best known celluloid role was that of Mrs Moore in the 1984 film A Passage to India — a role for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. To this day, Ashcroft remains the oldest person ever to win this award; she was 77 at the time. Although Ashcroft did not appear in person at the telecast to accept the Oscar, Angela Lansbury accepted it on her behalf. She was married three times, first to Rupert Hart-Davis (from 1929-33), and then to Theodore Komisarjevsky (1934). She had two children with her last husband, Jeremy Hutchinson, whom she married in 1940 and divorced in 1965. Ashcroft died in London of a stroke in June 1991, aged 83.

Dangerous Moves is a 1984 French language film about chess, directed by Richard Dembo and starring Michel Piccoli and Alexandre Arbatt. Its original French title is La diagonale du fou ("The Fool's Diagonal", referring to the chess piece called the bishop in English but the fool in French). The film was a co-production between companies in France and Switzerland. It tells the story of two very different men competing in the World Chess Championship Games. One is a 52-year-old Soviet Jew who has been a chess master for the past 12 years, and the other is a 35-year-old genius who defected to the West several years earlier. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1984; it was submitted by the Swiss government, and gave that nation its first Oscar win.

"I Just Called to Say I Love You" is a song written, produced, and performed by Stevie Wonder as part of the soundtrack to the 1984 film The Woman in Red. The midtempo ballad expresses how simply calling someone to tell them you love them can make even the most unremarkable day of your life magical. It is one of Wonder's most simplistic, jingly and sentimental songs, and, with its quintessentially mid-80s synthesizers and drum machines, is a far cry from his more organic and experimental 1970s material. For those reasons it was savaged by critics upon its release. However, the public were seduced by its simple charms, making it one of Wonder's most successful singles to date. The song was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks from October 13, 1984 and also became Wonder's first solo UK number-one hit, staying at the top for six weeks. It also became his tenth number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. It also won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Original Song.

56th Academy Awards

2008-01-29T09:26:00.000+01:00

The 56th Academy Awards were presented April 9, 1984 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The ceremonies were presided over by Johnny Carson, for the fifth and last time.

Terms of Endearment is a 1983 American drama film and romantic comedy adapted by James L. Brooks from the novel by Larry McMurtry. Actor Jack Nicholson's character, astronaut Garrett Breedlove, does not appear in the novel. The part was created for Burt Reynolds, but he was already committed to another film, so it was handed to James Garner. Garner quarrelled with the director over differing interpretations. The part then went to Harrison Ford who turned it down because he didn't like the age difference between himself and Shirley MacLaine. The role wound up going to Nicholson. Louise Fletcher and Sissy Spacek were the original choices for the mother and daughter roles. The movie tells the story of a mother/daughter relationship and both women's inconclusive search for love. The movie won five Academy Awards, including the one for Best Picture and it was the second Oscar win for Nicholson, this time as Best Supporting Actor.

The director, James L Brooks was the winner of the Best Director Oscar. He is best known for producing American television programs such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons (in which he created miscellaneous characters, including the Bouvier family), Rhoda and Taxi. His best-known film is Terms of Endearment, for which he received three Academy Awards in 1984, as the films producer and scriptwriter as well as the director. Brooks later started his own film and television production company, Gracie Films, in 1984. Gracie Films would produce the television series The Tracey Ullman Show and its spin-off, The Simpsons as well as the animated series The Critic. Gracie Films' notable film productions were Jerry Maguire, As Good as It Gets, Big, Bottle Rocket and Broadcast News.

The Best Actor award went to Robert Duvall. He is best known for his roles in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, THX 1138, Tender Mercies, Lonesome Dove, and The Apostle. Duvall's screen debut was as Boo Radley in the critically acclaimed To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Duvall later played the notorious malefactor Ned Pepper in True Grit (1969), and Major Frank Burns in the film version of MASH (1970), but his breakout role was that of Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974). He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in A Civil Action and for his role as Lt. Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979). He won Oscar's Best Actor in Tender Mercies (1983). His line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" from Apocalypse Now is now regarded as iconic in cinema history. He directed the critically acclaimed The Apostle, about a preacher on the run from the law, and Assassination Tango (2002), a thriller about one of his favorite hobbies, tango. Duvall portrayed General Robert E. Lee in Gods and Generals in 2003 and is actually a relative of the Confederate general. He has stated in several forums, including CBS Sunday Morning, that his favorite role was that of Augustus "Gus" McCrae in Lonesome Dove. He has been married four times, the first to Barbara Benjamin, from 1964 until 1975. He then married Gail Youngs (1982–1986) and Sharon Brophy (1991–1996). Duvall married Luciana Pedraza in 2005. He met Pedraza on a street in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were both born on January 5, but Duvall is 41 years older. They have been together since 1997.

Shirley MacLaine is an Academy Award-winning American film and theatre actress, well-known not only for her acting, but for her devotion to her belief in reincarnation and extraterrestrials. She is also the writer of a large number of autobiographical works and the older sister of Warren Beatty. Her first film was the Alfred Hitchcock film The Trouble with Harry in 1955, which won her the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress. In 1958, she took part in Hot Spell and Around the World in Eighty Days. At the same time, she starred in Some Came Running; this film gave her her first Academy Award nomination - one of the film's five Oscar nods - and a Golden Globe nomination.She got her second nomination two years later for The Apartment, in which she starred alongside Jack Lemmon. This film won 5 Oscars, including Best Director for Billy Wilder. She was nominated for Irma la Douce (1963), once again reunited with Wilder and Lemmon. In 1977 she was once again nominated for The Turning Point, as was her co-star Anne Bancroft. In 1983, she finally won her first Oscar as Best Actress for Terms of Endearment. After she won an Oscar, she starred in other major films, like Steel Magnolias with Julia Roberts. She made her feature-film directorial debut in the quirky film Bruno. As of 2004, she is the only actress to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama) without getting an Oscar nomination for the same performance, for Madame Sousatzka (1988). MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker until they divorced in 1982. They had a daughter, Sachi Parker (born 1956).

Linda Hunt is an American film, stage and television actress. She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award-winning role in 1983's The Year of Living Dangerously. Hunt's film debut occurred in 1980 in Robert Altman's musical comedy Popeye. In 1982 she won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her role as the male Chinese-Australian dwarf Billy Kwan in the film The Year of Living Dangerously. She is still the only person ever to win an Oscar for playing a character of the opposite sex.

Fanny and Alexander is a 1982, Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. It was originally conceived as a four part TV movie which spanned 312 minutes. A version lasting only 188 minutes was created later for cinematic release. Along with The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander is considered by many to be one of Bergman's best films. He intended the film to be his last feature, although he wrote several screenplays afterward and directed a number of TV specials. Bergman was nominated for both Directing and Writing Original Screenplay but was not awarded, thus ending his last chance of ever receiving a personal Oscar for a film. The movie won the Best Foreign Language Film award.

"Flashdance... What a Feeling" is an Academy Award winning song from the 1983 film Flashdance which was performed by Irene Cara. In addition to topping the Billboard Hot 100 and earning a platinum record in 1983, "Flashdance... What a Feeling" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1984. Despite the title, the word "Flashdance" is never used in the lyrics.In March 2007, the United World Chart ranked "Flashdance... What a Feeling" as the twenty-second most successful song in music history. The song was also rated on the list as the fourth most successful song by a solo female artist, behind Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On", Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You", and Cher's "Believe".

55th Academy Awards

2008-01-28T14:54:00.000+01:00

The 55th Academy Awards were presented April 11, 1983 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The ceremonies were presided over by Liza Minnelli, Dudley Moore, Richard Pryor, and Walter Matthau.

Gandhi is a multi-award-winning biopic film about the life of Mahatma Gandhi, who was leader of the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century. The film was directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Ben Kingsley as Gandhi; both won Academy Awards for their work on the film. It was an international co-production between production companies in India and the UK. The film premiered in New Delhi on November 30, 1982.

The film's director, Richard Attenborough, also won as Best Director. Attenborough has won two Academy Awards, BAFTA and three Golden Globes. He is the older brother of naturalist filmmaker, Sir David Attenborough. Attenborough's film career began in 1942 as a deserting sailor in In Which We Serve, a role which would help to type-cast him for many years as spy or coward in films like London Belongs to Me (1948), Morning Departure (1950), and his breakthrough role as a psychopathic young gangster in the film of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock (1947). Early in his stage career, Attenborough starred in the London West End production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which went on to become one of the world's longest running stage productions. Both he and his wife were among the original cast members of the production, which opened in 1952 and as of 2007 is still running.In 1967 and 1968, he won back-to-back Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor, the first time for The Sand Pebbles starring Steve McQueen, and the second time for Doctor Dolittle starring Rex Harrison. He would win another Golden Globe for Best Director, for Gandhi, in 1983. Six years prior to Gandhi he played the ruthless General Outram in Indian director Satyajit Ray's period piece The Chess Players. He has never been nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category. He took no acting roles following his appearance in Otto Preminger's version of The Human Factor in 1979, until his appearance as the eccentric developer John Hammond in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park in 1993. The following year he starred in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street as Kris Kringle. Since then he has made occasional appearances in supporting roles including the 1998 historical drama Elizabeth as Sir William Cecil. His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), and his acting appearances became more sporadic - the most notable being his portrayal of serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place (1971). He later directed two epic period films: Young Winston (1972), based on the early life of Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far (1977), an all-star account of Operation Market Garden in World War II. He won the 1982 Academy Awarf for Directing for his historical epic, Gandhi, a project he had been attempting to get made for many years. As the film's producer, he also won the Academy Award for Best Picture. His most recent films as director and producer include Chaplin (1992) starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Charlie Chaplin and Shadowlands (1993), based on the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. Both films starred Anthony Hopkins, who also appeared in three other films for Attenborough: Young Winston, A Bridge Too Far and the thriller Magic (1978). Attenborough also directed the screen version of the musical A Chorus Line (1985); and the apartheid drama Cry Freedom based on the experiences of Donald Woods. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films. His most recent film as director was another biographical film, Grey Owl (1999), starring Pierce Brosnan. Attenborough has been married to English actress Sheila Sim since 1945. They had three children. In December 2004, his elder daughter, Jane Holland, as well as her daughter, Lucy, and her mother-in-law, also named Jane, were killed in the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

Ben Kingsley, CBE, is a British actor. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Mohandas Gandhi in Richard Attenborough's 1982 film Gandhi, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actor. Kingsley's first film role was a supporting turn in Fear Is the Key, released in 1972. Kingsley continued starring in bit roles in both film and television, including a bit part on the soap opera Coronation Street and regular appearances as a defence counsel in the long-running British legal programme Crown Court. He found fame only years later, starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the Academy Award-winning film Gandhi in 1982, his best-known role to date. The audience also agreed with the critics, and Gandhi was a box-office success. Kingsley won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal. Kingsley has since appeared in a variety of roles. His credits included the films Turtle Diary, Maurice, Pascali's Island, Without a Clue (as Dr. Watson alongside Michael Caine's Sherlock Holmes), Suspect Zero, Bugsy--which led to an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Sneakers, Dave, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Schindler's List, Silas Marner, Death and the Maiden, Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story, Sexy Beast, for which he received another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and House of Sand and Fog, which led to yet another Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Kingsley had four children as of the summer of 2007: Thomas Bhanji and Jasmine Bhanji by actress Angela Morant, and Edmund Kingsley and Ferdinand Kingsley, both of whom became actors, by theatrical director Alison Sutcliffe. In 2005 he divorced German-born Alexandra Christmann, after pictures of her kissing another lover surfaced on the internet. On September 3, 2007, Kingsley married Daniela Barbosa de Carneiro, a Brazilian actress, in North Leigh, Oxfordshire.

Louis Gossett, Jr. is an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Academy Award winning American actor. After leaving the New York Knicks, Gossett stepped into the world of cinema in the Sidney Poitier vehicle A Raisin in the Sun in 1961. Since his film debut, Gossett has continued working. He has starred in numerous film productions such as The Deep, An Officer and a Gentleman, Jaws 3-D (as SeaWorld manager Calvin Bouchard), Enemy Mine, the Iron Eagle series, Toy Soldiers and The Punisher. His role as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman (opposite Richard Gere) showcased his talent and garnered him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 1986, he starred in another role as a military man in the film Iron Eagle. It was followed by three sequels.

Jessica Lange is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress.In 1976, Dino De Laurentiis cast her in his motion picture remake King Kong, which started and almost ended her career. Although, the King Kong remake was a top moneymaker for Paramount Pictures, film critics were not kind to the film. The unfavorable reviews were devastating but critics took notice when she made an impressive turn in Bob Rafelson's remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981).Her performance in her next film, Frances (1982), in which she portrayed actress Frances Farmer, was highly lauded and earned her a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress. She received two nominations that year, the other as Supporting Actress in the comedy Tootsie (1982), for which she won. She continued giving impressive performances through the 80s and 90s in films such as Sweet Dreams (1984) (playing country/western singer Patsy Cline), Music Box (1989), Men Don't Leave (1990), and Blue Sky (1994) for which she won the Best Actress Academy Award. Lange was married to photographer Paco Grande from 1970-1981. Since 1982, she has lived with playwright/actor Sam Shepard. She has three children, Alexandra (born 1981) with dancer/actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Hannah Jane (born 1985) and Walker Samuel (born 1987) with Shepard. Lange currently lives in New York City.

Begin the Beguine is a 1982 Spanish film about a man who returns to his homeland after many years. Its original Spanish title is Volver a empezar, which means Starting Again; the English language title refers to the song "Begin the Beguine" by Cole Porter. The film won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and was the first Spanish film to do so.

"Up Where We Belong" is a song from the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. Written by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, with lyrics by Will Jennings, it was performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes."'Up Where We Belong" won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1983. It also won the BAFTA Film Awards for Best Original Song in 1984. Cocker and Warnes also won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1983 for their rendition of this song.

54th Academy Awards

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The 54th Academy Awards were presented March 29, 1982 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The ceremonies were presided over by Johnny Carson.

Chariots of Fire is a British film released in 1981. Written by Colin Welland and directed by Hugh Hudson, it is based on the true story of British athletes preparing for and competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture. The title is a quotation from the hymn Jerusalem which is a setting of a poem by William Blake. The film's working title was "Running" until Welland saw the scene with the singing of the hymn and decided to change the title.Although the film is a period piece, set in the 1920's, the original soundtrack composed by Vangelis uses a modern, 1980's electronic sound with a strong use of synthesizer and piano among other instruments. This was a bold and significant departure from earlier period films which employed sweeping orchestral instrumentals. Vangelis was rewarded with an Academy Award for his work. The title theme of the film has become iconic and has been used in subsequent films and television shows during slow-motion.

The Best Director award went to Warren Beatty for Reds. Beatty's sister, three years his elder, is the talented and multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine. He made his film debut under Elia Kazan's direction and opposite Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass (1961). The film was a box office success and Beatty was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the category Best Motion Picture Actor - Drama. Subsequently he appeared in several films which went relatively unnoticed. Then, at age 30, he achieved critical acclaim and power as a producer and star of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. Subsequent Beatty films include McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Parallax View (1974), Shampoo (1975), and Heaven Can Wait (1978). The last film gave him box-office power he hadn't had since Bonnie and Clyde. He used this to make Reds (1981), an historical epic about famed Communist journalist John Reed in the Russian October Revolution. It won Academy Awards for Best Director (Beatty), Best Cinematography, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Maureen Stapleton). In 1990 he bounced back when he produced, directed and starred in the title role as the comic strip character Dick Tracy in the film of the same name. The film was one of the highest grossers of the year and was also the highest grossing film in Beatty's career at that point. However he did not manage to repeat the box office success of Dick Tracy in his subsequent films. He went on to star as the real-life gangster Bugsy Siegel in the biopic Bugsy (1991) opposite Annette Bening, whom he married in 1992. He starred opposite Bening once again in Love Affair (1994). Both films failed to do well. His next film which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in was the political satire Bullworth (1998) which was critically appreciated but also failed to do well at the box office. In 2001 he appeared in his last film, Town and Country, which became the second-largest money loser of any movie ever made. In 1992 he married Annette Bening, his co-star in the gangster film Bugsy. They have four children: Kathlyn (b. 1992), Benjamin (b. 1994), Isabel (b. 1996) and Ella Corinne (b. 2000).

Henry Fonda was a highly acclaimed Academy Award-winning American film and stage actor, best known for his roles as plain-speaking idealists. Fonda's subtle, naturalistic acting style preceded by many years the popularization of Method acting. Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor, and made his Hollywood debut in 1935. Fonda's career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance in 1940s The Grapes of Wrath, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts, and 12 Angry Men. Later, Fonda moved toward both more challenging, darker epics as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (portraying a villain who kills, among others, a child and a cripple) and lighter roles in family comedies like Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball. He was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity; his family and close friends called him "Hank". In 1999, he was named the sixth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. Fonda's film career blossomed as he costarred with Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the first Technicolor movie filmed outdoors. He also starred with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan in ‘’The Moon’s Our Home’’, and a short re-kindling of their relationship led to a brief consideration of re-marriage. Sullavan then married Fonda’s agent Leland Hayward and Fonda married socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, who had little interest in the movies or the theater. Fonda got the nod for the lead role in You Only Live Once (1937), also costarring Sidney, and directed by Fritz Lang. Fonda’s first child Jane Fonda was born on December 21, 1937. A critical success opposite Bette Davis, who had picked Fonda, in the film Jezebel (1938) was followed by the title role in Young Mr. Lincoln and his first collaboration with director John Ford. Fonda's successes led Ford to recruit him to play "Tom Joad" in the film version of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1940), but a reluctant Darryl Zanuck, who preferred Tyrone Power, insisted on Fonda's signing a seven-year contract with the studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. Fonda agreed, and was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the 1940 film, which many consider to be his finest role, but his friend James Stewart won the Best Actor award for his role in The Philadelphia Story. Second child Peter Fonda was born in 1940. Fonda played Wyatt Earp in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946) and appeared in the film Fort Apache (1948) as a rigid Army colonel, along with John Wayne and Shirley Temple in her first adult role. Fonda did seven post-war films then his contract with Fox expired.He starred in the 1955 film version of Mister Roberts opposite James Cagney, William Powell and Jack Lemmon, continuing a pattern of bringing his acclaimed stage roles to life on the big screen. On the set of Mister Roberts, Fonda came to blows with John Ford and vowed never to work for him again. He never did Fonda followed Mr. Roberts with Paramount Pictures's production of the Leo Tolstoy epic War and Peace, in which Fonda played Pierre Bezukhov opposite Audrey Hepburn, and which took two years to shoot. Fonda worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1956, playing a man falsely accused of murder in The Wrong Man, an unusual though not successful effort by Hitchcock based on an actual crime and filmed on location in black and white.In 1957, Fonda made his first foray into production with 12 Angry Men, based on a teleplay and a script by Reginald Rose and directed by Sidney Lumet. The low budget production was completed in only seventeen days of filming mostly in one claustraphobic jury room and had a strong cast including Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, and E. G. Marshall. The intense film about twelve jurors deciding the fate of a young man accused of murder was well-received by critics worldwide. Fonda shared the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations with co-producer Reginald Rose and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his performance as "Juror #8”, who with logic and persistence eventually sways all the jurors to an acquittal.After western movies The Tin Star (1957) and Warlock (1959), Fonda returned to the production seat for the NBC western television series The Deputy (1959–1961), in which he also starred. Around this time, his fourth troubled marriage was coming to an end. The 1960s saw Fonda perform in a number of war and western epics, including 1962's The Longest Day and How the West Was Won, 1965's In Harm's Way and Battle of the Bulge. In the Cold War suspense film Fail-Safe (1964), Fonda played the resolute President of the United States who tries to avert a nuclear holocaust through tense negotiations with the Soviets who see an attack coming their way.He appeared against type as the villain "Frank" in 1968's Once Upon a Time in the West. After initially turning down the role, he was convinced to accept it by actor Eli Wallach and director Sergio Leone, who flew from Italy to the United States to persuade him to take the part. In 1970, Fonda appeared in three films, the most successful of these ventures being The Cheyenne Social Club. The other two films were Too Late the Hero, in which Fonda played a secondary role, and There Was a Crooked Man, about Paris Pitman Jr. (played by Kirk Douglas) trying to escape from an Arizona prison. After the unsuccessful Hollywood melodrama, Ash Wednesday, he filmed three Italian productions released in 1973 and 1974. The most successful of these, My Name Is Nobody, presented Fonda in a rare comedic performance as an old gunslinger whose plans to retire are dampened by a "fan" of sorts.Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films. The first of these was the 1977 Italian killer octopus thriller Tentacoli (Tentacles) and the mediocre Rollercoaster, in which Fonda appeared with Richard Widmark and a young Helen Hunt. He performed once again with Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray, and José Ferrer in the killer bee action film The Swarm. He also acted in the global disaster film Meteor, with Sean Connery, Natalie Wood and Karl Malden, and then the Canadian production City on Fire, which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. Fonda had a small role with his son, Peter, in 1979's Wanda Nevada, with Brooke Shields. 1981's On Golden Pond, the film adaptation of Ernest Thompson's play, marked one final professional and personal triumph for Fonda. Directed by Mark Rydell, the project provided unprecedented collaborations between Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, and between Fonda and Fonda's daughter, Jane. The elder Fonda played an emotionally brittle and distant father who becomes more accessible at the end of his life. With eleven Academy Award nominations, the film earned nearly $120 million at the box office, becoming an unexpected blockbuster. In addition to wins for Hepburn (Best Actress), and Thompson (Screenplay), On Golden Pond brought Fonda his only Oscar for Best Actor (it also earned him a Golden Globe Best Actor award). Fonda was by that point too ill too attend the ceremony, and Jane Fonda accepted on his behalf.Henry Fonda was married five times. His marriage to Margaret Sullavan in 1931 soon ended in separation, which was finalized in a 1933 divorce. In 1936, he married Frances Ford Seymour. They had two children, Peter and Jane. In 1950, Seymour committed suicide. Fonda married Susan Blanchard, the stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein II, in 1950. Together, they adopted a daughter, Amy (born 1953), but divorced three years later. In 1957 Fonda married Italian Countess Afdera Franchetti. They remained married until 1961. Soon after Fonda married Shirlee Mae Adams, and remained with her until his death in 1982. Fonda died at his Los Angeles home on August 12, 1982, at the age of 77 from heart disease.

Katharine Hepbrun won her fourth Oscar for On Golden Pond. The Best Supporting Actor award went to John Gielgud for Arthur. Although he began to appear in British films as early as 1924, making his debut in the silent movie Who Is the Man?, he would not make an impact in the medium until the last decades of his life. His early film roles were sporadic and included the lead in Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent (1936), Benjamin Disraeli in The Prime Minister (1940), Cassius in Julius Caesar (1953), BAFTA Award for Best British Actor), George, Duke of Clarence to Olivier's Richard III (1955), and Henry IV to Orson Welles' Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight (1966). But he lost his aversion to filming in the late 1960s, and by the 1980s and 1990s he had thrown himself into the medium with a vengeance, so much so that it was jokingly said that he was prepared to do almost anything for his art. He won an Academy Award for his supporting role as a sardonic butler in the 1981 comedy Arthur, starring Dudley Moore, a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Providence (1977), a BAFTA Award for Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and his performances in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), The Elephant Man (1981), and Shine (1996) were critically acclaimed. In 1991, Gielgud was able to satisfy his life's ambition by immortalizing his Prospero on screen in the film Prospero's Books. Gielgud was one of the few people who has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. Gielgud's final onscreen appearance in a major release motion picture was as Pope Paul IV in Elizabeth which was released in 1998. Longtime lover Martin Hensler, 30 years his junior, died just a few months before Sir John did in 2000.

The Best Supporting Actress award went to Maureen Stapleton for Reds. Stepping in because Anna Magnani refused the role due to her limited English, Stapleton won a Tony Award for her role in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo in 1951. (Magnani's English improved, however, and she was able to play the role in the film version, winning an Oscar.) Stapleton's film career, though limited, brought her immediate success, with her debut in Lonelyhearts (1958) earning a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She appeared in the 1963 film version of Bye Bye Birdie, in the role of Mama Mae Peterson, with Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh, Paul Lynde and Ann-Margret. She was nominated again for an Oscar for Airport (1970) and Woody Allen's Interiors (1978). She won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Reds (1981), directed by Warren Beatty, in which she portrayed the Lithuanian-born anarchist, Emma Goldman. Stapleton won a 1968 Emmy Award for her performance in Among the Paths of Eden. She was nominated for the television version of All the King's Men (1959), Queen of the Stardust Ballroom (1975), and The Gathering (1977). Her more recent appearances included Johnny Dangerously (1984), Cocoon (1985) and its sequel Cocoon: The Return (1988). Stapleton's first husband was Max Allentuck, and her second husband was playwright David Rayfiel, from whom she divorced. She had a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Katherine, by her first husband and later was a devoted grandmother. Her daughter, Katherine Allentuck, garnered good reviews for her single movie role, that of "Aggie" in Summer of '42 (Stapleton herself also had a minor, uncredited role in the film as the protagonist's mother). In 2006, Maureen Stapleton, who was a heavy smoker, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, at the age of 80.

Mephisto is the title of a 1981 film adaptation of Klaus Mann's novel of the same name, directed by István Szabó, and starring Klaus Maria Brandauer as Hendrik Höfgen. The film was a co-production between companies in West Germany, Hungary and Austria. The film adapts the story of Mephistopheles and Doctor Faustus by having the main character Hendrik Höfgen abandon his conscience and continue to act and ingratiate himself with the Nazi Party and so keep and improve his job and social position. Both the film and Mann's 1936 novel mirror the career of Mann's brother-in-law, Gustaf Gründgens, who is considered by many to have supported the Nazi Party and abandoned his previous political views for personal gain rather than conscience. Mephisto was awarded the 1981 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film; the film was submitted to the Academy by Hungary.

"Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)", performed by Christopher Cross, is the theme song from the 1981 film Arthur starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli. The song was written in collaboration between Cross, pop music composer Burt Bacharach, and his frequent writing partner Carole Bayer Sager. A fourth writing credit goes to Minnelli's ex-husband and Australian songwriter Peter Allen, also a frequent collaborator with Bayer Sager; the line "When you get caught between the moon and New York City" from the chorus is taken from an unreleased song they had previously written together. The song won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Original Song. The award was presented by singer Bette Midler, who, in her presentation of the nominated songs, called the song " 'That Song About the Moon and New York City,' also known as 'Four on a Song,' " referring to the four songwriters.