Category: Oscar Profile

Born March 20, 1950 in Washington, D.C. William Hurt’s mother Claire worked for Time, Inc. and his father Alfred worked for the State Dept. After their divorce, his mother married Henry Luce II and young William lived abroad in Lahore, Mogadishu and Khartoum where he father was stationed. Educated at Tufts University and Julliard, Hurt…

Born October 5, 1975 in Reading, Berskshire, England, Kate Elizabeth Winslet was one of four children of a barmaid and a swimming pool contractor, both of whom were part-time actors. Actor Robert Bridges was her mother’s brother. Winslet made her acting debut in a TV commercial at the age of 2, and as a teenager…

Born November 11, 1974 in Los Angeles, California, Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is the son of a German born mother of German and Russian descent and a father of Italian and German descent. His mother worked as a legal secretary and his father as an underground performance artist. They separated when he was just a year…

Born August 22, 1892 in Denver, Colorado, Joseph Bailey Walker worked as a wireless telephone engineer, inventor and photographer of documentaries for the Red Cross during World War I before beginning his feature film career in 1919 with Back to God’s Country, a Canadian film that was filmed near the Artic Circle. He then freelanced…

Born February 22, 1944 in Baldwin, N.Y., (Robert) Jonathan Demme was the son of Robert Demme, a public relations manager and his wife, Dorothy. The family later moved to Florida, where he graduated from Southwest Miami High School and the University of Florida. Demme had an early job as a film critic for a shopping…

Born March 21, 1921 in Wiesbaden, Germany to French parents, Simone Henriette Charlotte Kamiker was a legendary French actress known professionally as Simone Signoret (her mother’s maiden name). Her mother was a French Catholic. Her father, who had Polish Jewish roots, left France to join General DeGaulle in England in 1940. Upon completing secondary school…

Born November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York and raised in Manhattan’s Little Italy, Martin Charles Scorsese earned a B.S. in film communications in 1964 and an M.A. in the same field in 1966. Having made his own short films since 1959, he made his first feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door starring…

Born December 30, 1934 to actors Sally Triplett and Eddie Tamblyn, Russell Irving Tamblyn known professionally as Rusty, then Russ Tamblyn, was discovered by actor Lloyd Bridges for the play Stone Jungle at the age of ten. He immediately found work on radio and made his film debut in 1948’s The Boy with Green Hair…

Born July 2, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York, George Joseph Folsey was one of Hollywood’s greatest cinematographers. He was director of photography on more than 160 films from 1919 to 1972, earning 13 Oscar nominations along the way. Folsey began in the film industry as an office boy in Jesse Lasky’s New York production company…

Born December 14, 1935 in Quincey, Massachusetts to Gertrude (nee Waldo), an actress and Francis Remick, a department store owner, Lee Remick was educated at Barnard College, where she studied dancing as well as acting. Remick made her TV debut at the age of 17 in an episode of Armstrong Circle Theatre. After several more…

Born August 9, 1918 in Cranston, Rhode Island, to the former Lora Lawson and newspaper publisher Edward Burgess Aldrich, Robert Aldrich was a long-time Hollywood director. He was the grandson of U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, nephew of John D. Rockefeller and cousin of Nelson Rockefeller. He was educated at the Moses Brown School in…

Born June 9, 1981 in Jerusalem, Neta-Lee Hershlag, known professionally as Natalie Portman, was the only child of an Israeli doctor and an American homemaker. She holds dual American and Israeli citizenship. The family relocated the U.S. when she was three years old. Portman began taking dance lessons at the age of four. At ten,…

Born August 12, 1975 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt, known professionally as Casey Affleck, like his older brother, Ben, began his career as a child actor. Affleck made his film debut at the age of 12 in 1988’s Lemon Sky. Two years later he was playing Robert Kennedy from 12 to 15 in…

Born October 31, 1926 in Manhattan, New York City, Lyova Haskell Rosenthal was the only child of a Romanian Jewish immigrant educator father and a Russian Jewish immigrant actress mother. A precocious child, she made her stage debut at age 4 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, playing the abducted princess in “L’Orocolo”.…

Born September 8, 1906 in Covington, Kentucky, Robert Surtees was raised in Ohio. After graduating high school, he got a job as a photographer and re-toucher at a portrait studio in Cincinnati. He moved to California in 1925 intending to go to college, but was offered a job as a camera assistant at Universal based…