Category: Oscar Profile

Born Shalom Jaffe in New York City on March 10, 1891, Sam Jaffe’s mother Ada Jaffe was a star in the Yiddish Theatre. His father Barnett was a jeweler. Young Sam graduated with a degree in engineering from City College of New York and earned his post-graduate degree at Columbia University. Having acted with his…

Oscar has four acting categories, one each for Best Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress. Actors who are co-leads in their films with other actors and actresses who are co-leads with other actresses can be nominated in the same category or, as is often the case lately, one can be can nominated as a…

Anyone who ever tried to put together a list of films that that should have been nominated for Academy Awards but weren’t, can tell you that it is an almost impossible task to sort out eligibility dates for the years 1927/28-1981 for to a number of reasons. The first awards were supposed to be for…

Born August 15, 1912 in Bramhall, Cheshire, England, the daughter of a cotton manufacturer, Wendy Hiller began her acting career in the 1930s with a repertory theatre in Manchester. Following her great success in 1934 in Love on the Dole, she married the play’s author, Ronald Gow, 15 years her senior, in 1937, the same…

Born December 6, 1900 in Clinton, Massachusetts to a Presbyterian minister and his mezzo-soprano wife, Agnes Moorehead was encouraged by her mother to perform and was singing church solos at age three. At ten she joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera where she sang and danced for four years. At her father’s insistence she left…

Born September 28, 1924 in Fontana Liri, Lazlo, Italy, Marcello Mastroianni soon moved with his family to Turin and then Rome. He made his film debut as an extra in 1939’s Marionettte at the age of 14. His first starring role was in 1951’s The Accusation aka The Charge Is Murder. He became a major…

Born December 4, 1949 in Los Angeles, California the second son of actor Lloyd Bridges and his actress wife Dorothy Dean Bridges, Jeff Bridges made his screen debut as an infant in mother’s arms in 1951’s The Company She Keeps alongside eight years older brother Beau. The younger Bridges was a child actor on numerous…

Born Aaron Blum Wolowicz on October 18, 1988, Harold Brent Wallis’ name was legally changed by his parents on September 14, 1889. In his early twenties Wallis was managing a Los Angeles movie theatre owned by Warner Brothers where he met and married comedy film star Louise Fazenda in 1927. Around the same time he…

Born June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee to Mayme Edna Freeman, a teacher and her husband, Morgan, a barber, Morgan Freeman has been ac ting since the age of 9 when he performed in a school play. After serving four years in the U.S. Air Force (1955-1959), Freeman began to pursue his acting career in…

Born December 21, 1937 in New York, New York to legendary actor Henry Fonda and his second wife, socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Fonda would become a legend in her own right at an early age. Traumatized by the suicide of her mother when she was twelve, the actress made her stage debut in a…

Born April 25, 1940 in the East Harlem, New York to Rose and Salvatore Pacino who divorced when he was two, Al Pacino was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents in the Bronx. Easily bored in school, he passed the time repeating plots and character voices from the films he had seen. Acting in…

Born March 28, 1902 in South Shields, Durham, United Kingdom, Flora McKenzie Robson first appeared on stage at the age of five. Educated at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, she augmented her budding acting career as a factory welfare officer until the stage provided more steady employment. In residence at the Old Vic from…

Born May 22, 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, England, Laurence Olivier was the son of a High Anglican priest who became an actor at the age of ten at his father’s urging. After graduating from acting school in the late 1920s, he appeared in numerous productions, achieving his first major success in Private Lives in 1930,…

Born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California to a factory worker mother and a steelworker father, Clinton Eastwood Jr. attended Los Angeles City College but dropped out before graduating. Drafted into the U.S. Army, he served as lifeguard at Fort Ord on the Monterey Peninsula where he was discovered by Universal. On screen in…