Category: Oscar Profile

Born September 17, 1928 in London, England, Roderick (Roddy) MacDowell was the son of a merchant mariner and housewife mother, both of whom had an interest in the theatre. His older sister Virginia (1927-2006) and he were both child actors. He made his screen debut in 1938’s Murder in the Family as the younger brother…

This week I thought it would be nice to do something a little different in light of last week’s Oscar nominations. The films with the most nominations among this year’s Best Picture nominees are Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel with nine each, followed by The Imitation Game with eight, American Sniper and Boyhood with…

Born Aril 24, 1942, Barbra Streisand is one of the best-selling music artists of all time with more than 72 million albums in the United States and 245 million records sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) Top Selling Album Artists list, the only female recording…

Born April 23, 1911 in London, England to early British film director Elwin Neame and his wife, silent screen star Ivy Close, Ronald Neame was one of the true renaissance men of the movies, working as an assistant director, cinematographer, producer, writer and ultimately director. Neame was only 18 when he worked as assistant director…

Born May 25, 1970 in Montgomery, Alabama the sixth of seven children, Octavia Spencer had her first brush with Hollywood as an intern on 1990’s The Long Walk Home with Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg filmed in her hometown. She was a staff assistant on 1996’s A Time to Kill with Matthew McConaughey and Sandra…

Born March 19, 1952 in Flushing, Queens, New York, New York, Harvey Weinstein is the best known film producer of the modern era. He is especially skilled at getting his films and the a actors in his films nominated for Oscars, for which there have been numerous wins over the years. Usually billed as a…

Born January 1, 1909 in Covington County, Mississippi, (Carver) Dana Andrews was one of thirteen children of a Baptist minister and his wife. The family later moved to Huntsville, Texas where his younger siblings, including actor Steve Forrest, were born. Educated at Sam Houston State University, he moved to Los Angeles in 1931 seeking employment…

Born Emilie Chauchoin on September 13, 1903 in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, France, the actress Claudette Colbert was one of the great stars of the golden age of Hollywood. Her family emigrated to the U.S. in 1906, settling in New York where Colbert grew up aspiring to become a painter but was encouraged to go into acting…

Born March 30, 1977, (Henry) Warren Beaty (later Beatty) is the younger brother of actress/dancer/writer Shirley MacLaine. Their mother, Kathlyn (née McLean) was a Canadian born drama teacher, their father, a school administrator. Both Warren and his sister were taught to excel from an early age. A star football player in high school, Beatty turned…

Born April 22, 1937 in Neptune, New Jersey, Jack Nicholson was raised by his maternal grandparents believing them to be his parents and his showgirl mother his older sister. He grew up on the Jersey shore, attending high school in Manasquan. He learned the truth from a reporter in the mid-seventies after both his mother…

Born August 8, 1937 to Lillian and Harry Hoffman, a prop supervisor at Columbia, Dustin Hoffman had originally wanted to be a concert pianist but turned to acting instead, making his stage debut at the Pasadena Playhouse opposite Gene Hackman in the late 1950s. He and Hackman moved to New York in pursuit of Broadway…

Born October 22, 1917 to British parents in Tokyo, Japan, Joan de Bouvier de Havilland, better known as Joan Fontaine, was the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland by fifteen months. A sickly child, Joan moved to California with her mother and sister after her parents’ separation in 1919 while still a baby. She returned…

Born December 24, 1906 in Upper Silesia, Germany, now Slaskie, Poland, Franz Wachsmann, later Waxman, pursued his dream of a career in music despite his family’s misgivings, supplementing his piano, harmony and composition lessons with his salary as a bank teller. The young composer found a job arranging music for a popular Berlin jazz band…

Born May 11, 1888 in Tyumen, Russian Empire, Israel Isidore Beilin, whose family name was later changed to Baline became known to the world as Irving Berlin. With his family at the age of five, he escaped a pogrom by the Cossacks after the burning of their house to make their way to New York.…

Born October 18, 1927, George C. (Campbell) Scott was the son of a Buick executive who raised him single-handedly after his mother’s death when he was just 8 years old. Enlisting in the U.S. Marines at 18, his primary duty from 1945 to 1949 was to serve as an honor guard at the burial of…