Category: Profiles

Born July 22, 1938 in London, England, Terence Stamp was the eldest of five children of Ethel and Thomas Stamp, a tugboat stoker. With his father away for long periods of time with the Merchant Navy, he was raised mostly by his mother, grandmother, and aunts. His family endured heavy bombing during the World War…

Born November 6, 1970 in Austin, Texas, Ethan Hawke has been actor since the age of 13. He is a great-grandnephew of Tennessee Williams on his father’s side. His maternal grandfather, Howard Lemuel Green, served five terms in the Texas Legislature and was a minor-league baseball commissioner. Hawke made his stage debut in a school…

Born March 6, 1947 in the Bronx, Robert Norman Reiner was the son of Estelle and Carl Reiner, the renown comedian, actor, writer, producer, director.  It would only be a matter of time before Rob followed his father into show business.  Sure enough, he began his acting career in TV’s Manhunt in 1961 when he was only…

Born December 4, 1913 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Mark Robson was a political science major at the University of California who found work in the prop department at 20th Century-Fox. Fired by Daryl F. Zanuck for asking for a raise, he moved to RKO. At RKO, Robson became an assistant editor under Robert Wise, working…

Born December 22, 1907 in Surrey, England, Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft, known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was a titan of the British stage who only occasionally appeared in films, but when she did, she was as amazing and unforgettable as she was in her lauded stage roles. Ashcroft’s mother had been an actress. Her father,…

Born June 22, 1949 in Summit, New Jersey to Mary, a commercial artist, and William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive, Mary Louise (Meryl) Streep’s early performing ambitions tended toward opera. Raised in New Jersey, she received her BA cum laude from Vasser in 1971, and her MBA from Yale Drama School in 1975. Streep’s first…

Holidays have been celebrated in films since their inception. There have been films about virtually all of them. 1942’s Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire is in fact a celebration of all of the U.S. holidays. We have had films that celebrate those we honor on their birthdays – George Washington (1942’s George Washington Slept Here with…

Born May 28, 1931 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania to a travelling salesman and his wife, Carroll Baker studied at Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg where her classmates included Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, Rod Steiger, and James Dean. Baker began acting in TV commercials in 1951, which led to small roles in TV dramas.  She made her…

Born September 29, 1904 in London, England, the daughter of a Scottish father and Irish mother, Greer Garson was educated at King’s College, London and the University of Grenoble in France. Intent on becoming a teacher, she instead went to work in an advertising agency and did some acting on the side, eventually turning to…

Born June 14, 1918 in Omaha, Nebraska, Dorothy McGuire was one of three actresses who came to prominence in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Both she and Teresa Wright had been original star Martha Scott’s understudy, with McGuire eventually replacing Scott when she went to Hollywood. Several Broadway roles later, she was…

Born October 28, 1929 in North Lincolnshire, England, the daughter of a journalist and playwright and his wife, Joan Plowright attended the Old Vic Theatre School after grade school. On stage from 1948, Plowright married first husband, actor Roger Gage, in 1953.  She made her film debut in an uncredited role in 1956’s Moby Dick…

Born April 14, 1941 in Assam, India, the daughter of an English tea planter and his Welsh painter wife, Julie Christie was sent to a boarding school in England at the age of 6. By 16, she had moved to France and soon thereafter returned to England and the British stage. By twenty, she had…

Born January 5, 1946 in Los Angeles, California to an amateur photographer mother and a civil engineer and real estate broker father, Diane Hall was the eldest of four children. After graduating from Santa Ana High School in 1963, she attended Santa Ana and Orange Coast colleges studying acting before moving to New York where…

Born July 10, 1977 in London, England to a Nigerian born doctor and his pharmacist wife, Chiwetel Ejiofor is the middle of three children.  His older sister is a doctor, and his younger sister is a CNN correspondent. In 1988, when Ejiofor was 11, during a family trip to Nigeria for a wedding, he and his…