about me
Anyone who knows me is aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been building an autograph collection of my favourite actors’ signed photographs. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I enjoy. I have collected the photographs from the actors themselves, through contacts in the studios and through auctions. I now have over 2,000 photographs in the collection.
My Autograph Collection
I have separated my autograph collection into different categories, which you can see below. Feel free to browse whichever section interests you. Inside, I share not only the autographed photo in my possession, but also information about the actor, including their biography, photos and posters of their movies, and sometimes videos dedicated to them.
Whether you’re drawn to classic Hollywood icons, contemporary superstars, or character actors with a cult following, there’s something in my autograph collection for every movie enthusiast. If you enjoy my blog, don’t hesitate to leave a comment on one of my entries.
Actors Autograph Collections
Blog Categories
BRITISH ACTORS
Collection of Classic Brittish Actors
IRISH ACTORS
Collection of Classic Irish Actors
HOLLYWOOD ACTORS
Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors
EUROPEAN ACTORS
Collection of Classic European Actors
CONTEMPORARY ACTORS
Collection of Classic Contemporary Actors
RECENT POSTS
Fred Webber (Wikipedia)
Fred Weller was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of lawyers Carole and Francis Weller In 1966. He is a 1984 graduate of Jesuit High School, a Catholic all-boys high school in New Orleans. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1988. He then studied acting at The Juilliard School as a member of the Drama Division’s Group 21 (1988–1992).
In 1993, Weller was one of the main regulars in the TV series Missing Persons. He has made guest appearances in episodes of Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Monk and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He has also appeared in several well-received films, such as Stonewall, The Business of Strangers, The Shape of Things, and the 2000 drama/miniseries The Beach Boys: An American Family portraying the character Brian Wilson.
Weller was initially successful as a stage actor, and stage acting is still his biggest passion. He performed in Neil LaBute and David Mamet plays and films. He appeared on Broadway in 2003 in the Tony award-winning play Take Me Out in which he appeared completely nude, and in 2014 in the Terrence McNally play Mothers and Sons. In 2018 he appeared on Broadway as Bob Ewell in Aaron Sorkin‘s To Kill a Mockingbird, an adaptation of Harper Lee‘s novel.
Weller has also played lead roles in many successful independent films, including Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things (with Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz and Gretchen Mol), James Toback’s When Will I Be Loved (opposite Neve Campbell) and The Business of Strangers (with Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles).
Weller starred in the USA Network comedy-drama series In Plain Sight as Deputy U.S. Marshal Marshall Mann. He worked closely with Mary McCormack (Deputy U.S. Marshal Mary Shannon) during filming.
Weller married actress Ali Marsh on September 6, 2003. They have a daughter Azalea, born in 2007, whose godmother is his In Plain Sight co-star Mary McCormack.
He is a cousin of actor Peter Weller.
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Marlo Thomas (Wikipedia)
Marlo Thomas was born in 1937 is an American actress, producer, author, and social activist best known for starring on the sitcom That Girl (1966–1971) and her award-winning children’s franchise Free to Be… You and Me. She has received four Emmys, a Golden Globe, and the George Foster Peabody Award for her work in television, and she has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame. She has also received a Grammy award for her children’s album Marlo Thomas and Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony, the highest honor that a civilian can receive.
Thomas serves as National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which was founded by her father Danny Thomas in 1962. She created the Thanks & Giving campaign in 2004 to support the hospital.
Marlo Thomas was born on November 21, 1937, in Detroit, Michigan, the eldest child of comedian Danny Thomas (1912 – 1991) and his wife, the former Rose Marie Cassaniti (1914 – 2000). She has a sister, Terre, and a brother, Tony Thomas, who is a television and film producer. Her father was a Roman Catholic Lebanese American and her mother was Sicilian American. Her godmother was Loretta Young.
Thomas was raised in Beverly Hills, California. Her parents called her Margo as a child, though she soon became known as Marlo, she told The New York Times, because of her childhood mispronunciation of the nickname. She attended Marymount High Schoolin Los Angeles. Thomas graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree: “I wanted a piece of paper that said I was qualified to do something in the world,” she said. She also was a member of the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.
Thomas appeared in many television programs including Bonanza, McHale’s Navy, Ben Casey, Arrest and Trial, The Joey Bishop Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, My Favorite Martian, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Donna Reed Show, among others. Her big break came in 1965 when she was cast by Mike Nichols in the London production of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, co-starring Daniel Massey, Kurt Kasznar, and Mildred Natwick. In 1986, she was once again cast by Nichols on Broadway in Andrew Bergman’s Social Security, co-starring Ron Silver and Olympia Dukakis.
Thomas and her father, Danny, were cast as Laurie and Ed Dubro in the gripping 1961 episode, “Honor Bright”, on CBS’s Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre. In the story line, Dubro, a former convict, opposes his daughter’s plans to marry a neighbor, Vince Harwell (Ed Nelson). When Harwell’s current wife suddenly arrives at the church to stop the wedding, Laurie flees and is crushed to death by a team of horses racing through town. Dubro plots a unique way to punish Harwell, but it costs him his own life in the process.
Thomas starred in an ABC pilot called Two’s Company in 1965. Although it did not sell, it caught the attention of an ABC programming executive. He met with Thomas, and expressed interest in casting her in her own series. With their encouragement, Thomas came up with her own idea for a show about a young woman who leaves home, moves to New York City, and struggles to become an actress. The network was initially hesitant, fearing audiences would find a series centering on a single female uninteresting or unrealistic.
The concept eventually evolved into the sitcom entitled That Girl, in which Thomas played Ann Marie, a beautiful, up-and-coming actress with a writer boyfriend, played by Ted Bessell. The series told the daily struggles of Ann holding different temporary jobs while pursuing her dream of a career on Broadway. That Girl was one of the first television shows to focus on a working, single woman who did not live with her parents, and it paved the way for many shows to come. Thomas was only the second woman to produce her own series, following Lucille Ball. That Girlaired from 1966 to 1971, producing 136 episodes, and was a solid performer in the Nielsen ratings.
In 1971, Thomas chose to end the series after five years. Both ABC and the show’s sponsor, Clairol, wanted the series finale to be a wedding between the two central characters, but Thomas rebuffed them, saying that she felt it was the wrong message to send to her female audience, because it would give the impression that the only happy ending is marriage. That Girl has since become popular in syndication.
After That Girl, eager to expand her horizons, Thomas attended the Actors Studio,[8] where she studied with Lee Strasberg until his death in 1982, and subsequently with Strasberg’s disciple Sandra Seacat. When she won her Best Dramatic Actress Emmy in 1986 for the TV movie Nobody’s Child, she thanked both individuals.
Thomas at the 41st Primetime Emmy Awards, September 17, 1989
In 1972, she released a children’s book, Free to Be… You and Me, which was inspired by her young niece Dionne Gordon. She went on to create multiple recordings and television specials of and related to that title: Free to Be… You and Me (1972, 1974) and Free to Be… A Family (1987), with Christopher Cerf. Also in 1972, she served as a California delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida.
In 1973, Thomas joined Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin as the founders of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the first women’s fund in the US. The organization was created to deliver funding and other resources to organizations that were presenting liberal women’s voices in communities nationwide.
In 1976, Thomas made a guest appearance on the NBC situation comedy The Practice as a stubborn patient of her father Danny Thomas’s character Dr. Jules Bedford, and the chemistry of father and daughter acting together made for touching hospital-room scenes.
She has made guest appearances on several television series, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (as Judge Mary Conway Clark, a mentor of ADA Casey Novak), Ballers, The New Normal, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later. She also narrated the series Happily Never After on Investigation Discovery. From 1996 to 2002, Thomas played Jennifer Aniston’s mother, Sandra Green, on the TV show Friends.
Thomas appeared in films such as Jenny (1970), Thieves (1977), In The Spirit (1990), The Real Blonde (1997), Starstruck (1998), Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), Playing Mona Lisa (2000), LOL (2012) with Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus, and Cardboard Boxer (2014). She also starred in television movies including It Happened One Christmas (1977; also produced) (a remake of It’s a Wonderful Life),[9] The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck (1984; also produced), Consenting Adult (1985), Nobody’s Child (1986; Best Dramatic Actress Emmy), Held Hostage: The Sis and Jerry Levin Story (1991; also produced), Reunion (1994; also produced), Deceit (2004; also produced), and Ultimate Betrayal (1994).
Thomas’s Broadway theatre credits include Thieves (1974), Social Security (1986), and The Shadow Box (1994), and in 2011, she starred as Doreen in Elaine May‘s comedy George Is Dead in Relatively Speaking during a set of three one-act plays (The New York Times called Thomas’ performance “sublime”). The other two plays were written by Woody Allen and Ethan Coen.
Off-Broadway, Thomas has appeared in The Guys, The Exonerated (in which she also appeared in Chicago and Boston, co-starring with Brian Dennehy), The Vagina Monologues and Love, Loss, and What I Wore. Also off-Broadway, she appeared opposite Greg Mullavey in the 2015 New York debut of Joe DiPietro‘s play Clever Little Lies at the Westside Theatre.[11] Regional theatre productions include: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Hartford Stage; Woman In Mind at the Berkshire Theatre Festival; Paper Doll, with F. Murray Abraham at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre; and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds at the Cleveland Playhouse. In 1993, she toured in the national company of Six Degrees of Separation. In the spring of 2008, she starred in Arthur Laurents’s last play, New Year’s Eve with Keith Carradine, at the George Street Playhouse.
Thomas has published seven best-selling books (three of them #1 best-sellers): Free to Be… You and Me; Free to Be… A Family; The Right Words at the Right Time; The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2: Your Turn; Marlo Thomas and Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long (the CD version of which won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children); her 2009 memoir, Growing Up Laughing; and It Ain’t Over…Till It’s Over: Reinventing Your Life and Realizing Yours Dreams Anytime, At Any Age.
Thomas serves as the National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, which was founded by her father, Danny Thomas. She donated all royalties from her 2004 book and CD Marlo Thomas and Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long (also produced with Christopher Cerf) and her two Right Words at the Right Time books to the hospital.
In 2010, Thomas created MarloThomas.com, a website for women aged 35+, associated with AOL and the Huffington Post.
Thomas is the recipient of four Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Grammy Award, a Jefferson Award, and the Peabody Award.
In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Thomas’s name and picture.
In 1996, she was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of her excellence and innovation in her creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television.[13]
On November 20, 2014, the Marlo Thomas Center for Global Education and Collaboration was opened as part of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.[14] Hillary Clinton presided over the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
On November 24, 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Thomas the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor an American civilian can receive, at a White House ceremony.
Thomas was in a long relationship with playwright Herb Gardner.
In 1977 Thomas was a guest on Donahue, the television talk show, when she and host Phil Donahue “fell in love at first sight.” They were married on May 21, 1980 and together they raised his five children.
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Joanna Barnes moved to Los Angeles soon after finishing her education, and took up a contract with Columbia Pictures. She went on to have roles in more than 20 films.
Among her most remembered roles is the snooty Gloria Upson in the film Auntie Mame(1958), which earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for New Star of the Year.[7]
Barnes became the 13th actress to play Jane when she appeared in Tarzan, the Ape Man (1959), with Denny Miller as Tarzan.
In Disney’s original 1961 version of The Parent Trap starring Hayley Mills, Barnes played gold-digger Vicki Robinson, who temporarily comes between Maureen O’Hara and Brian Keith. In the 1998 remake starring Lindsay Lohan, she played Vicki Blake, the mother of the child-hating gold-digger and fiancee Meredith Blake (Elaine Hendrix).
In the 1960s, she appeared in The War Wagon, a western movie starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.
Ms Barnes died in 2022.
New York Times obituary
The actress and author Joanna Barnes in an undated photo. “When I’m beginning to feel confined at writing,” she once said, “I take time out for acting.
May 12, 2022
Joanna Barnes, whose many screen roles included the conniving fiancée of a divorced father in the 1961 film “The Parent Trap” and, 37 years later, the character’s mother in the remake — and who, while still enjoying success as an actress, embarked on a successful second career as a writer — died on April 29 at her home in The Sea Ranch, Calif. She was 87.
The cause was cancer, her friend Sally Jackson said.
Ms. Barnes’s role in the hit Disney movie “The Parent Trap” was part of her busy first five years in Hollywood, which began in television on series including “Playhouse 90” and “Cheyenne” and then advanced to supporting roles in “Auntie Mame” (1958), opposite Rosalind Russell, and “Tarzan, the Ape Man” (1959), which starred Denny Miller in the title role.
Life magazine featured Ms. Barnes in a photo spread that promoted “Tarzan.”
“The silk-clad debutante, above, and the barelegged tree climber at right are the same — Miss Joanna Barnes of Boston and Hollywood,” the article said in part. “She is the latest and, MGM insists, the brainiest of the 20 girls who have played Jane, the genteel Englishwoman in the Tarzan films.”
In “The Parent Trap” (1961), starring Hayley Mills in the dual role of long-separated twin sisters who meet and conspire to reunite their divorced parents, Ms. Barnes played the vixenish fortune hunter dating the girls’ father, played by Brian Keith. When the film was remade 37 years later with Lindsay Lohan as its star, Ms. Barnes played the mother of her former character, who was portrayed by Elaine Hendrix.
“She had no judgment about being in a remake,” Nancy Meyers, the director of the film, said in a phone interview. “And she was one of those people who, after you say, ‘Cut!’ you want to keep talking to her.”
Ms. Barnes never became a major star, and in the 1960s she began to find diversions from acting.
In 1967 she hosted the ABC television series “Dateline: Hollywood,” on which she took viewers behind the scenes on studio tours and interviewed stars. She wrote a syndicated column, Touching Home, and a book, “Starting From Scratch” (1968), about interior decorating.
Her first novel, “The Deceivers” (1970), was a sexy Hollywood exposé that swirled around a former child actress and the powerful people in her orbit.
“Joanna Barnes is Jacqueline Susann with a brain,” the critic John Leonard wrote in The New York Times, referring to the author of the saucy 1966 saga “Valley of the Dolls.” He added, “A few of the characters in ‘The Deceivers’ seem to have been stamped out of stale Saltines; the sex grows like grass between each block of plot; and, as in too many first novels, everything gets resolved at a big party. But Miss Barnes is an excellent guide for tourists in the land of the plastic cactus.”
She also wrote the novels “Who Is Carla Hart?” (1973); “Pastora” (1980), about a 19th-century woman’s rise in San Francisco society, which was a New York Times paperback best seller; and “Silverwood” (1985).
“Acting and writing feed each other,” she told The Associated Press, adding, “When I’m beginning to feel confined at writing, I take time out for acting.”
And socializing. In 1971, she briefly dated Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard M. Nixon’s national security adviser at the time. When Maxine Cheshire of The Washington Post reported that she and Mr. Kissinger had attended a party in Hollywood together, she noted that Ms. Barnes had written “The Deceivers,” “which Kissinger hasn’t read.”
Ms. Barnes was born in Boston on Nov. 15, 1934, and raised in Hingham, Mass. Her father, John, was an insurance executive, and her mother, Alice (Mutch) Barnes, was a homemaker. She studied English at Smith College, where she received a bachelor’s degree in 1956 — the year she earned her first screen credit in the TV series “Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers.”
In 1961, she was booted from the Boston Social Register, which, she told The St. Petersburg (now Tampa Bay) Times, did not approve of actors. She had just been in the hit movie “Spartacus,” starring Kirk Douglas.
“Played a degenerate Roman lady,” she said. “Delicious part.”
Over the next three decades she was seen on many TV series, including “Bachelor Father,” “77 Sunset Strip,” “Love American Style,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Trapper John, M.D.” In the 1965-66 season she was a regular on “The Trials of O’Brien,” a short-lived series about a defense lawyer, played by Peter Falk. She played his ex-wife.
She is survived by her stepdaughters, Laura and Louise Warner; her stepson, John Warner; and her sisters, Lally Barnes Freeman and Judith Barnes Wood. Her marriages to Richard Herndon and Lawrence Dobkin ended in divorce; her marriage to Jack Lionel Warner ended with his death in 2012.
For all her success on the screen, her interest in acting had faded — until the remake of “The Parent Trap” came along.
“Her part was small but memorable, and I definitely didn’t need to tell her how to play it,” Ms. Meyers wrote in an email. “She knew exactly what to do and played it to the hilt
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Charlie De Melo stars in “Coronation Street”.
Charles Alexander De Melo (born 26 September 1989) is a British actor. From 2017 to 2022, he portrayed the role of Imran Habeeb on the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, for which he was nominated for the British Soap Award for Best Leading Performer.
De Melo was born on 26 September 1989 in Barnstaple, Devon, and later moved to London, where he attended the University of London. He later graduated from ArtsEd in 2012. He began his acting career in 2012, appearing in the short films Rewind and Innocence. In 2013, he appeared as Tamir Niaz in an episode of the BBC soap opera Doctors. In 2014, he portrayed Josh Ware in an episode of Casualty, and in 2015, De Melo was cast in the BBC One drama series The Interceptor as Martin, a former MI6 agent and a member of the UNIT team. In 2016, he appeared in the direct-to-video sequel Jarhead 3: The Siege. In 2017, De Melo appeared in EastEnders as PC Jaz Jones on a recurring basis, appearing in five episodes. Later that year, he provided additional voices for the video game Need for Speed Payback.
In November 2017, De Melo joined the cast of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street as Imran Habeeb.[9] The character was introduced as the brother of established character Rana Habeeb (Bhavna Limbachia) and arrives to attend Rana’s wedding. The character returned in January 2018, after being promoted to a regular character, with storylines including his relationship with Toyah Battersby (Georgia Taylor), a one-night stand with Abi Franklin (Sally Carman which results in Abi getting pregnant and a custody battle for their son. In March 2022, it was announced that De Melo had decided to leave the soap, and Imran was killed off after sustaining injuries in a car accident and ultimately dying of cardiac arrest in scenes broadcast on June 2022. Following his exit from the soap, De Melo announced he would be starring in a theatre adaption of The Clothes They Stood Up In, based on the 2001 book by Alan Bennett and in 2023, he is set to appear as Borachio in the play Much Ado About Nothing.
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Ryan Clayton
Ryan Clayton was born 6th August 1992 in Hyde and appeared on Coronation Street between January and October 2018 as Josh Tucker.
Graduating from ALRA with a BA Hons in Acting, his other television credits include Exile and Young Dracula, along with the short films I Shall Remember Them, Hard Time and Two Wrongs.
On stage he has appeared in productions of All in Good Time, Three Sisters, Guiding Star, Twelfth Night, Electra, Candide, Vernon God Little and The Box of Tricks.
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Paul Maxwell (Wikipedia)
Paul Maxwell was born in 1921 and was a Canadian actor who worked mostly in British cinema and television, in which he was usually cast as American characters. In terms of audience, his most notable role was probably that of Steve Tanner, the ex-GI husband of Elsie Tanner in the soap opera Coronation Street from 1967 until 1968.
During World War II, Maxwell served in the Royal Canadian Artillery. He studied at Yale University, and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts.
Maxwell started as an actor in the U.S., appearing in series such as Dragnet and Alfred Hitchcock Presents before emigrating to Britain in 1960. In the next decade, Maxwell appeared in many TV series produced by ITC Entertainment, such as Danger Man and The Baron. He also voiced North American characters in series filmed by Gerry Anderson‘s production company Century 21, most prominently the leading character of Colonel Steve Zodiac in Fireball XL5 (1962) and the supporting character of Captain Grey in Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967). Maxwell also made several appearances in UFO (1970).
Maxwell also starred as the “Man with the Panama Hat” in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), as a C.I.A chief in The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), and as General Maxwell Taylor in A Bridge Too Far (1977). His real passion, however, was theatre; he starred in the West End several times, with roles in Twelve Angry Menand the musical Promises, Promises.[2]
After the Second World War, Maxwell married Mary Lindsay. The couple had one daughter, named Lindsay. He died in 1991 at the age of 70.
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Sam Robertson (Wikipedia)
Sam Robertson was born in 1985 and is a Scottish actor and model best known for his roles as Flynn on E4 comedy-drama Beaver Falls, and as Adam Barlow in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.
Robertson was born in Dundee, Scotland. He studied Drama and English at the University of Manchester, but dropped out at 18 to focus on his role as Adam Barlow in Coronation Street.
He is a keen follower of his local football team, Dundee Football Club.
In 2005 and 2006, he took part in the second and third series of Sky One‘s The Match.
In 2009, Sam joined the BBC Scotland soap opera River City as new character Innes Maitland.
Robertson played Flynn in the E4 series Beaver Falls, which aired in July 2011 in the UK.
When he was eighteen, he joined the cast of Coronation Street as Adam Barlow.
In January 2013, Robertson was a housemate in the eleventh series of Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 5 in the UK.[3] He was the second evictee of the series.
In 2016, Robertson reprised his role as Adam Barlow in Coronation Street.
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Damien Lewis (Wikipedia)
Damien Lewis was born in 1971 is an English actor and producer. He played U.S. Army Major Richard Winters in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and also portrayed U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brodyin the Showtime series Homeland (which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award). His performance as King Henry VIII in Wolf Hall earned him his third Primetime Emmy nomination and fourth Golden Globe nomination. He currently plays Bobby Axelrod in the Showtime series Billions (2016–present), and portrays actor Steve McQueen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Lewis was born in St John’s Wood, London, the elder son of Charlotte Mary (néeBowater) and John Watcyn Lewis, a City insurance broker with Lloyd’s.[2][3][4][5] His paternal grandparents were Welsh.
As a child, Lewis made several visits to the U.S. to visit relatives during his summers. He first decided to become an actor at age 16. He was educated at the independent Ashdown House School in Forest Row, East Sussex, and at Eton College. He graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1993, after which he served as a stage actor for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
During his time with the RSC, he played Borgheim in Adrian Noble‘s production of Henrik Ibsen‘s Little Eyolf and Posthumus in William Shakespeare‘s Cymbeline. He also starred in another of Ibsen’s plays, as Karsten Bernick in Pillars of the Community at the National Theatre in November 2005.
Lewis once worked as a telemarketer selling car alarms, a job he detested.[13] He appeared in Robinson Crusoe (1997) as Patrick Conner. He appeared in Jonathan Kent‘s production of Hamlet, playing Laertes. This production was seen by Steven Spielberg, who later cast Lewis as Richard Winters in Band of Brothers, the first role of several that required him to have a credible American accent.
Subsequently, Lewis portrayed Soames Forsyte in the ITV series The Forsyte Saga, which earned him rave reviews. He returned to the US to star in Dreamcatcher, a Stephen King film about a man who becomes possessed by an evil alien. The character is American but when possessed he takes on a British accent.[10] On the heels of this role, he starred in Keane as a Manhattanite with a fragile mental state who is searching for his missing daughter. Despite the film’s poor box-office performance, the role won Lewis rave reviews.
He played Jeffrey Archer in the TV special Jeffrey Archer: The Truth. Since 2004, he has appeared in a number of films, as well as the 2005 BBC TV adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing, as part of the ShakespeaRe-Told season. Lewis played the role of Yassen Gregorovich in the film Stormbreaker. In 2006, he appeared in Stephen Poliakoff‘s BBC drama Friends and Crocodiles. He has appeared on BBC’s Have I Got News for You as guest host several times; on 10 November 2006, 1 May 2009, 18 November 2010, 27 April 9 November 2012 and 31 October 2014.
In 2008, Lewis starred as the main character Charlie Crews in the US television series Life on NBC. The show premiered in the U.S. on 26 September 2007 and was affected by the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. Only half of the first season’s shows were produced. Regardless, the show won a 2008 AFI Award for best television series. Although the show received critical acclaim, when it returned the following television season, it was shuffled from night to night, and eventually cancelled by NBC to clear its time slot for the less expensive nightly programme, The Jay Leno Show.
Lewis appeared, the following year, in the lead role in The Baker, a film directed by his brother, Gareth. Damian took a supporting role of Rizza in The Escapist, which he also helped produce. He led the cast in Martin Crimp‘s version of Molière‘s comedy, The Misanthrope, which opened in December 2009 at the Comedy Theatre, London. Other cast members included Tara Fitzgerald, Keira Knightley and Dominic Rowan.
Since 2010, Lewis has played Tory Prime Minister Simon Laity in two seasons of Number 10 on BBC Radio 4.
He played Gareth, the father of an 11-year-old Liverpool F.C. fan, in the 2011 film Will.
From 2011 to 2013, Lewis had a starring role as Gunnery Sergeant Nicholas Brody in the Showtime series Homeland.[23] In 2013, he narrated poetry for The Love Book App, an “interactive anthology of love literature developed by Allie Byrne Esiri“.
Since 2016, he stars as billionaire Bobby Axelrod in the Showtime series Billions.
Lewis was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to drama.
On 4 July 2007, Lewis married actress Helen McCrory. They have a daughter, Manon (born 8 September 2006), and a son, Gulliver (born 2 November 2007). Lewis and his family left England in the latter half of 2007 to live in Los Angeles, California, while he worked on the NBC-TV crime drama Life. However, after the completion of that series’ final episode in early 2009, he, his wife, and children returned to England to reside in a Victorian townhouse located in Tufnell Park, in north London. He is a cousin of Alderman William Russell, Lord Mayor-elect.
In March 2010, Lewis became a trade justice ambassador for the charity Christian Aid. In May 2006 and June 2018, he played for England in Soccer Aid, and played golf for Europe in the All*Star Cup in August 2006, both shown on ITV.
Damian Lewis is an avid supporter of Liverpool Football Club.
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“Daily Telegraph” obituary from December 2015:
Beth Rogan, who has died aged 84, was a Rank starlet who, in the 1950s and 1960s, appeared opposite Herbert Lom, Donald Sinden and Ray Harryhausen’s animated creatures, before marrying into high society.
Lively and prone to wildness, she was reputedly the inspiration for Diana Scott, the young model in John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965), a role that won Julie Christie a best actress Oscar. There were certainly parallels: both were headstrong ingénues who glimpsed fame and were pursued by millionaires.
One day in the mid-1950s Beth Rogan was spotted queuing at the All-England Tennis Club at Wimbledon as Carlo Riccono, an Italian television correspondent, drove past with a friend from Rank studios. The pair pulled in and invited her to join them at centre court. Two weeks later she received a contract from Rank and was immersed in the hothouse environment of the Company of Youth – popularly known as the Rank Charm School – in a church hall adjacent to Rank’s studio in Highbury.
Rogan and a flock of other hopefuls, including Joan Collins and Diana Dors, signed up to represent the studio at events and provide a pool of talent for casting directors. It was, a historian of the studio noted, “a sort of cross between Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio and a London finishing school for young ladies”.
High on the curriculum was the art of “desirability”, for which Beth Rogan had a natural talent. Her coal-dark hair, feline eyes and pillowy pout proved a winning combination. She featured in advertisements for Disprin and Babycham and while her acting career never truly took off she was an appealing bit-part player in several mainstream features and a capable leading lady – screaming or swooning as required – in the low-budget thrillers Innocent Meeting (1959, touted as “Teddy Boy meets girl – then hell breaks loose!”) and Compelled (1960).
Her best-known role was as Elena Fairchild, a sultry shipwrecked aristocrat, in Mysterious Island (1961), a Jules Verne adventure starring Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo. During the shoot she was pitted against giant hens and bees, animated by Harryhausen, while running around in a loosely laced buckskin tunic dress.
It was enough to draw the attention of Tony Samuel, a member of the Shell oil dynasty and later publisher of PG Wodehouse. In 1962 the couple married at the Chelsea register office. “I became quite a jet-setter after marrying a rich man,” she said later.
She was born Jenifer Puckle (and would remain Jeni to friends and family) on July 19 1931 in Walmer, Kent. Her father Kenneth was a major in the Royal Marines who had served at Gallipoli and her mother Enid (née Gray) was a housewife. Her sister, Priscilla, married Brigadier Charles Carroll, MC.
Jenifer attended school near Farnham and taught Latin to boys at a local prep school. She then studied at Wimbledon School of Art, retaining a lifelong passion for illustration. She married one of her teachers, Ted Draper, in order, she later admitted, to get away from her family.
But life in Wimbledon bored her, the chance encounter with Riccono developed into an affair, and her husband Draper gallantly bowed out, faking an assignation at a Brighton hotel in order to expedite a divorce.
By the late 1950s she had taken the stage name Beth Rogan and her Rank contract was beginning to pay dividends. She provided a pretty face in minor supporting roles opposite Dirk Bogarde in Doctor at Large, Kenneth More in The Admirable Crichton (both 1957) and Donald Sinden in The Captain’s Table (1959), and went out on the town with the playboy entrepreneur James Hanson.
She appeared en déshabillé on the cover of Picturegoer while the great Rank stills photographer George Courtney Ward captured her in frilly gingham beachware on the deck of a ship. “Coming on to rain?” enquired the publicity caption. “Don’t worry, there’s room for some lucky chap under Beth Rogan’s parasol.”
For The Captain’s Table she appeared in a striking white bikini with, as she recalled, “heavily padded bosoms”: “It caused quite a stir. I wore another to go swimming with a friend at Roehampton baths in Surrey and stuffed the top with some false breast enhancers, which promptly flew out as I dived into the pool.”
After marrying Samuel she lived in London and Arndilly, her husband’s Adam house on the River Spey. “We’d spend our summers on yachts off the Italian and French Riviera,” she said. The marriage was not a success, however. Samuel, some 17 years her senior, could be cantankerous and Beth Rogan was only partly committed to her role as chatelaine of Arndilly: she would decamp to Italy for August while Samuel hosted grouse shooting parties. The couple divorced in 1965.
Beth Rogan moved to Smith Street in Chelsea, holidayed in Morocco and cultivated colourful friends. She might get her chums into scrapes, one friend recalled, and could be “dangerous to know”, but would get away with it because of her charm.
She made a final screen appearance, opposite Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr, in Richard Donner’s caper Salt and Pepper (1968).
Her third marriage, in 1971, was to Timothy Cassel QC, whom she had met at a party. “She was absolutely magical,” he recalled. Although she was by then in her forties, the couple had a daughter, Natalia, and son, Alexander.
That marriage was dissolved in 1976, after which Beth Rogan lived in West Sussex and Hampshire, where she enjoyed hosting friends, painting and gardening.
She is survived by her children; after her death, they discovered a crop of home-grown cannabis drying out in her airing cupboard.
Beth Rogan, born July 19 1931, died November 25 2015
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IMDB Entry:
Alfred Molina was born in 1953 in London, England. His mother, Giovanna (Bonelli), was an Italian-born cook and cleaner, and his father, Esteban Molina, was a Spanish-born waiter and chauffeur. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. His stage work includes two major Royal National Theatre productions, Tennessee Williams‘ “The Night of the Iguana” (as Shannon) and David Mamet‘s “Speed the Plow” (as Fox), plus a splendid performance in Yasmina Reza‘s “Art” (his Broadway debut), for which he received a Tony Award nomination in 1998. He made his film debut in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and got a good part in Letter to Brezhnev (1985) (as a Soviet sailor who spends a night in Liverpool), but his movie breakthrough came two years later when he played–superbly–Kenneth Halliwell, the tragic lover of playwright Joe Orton, in Stephen Frears‘ Prick Up Your Ears (1987). He was also outstanding in Enchanted April (1991), The Perez Family (1995) (as a Cuban immigrant), Anna Karenina (1997) (as Levin) and Chocolat (2000) (as the narrow-minded mayor of a small French town circa 1950s, who tries to shut down a chocolate shop).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Thanassis Agathos<thanaga@hol.gr
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