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
John Castle (Wikipedia)
John Castle was born in 1940) and is an English retired actor. He is best known for playing Bill in Blowup (1966) and Geoffrey in The Lion in Winter (1968). His other notable credits include Man of La Mancha (1972) and RoboCop 3 (1993).
Born in Croydon, Castle was educated at Brighton College and Trinity College, Dublin, and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
Castle’s first appearance was as Westmoreland on stage in Henry V on 5 June 1964, at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park. His first Broadway theatre appearance was in February 1970, as Jos in the short-lived musical Georgy.
In 1967 he made his screen debut as the plotting Prince Geoffrey in the big-screen adaptation of The Lion in Winter. The role garnered him much praise and set him on his way as a supporting actor in London and Hollywood. According to Rotten Tomatoes, The Lion in Winter is Castle’s “highest-rated” film. Also in 1967, he appeared in the British TV Series, The Prisoner as Number 12, a sympathetic guardian in the episode, entitled “The General”.
Castle played the role of Octavius Caesar in Charlton Heston‘s poorly reviewed version of Antony and Cleopatra (1972).
Castle appeared as Carruthers, the most honourable of a trio of schemers in an episode of Granada Television‘s series Sherlock Holmes(“The Solitary Cyclist”, 1984). His association with Sherlock Holmes continued with his role as Nigel St Clair in the film version of The Crucifer of Blood (1991).
He played Inspector Craddock in an adaptation of the Agatha Christie story “A Murder is Announced” (1985), arole he recreated in the Miss Marple mystery The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1992). He also played the title role in the 2000 made-for-TV version of Christie’s Lord Edgware Dies. In 1990 Castle starred as Superintendent George Thorne in the BBC’s radio adaptations of John Penn’s novels. Castle appeared in other TV series, including I Claudius, Ben Hall, and Lost Empires.
Among Castle’s stage performances was his role as Oswald in the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s revival of Ibsen’s Ghosts in 1967, with Dame Peggy Ashcroft as Oswald’s mother Mrs Alving and Gandhi in the play Gandhi at the Tricycle theatre London.
Castle is married to writer Maggie Wadey.
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Adam Driver (Wikipedia)
Adam Driver was born in 1983) is an American actor. He rose to prominence in the supporting role of Adam Sackler in the HBO comedy-drama series Girls (2012–2017), for which he received three consecutive nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. He made his Broadway debut in Mrs. Warren’s Profession (2010) and subsequently appeared in Man and Boy (2011). Driver went on to play supporting roles in such films as Lincoln (2012), Frances Ha (2012), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and Silence (2016).
Driver won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his lead role in the drama Hungry Hearts(2014) and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor for playing a poet in Jim Jarmusch‘s Paterson (2016). He earned nominations for the Golden Globeand the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a police detective in the black comedy film BlacKkKlansman (2018). Driver gained wider recognition for playing Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy films The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi(2017), and the upcoming The Rise of Skywalker (2019). He returned to Broadway in 2019 with Burn This, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
Driver is the co-founder of Arts in the Armed Forces, a non-profit that brings high-quality arts programming to active-duty service members, veterans, military support staff and their families around the world free of charge. He founded the organization with his wife Joanne Tucker in 2006.
Driver was born in San Diego, California, the son of Nancy Wright (née Sneedham), a paralegal, and Joe Douglas Driver. His father’s family is from Arkansas and his mother’s family is from Indiana. His stepfather, Rodney G. Wright, is a minister at a Baptist church. He has English, Irish, Scottish, German, and Dutch ancestry. When Driver was seven years old, he moved with his older sister and mother to her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, and attended Mishawaka High School, where he graduated in 2001. Driver was raised Baptist; he had a religious upbringing and sang in the choir at church.
As a teenager, Driver described himself as a “misfit,” telling M Magazine that he climbed radio towers, set objects on fire, and co-founded a fight club with his friends after being inspired by the film Fight Club. After high school, and before his military service, Driver worked as a door-to-door salesman selling Kirby vacuum cleaners and as a telemarketer for a basement waterproofing company and Ben Franklin Construction. After high school, Driver applied to the Juilliard School for drama, but was rejected.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Driver joined the United States Marine Corps and was assigned to Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines as an 81mm mortar man. He served for two years and eight months with no deployments before breaking his sternum while mountain biking. He was medically discharged with the rank of Lance Corporal. After leaving the Marine Corps, Driver attended the University of Indianapolis for a year, then auditioned again and was accepted into Julliard to study drama. Driver said that he was seen as an intimidating and volatile figure by his classmates, and struggled to fit into a lifestyle so different from the Marines. He was a member of the Drama Division’s Group 38 (2005–2009), where he met his wife Joanne Tucker. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2009.
After graduating from Juilliard, Driver began his acting career in New York City, appearing in both Broadway and off-Broadwayproductions. Like many aspiring actors, he occasionally worked as a busboy and waiter. Driver also appeared in several television shows and short films. He made his feature film debut in Clint Eastwood‘s biographical drama J. Edgar in 2011.
In 2012, Driver was cast in the HBO comedy-drama series Girls, as the emotionally unstable Adam Sackler, the boyfriend of the lead character Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham). During the show’s run he received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role. The same year, Driver played supporting roles in two critically acclaimed films, as telegraph and cipher officer Samuel Beckwith in Steven Spielberg‘s historical drama Lincoln, and Lev Shapiro in Noah Baumbach‘s comedy-drama Frances Ha. He also appeared in the drama Not Waving But Drowning and the romantic-comedy Gayby. Additionally, he garnered major off-Broadway recognition for playing Cliff, a working-class Welsh houseguest in Look Back in Anger,winning the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play.
In 2013, Driver appeared in the drama Bluebird and the romantic-comedy What If. He played Al Cody, a musician, in the Coen Brothers‘ black comedy tragedy Inside Llewyn Davis, and photographer Rick Smolan in the drama Tracks. In 2014, he played Jude, a despairing father, in the drama Hungry Hearts; Jaime, an aspiring filmmaker, in Noah Baumbach‘s comedy While We’re Young; and Philip, the black sheep of a dysfunctional Jewish family, in the comedy-drama This Is Where I Leave You. For his performance in Hungry Hearts, Driver won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 71st Venice International Film Festival.
In February 2014, Variety reported that Driver would play the villain, Kylo Ren, in J. J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). On April 29, 2014, he was confirmed as a cast member. The Force Awakens was released on December 18, 2015 to commercial and critical success. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardianhighlighted Driver’s performance in his review of the film calling him “gorgeously cruel, spiteful and capricious… very suited to Kylo Ren’s fastidious and amused contempt for his enemies’ weakness and compassion.”
In 2016, Driver played a supporting role in Jeff Nichols‘ sci-fi thriller Midnight Special, which was released on March 18, 2016. He also co-starred in Martin Scorsese‘s historical drama Silence (2016) as Father Francisco Garupe, a 17th-century Portuguese Jesuit priest, alongside Andrew Garfield. In preparation for the role, Driver lost almost 50 pounds. Jim Jarmusch‘s drama Paterson was Driver’s final film of 2016, in which he played Paterson, a bus driver who writes poetry. The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival and was released on December 28, 2016. Driver’s performance was acclaimed and he received multiple nominations for Best Actor from critics associations, winning several, including the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor. Peter Traversof Rolling Stone wrote “Driver’s indelibly moving portrayal is so lived-in and lyrical you hardly recognize it as acting.” Paterson was included in many critics’ top ten lists of best films of 2016.
In 2017, Driver played a cameo in Noah Baumbach‘s The Meyerowitz Stories as Randy, marking his third appearance in one of Baumbach’s films. The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival and was released on October 13, 2017 on Netflix. He also portrayed Clyde, a one-armed redneck veteran, in Steven Soderbergh‘s Logan Lucky, which was released on August 18, 2017.[42] He reprised his role as Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which was released on December 15, 2017. His performance was positively received, with his character lauded as the best in the series: David Edelstein of Vulture wrote, “the core of The Last Jedi — of this whole trilogy, it seems — is Driver’s Kylo Ren, who ranks with cinema’s most fascinating human monsters.”
In 2018, Driver portrayed a Jewish police detective, Phillip “Flip” Zimmerman, who helps infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan in Spike Lee‘s comedy-drama BlacKkKlansman. The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival and was theatrically released on August 10. He received critical acclaim for his performance in the film and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Driver also starred as the lead character Toby Grisoni in Terry Gilliam‘s adventure-comedy The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which also premiered at Cannes. In 2019, he starred as Daniel Jones in Scott Z. Burns‘ political drama The Report, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. Driver returned to Broadway to play Pale against Keri Russell in a Michael Mayer-directed production of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This. He received acclaim for his explosive performance and was nominated for Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
In 2019, Driver was part of the ensemble cast of the Jim Jarmusch zombie comedy movie The Dead Don’t Die.
Driver will co-star with Scarlett Johansson in the upcoming Marriage Story. He is set to star in Sylvester Stallone‘s Tough As They Come and Leos Carax‘s upcoming music drama Annette. He will reprise his role as Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Driver married actress Joanne Tucker in June 2013. They live together in Brooklyn Heights with dog Moose, a Rottweiler-Pitbull mix.
He is the co-founder of Arts in the Armed Forces (AITAF), a non-profit that performs theatre for all branches of the military, both in the United States and abroad.
Indie-rock band Sipper has a song dedicated to Driver.
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Janina Faye (Wikipedia)
Janina Faye was born in 1948 and is an English actress and director. She is a daughter of Florence Louisa Jonathan and Jan Smigielski. Her father was a Polish pilot from No. 303 Squadron RAF during the Battle of Britain.
She began her career as an actress in 1956 and includes theatre and television work in addition to many film appearances. In 1961 she appeared as Helen Keller in the William Gibson play, The Miracle Worker. In 1962 she appeared as Anne in the thriller Don’t Talk to Strange Men. In 1971, she appeared in an episode of Doctor at Large. She appeared in several major fantasy and horror filmswhen she was very young, such as Hammer Films‘ original version of Dracula (1958), Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960) and The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960).
In 1998, she teamed up with director Paul Cotgrove and Hammer co-star Ingrid Pitt to make the short British horror film Green Fingers, a story about a woman whose garden has strange properties with an ability to grow anything, even things that are no longer living.
She often appears at signings.
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Ron Reagan Jnr (Wikipedia)
RonReagan was born in1958 and is an American former radio host and political analyst for KIRO radio and later, Air America Radio, where he hosted his own daily three-hour show. He is a commentator and contributor to programming on the MSNBC cable news and commentary network. His liberal views contrast those of his late father, Republican United States President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, the son of Ronald Reagan and his second wife, Nancy Davis Reagan. The family lived in Sacramento while his father was governor, from 1967 to 1975. His sister, Patti Davis, is five and a half years older. His elder brother Michael Reagan, adopted as an infant by Ronald Reagan and his first wife Jane Wyman, is 13 years older. He also had two half-sisters born to Reagan and Wyman, Maureen Reagan (1941–2001) and Christine Reagan, who was born prematurely, on June 26, 1947, and died the same day. At an early age, his father, Ronald Reagan, often joked that they were related to every royal family with the name O’Regan in Europe. Burke’s Peerage provided the Reagans with their family tree, which lacked any direct connection to European royalty.
Reagan dropped out of Yale University in 1976 after one semester to become a balletdancer. He joined the Joffrey Ballet in pursuit of his lifelong dream and participated in the Joffrey II Dancers, a troupe for beginning dancers, where he was mentored by Sally Brayley. Time wrote in 1980: “It is widely known that Ron’s parents have not managed to see a single ballet performance of their son, who is clearly very good, having been selected to the Joffrey second company, and is their son nonetheless. Ron talks of his parents with much affection. But these absences are strange and go back a ways.” Reagan and Nancy went to see Ron perform at the Lisner Auditorium on Monday, May 18, 1981. The elder Reagan commented in his White House diary on this day that Ron’s performance was reminiscent of Fred Astaire.
Reagan became more politically active after his father left the White House in 1989. In contrast to his father, the younger Reagan’s views were unabashedly liberal. In a 2009 Vanity Fair interview, Ron said that he did not speak out politically during his father’s term because the press “never cared about my opinions as such, only as they related to him“, adding that he did not want to create the impression that he and his father were on bad terms because of political differences. In 1991, Reagan hosted The Ron Reagan Show, a syndicated late-night talk show addressing political issues of the day, which was canceled after a brief run since it was unable to compete with the higher ratings of The Arsenio Hall Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Nightline.
Reagan has worked in recent years as a magazine journalist, and has hosted talk shows on cable TV networks such as the Animal Planetnetwork. In Britain, he is best known for having co-presented Record Breakers (based on The Guinness Book of Records) for the BBC. Reagan presented a report from the United States each week.
He has served on the board of the Creative Coalition, an organization founded in 1989 by a group that included Susan Sarandon and Christopher Reeve, to politically mobilize entertainers and artists, generally for First Amendment rights, and causes such as arts advocacy and public education. From February to December 2005, Reagan co-hosted the talk show Connected: Coast to Coast with Monica Crowley on MSNBC.
Until its demise in 2010, Air America Media aired The Ron Reagan Show. The program made its debut on September 8, 2008.
In 2011, he published My Father at 100: A Memoir. In interviews promoting the book, Reagan described noticing his father was having certain mental lapses which, in hindsight, caused the younger Reagan to speculate subsequently that his father may have already been in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease while still in office. This assertion was attacked by critics, including his brother, Michael Reagan. Ron Reagan subsequently clarified that he did not feel the lapses were evidence of “dementia.”
In July 2004, Reagan spoke at the Democratic National Convention about his support for lifting Bush’s restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, from which he expected a cure or new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, of which his father had recently died. “There are those who would stand in the way of this remarkable future, who would deny the federal funding so crucial to basic research. A few of these folks, needless to say, are just grinding a political axe and they should be ashamed of themselves,” Ron Reagan said of the restrictions. “We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.” Reagan’s mother Nancy also supported this position.
In September 2004, he told the Sunday Herald newspaper that the George W. Bush Administration had “cheated to get into the White House. It’s not something Americans ever want to think about their government. My sense of these people is that they don’t have any respect for the public at large. They have a revolutionary mindset. I think they feel that anything they can do to prevail — lie, cheat, whatever — is justified by their revolutionary aims” and that he feared Bush was “hijacking” his father’s reputation.
Reagan later wrote the essay “The Case Against George W. Bush by Ron Reagan” for Esquire. He voted for Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Reagan endorsed then-senator Barack Obama of Illinois for president in the 2008 presidential election. In November 2015, Reagan endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2016 Democratic Party primaries.
Ron Reagan lives in Seattle. He married Doria Palmieri, a clinical psychologist, in 1980. She died in 2014 from neuromuscular disease. They had no children.
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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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Sites of Interest
These are some of my favourite film websites. They are a fantastic resource for any film buff.