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Sunday, July 1, 2012

Angela Lansbury Biography


Angela Brigid Lansbury, CBE (born 16 October 1925) is an English-born US-naturalized actress and singer in theatre, television, and motion pictures. Her career has spanned eight decades and earned an unsurpassed number of performance Tony Awards (tied with Julie Harris and Audra McDonald), with five wins. Her first film appearance was in the film Gaslight (1944) as a conniving maid, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Among her other films are The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Anastasia (1997).

She expanded her repertoire to Broadway musicals and television in the 1950s and was particularly successful in Broadway productions of Gypsy, Mame and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Lansbury is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her twelve-year run starring as writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the American television series Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996). Her recent roles include Lady Adelaide Stitch in the film Nanny McPhee (2005), Leona Mullen in the 2007 Broadway play Deuce, Madame Arcati in the 2009 Broadway revival of the play Blithe Spirit and Madame Armfeldt in the 2010 Broadway revival of the musical A Little Night Music.

Lansbury has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, and has been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and nineteen Emmy Awards.


Angela Lansbury

Early life
Lansbury was born in Poplar, London, to Northern Irish-born actress Moyna MacGill and timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the London Borough of Poplar. Her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader George Lansbury. She is the elder sister of twins Edgar Lansbury and Bruce Lansbury, both producers, and a cousin of the late English animator and puppeteer Oliver Postgate. Another cousin was the academic and novelist Coral Lansbury, whose son is former Australian federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull.

Her earliest theatrical influences were the teenaged actress Deanna Durbin, screen star Irene Dunne and Lansbury's mother, who encouraged her daughter's ambition by taking her to plays at the Old Vic. She attended South Hampstead High School for Girls, the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art from 1939–40, and the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in New York from 1940-42. Following her father's death from stomach cancer in 1934, her mother became involved with a Scotsman named Leckie Forbes, and the two merged their families under one roof in Hampstead. A former colonel with the British Army in India, Forbes proved to be a jealous and suspicious tyrant who ruled the household with an iron fist.

Angela Lansbury

Just prior to the London Blitz, Lansbury's mother took her children to New York City. They arrived in NY on August 25, 1940. When her mother settled in Hollywood following a tour of a Noël Coward play, Lansbury (and later her brothers) joined her there. Lansbury worked at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. At one of the parties that her mother hosted for British émigré performers in their Laurel Canyon home, Lansbury met the casting director for the upcoming film Gaslight (1944), and he offered her the part of Nancy Oliver, Ingrid Bergman's conniving maid. This was the 18-year-old Lansbury's first film role. She was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar and the following year gained another nomination for her performance as the doomed Sibyl Vane in the film The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945).

Angela Lansbury

Personal life
In 1945, Lansbury married American actor Richard Cromwell when he was 35 and she was 19. Cromwell was bisexual, and the marriage dissolved after a year, but the two reportedly remained friends. In 1949, Lansbury married British-born actor and businessman Peter Shaw. She had two children, Anthony Peter Shaw (born January 7, 1952) and Deidre Angela Shaw (born April 26, 1953). Shaw was instrumental in guiding and managing Lansbury's career. They were married for 54 years until his death in January 2003.

Lansbury became a naturalized US citizen in 1951.

She is the mother of two, stepmother of one and a grandmother. A fire destroyed the family's Malibu home in September 1970, prompting a move to a rural area of County Cork in Ireland. Her daughter and son-in-law, a chef, are restaurateurs in West Los Angeles. Her son Anthony Shaw, after a brief fling with acting, became producer/director of Murder, She Wrote and currently is a television executive and director.

Lansbury's half-sister Isolde was married to Peter Ustinov for some years, but they divorced in 1946. Lansbury and Ustinov appeared together once in Death on the Nile (1978). She is related by marriage to actress Ally Sheedy, ex-wife of her nephew David Lansbury. Both her brothers, twins Bruce and Edgar, are successful theatre producers: Edgar was instrumental in bringing Godspell to Broadway, and Bruce Lansbury was a television producer for such shows as The Wild Wild West and Mission: Impossible and Murder, She Wrote.

Angela Lansbury

Lansbury was a long-time resident of Brentwood, a neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California, where she supported various philanthropies. She had knee-replacement surgery on July 14, 2005. She had two hip replacement surgeries. In 2006, she moved to New York City, purchasing a condominium at a reported cost of $2 million. The following year, she returned to Broadway in Deuce, opposite Marian Seldes. Lansbury's papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

Angela Lansbury endorsed president Barack Obama for re-election saying that she will be voting for him.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Lansbury

Angela Bassett Biography


Angela Evelyn Bassett (born August 16, 1958) is an American actress and comedienne. She has become well known for her biographical film roles portraying real life women in African American culture, including Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It, as well as Betty Shabazz in Malcolm X and Panther, Rosa Parks in The Rosa Parks Story, Katherine Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream,and Voletta Wallace in Notorious.

Angela Bassett

Early life
Bassett was born Angela Evelyn Bassett in Harlem, New York on August 16, 1958, the daughter of Betty Jane and Daniel Benjamin Bassett. After her parents' separation, she relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida, where she and her sister D'nette were raised by their social worker/civil servant mother. As her interest in entertainment developed, Angela and her sister would often put on shows, reading poems or performing popular music for their family. At Boca Ciega High School, Bassett was a cheerleader and a member of the debate team, student government, drama club and choir.

Bassett attended Yale University and received her B.A. degree in African-American studies in 1980. In 1983, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama. At Yale, Bassett met her future husband Courtney B. Vance, a 1986 graduate of the drama school. After graduation, Bassett worked as a receptionist for a beauty salon and as a photo researcher.

Bassett soon looked for acting work in the New York theater. One of her first New York performances came in 1985 when she appeared in J. E. Franklin's Black Girl at Second Stage Theatre. She appeared in two August Wilson plays at the Yale Repertory Theatre under the direction of her long-time instructor Lloyd Richards. The Wilson plays featuring Bassett were Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1986). In 2006, she had the opportunity to work on the Wilson canon again, starring in Fences alongside longtime collaborator Laurence Fishburne at the Pasadena Playhouse in California.

Angela Bassett

Career
Television and film career
In 1985, Bassett made her first television appearance as a prostitute in the TV movie Doubletake. However, she made her official film debut as a news reporter in F/X (1986). Bassett moved to Los Angeles and gained recognition in the films Boyz n the Hood (1991) and Malcolm X (1992). For her portrayal of Betty Shabazz, she earned an Image Award.

In 1992, Bassett played Katherine Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream. Later that year, Bassett was cast as Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It (1993). Bassett won a Golden Globe and earned an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Turner. She was the first African-American to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Angela Bassett

Bassett starred in three movies in 1995, which were released with varied reactions from critics: Vampire in Brooklyn, Strange Days, and Waiting to Exhale (where she worked with author Terry McMillan). In Strange Days, Bassett played Lornette "Mace" Mason, a chauffeur and bodyguard. In Vampire in Brooklyn, she played Rita Veder, a tortured cop with a dark secret. Bassett's character in Waiting to Exhale, Bernadine Harris, was betrayed by her husband and in revenge she set fire to his entire wardrobe and vehicle, then sold what was left for one dollar.

In 1998, Bassett starred in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, once again collaborating with McMillan. She played Stella, a 40-year-old American professional woman who falls in love with a 20-year-old Jamaican man. In 1999, Bassett starred in Music of the Heart, once collaborating with the horror icon Wes Craven. In 2000, Bassett turned down the lead role in Monster's Ball because of the script's sexual content; the role earned Halle Berry the Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 2003, she read from the WPA slave narratives in Unchained Memories. In the 1930s, about 100,000 former slaves were still living during the Great Depression, of which 2,300 were interviewed part of the Federal Writers' Project. The transcripts of the Slave Narratives collection of the Library of Congress is a record of slavery, bondage and misery.

Bassett joined the regular cast of ER for the show's final season (2008–2009). She portrayed Dr. Catherine Banfield, an exacting Chief of the ER who was also working to recover from the death of a son and to bring another child into her family. Bassett's husband Courtney Vance played her television husband on ER as Russell Banfield.

In 2010, Bassett lent her voice to portray First Lady Michelle Obama on an episode of The Simpsons entitled "Stealing First Base". Bassett was also cast in the superhero film Green Lantern, released in 2011, as notable DC Comics character Amanda Waller.

In 2011, Bassett co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson in the play The Mountaintop a fictionalized depiction of the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King (Jackson portrays MLK) while at the Lorraine Hotel. The critically acclaimed play by Katori Hall originally debuted in London's West End in 2009 and went on to win the Lawrence Olivier Award for Best New Play. The production opened on Broadway on October 13, 2011.

Angela Bassett

Personal life
Bassett married Courtney B. Vance in 1997. In the summer of 2005, they starred together in a production of His Girl Friday at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The couple's children – son Slater Josiah and daughter Bronwyn Golden - were born on January 27, 2006.

Bassett is an avid supporter of programs for the Arts, especially for youth. She annually attends events for children with diabetes and those in foster homes. She is an active Ambassador of UNICEF for the USA. Bassett is a big supporter of the Royal Theater Boys & Girls Club in her hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida. The Club is one of the first all performing arts Boys & Girls Clubs in the country.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Bassett

Andrea Roth Biography


Andrea Roth (born September 30, 1967) is a Canadian actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as Janet Gavin, the wife of main character Tommy Gavin, on the FX television series Rescue Me (2004–2011).

Andrea Roth

Biography
Roth, a first-generation Canadian, was born in Woodstock, Ontario to a Scottish father and a Dutch mother.

Andrea Roth

She debuted in the Canadian horror film The Club, directed by Brenton Spencer. She appeared in numerous television series and TV movies before landing her role on Rescue Me. She also appeared in the Jet Li action film War, in 2007. Furthermore, she guest-starred on Blue Bloods and Ringer.

Andrea Roth

On March 29, 2010, Roth gave birth to a daughter named Ava Reese, with boyfriend Todd Biermann. Roth and Biermann married on October 7, 2011.

Andrea Roth

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Roth

Andrea Bowen Biography


Andrea Lauren Bowen born March 4, 1990; Columbus, Ohio is an American actress who is best known for playing Julie Mayer on Desperate Housewives (2004–2012). She has won two SAG Awards.

Andrea Bowen

Biography
Bowen is of Welsh descent and made her Broadway debut in 1996 as Young Cosette/Young Eponine in Les Misérables. At six, she was the youngest actress to ever play the role. From 1996 to 2001 Bowen was a consistent presence on Broadway. She appeared in the original company of the 1998 revival of The Sound of Music as Marta, and in 2000, created the role of Adele in the musical version of Jane Eyre. Bowen was also a member of The Broadway Kids concert group. Several of Bowen's siblings have also been heavily involved in musical theatre, performing roles in various other Broadway shows.

Andrea Bowen

She briefly attended the Professional Performing Arts School in New York alongside best friend Sarah Hyland.

Andrea Bowen

From 2004–2012 Bowen has portrayed Julie Mayer on Desperate Housewives. She currently models for Miss Selfridge. She has also had recurring or guest starring roles on such shows as One Tree Hill (with friend Sophia Bush), Boston Public and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In the film Red Riding Hood she appears as one of "The Three Ashleys." Most recently, she played the role of Candace in the esoteric adventure film Eye of the Dolphin. She also starred in the Lifetime Original film Girl, Positive, an experience that allowed her to help spread the message among youth that "HIV is something you can protect yourself from."  More recently, she has appeared in an episode of Ghost Whisperer during its fourth season.

Andrea Bowen

Bowen is the younger sister of Graham Bowen, Alex Bowen, Cameron Bowen, Jessica Bowen and Jillian Bowen, who are also actors.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Bowen

Ana Ortiz Biography


Ana Ortiz born January 25, 1971 is an American actress and singer. She is a native of Manhattan, but was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a regular cast-member on the ABC comedy-drama series Ugly Betty, in which she plays the title character's older sister, Hilda Suarez. The role earned her the ALMA Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2007.

Ana Ortiz

Life and career
Ortiz was born in Manhattan and is the daughter of Angel L. Ortiz, a former Philadelphia City Council member of Puerto Rican descent, and an Irish American mother.

As a child, Ortiz originally dreamed of becoming a ballerina, and she studied ballet for eight years, until the pain of dancing en pointe forced her to pursue a different artistic discipline.

Switching to singing, Ortiz attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City and later the University of the Arts in Philadelphia before making her professional stage debut in a regional theater production of Dangerous Liaisons. Her additional stage credits include portraying Chrissy in a European touring production of Hair, regional theater productions such as Dog Lady and the Cuban Swimmer and in the South Coast Repertory Theater's production of References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot.

After joining LAByrinth Theatre Company, she appeared off-Broadway in In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings, which also co-starred Puerto Rican actress Liza Colón-Zayas and was directed by Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and named one of the 10-best plays of 1999 by the magazine Time Out New York.

Ana Ortiz

Career
On television, Ortiz's resume includes NYPD Blue, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, Commander In Chief, Boston Legal, ER, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Over There, her first full-time series role, Kristin and Everybody Loves Raymond. Ortiz also had a guest-starring role on Army Wives during its second season as a waitress named Sandi.

In addition to her current role on Ugly Betty, she is active in films, which include starring roles King of L.A., Tortilla Heaven and the 2009 TV movie Labor Pains co-starring her former Ugly Betty co-star, Lindsay Lohan.

Ortiz is one of two Philadelphians who are regulars on Ugly Betty, the other being Mark Indelicato, who plays her son Justin. Another connection to the city is co-star Becki Newton (who plays Amanda Tanen), who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Originally, Ortiz had auditioned for the Betty Suarez role, but it went to America Ferrera instead. Ortiz said in 2008, "I was super plain. I just put on some glasses and kept my hair kind of flat and layered on the clothing", describing what she wore when auditioning for the role of Betty. "I just wanted them to remember me, so that I could be involved in the future".

Ortiz also appeared in the 2010 music video for Enrique Iglesias and Juan Luis Guerra's "Cuando me enamoro".

Ana Ortiz

Personal life
Ortiz graduated from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Ortiz lives in New York City. In her spare time she enjoys hiking, horseback riding, softball, and water sports, and writes poetry. She married musician Noah Lebenzon on June 9, 2007 in Rincón, Puerto Rico. The couple were expecting their first child on June 25, 2009. On Saturday, June 27, 2009, Ana and Noah welcomed a daughter, named Paloma Louise Lebenzon. Paloma was born at 4:25 p.m. and weighed in at 7 pounds 10 ounces.  The second child, a son named Rafael, was born on September 24, 2011.

Ana Ortiz

Ortiz is active in raising awareness against domestic abuse, citing her own experiences when she was in her 20s and involved in a romantic relationship that turned physically abusive. In an article for USA Today, Ortiz notes that the final scene from the Ugly Betty episode "How Betty Got Her Grieve Back", in which Hilda sat on her bed staring at the bathroom after realizing that Santos had died, was drawn from that experience: "I used some of that subconsciously ... It's something that is always with me".

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Ortiz

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