Category: Oscar Profile

Born June 20, 1967 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Nicole Kidman was raised in a suburb of Sydney, Australia by her Australian parents who were visiting Hawaii on educational visas at the time of her birth. Young Kidman’s first love was ballet, but she soon gravitated toward drama and made her film debut in the 1983 Australian…

Born March 19, 1947 in Greenwich, Connecticut to Bettine (née Moore) and William Taliaferro Close, a doctor who ran a clinic in the Belgian Congo and served as personal physician to the Congo’s president, Glenn Close has long been considered one of our greatest actresses. Her paternal grandfather was first married to cereal heiress Marjorie…

Born July 22, 1955 in Appleton, Wisconsin, William J, Dafoe was one of eight children whose parents were a surgeon and a nurse who worked together constantly, leaving the future actor to be raised by his five older sisters. He became known as “Willem”, the Dutch name for “William”, while in high school. Dafoe studied…

Born July 18, 1911 in London, Ontario, Canada, Hume Cronyn was one of five children whose father, Hume Sr. was a businessman and member of Parliament for London who had an observatory at the University of Western Ontario and an asteroid named after him. After graduating from Ridley College, Cronyn switched majors from pre-law to…

Born October 31, 1896 in Chester, Pennsylvania as the result of the rape of her 15-year-mother Louise Anderson by her 18-year-old father, pianist John Waters, Ethel Waters was raised in poverty by her grandmother, Sally Anderson who worked as a housemaid, along with two aunts and an uncle, her mother having married another man shortly…

Born June 11, 1919 in Dublin, Ireland, Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd was the son of Andrew William Palethorpe Todd, an an international Irish rugby player who gained three caps for his country before becoming a British Army physician. Todd spent much of his early years in India where his father was stationed. The family later moved…

Born October 1, 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England as Julia Elizabeth Wells, the internationally acclaimed superstar known professionally as Julie Andrews took the last name of her stepfather (Ted Andrews) when her mother remarried in 1944. Andrews began performing at early age with her mother and stepfather who were both music hall performers. Just after…

Born February 28, 1894 in New York City, Ben Hecht was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. At ten, he was considered a child prodigy on his way to becoming a violin virtuoso but at 12 he became an acrobat in the circus. The family moved to Racine, Wisconsin where Hecht attended high school. He…

Born December 19, 1902 in Cheltenham, England, Ralph Richardson’s parents were eccentric artists. When he was four, his parents got into a row over the wallpaper his mother had chosen for his father’s study. His mother left his two older brothers with their devout Quaker father who raised them in his religion and took Ralph…

Film history is full of wonderful characters played by actors and actresses, some of whom were in countless films without making on a mark and then suddenly burst into our collective consciousness with one special performance from which they built successful careers, while others came and went with just that one unforgettable performance. Before 1936,…

Born July 26, 1926 in Stratford, England as John Theobald Clarke, actor-writer-producer-director Bryan Forbes was evacuated to Cornwall during World War II. In 1943, a neighbor who was a BBC producer put 17-year-old Clarke into BBC Radio’s The Will Hay Programme. He spent four years in the Intelligence Corps from 1944-1948. Upon completing his military…

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

Born November 26, 1892 in Sarasota Springs, New York to New York State Senator Edgar Truman Brackett and his wife Mary, nee Corliss, Charles Brackett’s American family heritage could be traced back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. A 1915 graduate of Williams College, he earned his degree from Harvard University. A member of…

Born October 29, 1971 as Winona Laura Horowitz in Winona, Minnesota, the actress chose her professional last name of Ryder while listening to an album by Mitch Ryder. Her mother is an author, video producer and editor, and her father an author, editor, publisher and antiquarian bookseller. He also worked as an archivist for psychedelic…

Born February 8, 1894 in Galveston, Texas, King Wallis Vidor was the son of a prominent businessman and his wife. He became freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist before becoming a filmmaker himself. The city of Vidor, Texas, was named after his father Charles Shelton Vidor who founded the Miller-Vidor Lumber Co., which the town…