Category: Oscar Profile

Born May 20, 1946 in El Centro, California, Cherilyn Sarkisian, known professionally as Cher, has been a star in multiple mediums for over five decades. The daughter of a truck driver and a housewife, she left school at 16, had a brief relationship with Warren Beatty and met future husband Sonny Bono that same year.…

Born January 7, 1964 in Long Beach, California, Nicolas Kim Coppola, known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is the son of literature professor August Coppola and his wife, dancer/choreographer Joy Vogelsang. He is the nephew of Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola and Oscar-nominated actress Talia Shire. Inspired to become an actor by watching James Dean in…

Born October 25, 1892 in Riace, Calabria, Italy, Nicola (later Nicholas) Musuraca emigrated to the U.S. with his father in 1907 when he was 14. They settled in Brooklyn where his father’s brother was already living. Musuraca began his show business career as a chauffer for silent film director and producer J. Stuart Blackton. He…

Born April 9, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York, Brandon De Wilde was the only son of Dutch immigrants. His father was actor and Broadway stage manager Frederic de Wilde (1914-1980) and his mother Eugenia (1915-1987) was a part-time actress. Frederic De Wilde was the stage manager for 1950’s The Member of the Wedding which was…

Born September 15, 1922 in Los Angeles, California, John (Jackie) Cooper (Jr.) was the nephew of actress Julie Leonard, writer Jack Leonard and by marriage, director Norman Taurog. His father abandoned the family when he was just two years old. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother who was an extra in films.…

Born February 9, 1892 in Brooklyn, New York, Mary Margaret (Peggy) Wood was the daughter of journalist Eugene Wood and telegraph operator Mary Gardner Wood. A lilting soprano, she began taking singing lessons at the age of 8 and made her stage debut at 18 in a production of Naughty Marietta. She made her Broadway…

Born September 29, 1909 in Bisbee, Arizona, Mitchell John (Mike) Frankovich was one of four children of immigrant Yugoslavians Yova and Melica Frankovich. When the children were small, the Frankovich family left the copper-mining town of Bisbee en route to California but stopped in Tonopah, Nevada, for several years after the elder Frankovich won its…

Born May 6, 1961 in Lexington, Kentucky, George (Timothy) Clooney is the son of Nina Bruce (née Warren) and former TV host Nick Clooney. The late legendary singer and actress Rosemary Clooney was Clooney’s father’s sister. Clooney’s first role as an actor was as an extra in the 1978 mini-series Centennial filmed near his Kentucky…

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

Born March 24, 1930 in Beech Grove, Indiana, Terence Steven (Steve) McQueen was the son of a stunt pilot who left McQueen’s mother six months after meeting her. Unable to cope with raising a child on her own, she sent the future actor to live with her parents in Slater, Missouri in 1933 at the…

Born November 12, 1922 in Detroit, Michigan to an engineer and his wife, a former concert pianist, Janet Cole was a painfully shy child who studied drama to overcome her shyness. The actress made her stage debut as Penny in Penny Wise in Miami in 1939. She was discovered by an RKO talent agent in…

Born February 20, 1946 in Kent, England to an engineer and his wife, Brenda Anne Bottle was the youngest of nine children. Married to Alan Blethyn in 1966, she worked as a stenographer and bookkeeper for the British Rail Company until her divorce in 1973 when she enrolled in the Guildford School of Acting in…

Born March 1, 1910 in London, English (James) David (Graham) Niven was the youngest of four children, his father being killed in World War I during the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915. His mother married Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt, believed to be Niven’s biological father, in 1917. Raised in private schools, Niven graduated from Royal Military…

Born February 6, 1949 in Dublin, Ireland, Jim Sheridan was one of three sons of Anna and Peter Sheridan, Sr., owners of a lodging house. Anna also worked at a hotel and Peter as a railway clerk to support their young family. The future writer-producer-director was educated in a Christian Brothers School. In 1969, he…

Born July 7, 1901 in Lazio, Italy, Vittorio de Sica grew up in Sicily where his first job was as an office clerk in support of his poor family. Drawn to acting, he made his film debut as the title character as a boy in The Clemenceau Affair in 1917. He did not make another…