Category: Oscar Profile

When the Oscar nominations come out every year, there is a mix of repeat performers and first-time nominees. This year is particularly rich with first time contenders from Riz Ahmed to Helena Zengel. In fact, there are sixteen strong potential first time nominees among the twenty acting slots. Among the contenders for Best Actor are…

Born April 28, 1958 in Santa Ana, California to Donna and Richard Pfeiffer, a heating and air-conditioning contractor, Michelle Pfeiffer has an older brother, Rick, and two younger sisters, Deedee and Lori, both of whom have acted. She made her acting debut in 1978 as the bombshell in the TV series, Delta House. In minor…

Born June 28, 1946 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Clair and Marian Davison, Bruce Davison is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and New York University. He made his Broadway debut in Tiger at the Gates, his film debut in 1969’s Last Summer, and his TV debut in a 1970 episode of Medical Center. Following the…

Born September 20, 1934 in Rome, Italy, Sophia Scicolone and her younger sister, Maria, were raised by their maternal grandmother in the slums of Pozzuoli, their construction engineer father having refused to divorce his wife and marry the girls’ piano teacher mother. Encouraged to enter a beauty contest at 14, the young would-be actress was…

Born December 10, 1960 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the middle child of a Protestant working class family, Kenneth Branagh moved with his family to Berkshire, England when he was nine to escape “the troubles”. Educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he was asked by the principal when he was 19 to perform…

Born August 28, 1962 in Denver, Colorado, David (Andrew) Fincher was the son of Howard “Jack” Fincher, a reporter and bureau chief for Life Magazine, and his wife, Claire Mae, a mental health nurse. The family moved to San Anselmo, California where filmmaker George Lucas was a neighbor. He began making films with an 8mm…

Born Francisco Rosario Capra on May 18, 1897 in Bisacquino, Sicily and raised in Los Angeles from the age of six, the future President of both AMPAS (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and the DGA (Directors Guild of America) would become a naturalized American citizen in 1920 at which time he legally…

Born March 10, 1892 in Towanda, Pennsylvania, (George) Gregory La Cava studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students’ League in New York. He was hired by silent film cartoonist Raoul Barré in 1913 to do odd jobs at his studio. By 1915, he was an animator on The Animated Grouch…

Born April 28, 1878 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Lionel Herbert Blythe was the oldest of three children of actors Maurice Barrymore and Ellen Drew Barrymore, Barrymore being the stage name that Lionel and his siblings, Ethel, and John, also took. The most prolific of the acting Barrymores, Lionel made his stage debut in a 1903 Kansas…

Born July 14, 1928 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Henry Olson, a physician, and his wife, Evelyn, Nancy Olson was discovered on stage at UCLA which she transferred to in 1948. The peaches-and-cream blonde was given a walk-on in 1948’s Portrait of Jennie and then given a contract by Paramount. Olson made her first credited appearance…

Born June 10, 1911 in London, England to a British diplomat and his wife, Oxford educated Terence Rattigan was one of the preeminent British playwrights of the 20th Century. Rattigan began writing plays in 1934. He cowrite an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities with John Gielgud in 1935, but the play…

Born January 3, 1907 in Neath, Glamorgan, Wales, UK, Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones, known professionally as Ray Milland, was the son of a steel mill superintendent and his wife. He trained as an equestrian on his uncle’s horse breeding farm and later joined the Household Cavalry before becoming an actor. Turning to acting, Milland’s rise…

Born May 26, 1905 in Del Rio, Tennessee, Burnett Guffey attended school in Etowah, Tennessee. He worked as a messenger boy in a bank and then as a camera assistant at Fox beginning in 1923. His first film was that year’s The Courtship of Myles Standish that same year. John Ford picked him for second…

Born May 6, 1920 in Cleveland, Ohio, Martin Fuss, known professionally as Ross Hunter, was raised by his German American parents, attending Cleveland’s Glenville High School where he later taught English and Drama. He worked in U.S. Army Intelligence during World War II. After his war service, Hunter returned to teaching in Cleveland where he…

Born October 12,1968 in Sydney, Australia, Hugh (Michael) Jackman was the son of English parents who had emigrated to Australia in 1967. His father was a Cambridge educated accountant. His parents divorced when he was eight years old, with his mother taking his two sisters back to England with her, while Hugh and his two…