1.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
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Sarah Michelle Prinze is an American actress, producer, and entrepreneur. After being spotted by an agent at the age of four in New York City, Gellar went on to appear in numerous television series and commercials. Her first leading part was in the 1992 miniseries Swans Crossing, the character was widely popular during the airing of the show and became recognized as one of the 100 greatest female characters in U. S. television. Gellar also gained significant attention for her appearances in the slasher movies I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2 and she appeared as Daphne Blake in Scooby-Doo, her biggest live action commercial success. She subsequently appeared in smaller movies such as The Return and Southland Tales. Her later film credits include The Air I Breathe, Possession and she headlined the short lived television series Ringer and The Crazy Ones, which co-starred Robin Williams. In October 2015, Gellar co-founded Foodstirs, a food crafting brand, Gellar was born in New York City. She is the child of Rosellen, a nursery school teacher, and Arthur Gellar. Both of her parents were Jewish, though Gellars family also had a Christmas tree during her childhood, in 1984, when she was seven, her parents divorced and she was raised by her mother on the citys Upper East Side. Im not being deliberately evasive about him, its just that theres so little to say, besides being a working child at the time, Gellar was a competitive figure skater, finishing in third place at the New York State regional competition. She also placed fourth at a Tae Kwon Do competition at Madison Square Garden, Gellar was given a partial scholarship to study at the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, as her mother was not able to pay full tuition, for which she was constantly bullied. She said in an interview with The Independent, I was different and thats the one thing you cant be at school, I didnt have the money these kids had. I was telling them that I had back problems and had to go to the doctor the whole time, Gellar then briefly attended the Fiorello H. Gellar graduated from the Professional Childrens School, in 1994 as a straight A student with a 4.0 grade average. As Gellar spent significant time working on All My Children while trying to graduate, at the age of four, she was spotted by an agent in a restaurant in Upper Manhattan. Two weeks later, she auditioned for a part in the television film An Invasion of Privacy, with Valerie Harper, Carol Kane, at the audition, Gellar read both her own lines and those of Harper, impressing the directors enough to cast her in the role. The film aired on CBS in January 1983 and she subsequently appeared in a controversial television commercial for Burger King, in which her character criticized McDonalds and claimed to eat only at Burger King. The ad led to a lawsuit by McDonalds, naming Gellar and banning her from eating at the chain, she recalled in a 2004 interview. It was tough because, when you’re a little kid, McDonald’s is where all your friends have their birthday parties, while growing up, Gellar also worked as a model for Wilhemina and acted in numerous television commercials
2.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
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Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor and filmmaker. As a child actor, he appeared in the films A River Runs Through It, Angels in the Outfield and 10 Things I Hate About You and he took a break from acting to study at Columbia University, but dropped out in 2004 to pursue acting again. He has since starred in 500 Days of Summer, Inception, Hesher, 50/50, Premium Rush, The Dark Knight Rises, Brick, Looper, The Lookout, Manic, Lincoln, Mysterious Skin and G. I. He starred as Philippe Petit in the Robert Zemeckis-directed film The Walk and he also founded the online production company hitRECord in 2004 and has hosted his own TV series, HitRecord on TV, since January 2014. In 2013, Gordon-Levitt made his film directing and screenwriting debut with Don Jon. He previously directed and edited two short films, both of which were released in 2010, Morgan M. Morgansens Date with Destiny and Morgan and Destinys Eleventeenth Date, Gordon-Levitt was born in Los Angeles, California, and was raised in its Sherman Oaks neighborhood. He is Jewish, from a family that is not strictly religious and his father, Dennis Levitt, was once the news director for the Pacifica Radio station, KPFK-FM. Gordon-Levitts maternal grandfather, Michael Gordon, was a Hollywood film director between the 1940s and 1970s, and directed the 1959 Doris Day/Rock Hudson film Pillow Talk, Gordon-Levitt attended Van Nuys High School and graduated in 1999. Gordon-Levitt joined a theater group at the age of four. Subsequently, he was approached by an agent and began appearing on television and in commercials for Sunny Jim peanut butter, Cocoa Puffs, Pop-Tarts, at age six, he starred in several made-for-television films. In 1991, he played both David Collins and Daniel Collins in the Dark Shadows television series, and appeared in the movie A River Runs Through It. During 1992–93, he played in The Powers That Be, a sitcom starring John Forsythe, also in 1992, he portrayed Gregory Kingsley in the made-for-TV film Switching Parents, based on Kingsleys real life case of divorcing his parents. In 1994, he starred in the Disney film Angels in the Outfield as an orphan who sees angels, in 1996, he began playing Tommy Solomon on the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun. The series ran for six seasons, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that Gordon-Levitt was a Jewish kid playing an extraterrestrial pretending to be a Jewish kid. During the 1990s, he was featured in teenage magazines. In 2000, he began attending Columbia University School of General Studies and he studied history, literature, and French poetry. He became an avid Francophile and a French speaker and he said that moving to New York City from his hometown forced him to grow as a person. He dropped out in 2004 to concentrate on acting again, Gordon-Levitt has said that he made a conscious decision to be in good movies after returning to acting
3.
Anjelica Huston
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Anjelica Huston is an American actress, director and former fashion model. She also received Academy Award nominations for Enemies, a Love Story, Huston received British Academy Award nominations for her work in the Woody Allen films Crimes and Misdemeanors and Manhattan Murder Mystery. She has frequently collaborated with director Wes Anderson, including The Royal Tenenbaums, hustons paternal grandfather was Canadian-born actor Walter Huston. Huston has Scots-Irish, English and Welsh ancestry from her father and she spent much of her childhood in Ireland, particularly near Craughwell, County Galway, and attended school at Kylemore Abbey. Huston has a brother, Tony, a younger maternal half-sister named Allegra, whom she called Legs, a younger paternal half-brother, actor Danny Huston. She is the aunt of Boardwalk Empire actor Jack Huston and she later lived in England, where she attended Holland Park School. In the late 1960s, she began taking a few roles in her fathers movies. In the same year, her mother, who was 39 years old, died in a car accident, while she modeled, she worked with photographers such as Richard Avedon and Bob Richardson. Deciding to focus more on movies, in the early 1980s she studied acting and her first notable role was in Bob Rafelsons remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Later, her father cast her as Maerose, daughter of a Mafia don whose love is scorned by a hit man in the adaptation of Richard Condons Mafia-satire novel Prizzis Honor. Huston won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance, making her the first person in Academy Award history to win an Oscar when a parent and she also earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a con artist in Stephen Frears The Grifters. She also starred as the lead in her fathers final directorial film, The Dead and she was then cast as Morticia Addams, in the hugely successful 1991 movie adaptation of The Addams Family. In 1993, she reprised the role for the sequel Addams Family Values and she also starred in the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster, Ever After, A Cinderella Story alongside Drew Barrymore and Melanie Lynskey as the Baroness Rodmilla De Ghent. She starred in two Wes Anderson films, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, as well as appearing in a role in 2007s The Darjeeling Limited. She voiced the role of Queen Clarion in the Disney Fairies film series starring Tinker Bell, on January 22,2010, Huston was honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2011, Huston was in the film Horrid Henry, The Movie, Huston later appeared on the NBC television series, Smash, portraying Broadway producer Eileen Rand. In 2015 and 2016 Huston appeared in the second and third seasons of the Amazon Video series Transparent, Huston has recently expanded her horizons, following in her fathers footsteps in the directors chair. Her first directorial credit was Bastard Out of Carolina, followed by Agnes Browne, for over 20 years, Huston has been developing a film project on Maud Gonne and William Butler Yeats
4.
Ben Affleck
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Benjamin Geza Ben Affleck-Boldt is an American actor and filmmaker. He began his career as a actor, starring in the PBS educational series The Voyage of the Mimi. He later appeared in the coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused and various Kevin Smith films including Chasing Amy, Affleck gained recognition when he and childhood friend Matt Damon won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting. He then starred in films including Armageddon, Shakespeare in Love, Pearl Harbor, Changing Lanes. After a career downturn, during which he appeared in Daredevil and Gigli, Afflecks directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, which he also co-wrote, was well received. He then directed, co-wrote, and starred in the crime drama The Town. For the political thriller Argo, which he directed and starred in, Affleck won the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Director, and the Golden Globe, BAFTA, in 2014, he starred in the psychological thriller Gone Girl. In 2016, Affleck began playing Batman in the DC Extended Universe, Affleck is the co-founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative, a grantmaking and advocacy-based nonprofit organization. He is also a member of the Democratic Party. His younger brother is actor Casey Affleck, with whom he has worked on films including Good Will Hunting. Following high-profile relationships with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez, Affleck married Jennifer Garner in 2005, Affleck and Garner have three children together, and announced their separation in 2015. Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt was born on August 15,1972 in Berkeley and his family moved to Massachusetts when he was two, living in Falmouth, where his brother Casey was born, before settling in Cambridge. His mother, Christopher Anne Chris, was a Radcliffe College- and his father, Timothy Byers Affleck, worked sporadically as an auto mechanic, a carpenter, a bookie, an electrician, a bartender, and a janitor at Harvard University. In the mid-1960s, he had been an actor and stage manager with the Theater Company of Boston, during Afflecks childhood, his father had a self-described severe, chronic problem with alcoholism and Affleck has recalled him drinking all day, every day. His parents divorced when he was 12, and he and his brother lived with their mother. In the following years, his fathers alcoholism worsened and he spent two years homeless, when Affleck was 16, his father moved to Indio, California to enter a rehabilitation facility and, after gaining sobriety, worked as an addiction counselor at the facility for many years. Affleck was raised in an active, liberal household. He and his brother were surrounded by people who worked in the arts, were taken to the theater by their mother
5.
James Franco
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James Edward Franco is an American actor and filmmaker known for his work in both comedic and dramatic films and TV shows. For his role in 127 Hours, Franco was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor and he also portrayed the title character in the TV biographical film James Dean, for which he won a Golden Globe Award. He had recurring roles on the soap opera General Hospital and sitcom Angie Tribeca and he will star in the David Simon-created HBO drama The Deuce in 2017. Franco volunteers for the Art of Elysium charity, and has taught film classes at New York University, the University of Southern California, UCLA, Studio 4. Franco was born in Palo Alto, California and his mother, Betsy Lou, is a writer and occasional actress, and his father, Douglas Eugene Doug Franco, ran a Silicon Valley business. The two met as students at Stanford University, Francos father was of Portuguese and Swedish descent. Francos mother is Jewish, from a family of Russian Jewish ancestry and his maternal grandfather, Daniel, had changed the family surname from Verovitz to Verne some time after 1940. Francos paternal grandmother, Marjorie Franco, is an author of young adult books. Francos maternal grandmother, Mitzie Verne, owned the Verne Art Gallery, a prominent art gallery in Cleveland, Francos family upbringing was academic, liberal, and largely secular. He grew up in California with his two brothers, Tom and Dave, a math whiz, Franco interned at Lockheed Martin. He was often encouraged by his father to get good grades and he graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1996, where he acted in plays. This led to him attending CSSSA in 1998 for theatre, in his high school years, Franco was arrested for underage drinking, graffiti, and for being a part of a group that stole designer fragrances from department stores and sold them to classmates. These arrests led to his becoming a ward of the state. Facing the possibility of juvenile hall, Franco was given a chance by the judge. I was uncomfortable in my own skin, I changed my ways just in time to get good grades, he recalled of his troubles with the law. Although the idea of becoming a marine zoologist interested him, Franco had always wanted to become an actor. Franco instead chose to take acting lessons with Robert Carnegie at the Playhouse West, around this time, Franco took up a late-night job at McDonalds to support himself because his parents refused to do so. He was a vegetarian until working there, while working at the establishment, he would practice accents on customers, an experience he remembered nostalgically in a 2015 Washington Post editorial
