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Sydney Pollack, the great film director dies at 73

Posted in Actors, News on May 26th, 2008 | 1 comment

Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 73.

The cause was cancer, said a representative of the family. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.

Sydney Pollack (July 1, 1934 – May 26, 2008) was an Academy Award-winning American film director, producer and actor. He directed over 21 films and 10 television shows, acted in over 30 films or shows, and produced over 44 films.

One of the rare Hollywood talents who excelled at both acting and directing, Sydney Pollack fell haphazardly into a craft that eventually earned him three Oscar nominations and one Academy Award. Thanks to his early career as an acting coach, Pollack developed a reputation for being one of the best director for actors to work with. But his filmmaking style was without a signifying mark or defining element with which audiences could identify.

In fact, it was quite easy to walk out of the theater having enjoyed the movie without ever knowing Pollack was the director. Be that as it may, Pollack crafted excellent films in his four decades as a filmmaker, adding such luminous titles like “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969), “Three Days of the Condor” (1973), “Tootsie” (1982) and “Out of Africa” (1985) to the American filmmaking canon. Despite a lack of visual flare, American cinema would have suffered without Pollack’s steady contributions. Pollack is best known for directing films Out of Africa (Academy Awards, 1985), Tootsie (1982), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Yakuza (1975), The Way We Were and Jeremiah Johnson (1972), along with newer films The Interpreter (2005), Sabrina (1995), The Firm (1993) and Havana (1990). He has appeared in over 15 films, including The Interpreter (2005), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Husbands and Wives (1992), The Player (1992), and The Electric Horseman (1979). Most recently he appeared opposite George Clooney in Michael Clayton (2007), a film which he also co-produced.

Hollywood honored Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film “Out of Africa” as well as nominations for directing “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969) and “Tootsie” (1982). Last fall, Warner Brothers released “Michael Clayton,” of which Pollack was a producer and a member of the cast. He delivered a trademark performance as an old-bull lawyer who demands dark deeds from a subordinate, played by George Clooney. (“This is news? This case has reeked from Day One,” snaps Pollack’s Marty Bach.) The picture received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and a Best Actor nomination for Clooney.

Pollack became a prolific producer of independent films in the latter part of his career. With a partner, the filmmaker Anthony Minghella, he ran Mirage Enterprises, a production company whose films included Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” and the documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” released last year, the last film directed by Pollack.

Apart from that film, Pollack never directed a movie without stars. His first feature, “The Slender Thread,” released by Paramount Pictures in 1965, starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. In his next 19 films — every one a romance or drama but for the single comedy, “Tootsie” — Pollack worked with Burt Lancaster, Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Streisand and others.

Sydney Irwin Pollack was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Indiana, and reared in South Bend. By Pollack’s own account, in the biographical dictionary “World Film Directors,” his father, David, a pharmacist, and his mother, the former Rebecca Miller, were first-generation Russian-Americans who had met at Purdue University.

Pollack developed a love of drama at South Bend High School and, instead of going to college, went to New York and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. He studied there for two years under Sanford Meisner, who was in charge of its acting department, and remained for five more as Meisner’s assistant, teaching acting but also appearing onstage and in television.

Curly-haired and almost 6 feet 2 inches tall, Pollack had a notable role in a 1959 “Playhouse 90″ telecast of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” an adaptation of the Hemingway novel directed by John Frankenheimer. Earlier, Pollack had appeared on Broadway with Zero Mostel in “A Stone for Danny Fisher” and with Katharine Cornell and Tyrone Power in “The Dark Is Light Enough.” But he said later that he probably could not have built a career as a leading man.

Instead, Pollack took the advice of Burt Lancaster, whom he had met while working with Frankenheimer, and turned to directing. Lancaster steered him to the entertainment mogul Lew Wasserman, and through him Pollack landed a directing assignment on the television series “Shotgun Slade.”

After a faltering start, he hit his stride on episodes of “Ben Casey, “Naked City,” “The Fugitive” and other well-known shows. In 1966 he won an Emmy for directing an episode of “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater.” From the time he made his first full-length feature, “The Slender Thread,” about a social work student coaxing a woman out of suicide on a telephone help line, Pollack had a hit-and-miss relationship with the critics. Writing in The New York Times, A. H. Weiler deplored that film’s “sudsy waves of bathos.” Pollack himself later pronounced it “dreadful.”

But from the beginning of his movie career, he was also perceived as belonging to a generation whose work broke with the immediate past. In 1965, Charles Champlin, writing in The Los Angeles Times, compared Pollack to the director Elliot Silverstein, whose western spoof, “Cat Ballou,” had been released earlier that year, and Stuart Rosenberg, soon to be famous for “Cool Hand Luke” (1967). Champlin cited all three as artists who had used television rather than B movies to learn their craft.

Self-critical and never quite at ease with Hollywood, Pollack voiced a constant yearning for creative prerogatives more common on the stage. Yet he dived into the fray. In 1970, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” his bleak fable of love and death among marathon dancers in the Great Depression, based on a Horace McCoy novel, received nine Oscar nominations, including the one for directing. (Gig Young won the best supporting actor award for his performance.)

Two years later, Pollack made the mountain-man saga “Jeremiah Johnson,” one of three closely spaced pictures in which he directed Redford. The second of those films, “The Way We Were,” about a pair of ill-fated lovers who meet up later in life, also starred Streisand and was an enormous hit despite critical hostility.

The next, “Three Days of the Condor,” another hit, about a bookish CIA worker thrust into a mystery, did somewhat better with the critics. “Tense and involving,” said Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times.

With “Absence of Malice” in 1981, Pollack entered the realm of public debate. The film’s story of a newspaper reporter (Sally Field) who is fed a false story by federal officials trying to squeeze information from a businessman (Paul Newman) was widely viewed as a corrective to the adulation of investigative reporters that followed Alan Pakula’s hit movie “All the President’s Men,” with its portrayal of the Watergate scandal.

But only with “Tootsie,” in 1982, did Pollack become a fully realized Hollywood player. By then he was represented by Michael S. Ovitz and the rapidly expanding Creative Artists Agency. So was his leading man, Dustin Hoffman.

As the film — a comedy about a struggling actor who disguises himself as a woman to get a coveted television part — was being shot for Columbia Pictures, Pollack and Hoffman became embroiled in a semi-public feud, with Ovitz running shuttle diplomacy between them.

Hoffman, who had initiated the project, argued for a more broadly comic approach. But Pollack — who played Hoffman’s agent in the film — was drawn to the seemingly doomed romance between the cross-dressing Hoffman character and the actress played by Jessica Lange.

If Pollack did not prevail on all points, he tipped the film in his own direction. Meanwhile, the movie came in behind schedule, over budget and surrounded by bad buzz.

Yet “Tootsie” was also a winner. It took in more than $177 million at the domestic box office and received 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture. ( Lange took home the film’s only Oscar, for best supporting actress.)

Backed by Ovitz, Pollack expanded his reach in the wake of success. Over the next several years, he worked closely with both Tri-Star Pictures, where he was creative consultant, and Universal, where Mirage, his production company, set up shop in 1986.

Pollack reached perhaps his career pinnacle with “Out of Africa.” Released by Universal, the film, based on the memoirs of Isak Dinesen, paired Streep and Redford in a period drama that reworked one of the director’s favorite themes, that of star-crossed lovers. It captured Oscars for best picture and best director.

Still, Pollack remained uneasy about his cinematic skills. “I was never what I would call a great shooter or visual stylist,” he told an interviewer for American Cinematographer last year. And he developed a reputation for caution when it came to directing assignments. Time after time, he expressed interest in directing projects, only to back away. At one point he was to make “Rain Man,” a Dustin Hoffman picture ultimately directed by Levinson; at another, an adaptation of “The Night Manager” by John le Carré.

That wariness was undoubtedly fed by his experience with “Havana,” a 1990 film that was to be his last with Redford. It seemed to please no one, though Pollack defended it. “To tell you the truth, if I knew what was wrong, I’d have fixed it,” Pollack told The Los Angeles Times in 1993.

“The Firm,” with Tom Cruise, was a hit that year. But “Sabrina” (1995) and “Random Hearts” (1999), both with Harrison Ford, and “The Interpreter” (2005), with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, fell short, as Hollywood and its primary audience increasingly eschewed stars for fantasy and special effects. Pollack never stopped acting; in a recent episode of “Entourage,” the HBO series about Hollywood, he played himself.

Among Pollack’s survivors are daughters, Rachel and Rebecca , and his wife, Claire Griswold, who was once among his acting students. The couple married in 1958, while Pollack was serving a two-year hitch in the army. Their only son, Steven, died at age 34 in a 1993 plane crash in Santa Monica, California. In his later years, Pollack appeared to relish his role as elder statesman. At various times he was executive director of the Actors Studio West, chairman of American Cinematheque and an advocate for artists’ rights.

He increasingly sounded wistful notes about the disappearance of the Hollywood he knew in his prime. “The middle ground is now gone,” Pollack said in a discussion with Shimon Peres in the fall 1998 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly. He added, with a nod to a fellow filmmaker: “It is not impossible to make mainstream films which are really good. Costa-Gavras once said that accidents can happen.”~ By Michael Cieply, The Herald Tribune

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Ben Affleck new Wallpapers

Posted in Actors on Feb 23rd, 2008 | 0 comments

Ben Affleck .. Benjamin Géza Affleck (born August 15, 1972) is an American Golden Globe Award-nominated film actor, director, an Academy Award-winning and Golden Globe Award-winning screenwriter. He became known in the late 1990s, after his involvement in the film Good Will Hunting, and has since become a Hollywood leading man, having starred in several big budget films.

Affleck was born Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt in Berkeley, California, the son of Chris Ann (née Boldt), a school district employee and teacher, and Timothy Affleck, a drug counselor, social worker, janitor, auto mechanic, bar tender, and former actor with the Theater Company of Boston.

Affleck’s mother attended Harvard University and taught at Brearley School. Affleck’s younger brother is actor Casey Affleck. Affleck has Irish ancestry.

His family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts when he was very young and his parents divorced in 1984. At the age of eight, Affleck met ten-year-old Matt Damon, who lived two blocks away.

Affleck and Damon would later attend Cambridge Rindge and Latin School together, although they were in different year groups. Affleck attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, as well as the University of Vermont.

Affleck worked as a child actor, appearing on the PBS kids’ series The Voyage of the Mimi as well as in several made-for-television movies. Throughout the 1990s, Affleck had a role in LifeStories: Families in Crisis as a steroid abusing athlete as well as several notable films, including 1992’s School Ties (with Matt Damon and Brendan Fraser), 1993’s Dazed and Confused, 1995’s Mallrats and 1997’s Chasing Amy; Mallrats and Amy began his collaboration with writer/director Kevin Smith. Affleck has appeared in every film Smith has made with the exception of Kevin Smith’s first film Clerks.

Affleck had a one-line speaking role as a high school basketball player in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. He and fellow Boston Red Sox fanatic Matt Damon had roles as extras in the movie Field of Dreams when characters played by Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones go to Fenway Park.

Affleck came to national attention working with best-friend Damon in Good Will Hunting (1997). They shared credit and both received the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Along with Damon and producers Chris Moore and Sean Bailey, Affleck founded the production company LivePlanet, through which the four created the documentary series Project Greenlight, as well as the failed mystery-hybrid series Push, Nevada amongst other projects.

Project Greenlight was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program in 2002, 2004 and 2005.

Following Good Will Hunting, Affleck had starring roles in many successful movies, including Armageddon, Forces of Nature, Pearl Harbor, Changing Lanes, The Sum of All Fears and Daredevil, establishing himself as a Hollywood leading man throughout the early 2000s. However, after the release of several critically panned, box office flops, including Gigli (2003) and Surviving Christmas (2004), Affleck’s career waned considerably.

He did not appear in any films until 2006 when he appeared in Clerks II. In addition to being a fan of the Daredevil comics (Frank Miller’s run specifically), he wrote the introduction to the trade paperback Daredevil: Guardian Devil which reprints Daredevil (Volume 2) #1 – 8 (written by Kevin Smith).

Affleck made what can be considered a comeback with the September 2006 release of the critically acclaimed George Reeves biopic-noir Hollywoodland, directed by HBO TV-series veteran Allen Coulter. His performance was impressive enough that he was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival and has also won the Supporting Actor of the Year award at the Hollywood Film Festival and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture. Affleck had his directorial debut with Gone, Baby, Gone, for which he also co-wrote the screenplay, about two Boston area detectives investigating a little girl’s kidnapping and how it affects their lives.

Based on the book by Dennis Lehane, it opened to rave reviews in October, 2007, and has led to speculation of Academy Award nominations for Affleck and his brother Casey (who plays the leading role). Writes Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News: “Ben Affleck won an Oscar for the Good Will Hunting script he co-wrote with Matt Damon, but this is his first outing behind the camera.

Whatever you think of his acting, he’s got real chops as a filmmaker. The movie has energy, pace, some insanely well-choreographed action sequences, outstanding performances and a couple of speeches that belong in the pulp fiction hall of fame.” Claudia Puig in USA Today remarks: “Ben Affleck has come of age as a director.” And Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post comments that Affleck “shows that even if he never developed a memorable performance when he was in front of the camera, he was paying attention to what was going on behind it.”

Personal life: Affleck had a high-profile romance with actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998, following her breakup with actor Brad Pitt. In 2002, he began dating actress/singer Jennifer Lopez, whom he had met prior to filming Gigli.

The same year, his engagement to Lopez was announced, and the relationship between the two received a lot of attention by the entertainment media who dubbed the couple “Bennifer.” The couple broke up in 2004 while they were due to get married on the 14th of September of that year, both blaming the media attention – including an alleged incident in which Affleck partied with Christian Slater and some lap dancers in Vancouver. This negative publicity and media attention was also brought along to the 2004 Jersey Girl, which also was a box office failure.

Affleck subsequently dated his Daredevil co-star, actress Jennifer Garner, and the two were engaged after nine months of seeing each other. In May 2005, it was announced that Garner was pregnant and the couple were married on June 29, 2005 on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos. Garner gave birth to a daughter, Violet Anne Affleck, on December 1, 2005 in Los Angeles, California. Affleck has a holiday home in Savannah, Georgia. The family was in Cambridge for the summer while Affleck was directing Gone, Baby, Gone.

Affleck is an avid poker player, regularly entering local events. He has been tutored by poker professionals Amir Vahedi and Annie Duke, and won the California State Poker Championship on June 20, 2004, taking home the first prize of $356,000, which qualified him for the 2004 World Poker Tour final tournament. Affleck is a fan of the Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots and Boston Celtics.

Affleck quit smoking after starring in the 2007 film Smokin’ Aces, in which he was required to smoke heavily, and lost his taste for it after a week of chain-smoking for his role.

Affleck supports a non-profit organization called the A-T Childrens Project. He started supporting the A-TCP after meeting Joe Kindregan when filming Forces of Nature. Kindregan, who was then 9 years old, has a rare disease called ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T). Affleck has attended benefits and spoken to Congress to advocate for the A-T Childrens Project. The disease, described as like having muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, immune deficiency and cancer all at once, is progressive; children with A-T usually do not live beyond their late teens. In 2007, Affleck was the keynote speaker at the Graduation Ceremony for Falls Church High School at the GMU Patriot Center. Of his best friend and graduating senior Joe Kindregan, Affleck mentions that though Kindregan is bound to a wheelchair, through his perseverance he has taught Affleck, “How to stand.”

Political activism: In the final weeks of the 2000 Presidential campaign, Affleck promoted the Democratic ticket, supporting Al Gore and repeatedly delivering a get-out-the-vote plea: “It’s very important to vote. The president will appoint three or four Supreme Court justices.”

During the final week of the race, Affleck spoke on behalf of Gore in California, Florida, and Pennsylvania. During a stop in Pittsburgh, the star — along with Helen Hunt, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner and other actors — spent an hour at a phone bank calling registered Democrats. “People in my generation have a low voter turnout. One of the reasons that I’m here is to demonstrate that no matter who you are going to vote for… I think it’s important to get involved and get out and vote,” Affleck told reporters. “But I’m going to tell people to vote for Gore.”

On October 28, 2000, Affleck flew with Hillary Clinton, who was running for a Senate seat, to Ithaca, New York, where he introduced her at a Cornell University rally. Affleck told the college crowd that Clinton had been advocating for women and working families since “Rick Lazio was running around the frat house in his underwear”. Lazio, then a Long Island congressman, was Clinton’s Republican opponent.

On November 6, 2000, the final day of the campaign, Affleck was one of several high-profile celebrities summoned to Miami Beach by Miramax Films boss Harvey Weinstein for a late-night Gore rally, just hours before polls opened nationwide. The Gore campaign’s last event, a final effort to energize South Beach voters, did not end until about 1:00 a.m., but Affleck flew back to New York that morning and made a surprise live appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show. It was 10:15 a.m. when he made his final public pitch from a Rockefeller Center studio, noting that he was “a little bit tired… I’ve been out getting involved, doing stuff and trying to get people to vote. And that’s why I came by here”. Also, “Today is the get-out-the-vote day and…I think this is the time to get involved, especially the young folks who are here … I’m about to go vote,” He then said, “I am personally gonna vote for Al Gore”.

As votes were tallied that night, Affleck told Salon.com’s Amy Reiter, “I’m nervous this evening, but one of the things that’s exciting to me is the number of people who voted. No matter who wins, I think it’s a healthy thing for our country that so many voters have come out and participated in the process. Either way, I think the most important number will be the turnout”. However, as The Smoking Gun later discovered, Affleck himself did not vote that day.

In the May 2001 issue of GQ, Affleck said, “My fantasy is that someday I’m independently wealthy enough that I’m not beholden to anybody, so I can run for Congress on the grounds that everyday people should be in government”.

In the March 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, Affleck again proposes the possibility of a future run for Congress. “I think there’s a real nobility to public service… It would be fun to run on a platform I really believed in, without being beholden to the win-at-all-costs mentality”.

In 2004, Affleck actively campaigned for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. During the first day of the Democratic Convention, Affleck was featured on Larry King Live with Tucker Carlson and Al Sharpton. Larry King asked Affleck if he would consider running for office, and Affleck admitted to contemplating the proposition. Specific attention focused on whether he would run for Kerry’s open Senate seat (as Affleck was from Massachusetts).

He noted that the line between politics and entertainment is becoming increasingly blurred, as political figures Ronald Reagan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, both came from the entertainment business, although both were members of the Republican Party. During the campaign, Affleck remained diplomatic, saying, “I had the pleasure of and the honor of meeting the President of the United States at the Daytona 500.

I found him to be a collegial, affable, kind guy.” He went on to say Bush “is a patriot and he.s a man who believes in the country. He’s trying to further an agenda he believes in. I happen to disagree with most of his policies, but I respect the man.” (Interview with Bill O’Reilly July 27, 2004).

He appeared in a print ad with his openly gay cousin, Jason, in support of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.  He once said, “Everyone has the capacity for being bisexual.” He has, however, never suggested that he himself is bisexual.

Affleck in popular culture:

  • Affleck was mentioned in “I’ll Sue Ya” on “Weird Al” Yankovic’s CD, Straight Outta Lynwood: “I’ll sue Ben Affleck…… aw, do I even need a reason?”
  • On Will & Grace, after the character Jack has his voice dubbed over in his most recent TV series, he explains to Josh Lucas that Lucas is Matt Damon and that he’s “Ben Affleck in Gigli…or Paycheck…or Bounce…or Jersey Girl…or Surviving Christmas.” This is a joke on how many films he has had bomb.
  • Affleck appears to embrace some of his failed movies; in Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Affleck is seen alongside Damon on the fictitious set of Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season, where Damon mocks the failure of Affleck’s Reindeer Games while the two discuss their movie choices.
  • Affleck has been prominent in two South Park episodes. In “How to Eat with Your Butt”, Affleck was found to be the missing child of a couple suffering from a facial deformity in which their heads were encased in buttocks. In “Fat Butt and Pancake Head”, Affleck was portrayed as Jennifer Lopez’s boyfriend, until he left her for Eric Cartman’s hand puppet, also named Jennifer Lopez.
  • Affleck is a favorite target of Mike Nelson’s RiffTrax.
  • Affleck has also been parodied on Family Guy episode Fast Times at Buddy Cianci, Jr. High, in a flashback scene in which he was lying on the couch while Damon wrote Good Will Hunting, with the joke that he contributed nothing to the script, smoked all their pot and added his name only after adding a word to a sentence. In the episode Barely Legal, Megs’s friends say that Brian looks “just like Ben Affleck” despite the fact that he looks nothing like him.
  • Affleck is mentioned in The Simpsons episode “See Homer Run”, saying that he ran most of Homer’s political campaign.
  • In the movie Team America: World Police, Affleck is mentioned in a song when the vocalist makes a joke about how he needs his girlfriend like Affleck needs acting school.
  • In the video game Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, one of the first tasks the player must complete in Hollywood is performing a kickflip over a “lame” actor named Ben Whofleck. This is later confirmed as a takeoff on Affleck, as an PC comments that Whofleck “sucked in Pearl Harbor”.
  • In the film Date Movie, Affleck is mentioned when the main character goes to see “Hitch” (a parody of the Will Smith character in the film Hitch), who references all of the couples he’s responsible for to show his expertise. Ben Affleck is referred to three times: first with “Ben and Jen,” (Jennifer Lopez, whom Affleck actually dated) “Ben and Jen,” (Jennifer Garner, whom he is currently married to) and “Ben and Matt (Matt Damon).” This is a play on how close they are as friends, suggesting that they were close enough to have been involved, although they actually never were.

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Ryan Reynolds Career and Photos

Posted in Actors on Feb 23rd, 2008 | 0 comments

Ryan Rodney Reynolds (born October 23, 1976) is a Canadian television and film actor. He came to prominence in the television sitcom Two Guys and a Girl (1998–2001), before establishing a career as a Hollywood motion picture actor, starring in both comedic and dramatic roles.

Reynolds was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the son of Tammy, a salesperson and career student, and Jim Reynolds, a Vancouver food wholesaler and former semi-professional boxer. He is the youngest of four brothers. Reynolds graduated from Kitsilano Secondary School in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1994.

Reynolds starred in the National Lampoon movie Van Wilder and the American television series Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place, playing medical student Michael “Berg” Bergen.

He also cameoed in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle as the male nurse, appeared in The In-Laws with Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks, as well as the Canadian production Foolproof and 2004’s Blade: Trinity with Wesley Snipes.

In 2005 he played a waiter named Monty in Waiting…, and as music executive Chris Brander in the romantic comedy Just Friends alongside Amy Smart and Anna Faris. He has also appeared in an episode of the television series Scrubs, where he played Spence, a college friend of J.D. and Turk.

Although he has performed primarily in comedies, Reynolds played the dark character George Lutz in the remake of the horror movie The Amityville Horror.

Reynolds underwent intense physical training to play an action role as the character of Hannibal King in the film Blade: Trinity, which also starred Wesley Snipes and Jessica Biel. He has also played as an FBI agent alongside Ray Liotta in the thriller Smokin’ Aces.

In a March 2005 interview, Reynolds spoke of his interest and involvement in a possible film adaptation of Deadpool with screenwriter David S. Goyer.and also the possibilty of playing the incarnation of The Flash known as Wally West in an adaption of the popular DC comics character in the upcoming movie project. Reynolds will first portray Deadpool in the X-Men spinoff, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

From 2002 to 2007, Reynolds had been romantically linked to Alanis Morissette, becoming engaged in 2004. In July 2006, People reported that the two had split, but neither party confirmed this report. Morissette and Reynolds were pictured holding hands in Los Angeles, sinking the rumors.

However, in February 2007, they mutually decided to end their engagement. He has recently been seeing Scarlett Johansson. In February, perezhilton.com, reported that they might have been engaged but Johansson’s representative has denied the rumours.

Reynolds is a Green Bay Packers fan and loves motorcycles, owning three: a customized 2005 Harley-Davidson Springer Softail, a 2006 Ducati Sport 1000, and a 2005 Confederate.

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Vin Diesel Wallpapers and Photos

Posted in Actors on Feb 15th, 2008 | 0 comments

Huge, hulking and with a neatly shaved skull and a voice that sounds like granite scraping on granite, Actor, producer, writer, and director Vin Diesel had a charmed entry into the world of screen acting: after seeing Multi-Facial, a short that Diesel wrote, produced, financed, directed, and starred in, Steven Spielberg created the role of Private Caparzo specifically for the talented young newcomer in his Saving Private Ryan (1998), Vin Diesel attracts action like moths to a flame, and trust us it’s the kind of action everyone likes.

Vin Diesel (born Mark Sinclair Vincent, July 18, 1967, New York City) is an American actor, writer, director, and producer.

He has played roles of different cultural backgrounds, but prefers to identify himself as “multicultural”, as a result of early difficulties finding roles due to his heritage. He founded the production companies OneRace Films, Tigon Studios, and Racetrack Records.

In an interview on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, he said that he changed his name to Vin Diesel while working as a bouncer, because in that business one’s real name is not usually given out.

The name “Vin” is simply a shortened version of “Vincent”. He received the nickname “Diesel” from his friends who said he ran off diesel, referring to his non-stop energy.

Diesel made his stage debut at age seven when he appeared in the children’s play Dinosaur Door, written by Barbara Garson. The play was produced at Theater for the New City in New York’s Greenwich Village. His involvement in the play came about when he, his brother and some friends had broken into Theater for the New City’s space on Jane Street with the intent to vandalize it.

They were confronted by the Theater’s Artistic Director, Crystal Field, who instead of punishing the kids, handed them scripts and offered them parts in the upcoming show. He remained involved with the theatre throughout adolescence, going on to attend the city’s Hunter College, where his creative writing studies led him to begin screenwriting.

Diesel became an active film-maker in the early 1990s, first earning notice for the short film Multi-Facial, which was selected for screening at the 1995 Cannes Festival.

Diesel’s first film role was an uncredited appearance in the 1990 film Awakenings. He then produced, directed and starred in the 1994 short film Multi-Facial, a short semi-autobiographical film which follows a struggling actor stuck in the audition process, because he is regarded as either “too black” or “too white”, or not black or white enough.

He made his first feature-length film, 1997’s Strays, an urban drama in which he was self-cast as a gang boss whose love for a woman inspires him to try to change his ways. Written, directed and produced by Diesel, the film was selected for competition at the 1997 Sundance Festival, leading to an MTV deal to turn it into a series.

He was then cast in Steven Spielberg’s 1998 Oscar-winning film Saving Private Ryan on the poignancy of his performance in Multi-Facial. He then earned critical acclaim for voice work as the title character in the animation film The Iron Giant (1999).

He followed it up with a major role in Boiler Room (2000) and then got his breakthrough role as the anti-hero Riddick in Pitch Black (2000). He then attained action hero super stardom with the 2001 film The Fast and the Furious and the 2002 film xXx.

In 2004, he reprised his role as Pitch Black’s Riddick in The Chronicles of Riddick. In 2005 he played a lighthearted role in the comedy film The Pacifier which was a box office success. In 2006 he attempted a dramatic role when he played real-life mobster Jack DiNorscio in Find Me Guilty.

Although he was critically acclaimed for his performance, the film bombed at the box office. In 2006 he made a cameo appearance in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, reprising his role from The Fast and The Furious.

In 2007 he was to produce and star as Agent 47 in the video game adaptation of Hitman but eventually left the project. In 2008 his upcoming film release is the science-fiction action thriller Babylon A.D..

He is also currently rumored to be the new T-800 in the new Terminator movie, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. He has announced his intention to direct Hannibal the Conqueror, and star as the legendary Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps by elephant to attack Rome.

Diesel was originally offered the lead in 2 Fast 2 Furious but turned it down. He was also offered the chance to reprise his role from xXx in xXx: State of the Union but also turned it down. On March 8, 2006, Diesel revealed that he was working on a sequel to The Chronicles of Riddick which as of 2008 is still in production.

While visiting the Dominican Republic in 2005, Diesel was accused in October of that year by Marianny Pimentel Orde, a 23 year old architecture student, of suggesting that the owner of a local bar booted her out of the place because she refused to go back to a local hotel with Diesel. Diesel denied the allegations as the club has had a history of problems unrelated to him.

Diesel reportedly claimed that he prefers dating in Europe, where he is less likely to be recognized and where celebrities are not romantically linked to each other. He prefers to maintain his privacy regarding his personal life. “I come from the Harrison Ford, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino code of silence.”

Diesel remains guarded about his personal life. Diesel has played Dungeons & Dragons for over twenty years and wrote the foreword for the commemorative book 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons. In the 30th Anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons issue of Dragon Magazine, they examine the fact that Diesel played Dungeons and Dragons, and reveal that he has a tatoo of his character’s name, “Melkor,” on his back.

Filmography:

Year Movie Role Other notes
1990 Awakenings Orderly Uncredited role
1994 Multi-Facial Mike
1997 Strays Rick
1998 Saving Private Ryan Private Caparzo
1999 The Iron Giant The Iron Giant (voice) Animated
2000 Boiler Room Chris Varick
Pitch Black Richard B. Riddick
2001 The Fast and the Furious Dominic Toretto
Knockaround Guys Taylor Reese
2002 xXx Xander Cage
2003
A Man Apart Sean Vetter
2004 The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury Richard B. Riddick (voice) Straight-to-DVD, animated
The Chronicles of Riddick Richard B. Riddick
2005 The Pacifier Lieutenant Shane Wolfe
2006 Find Me Guilty Jack DiNorscio gained 30 pounds for the role
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift Dominic Toretto Cameo appearance
Rockfish voiceover Announced; animated
2008 Babylon A.D. Hugo Cornelius Toorop Completed
2009 The Wheelman The Wheelman Announced
The Fast and the Furious 4 Dominic Toretto Confirmed
Hannibal the Conqueror Hannibal Barca Announced

Producer – filmography:

  • Multi-Facial (1994) (producer)
  • Strays (1997) (executive producer) (producer)
  • xXx (2002) (executive producer)
  • A Man Apart (2003) (executive producer)
  • Chronicles of Riddick (2004) (executive producer)
  • Life is a Dream (2004) documentary (executive producer)
  • Find Me Guilty (2006) (producer)
  • Hitman (2007) (executive producer)
  • Hannibal the Conqueror (2008) (producer)

Director – filmography:

  • Multi-Facial (1994)
  • Strays (1997)
  • Hannibal the Conqueror (2008)

Writer – filmography:

  • Multi-Facial (1994)
  • Strays (1997)

Games:

  • The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (2004)
  • The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (2008)
  • The Wheelman (2008)

Salary:

  • The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) $0 (After the film makers realized they were over budget, they weren’t sure if Vin Diesel would accept the small part in the end of the film of which they had wished to include. To their surprise however, Vin Diesel did accept the part, even though he would receive no income for it.).
  • The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) $11,500,000
  •  A Man Apart (2003) $2,500,000
  • xXx (2002) $10,000,000
  • The Fast and the Furious (2001) $2,000,000
  • Saving Private Ryan (1998) $100,000

Vin Diesel, is an actor, writer, director, and producer. Diesel is also the founder of the production companies OneRace Films and Tigon Studios. Diesel is distinguished by a bald head, muscular physique, and deep, textured baritone voice.

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Stallone back in action with 2-film deal

Posted in Actors, Films and Movies, News on Feb 5th, 2008 | 0 comments

Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo in Lionsgate Films' Rambo - 2008Boxoffice comeback champ Sylvester Stallone has inked a lucrative deal to direct and star in two action films with “Rambo” producers Danny Dimbort,

Several scripts are being considered for follow-ups to his surprise hit sequels to “First Blood” and “Rocky.” With Nu Image/Millennium’s new Writers Guild of America interim deal speeding up the process, the first script is expected to be ready by the fall, with production set to begin shortly thereafter.

“The past year and a half of working with Avi, his partners Danny and Trevor and his film family has been nothing but a high point for me and my career and an extremely rewarding experience,” Stallone said. “Avi is a real gentleman and a man of his word.”

Stallone will produce the films with Kevin King-Templeton and Lerner. Dimbort, Short and Boaz Davidson will serve as executive producers.

It’s a deal few would have expected just a few years ago, when Stallone followed up his role in “Spy Kids 3D: Game Over” with a failed network boxing reality TV series, “The Contender.” But in 2006, Stallone wrote, directed and starred in “Rocky Balboa,” the sixth “Rocky” film, 16 years after the previous sequel in the franchise. The MGM release grossed $70 million on an estimated $24 million budget.

The second part of Stallone’s one-two punch came with the current release “Rambo,” which he also stars in, wrote and directed. The film, distributed by Lionsgate, made $18.2 million in its opening weekend and earned an estimated $25 million in its first 10 days of release.

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