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

Links:

• Sydney Pollack Profile and Detailed Biography at WhoABC.com: http://www.whoabc.com/men/s/sydney-pollack/

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.

Links:

• Ben Affleck Website: http://www.westlord.com/benaffleck/

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.

Links:

• Ryan Reynolds Website: http://www.westlord.com/ryan-reynolds/

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:

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.

Links:

• Vin Diesel Website
• Vin Diesel Photos Gallery
• Vin Diesel Posters
• Vin Diesel Desktop Wallpapers

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.

Links:

• Sylvester Stallone Website:  http://www.westlord.com/sylvesterstallone/
• Rambo 4 Trailers and Reviews: http://www.boxist.com/2008/01/10/rambo-2008-film-trailer-review-and-  wallpapers/

He is also well known for his roles in films such as Dude, Where’s My Car?, Just Married, The Butterfly Effect , and The Guardian. He is currently married to actress Demi Moore.

Kutcher was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the son of factory workers Diane and Larry Kutcher. He has an older sister, Tausha, and a fraternal twin, Michael, who has cerebral palsy.

Michael had an emergency heart transplant at the age of thirteen that was necessitated by cardiomyopathy, a virus-induced illness that weakened and perforated his heart muscle.

Kutcher’s childhood was that of a rugged, outdoorsy Midwesterner, and he had various odd jobs, including carpentry, hay-baling and livestock castration.

Kutcher attended Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for about a year when his family moved to Tiffin, Iowa where he attended the Clear Creek-Amana High School. In addition to being a student, he played on the football team as wide receiver and appeared in school plays. Meanwhile, his home life was stressful. He has stated that “I didn’t want to come home and find more bad news about my brother” and “kept myself so busy that I didn’t allow myself to feel.”

Kutcher stated that as a teen, he contemplated committing suicide. At thirteen, he attempted to jump from a hospital balcony, but his father intervened at the last minute. At around this time, his parents divorced. During his senior year, he broke into the high school at night with his cousin in an attempt to steal money; he was caught leaving the scene.

Kutcher was convicted of third-degree burglary and sentenced to three years’ probation and 180 hours of community service. Kutcher stated that though the experience “straightened him out,” he lost his girlfriend and anticipated college scholarships, and he was ostracized at school and in his community.

Kutcher attended the University of Iowa, where he majored in biochemical engineering (but did not complete), motivated by the desire to find a cure for his brother’s heart ailment.

At the University of Iowa, Kutcher was kicked out of his apartment for being too “noisy” and “wild.” Kutcher stated, “I thought I knew everything but I didn’t have a clue. I was smoking a lot of weed and partying, and I woke up many mornings not knowing what I had done the night before. I played way too hard. I am amazed I am not dead.”

He was also a member of the Delta Chi fraternity. To make ends meet, Kutcher worked as a floor sweeper for a General Mills plant, and sometimes donated blood for money. Despite his studies, he secretly yearned to be an actor, and once packed up his belongings and headed (on foot) for the airport. Quickly exhausted, and without any plan, he called his mom, and she came and picked him up.

During his time at the University he was approached by a talent scout at a bar called The Airliner in Iowa City, Iowa, he was recruited to enter the “Fresh Faces of Iowa” modeling competition, and after placing first he won a trip to New York City to the International Modeling and Talent Association (IMTA) Convention. After his stay in New York City Ashton returned home to Cedar Rapids, Iowa before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career.

After participating as a modelling contestant in an IMTA competition (losing to Josh Duhamel) in 1997, Kutcher signed with the Next modeling agency in New York, appeared in ads for Calvin Klein, modeled in Paris and Milan, and appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial.

After some success in modeling, Kutcher moved to Los Angeles and, after his first audition, was cast as Michael Kelso in the television series That ’70s Show, which debuted in 1998 and ended in 2006.

Kutcher was cast in a series of film roles; although he auditioned but was not cast for the role of Danny Walker in Pearl Harbor (2001), he starred in several comedy films that performed well at the box office, including Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000), Just Married (2003), and Guess Who (2005).

In addition, he appeared in the family film Cheaper By The Dozen, playing a self-obsessed actor. His 2004 film The Butterfly Effect was an unusually dramatic role for Kutcher, playing a conflicted young man who fell in love with a girl called Kayleigh; the film received very mixed reviews, but was a box-office success.

In 2003, Kutcher produced and starred in his own series on MTV’s Punk’d. The series involves various hidden camera tricks performed on celebrities. Kutcher is also an executive producer of the reality television show Beauty and the Geek, which debuted in 2005, and will produce a reality show based around the rap group Three 6 Mafia, as well as another reality series entitled The Real Wedding Crashers. Kutcher’s most recent film role is in The Guardian, a film which opened on September 29, 2006.

The film co-stars Kevin Costner and Kutcher as United States Coast Guard rescue swimmers. The studio behind the film, Touchstone Pictures, initially hesitated in casting Kutcher in an action film because of his public image as a comic actor; Kutcher underwent eight months of physical training and quit smoking to prepare for the role.

Also, in order to be there for filming, Ashton was forced not to renew his contract for the eighth and final season of That 70s Show, though he did appear in the first four episodes of it (credited as a special-guest star) and returned for the show’s series finale.

Kutcher also voiced a leading character in the animated film Open Season, which opened on the same date as The Guardian. Kutcher is the first of two That 70s Show cast members to host a TV show on MTV (Punk’d), followed by best friend and co-star Wilmer Valderrama. (Yo Momma)

Kutcher has dated actresses January Jones (from 1998 to 2001), Ashley Scott (from 2001 to 2002), Monet Mazur (2002), and Brittany Murphy (from 2002 to 2003). Following his break-up with Murphy in early 2003, Kutcher began dating Demi Moore; reports in the media frequently commented on the fifteen-year age difference between the two.

Moore and Kutcher married on September 24, 2005 in a private ceremony conducted by a rabbi of the Kabbalah Centre; the wedding was attended by about 100 close friends and family of the couple, including Bruce Willis, Moore’s ex-husband. Kutcher has described the marriage as an “illogical decision, but one I couldn’t help making”. He also says, “Bruce and I have a friendship of our own.”

Both Kutcher and Moore are followers of the Kabbalah Centre, a controversial California-based organization which alleges that it teaches Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism.

As part of his involvement in the religion, Kutcher has toured Israel with Demi Moore, as well as taken time off from filming to observe traditional Jewish High Holy Days, and celebrated the Jewish holiday Purim. Kutcher also usually wears the traditional Kabbalah Red string.

Kutcher is best friends with his former That ’70s Show co-stars Danny Masterson and Wilmer Valderrama, as well as actor Seann William Scott whom he co-starred with in Dude, Where’s My Car. Kutcher has also invested in an Italian restaurant named Dolce (other owners include Masterson and Valderrama) and a Japanese-themed restaurant named Geisha House located in Atlanta and Los Angeles. Kutcher is a big Chicago Bears supporter.

Links:

• Ashton Kutcher Website: http://www.westlord.com/ashton-kutcher/
• Demi Moore Website: http://www.westlord.com/demi-moore/

Andy Garcia

Garcia was born Andrés Arturo García y Menéndez in Bejucal, Provincia de la Havana. His mother, Amelie Menéndez, was an English teacher, and his father, René García Núñez, was an attorney in Cuba and later a businessman in the United States.

He has an older brother, Rene. When Garcia was five years old, the family moved to Miami, Florida after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Over a period of several years, however, they built up a million-dollar perfume company. García was raised as a Catholic and attended Miami Beach Senior High School, where he played on the basketball team. During his last year in high school, however, he became ill with hepatitis, which convinced him to pursue a career in acting.

García began acting at Florida International University, but soon went to Hollywood. He started to perform in very short roles, working part-time as waiter and in a warehouse. His chance arose when he was offered a role as a gang member in the first episode of the popular TV series Hill Street Blues.

Director Brian de Palma liked his performance in the 1986 movie 8 Million Ways to Die and engaged him the following year for The Untouchables, which made Garcia a popular Hollywood actor. In 1989, Francis Ford Coppola was casting The Godfather Part III.

The character Vincent Corleone, the illegitimate son of Sonny Corleone, was an exceptional part which many actors wanted. Garcia was not the only one of the few actors capable of carrying the part, but he also bore a resemblance to Robert De Niro, who played the role of young Vito Corleone, Vincent’s grandfather, in The Godfather Part II.

The role thus went to Garcia, who earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance and became an internationally acclaimed star.

In the following years, García has performed in a wide variety of films. He has appeared also in several TV films. While not in the same vein of movie stars dominating the box office, Garcia has remained equally strong in both leading and supporting roles.

One of his more well-known films was the 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven, in which he played Terry Benedict, the ruthless Las Vegas mogul who just happens to be seeing the estranged wife (Julia Roberts) of George Clooney’s character.

García reprised the role in the 2004 sequel, although many noted that the part was significantly smaller than the one he played in the first film. He has finished and released The Lost City which he co-wrote, directs, and stars in, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray.

Upon its release, The Lost City sparked controversy among many in Latin America due to its negative portrayal of the Cuban Revolution, and Che Guevara in particular, who have substantial supporters in the early 21st century Latin America.

In 1982, Garcia married María Victoria Lorido. He is the father of three daughters and one son, his namesake, born in 2002. The García family lives in Los Angeles and Miami.

Garcia and his good friend Christian Tellez saved a family of four during a boating accident they witnessed off the coast of Miami Beach in 1986. García is a fervent critic of the Cuban government.

He was also, along with Gloria Estefan, a strong advocate of Elian Gonzalez staying in the United States rather than returning to be with his father in Cuba in early 2000. He also appeared as a waiter in Gloria Estefan’s video for the song “When I see your smile”.

Garcia’s niece Jackie was the longtime girlfriend of the late Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor, who was shot by intruders in their Miami-area home on November 26, 2007 and who died from his wounds on November 27, 2007. The two were home with their 18-month old daughter Jackie when the incident took place. Garcia attended Taylor’s funeral, and released a statement to the Miami Herald calling Taylor a hero for saving the life of his niece and her child.

• Andy Garcia Website: http://www.westlord.com/andy-garcia/

Harvey began doing stand-up comedy in the mid 1980s, eventually leading to a long stint as host of It’s Showtime at the Apollo, succeeding his colleague Mark Curry in that role. His success as a stand-up comedian led to The WB network giving him his own show, The Steve Harvey Show, which ran from 1996 to 2002. While wildly popular in the African-American community (the show won multiple NAACP Image Awards), the show never achieved critical acclaim outside of the African-American community, a matter about which Harvey has often complained.

In 1997, Harvey continued his work in stand-up comedy, touring as one of the Kings of Comedy, along with Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley and Bernie Mac. The comedy act would later be put together into a film by Spike Lee called The Original Kings of Comedy.

Following the end of his runs on Showtime at the Apollo and The Steve Harvey Show, Harvey continued acting in some minor roles, but has become a major figure in many African-American functions and is a staple on BET. In addition, he has released an audio CD of up-and-coming hip hop and R&B artists on a record label he founded, and has authored a book, Steve Harvey’s Big Time.

That title was also used as the name of Harvey’s comedy and variety television show (later renamed Steve Harvey’s Big Time Challenge) which aired on The WB network from 2003 until 2005.

DVD sales of The Original Kings of Comedy and Don’t Trip, He Ain’t Through With Me Yet have increased Steve Harvey’s brand recognition among African Americans. During the past two years, Harvey has launched the popular Steve Harvey clothing line which features the line of dress wear which has made him popular with the 40+ crowd.

On October 7th, 2004 Marshall Mathers, better known as rapper Eminem released the track “Just Lose It”, with some lyrics remarking humorously on Michael Jackson’s career and historically infamous legal troubles. Steve Harvey was quick to respond against these lyrics saying, “Eminem has lost his ghetto pass. We want the pass back.”

Harvey, initially expecting a positive response from this off the cuff remark was quickly criticized by many for his support of the controversial legal stance of the artist Michael Jackson, as well as his remarks about Eminem. “Steve Harvey, who was born in a town in West Virginia of less than 1,500 people is revoking someone’s ghetto pass? Being born black don’t mean you were born in the ghetto.” (DeShaun Dupree Holton, aka rapper Proof from D12)

Harvey was previously married to Mary Shackelford. They divorced after 10 years of marriage in December 2005. The couple have one son together, named Wynton. Harvey also has twin daughters and a son from his first marriage. He remarried for the third time on June 25, 2007 in Maui to Marjorie Bridges, a longtime friend. Harvey is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Harvey is also a Born Again Christian.

Harvey also hosted his own radio morning radio show, The Steve Harvey Morning Show, syndicated under Radio One, Inc. broadcasting company, from September 2000 until May 2005. The Los Angeles-based show, although fairly successful in the L.A. market itself, was not as successful in its national syndication efforts as either Harvey or Radio One had hoped it would be. Ultimately, the show aired only in L.A. on KKBT, and in Dallas on KBFB, with Harvey splitting his time between the Dallas and L.A. studios. As a result, Harvey and Radio One decided to part ways shortly before his contract expired.

In September 2005, Harvey signed a joint syndication deal with Premiere Radio Networks and Inner City Broadcasting Corporation for a new incarnation of “The Steve Harvey Morning Show”; the show is based out of WBLS in New York. Steve is also a strong advocate of the 50 milion pound weight loss with Dr.Ian Smith.

He was a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984, and has worked as a stand-up comedian. He has also enjoyed a minor singing career.

Murphy has received Golden Globe nominations for best actor in a comedy or musical for his performances in Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places, and The Nutty Professor. In 2007, he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of fictitious soul singer James “Thunder” Early in Dreamgirls, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the same role.

Murphy’s work as a voice actor includes Thurgood Stubbs in The PJs, Donkey in the Shrek series and the dragon Mushu in Disney’s Mulan. In some of his films, he plays multiple roles in addition to his main character, which he calls a tribute to one of his idols Peter Sellers (who is famous for playing multiple roles in one film), films which Murphy has played multiple roles include Coming to America, the Nutty Professor films, where he played much of the Klumps clan, and 2007’s Norbit.

Another trademark of Murphy is his deep, infectious, and considerably goofy laugh. One other trademark of his is his catchphrase “how you doin’?”, which is similar to Will Smith’s “Aw hell no!” or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “I’ll be back!”

Murphy is also a singer and musician, having frequently provided background vocals to songs released by the The Bus Boys. As a solo artist, Murphy had two hit singles, “Party All the Time” (which was produced by Rick James) and “Put Your Mouth on Me” in the 1980s. “Party All the Time” was featured on Murphy’s 1985 debut album How Could It Be, which also included a minor follow-up R&B hit in the title track, a duet with vocalist Crystal Blake. T

his track was written by Rusty Hamilton and was produced by Stevie Wonder’s cousin Aquil Fudge after a brief falling out and bet with Rick James. In 2004, VH-1 and Blender magazine voted “Party All the Time” number seven among the “50 Worst Songs of All-Time.” Sharam used a sample of Murphy’s “Party All The Time” for the UK #8 hit “PATT (Party All The Time)” in 2006.

Murphy recorded the album Love’s Alright in the early 1990s. He performed in a video of the single “Whatzupwitu”, featuring Michael Jackson. In 1999, the “Whatzupwitu” video, which featured Murphy and Jackson in a technicolor-like dream world, was voted as number three among the 25 worst music videos in the MTV era. He also recorded a duet with Shabba Ranks called “I Was a King”, which was similarly panned. In 1992, Murphy also appeared in Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” video alongside Magic Johnson and Iman.

Although uncredited, Murphy provided vocal work on SNL castmate Joe Piscopo’s comedy single, “The Honeymooners Rap.” Piscopo impersonated Jackie Gleason on the single, while Murphy provided an imitation of Art Carney.

In Coming to America, Murphy imitated Jackie Wilson when he sang “To Be Loved,” but because the character he was playing had a thick accent, he had to sing it in character. In later years, Murphy performed several songs in the Shrek film franchise. In the first film, he performed a version of “I’m a Believer” in the film’s final scene; in Shrek 2 he performed Ricky Martin’s hit “Livin’ La Vida Loca” along with co-star Antonio Banderas.

From 1989 until the mid-1990s, box office results for Murphy’s films dropped, particularly with Beverly Hills Cop III (a movie Murphy would ultimately denounce during an appearance on Inside the Actors Studio), and Vampire in Brooklyn, although he did find success with The Distinguished Gentleman, Boomerang and Another 48 Hrs.. His directorial debut, Harlem Nights, is widely seen as a vanity project and the first step in Murphy’s career slump. Harlem Nights featured Murphy (who had previously been known only as a performer) as director, producer, star, and co-writer, as well as supporting roles for Murphy’s comic idols Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor.

During this period Murphy was also criticized by filmmaker Spike Lee for not using his show business stature to help black actors break into film, despite Murphy giving several future stars roles in his films, for example Damon Wayans in Beverly Hills Cop, Halle Berry and Martin Lawrence in Boomerang, Samuel L. Jackson and Cuba Gooding Jr in Coming to America and Raw, Dave Chappelle in The Nutty Professor and Chris Rock who was in Beverly Hills Cop II and Boomerang. David Spade poked fun at Murphy’s career slump on his Hollywood Minute segment on Saturday Night Live. With an image of Murphy on screen, Spade said “Look children, a falling star…make a wish!”

Although Murphy has enjoyed commercial success since Saturday Night Live, he has never attended cast reunions, anniversary specials, or participated in the making of the Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live retrospective book by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller (2002).

Some believe Murphy feels that SNL betrayed him with Spade’s comments (although he hadn’t attended the 15th Anniversary special before the comments were made). Others believe Murphy’s lack of allegiance to producer Lorne Michaels was responsible, since Murphy was brought on the show by executive producer Jean Doumanian after Michaels had left, and was one of the few cast members retained by Dick Ebersol when she was replaced.

Murphy’s box office results began to recover in 1996, starting with The Nutty Professor. He followed with a series of very successful family-friendly movies like Mulan, Dr. Dolittle and its sequel, the Shrek series, Daddy Day Care, and The Haunted Mansion, along with Nutty Professor II, which some attribute to his real-life role as a family man. However, most of his movies meant for more adult audiences performed moderately- Metro, I Spy, and Showtime all ended to gross less than $40 million domestically, Holy Man performed badly grossing less than $13 million, and The Adventures of Pluto Nash is on record as one of the biggest theatrical money-losers of all time, grossing just $7 million worldwide on a reported $110 million budget. A notable exception to this run of poorly received adult -themed films was the Frank Oz comedy Bowfinger, also starring Steve Martin. A biting satire on the Hollywood movie industry, Bowfinger garnered generally positive critical reviews, and grossed a respectable $66 million at the US box office.

But his fortunes turned around in 2006/2007 with the motion picture version of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls as soul singer James “Thunder” Early. Murphy won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award in that category. Several reviews for the film highlighted Murphy’s performance while he received some pre-release Academy Awards buzz. Murphy was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on January 23, 2007, but lost to Alan Arkin for his performance in Little Miss Sunshine.

Dreamgirls was the first film distributed by Paramount Pictures to star Murphy (who once signed an exclusive contract with the studio) since Vampire in Brooklyn in 1995. As a result of Viacom’s acquisition of Dreamworks SKG, Paramount distributed his other 2007 releases: Norbit and Shrek the Third. He is currently filming NowhereLand for Paramount Pictures.

Murphy is expected to begin work on Beverly Hills Cop IV sometime in the near future, and it is expected that producer Jerry Bruckheimer will not participate in the fourth installment of the series. Murphy recently told the Sun Online that “the new script is looking good.” In 2007, Murphy was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Personal life: Murphy was rumored to have dated Whitney Houston before meeting his wife. He began a longtime romantic relationship with Nicole Mitchell after meeting her in 1988 at an NAACP Image Awards show. They lived together for a year and a half before getting married at the Grand Ballroom of The Plaza Hotel in New York City on March 18, 1993. In August 2005, Mitchell filed for divorce, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The divorce was finalized on April 17, 2006..

On May 2, 1997, around 4:45am, Eddie Murphy picked up pre-op transsexual prostitute Atisone Seiuli aka Shalimar on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. This area was to be inside a “prostitution abatement zone” designated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Deputies pulled over Murphy’s Toyota Land Cruiser, arrested his passenger for outstanding warrants, and released Murphy. The incident made tabloids and late night talk show monologues for months afterwards. The scandal prompted several other sex workers to come forward to the media about their alleged meetings with the actor.

Paul Barresi, a private investigator allegedly hired by Murphy for damage control when the scandal broke, told a source: “I called Marty ‘Bull Dog’ Singer [Murphy's attorney] and told him I could round up all the transsexuals alleging sexual dalliances with Murphy.” And they would all recant their stories. Within ten days, Barresi said, “I got them all to sign sworn, videotaped depositions, stating it wasn’t Murphy himself, but rather a look-alike, who they’d encountered – with the exception of Seiuli.”

Following his divorce from Mitchell, he dated Melanie Brown, who stated that her child is Murphy’s. Mitchell has considered arguing that Murphy breached their prenuptial agreement. It was widely reported that the reason may have been directly related to the 1997 sex worker incident. When questioned about the pregnancy in December 2006, Murphy told a reporter, “I don’t know whose child that is until it comes out and has a blood test. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions, sir.” Brown gave birth to a baby girl, Angel Iris Murphy Brown, on Murphy’s 46th birthday, April 3, 2007. On June 22, 2007, representatives for Brown announced in People magazine that a DNA test had confirmed that Murphy was the father. Brown’s daughter is Murphy’s seventh child; he has five children from his previous marriage to Nicole Mitchell, and another son from a previous relationship.

Murphy exchanged marriage vows with film producer Tracey Edmonds, former wife of Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, on January 1, 2008 in a private ceremony on an island off Bora Bora. It was announced on January 16, 2008 that they never legally wed, had decided to forgo legalizing their union and had instead chosen to remain friends.

• Eddie Murphy Website: http://www.westlord.com/eddie-murphy/

He acted in 24 movies and several television episodes during his career. In 2006, he spent 10 days in jail for conviction of driving while under the influence and attempted heroin possession.

Brad Renfro was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Angela and Mark Renfro, who works in a blueprint factory. He was raised by his grandmother, Joanne Renfro, a church secretary.

Renfro was ten when he was discovered by Mali Finn, a casting director for Joel Schumacher. Cast by Finn for Schumacher’s The Client, Renfro acted alongside Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. The movie was based on the bestselling John Grisham novel and became one of the top-grossing films of 1994. In 1995, he won Hollywood Reporter’s “Young Star” award, and was nominated as one of People magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30.”

In 1996 he was cast as the young Michael Sullivan for the movie Sleepers based on the novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra. The book Sleepers reportedly tells the story of Carcaterra’s own childhood in Hell’s Kitchen (NYC) and the highly traumatic time he spent in a juvenile detention centre. Michael Sullivan as a grown up was portrayed by Brad Pitt. The film Sleepers was directed by Barry Levinson and also starred Robert de Niro, Kevin Bacon, Dustin Hoffman and Jason Patric.

Renfro went on to act in other films, including 2001’s Ghost World and Bully and 2005’s The Jacket with Keira Knightley and Adrien Brody. He also played Huck Finn in 1995’s Tom and Huck with Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Renfro also appeared in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Recently, he completed filming his role in the upcoming movie The Informers.

Death: Renfro was found dead on January 15, 2008 in his Los Angeles apartment, after he had reportedly spent the previous night drinking with friends. The cause of death has yet to be determined.

Brad Renfro Dies at 25: Actor Brad Renfro has died at age 25, Renfro died Tuesday at a Los Angeles apartment where he spent the night with friends, Craig Harvey, chief investigator for the Los Angeles county coroner.

Renfro was heard snoring overnight, but found not breathing later Tuesday morning, and the friends called 911. Paramedics declared him dead at the scene at about 9 a.m., Harvey says. A cause of death was not immediately determined, but Renfro had a history of drug problems.

Drug overdose is a “possibility considering his history, but right now all we have is the history of his drinking the previous night,” Harvey says. “All that we have is that he was last known to be alive during the morning hours and he was snoring.”

The actor, who starred in The Client and Apt Pupil, had recently completed a movie with Winona Ryder and Billy Bob Thornton.

Discovered at Age 12 Film director Joel Schumacher discovered Renfro at age 12 and cast him in the 1994 John Grisham movie The Client (which also starred Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones). The following year, PEOPLE named the young screen hopeful one of its “Top 30 Under 30.” The actor’s other credits include Tom and Huck, Ghost World and Deuces Wild.

But Renfro had a troubled life off-screen, going back to 1997 when he was sentenced to two years of probation after he tried to steal a yacht.

In 2005, Renfro was busted again, this time in a police sting in which he was charged with a felony count of attempting to possess heroin. In a separate incident, he was charged with a misdemeanor count of driving under the influence and two counts of driving with a suspended license.

In January 2006, he entered a rehab program. At the time, Renfro’s attorney, Richard Kaplan, told the Los Angeles Times that his client was doing well and “looks forward to doing whatever is necessary to take care of his personal and legal issues.” Renfro eventually plead guilty to the heroin charge and was sentenced to three years’ probation.

Most recently, in June 2007 Renfro was found to have violated his probation by not enrolling in a long-term drug treatment program. A judge warned him that if he violated probation two more times, he could be sentence to a live-in rehab program or to jail time.