Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was a British and American film director, producer and screenwriter. Until 1939 he worked in the UK, and then – in the United States. Hitchcock is a film director, whose work is primarily associated with thriller and suspense. He became probably the only film director whose face was recognizable to the general public. He made a fleeting trademark appearance in virtually every one of his films.
Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899 in London. He was a painfully shy child raised in a Catholic household.
Alfred attended St. Ignatius’ College to prepare for the ministry. In 1919, he joined the Islington branch of the Famous Players Lasky film company as a designer of title-cards.
In 1923 he was hired as an assistant director for the production company, where he met his future wife, Alma Reville.
In 1939 Hitchcock left England with his wife and daughter to settle in Hollywood.
Psycho (1960) was Hitchcock’s most terrifying and controversial film. It made entire generation of viewers nervous about taking a shower.
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Akira Kurosawa was a famous Japanese film director, screenwriter and producer. His films have established him as one of the great epic poets of the cinema. Kurosawa is considered one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He made 30 films during 57 years of his career. Akira Kurosawa is widely regarded as a classic of Japanese cinema, whose work has had a tremendous impact not only on a national but also on the world cinema.
Akira Kurosawa was born on March 23, 1910 in Tokyo. He was the youngest of eight children in the family.
He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts.
He worked as an assistant director for a Japanese film studio.
In 1943 he made his directorial debut with his first feature film, Sanshiro Sugata. The film tells about the development of judo in Japan in the late XIX century. It became very popular with Japanese audiences.
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Since childhood Mandy Moore knew she was going to be a star. Now she is an American actress and pop singer, winner of the Young Hollywood award in 2003.
Amanda Leigh Moore was born on April 10, 1984 in Nashua, New Hampshire. Soon her family moved to Orlando, Florida. She has brothers Scott Moore and Kyle. At the age of nine Moore started singing and acting. She also spent seven years performing as a cheerleader for Pop Warner football.
She sang The Star-Spangled Banner for all major sports teams and for Chris Evert’s Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament. Mandy was named the National Anthem Girl. She also appeared in a Mexican teen magazine.
In 1999, Moore was involved in a joint tour with Backstreet Boys. Her first album, So Real was released in December 1999 and took 31th place in the US Billboard 200.
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Meryl Streep is an American film and stage actress. She embodied an increasing realism for female characters in major studio films. She is one of the most gifted film actresses of the late 20th century. Streep is three-time Oscar winner (with 19 nominations – more than any other actor or actress in the history of cinema).
Meryl Louise Streep was born on June 22, 1949 in Summit, New Jersey. Her mother was a commercial artist and her father a pharmaceutical executive. She has two younger brothers.
She started acting at Bernards High School. She was a swimmer who later became a cheerleader in high school.
Meryl studied at Vassar, Dartmouth and at the prestigious Yale Drama School. She appeared in more than three dozen productions with the Yale Repertory Theater. She appeared at the Public Theater in the musical Alice in Concert.
In 1977 she was nominated for a Tony Award for Tennessee Williams’s 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.
In the same year Streep made her debut in Robert Markowitz’s The Deadliest Season. That year she also appeared onscreen for the first time in Fred Zinnmann’s Julia (1977) as Anna Marie.
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Woody Allen is one of the most respected and prolific filmmakers in the modern era. Allen not only writes and directs his movies but he also acts in the majority of them.
Allan Stewart Konigsberg, a.k.a. Woody Allen, was born on December 1, 1935 in the Bronx to Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Cherry. Woody’s grandparents were immigrants. Allen has Jewish and German roots. Allen has a younger sister, Letty (born in 1943). She starred in a documentary film about Allen (2012).
At his first year of school he was put in an accelerated class because of his high IQ. But he hated school from day one and became rebellious. He didn’t do his homework, was rude to the teachers. He was very good in sports (basketball, stickball, football, baseball). He was obsessed with magic and music. At the age of fifteen he started playing the clarinet.
To earn money, he started writing jokes for newspaper columns. In 1952 Allan S. Konigsberg changed his name to Woody Allen.
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Stephen Fry is a comedian, successful novelist, star of the silver screen. He is the nation’s favourite teddy bear and the most beloved of all television personalities. Fry has spent more than two decades as one of British television’s favorite comic actors.
Stephen Fry was born on August 24, 1957 in Hampstead, London into a family of an English physicist and inventor Alan John Fry and his wife Marianne Eve Fry (née Newman).
At the age of 17 Stephen left College of West Anglia and ran away from home. He took a credit card of a family friend. He was arrested in Swindon and spent three months in jail.
Fry continued his studies at City College Norwich. Later he entered the famous Queens College, where he studied English literature. In addition to his studies, he took part in productions of students’ theater, where he met his friend and colleague Hugh Laurie.
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Clive Owen is a British film and stage actor. He first gained recognition after the release of UK television series Lawyer. He was nominated for Oscar, was a winner of the BAFTA awards and Golden Globe for the film Closer.
The most famous films with his participation are Closer (2004), King Arthur (2004), Sin City (2005), Children of Men (2006).
Clive was born on October 3, 1964 in Coventry, UK into the family of Pamela (née Cotton) and Jesse Owen, a country singer. His parents split when he was 3, and he was brought up—the fourth of five brothers—by his mother and stepfather.
He failed his school exams and could have ended up like some of his friends, hanging around shopping malls getting into trouble. Fortunately, he had joined the local youth theater.
Owen applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), London’s premier drama school.
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