Hugh Jackman is an Australian and American film and stage actor and producer. He is best known for his role of a superhero mutant Wolverine in the anthology X-Men. The peak of his acting career was his role in a detective thriller Prisoner (2013). He is also widely known for the films Kate & Leopold, Password Swordfish, Van Helsing, The Fountain, Prestige, Real Steel, Les Miserables and Chappie. Hugh was nominated for Oscar (2013), BAFTA (2013) and Golden Globe (2002). He was a winner of cinema award Golden Globe (2013), theater award Tony (2004) and the television prize Emmy (2005).
Hugh Michael Jackman was born on October 12, 1968 in Sydney. He was the youngest of five children. Hugh was born into the family of Chris Jackman and Grace Watson, emigrants from the UK. In the 1960s they moved to Australia. When Hugh was 8 years old, his parents divorced, Grace returned to England with daughters, and three sons stayed with their father. A few years later, when Hugh was 12, his parents tried to be together again, but the attempt was unsuccessful. Grace came to Australia for three weeks every six months. Later Hugh began to travel to London to visit his mother and sisters.
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William Frederick Cody was better known as Buffalo Bill. Cody’s career was romanticized in story and song until he became a legend in his own time. He was a folk hero of the American West.
He also produced a famous show about the Wild West.
Cody was born on February 26, 1846 in Iowa. He grew up in Kansas. He was a strong, active boy who liked to hold western shows in a neighbor’s pasture, using an old black mare as his only animal.
When Billy was ten he witnessed his father being stabbed in a fight by drunken men. In 1857, his dad died. The boy got a job herding cattle to support his mother. At the age of eleven Bill Cody killed his first Indian and became a hero in the eyes of older men.
At the age of 14 he started working for the Pony Express, a service that delivered mail on horseback.
In the 1860s Cody served in the American Civil War and scouted for the U.S. Army. As a scout he roamed around to gather information about the Native Americans. He got the nickname Buffalo Bill for shooting thousands of buffalo to feed railroad workers.
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Katharine Hepburn was an American actress. She was nominated for Oscar twelve times and won it four times – more than any other actor or actress in history. She was recognized the greatest actress in Hollywood history by the American Film Institute. She was a successful actress on the stage and on the screen for over 50 years.
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut. The girl grew up in New England into the family of a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn (1879-1962), who worked as urologist in the Hartford Hospital, and a prominent feminist Martha Katherine Houghton Hepburn, who headed the local branch of the suffrage organization. She was one of six children.
At the age of 12 Katharine began to take part in amateur theatricals, in 1928 she made her debut at the theater in Baltimore, and a year later found herself on the Broadway stage.
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Sir Charles Chaplin was film actor, director, and writer. He was one of the most original creators in the history of the cinema. He first went on stage when he was five years old. At the age of 21 he joined a show that toured America. In 1914, he went to Hollywood. In his first year there he made 35 short comedy films! He always appeared as a tramp with a moustache, a jacket that was too small for him, a bowler hat, large boots and a walking cane. His first full-length film was The Kid. In 1940, he made his first ‘talking picture’, The Great Dictator, and for the first time he didn’t appear in his familiar role of the tramp. He left America in the 1950s and settled in Switzerland with his fourth wife.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889 in Kennington, London. His mother, a talented singer, spent most of her life in and out of mental hospitals; his father was a fairly successful vaudevillian until he began drinking.
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Romy Schneider was a German-French actress, star of the Austrian, German and French cinema. She is one of the most famous German actresses of the XX century who has earned international success and fame.
Rosemarie Magdalena Albach was born on September 23, 1938 in Vienna. Her mother was a German film star Magda Schneider, her father was a hereditary Austrian actor Wolf Albach-Rhett. Her paternal grandmother, Rosa Albach-Retty, had been a famous Vienna stage actress of an earlier era.
Romy and her younger brother Wolf-Dieter were brought up by grandparents. Their parents didn’t see the children very often. They broke up in 1943 and finally divorced in 1945. Romy’s father married the Austrian actress Trude Marlen in 1947, and Magda Schneider married restaurateur Hans Herbert Blatzheim in 1953.
As a teen, Schneider attended a school in Salzburg, Austria, where she performed in plays and participated in several sports. Her ambition was to become a painter.
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James Dean is famous today as the symbol of American youth in the 1950s and he still has many fans.
James Byron Dean was born on February 8, 1931 in Marion, Indiana. At the age of five James moved to Los Angeles from the Mid-west. His mother died of cancer three years later in July 1940; he returned to the Mid-west and lived on a relative’s farm.
After graduating in 1949 he left for Los Angeles, where he lived briefly with his father and stepmother and entered Santa Monica City College. The following year he transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dean started acting when he went to New York and got a part in a Broadway play. He did television plays and several more Broadway productions. He won the Daniel Blum Theatre World Award for ‘‘best newcomer’’ of the year for his role in The Immoralist.
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Leni Riefenstahl was a German film director and photographer, as well as an actress and dancer. Riefenstahl is one of the most famous filmmakers who worked during the period of National Socialist rule in Germany. Her documentary Triumph of the Will and Olympia made her an active promoter of the Third Reich.
Helene Berta Amalie Riefenstahl (her real name) was born on August 22, 1902 in Berlin. Her brother Heinz was born two and a half years later. Their father, Alfred Riefenstahl, was an experienced businessman and owned a large company.
Since childhood Leni took music lessons. The girl successfully performed at school concerts. Leni was gifted in music and painting, but had a real passion for dance. Italian musician F. Busoni saw her dancing and composed Waltz-Caprice special for the girl. Later it became one of her most popular performances.
At the age of 12 Leni joined the swimming sports club Mermaid, where she participated in competitions and received prizes. Once she fell from a five-meter diving tower and had to leave the club.
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