0

Lucy Liu Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Lucy Liu Biography.jpg

Having previously appeared in supporting roles in several films and as a regular on the CBS sitcom “Pearl” (1996-97), actress Lucy Liu skyrocketed to popularity in 1998 as the malicious Ling Woo on “Ally McBeal” (Fox, 1997-2002). David E Kelley, who originally auditioned her for the role of Nelle Porter (later played by Portia de Rossi), wrote the popular character for Liu, whose fiery performance in her first episode soon eventually led to a regular role. During her run on the series, Liu’s scene-stealing portrayal earned many fans and a share of the 1998 SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

Before making her name on “Ally McBeal,” Liu could be seen frequently in guest appearances on television, including a 1991 stint as a waitress on “Beverly Hills, 90210″ (Fox). One of her more memorable turns came with a recurring part in 1995 as a woman whose young son was suffering from complications of AIDS on NBC’s medical drama “ER”. Additionally, Liu portrayed the self-hating girlfriend of Luke Perry’s Los Angeles police officer in “Riot”, a 1997 Showtime movie dramatizing different stories in 1992’s racially charged Los Angeles riots.

Liu’s up and coming film career began with a bit part in the 1996 hit “Jerry Maguire”. The following year, she played an exotic dancer in the Harvey Keitel actioner “City of Industry”. (The dedicated actress prepared for this role by performing for over a month in a Los Angeles strip club.) Had Liu not already come to the public’s attention on “Ally McBeal,” 1999’s “Payback” may have proven to be her breakthrough role. She starred as Pearl, a leather-clad dominatrix who proved so likable that the initial script was rewritten to afford her more screen time. That same year, Liu could be seen in a featured role in “Molly”, starring Elisabeth Shue as an autistic woman who becomes a genius and in “Play It to the Bone.” The following year, Liu portrayed a kidnapped Chinese princess in “Shanghai Noon” and displayed her martial arts expertise as one of “Charlie’s Angels.” The latter film provided a major boost to Liu’s public image, placing her in an on-screen pantheon of A-listers Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz. As famously as she got on with her female co-stars, Liu did have to contend with numerous media reports of serious friction between herself and comedian Bill Murray, who played Bosley in the film.

Following the phenomenal success of “Charlie’s Angels” in 2000, a wealth of exciting film roles fell into Liu’s lap. In addition to immediately signing up for the glitzy sequel to the hit franchise, Liu starred opposite Antonio Banderas in the little-seen sci-fi thriller “Ecks vs. Sever” in 2002. She also nabbed a part in the much anticipated film version of “Chicago” (2002), turning in a juicy if all-too-brief performance as murderess Kitty Baxter; In 2003, Lui reunited with Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore for the action-packed, eye-candy heavy “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.” The feature, again directed by McG, allowed Liu re-emphasized the ass-kicking style of female bonding the Angels trio–by then very close friends off-screen as well as on–demonstrated in the first film and in their media appearances together. Next, Liu got on board Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited fourth feature “Kill Bill, Vol. 1″ (2003), in a bravura performance as Japanese-Chinese-American O-Ren Ishii, Queen of the Tokyo Underworld and leader of the Crazy 88 Fighters. Liu also enlivened the 2004-2005 first season of the “Friends” spin-off sitcom “Joey” by playing the compulsively clean TV producer Lauren Beck on several episodes.

Significant Others
Education
Milestones

Celebrity Biography
0

Diane Lane Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Diane Lane.jpg

A stage veteran before she made her first films as a teenager, Diane Lane landed on the cover of TIME magazine in a 1979 profile of rising child stars. Few of those featured, however, were as lucky as Lane in making the transition to adult roles, and while her career has had the requisite peaks and valleys, she has continued to land challenging and diverse roles ranging from a frontier prostitute in the acclaimed miniseries “Lonesome Dove” (CBS, 1989) to sexually awakening Jewish housewife of “A Walk on the Moon” (1999) to her Oscar-nominated turn as a straying wife in the provocative “Unfaithful” (2002) .

The only daughter of parents who split within weeks of her birth, the petite blonde Lane was raised by her father in NYC. By the age of six, she had begun her showbiz career in earnest with a role in “Medea” staged by the famed LaMaMa theater company. Throughout the remainder of the 1970s, Lane amassed numerous stage credits, including a world tour with LaMaMa and in various productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival (most notably Elizabeth Swados’ “Runaways”). While she was deemed inappropriate model material, the poised, attractive teenager quickly made the transition to films. Her breakthrough role came in “A Little Romance” (1979), as a precocious American girl who experiences first love with an equally gifted French boy, abetted by an eccentric Englishman. That she shared screen time with Laurence Olivier and proved a strong and engaging presence helped propel her career and made her the “It girl” of the moment.

Lane capitalized on her growing fame with TV-movies (e.g., “Miss All-American”, CBS 1982) and the femme lead opposite Matt Dillon in a pair of films adapted from S E Hinton novels, “The Outsiders” and Rumble Fish” (both 1983), both directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The helmer has admitted to being infatuated with the starlet which is a possible explanation for his hiring her to co-star with Richard Gere in the ill-fated “The Cotton Club” (1984). A sprawling would-be epic, the movie suffered greatly from the lack of chemistry between Gere and Lane (although she looked fabulous in the period clothing) as well as from her miscasting–at 18, she was clearly too young to play a world-weary gangster’s moll who tempts a musician into an affair. It didn’t help her career, either, when she declined the part of the mermaid in “Splash” in favor of portraying a rock star diva in Walter Hill’s muddled musical “Streets of Fire” (also 1984).

After a hiatus to regroup, Lane attempted to forge a screen persona but the fickleness of Tinseltown reduced her to appearing in drivel like “Lady Beware” (1987), She did have a moderately good turn as a stripper opposite Matt Dillon in the noirish “The Big Town” (also 1987), but few saw the flick in its theatrical release. One of her best 80s roles came on the small screen as the prostitute who accompanies a group of men on a cattle drive in the award-winning adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel “Lonesome Dove”.

Despite her fine work and an Emmy nomination, good follow-up roles failed to materialize in the early 90s. Lane co-starred as the daughter of a man who may have been a Nazi sympathizer in the 1990 HBO drama “Descending Angel” and made the most of her limited screen time as Paulette Goddard in Richard Attenborough’s reverent biopic “Chaplin” (1992). Once again television provided a pair of fine roles: as the young version of the titular “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” (CBS, 1994) and as Stella to Alec Baldwin’s Stanley Kowalski in a remake of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (CBS, 1995). In between, the actress attempted to raise her international stock by hitching on to Sylvester Stallone’s renown, but the resulting film, “Judge Dredd” (1995) was a dismal mess. A reteaming with director Walter Hill as a luminous woman from the past of “Wild Bill” (also 1995) showcased her gifts but that film proved a box-office disappointment as well. Lane slowly rebounded as the mother of a boy with a rare genetic disease that aged him rapidly (and turned him into Robin Williams!) in “Jack”, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and by playing a competent Secret Service agent in the thriller “Murder at 1600″ (1997).

The 1969-set indie “A Walk on the Moon” (1999), Tony Goldwyn’s directorial debut, however, allowed her to fully realize her screen potential. As a vaguely unhappy Jewish wife and mother who embarks on an affair, Lane earned some of the best reviews of her career and rejuvenated her standing in Hollywood. She subsequently began the millennium co-starring opposite Bill Pullman in the TV remake of “The Virginian” (TNT, 2000) and portrayed Mark Wahlberg’s land-bound girlfriend in “The Perfect Storm” (2000). Even as audiences were growing ever aware that her acting abilities were equal to her enduring beauty, she still found herself cast in relatively minor roles in films of varying quality, from the terrific such as “My Dog Skip” (2000) to the terrible, like the thriller “The Glass House” (2001).

Finally, in 2002 Lane was cast in a role that perfectly showcased her remarkable talents when she took the lead in “Unfaithful,” director Adrian Lyne’s psychological and often erotic look at a mature woman who has no reason to upset her happy home life but nevertheless embarks on a torrid affair with a young lover that ultimately results in tragedy. Lane’s sensual, natural and conflicted performance–better, actually, than the movie itself–won her heaps of accolades, including an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, and marked a new high point in her career.

At last established as a bankable leading lady, Lane’s follow-up was the lighter-weight romantic comedy “Under the Tuscan Sun” (2003), based on the popular book by author Frances Mayes, in which Lane played a 35-year-old San Francisco writer who makes an impulsive home purchase in Tuscany and discovers romance as she renovates her dilapidated new house.

Family
Significant Others
Education
Milestones
Celebrity Biography
0

Ashley Judd Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Ashley Judd Biography.jpg

Described by her own mother as “an intellectual pinup”, Ashley Judd has portrayed a wide array of characters that possess a fierce determination coupled with an alluring sensuality. Whether she is playing a Southerner starting over (her breakthrough role in “Ruby in Paradise” 1993), a pre-fame Marilyn Monroe (HBO’s “Norma Jean & Marilyn” 1996) or a kidnap victim who managed to elude her captor (”Kiss the Girls” 1997), this actress delivers strong, beautiful, delicate and forthright performances that have impressed critics and audiences alike.

When her parents divorced, Judd was shuttled between California, Kentucky and Tennessee, attending 12 schools in 13 years. A bookish child, she developed an early interest in performing and, goaded by her older sister, opted to try her luck in Hollywood after completing college. Working as a hostess at the popular restaurant The Ivy, Judd made industry connections and within a year had begun to land stage and screen roles, perhaps most notably as Swoosie Kurtz’s troubled daughter Reed on the NBC drama “Sisters”. Judd, however, found the small screen role frustrating and negotiated an early release from her contract. The ambitious actress auditioned for the pivotal role of Christian Slater’s girlfriend in the comedy “Kuffs” (1992) but as she told Lawrence Grobel in Movieline (October 1997): she “thought they were boiling it down to a booby factor–choosing a pair of breasts.” Her agent suggested she pass and accept instead the smaller role of a woman in a paint store and her career began to take shape.

After her award-winning turn as the Tennessee heiress who sets out to find herself in Florida in “Ruby in Paradise”, Judd was cast as the sole survivor of a massacre who describes the traumatic event in detail in “Natural Born Killers” (1994). Because her emoting was accompanied by graphic flashbacks, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) requested that director Oliver Stone cut the scene, deeming it too violent and disturbing. (Stone restored it for the 1996 “director’s cut” video release.) Judd continued to add to her gallery of supporting roles with a dramatic turn as Harvey Keitel’s junkie daughter in “Smoke” and Val Kilmer’s unfaithful wife in “Heat” (both 1995) and she brought what she could to the underwritten part of a lawyer’s spouse in “A Time to Kill” (1996). Faring better on the small screen, Judd displayed her intelligence and skill (as well as a considerable amount of flesh) as the younger incarnation of Marilyn Monroe in “Norma Jean and Marilyn”, which brought her an Emmy nomination. While “Normal Life” (1996) was originally intended for theatrical release, it was relegated to HBO. Nevertheless, it contained her disturbing, impassioned portrayal of an unhinged woman who drives her caring husband to a life of crime in order to satisfy her acquisitive nature.

In her first Hollywood lead, Judd was cast as a capable doctor who, having escaped from a kidnapper, agrees to help the police track down the criminal in “Kiss the Girls” (1997). Again, her native intelligence and striking beauty were used to good effect, even if the surrounding efforts were not top-drawer. The actress exhibited her sexy side as the local girl who falls for a drifter in “The Locusts” (also 1997) and offered a memorable, if relatively brief, turn as a single mother in the sentimental period drama “Simon Birch” (1998). Judd returned to thrillers as an innocent woman who, after serving time for murdering her abusive husband, discovers he was still alive in “Double Jeopardy” (1999) and a suspected serial killer tracked by Ewan McGregor in “Eye of the Beholder” (2000).

In 2001, Judd starred opposite Hugh Jackman as a betrayed woman who becomes obsessed with studying male behavior in the romantic-comedy feature “Someone Like You,” which did not ignite any special box office sparks. A return to form in the middlebrow thriller “High Crimes” (2002) as a high powered laywer stunned by her husband’s shocking past–opposite her “Kiss the Girls” co-star Morgan Freenan (though not a sequel)–also did little to advance the actress craft or audience pull, though she did provide some fire and flavor to her softer follow-up, the seriocomic “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” (2002), playing the flashback version of Vivi, the highly strung Ellen Burstyn character. She was then cast as in a small but crucial supporting role as Tina Modotti in the story based on the life of Frida Kahlo, “Frida” (2002), as a favor to Judd’s longtime friend Salma Hayek. After a stint on Broadway in the role of Maggie in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and a never-realized flirtation with the role of “Catwoman” (later played by Halle Berry), Judd returned to the big screen in 2004 as Linda Lee Porter, the devoted wife and muse to the great American composer/songwriter Cole Porter (Kevin Kline) in the elegant and sophisticated biopic “De-Lovely.”

Family
Significant Others
Milestones
Celebrity Biography
0

Famke Janssen Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Famke Janssen Biography.jpg

She wore the most luxurious fashions of the 1980s. Her face is the envy of millions. So when Famke Janssen was cast as Xenia Onatopp, the new “Bond Girl” of the 1990s in the James Bond thriller, “GoldenEye” (1995), it was front-page news in The Hollywood Reporter. When the movie premiered, she was interviewed everywhere, and her name was added to wish lists all over Hollywood.

Janssen began modeling at a young age and was immediately successful in her native Holland. When work for Chanel brought her to NYC, she stayed. Still young for a model (not yet 25), she quit to study creative writing and literature at Columbia University and enrolled in an acting workshop. Having appeared in an episode of Fox’s campy night-time soap “Melrose Place”, Janssen landed her first significant role as Jeff Goldblum’s romantic interest in “Fathers and Sons” (both 1992). She followed that up playing the action lead in the TV-movie “Model By Day” (Fox, 1994), a role she is said to want to forget. The multilingual actress co-starred with Scott Bakula in Clive Barker’s “Lord of Illusions” (1995) before hitting screens in her breakthrough role as the villainous Russian killer who crushes men to death with her thighs in “GoldenEye.”

After that, the raven-haired stunner was careful not to fall into the trap so many other models-turned-actresses had. She avoided accepting too many glamorous, yet unnecessary girlfriend roles in big studio movies, opting instead to tackle a variety of characters that required her to stretch her acting muscles, not just smile pretty for the camera. One of the only actresses to escape Bond-girl oblivion (few of James Bond’s female co-stars have gone on to bigger and better projects), the busy actress appeared in six releases in 1998, announcing that she was more interested in working with quality directors and actors than starring in big-budget features. She essayed characters ranging from a bitter alcoholic in “The Gingerbread Man” to a Russian-born owner of a gambling joint in “Rounders” to a tough, blue-collar Bostonian in “Monument Avenue”. Woody Allen cast her as a sophisticated book editor in “Celebrity”, reuniting her with her “Gingerbread Man” co-star Kenneth Branagh, while Robert Rodriguez tapped her to be a timid high school teacher in “The Faculty”. Her deft performances prompted critics and co-stars to marvel at her chameleonic versatility and uncanny knack for imitating accents.

Janssen slowed down a bit the following year, seen only in the forgettable horror flick “The House on Haunted Hill” before returning with gusto in 2000 and earning rave reviews for her performance in “Love & Sex”, her first starring role in a romantic comedy. The movie, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was also her first with actor-writer-director Jon Favreau. After that, she again switched gears, this time playing a telepathic mutant holding her own against Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Anna Paquin in the big-screen version of the Marvel comic “X-Men.” She returned to comedy later that year in the Favreau-helmed vehicle, “Made” (2001), again showing great chemistry with Favreau and a effective range in an otherwise small role. In the kidnapping thriller “Don’t Say a Word” (2001) Janssen also imbued the thankless role of Michael Douglas’ bedridden wife with a great sense of vulnerability when their daughter is abducted. She switched gears in 2002 for the big screen version of the 1960s TV hit “I Spy” starring Owen Wilson and Eddie Murphy, and even during the most comedic moments with her co-stars Janssen demonstrated an enviable ability to keep her performance rooted in reality and, after several turns downplaying her looks, using her considerable sex appeal to great effect. Next up was a dramatic return to the role of Jean Grey (now with red hair like her comic book counterpart) for the much-anticipated sequel “X2: X-Men United” (2003), setting in motion events that would make her character pivotal to a third outing. Her next move was to the small screen in a recurring role in the 2004 season of FX’s hit drama “Nip/Tuck” as the provocative “life coach” Ava Moore whose relationship with the McNamara’s teen son revealed a seamier relationship with her own offspring.

After supporting roles in “Eulogy” (2004), a low-budget comedy about three generations of a dysfunctional family gathering in Rhode Island to bury their patriarch, and “Hide & Seek” (2005), a low-budget horror about a widower (Robert De Niro) who discovers his daughter’s imaginary friend is really a malicious and violent reality, Janssen revived Jean Grey for the third installment of the series, “X-Men: The Last Stand” (2006), directed by Brett Ratner. This time, the mutants face a peculiar choice after a cure for mutations is found: retain their uniqueness and remain isolated from society or give up their strange powers and become human.

Family
Significant Others
Milestones
Celebrity Biography
Previous Page
Next Page