Natasha Lyonne Biography
With curly blonde hair, a winning smile and a world-weary delivery, Natasha Lyonne successfully made the transition from child performer to assured screen presence with talent to spare. She may perhaps be best recalled for her recurring role of Opal on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” in the late 1980s. Lyonne made her first film appearance in the uncredited role of Meryl Streep’s niece in “Heartburn” (1986) and, after a brief time living in Israel, landed a recurring role on the CBS daytime drama “As the World Turns”. Her first supporting film role was in “Dennis the Menace” (1993) but she garnered more attention for her deadpan narration as Woody Allen’s levelheaded teenaged daughter in the musical “Everyone Says I Love You” (1996).
She was next seen as Richard Dreyfuss’ daughter, forced to pretend to be part of an imaginary civilization, in the uneven comedy “Krippendorf’s Tribe” (1998). But Tamara Jenkins’ “Slums of Beverly Hills” (also 1998) offered the rising star one of her best screen roles to date as a teenager coping with the onset of puberty and her dysfunctional (all male) family’s constant movement from apartment to apartment. The young thespian delivered a winning and assured performance that anchored the uneven film. She followed with a decidedly supporting turn in the horror comedy “Revenant” (also 1998). In 2002, Lyonne was cast in the holocaust feature “Grey Zone.” The following year, she co-starred in the drug, sex and club drama “Party Monster”, a feature based on the life of Michael Alig, a once-ago, high-time club promoter who was convicted of murder. Later in 2003, Lyonne appeared as the avenging daughter of a film producer who suddenly dies in “Die Mommie Die!†(2003). In “Blade: Trinity†(2004), Lyonne played Sommerfield, a member of the Nightstalkers—a group of human vampire hunters who team up with Blade (Wesley Snipes) to hunt down Dracula and his gang of undead thugs.
After appearing in the unreleased indie comedy “Max & Grace,” about a suicidal couple who break out of a mental institution, Lyonne suddenly started making more headlines for her personal travails than for her career. In December 2004 she was charged with criminal mischief, harassment and trespassing after she purportedly melted down on her New York neighbor, ripping a mirror off the woman’s wall and threatening to sexually molest her dog. In August 2005 she was subsequently discovered in intensive care at a New York City hospital with hepatitis C, a collapsed lung and a heart infection.
- Born:
on 04/04/1979 in New York, New York - Job Titles:
Actor, Producer
Family
- Brother: Adam Lyonne. born c. 1972
- Father: Aaron Braunstein. divorced from Lyonne’s mother
- Mother: Yvette Lyonne. divorced from Lyonne’s father
Significant Others
- Companion: Adam Goldberg. reportedly dating as of October 2000
- Companion: Edward Furlong. appeared together in “Detroit Rock City” (1999); became involved during filming; broke up in summer 2000
Education
- New York University, New York, New York, film
Milestones
- 1986 First film, an uncredited appearance as Meryl Streep’s niece in “Heartburn”
- 1986 Played recurring role of Opal on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” (CBS)
- 1993 Film acting debut in “Dennis the Menace”
- 1996 Breakthrough screen role as DJ the narrator of Woody Allen’s “Everyone Says I Love You”
- 1998 Starred in “Slums of Beverly Hills”
- 1999 Debut as associate producer, “Freeway 2″; also tarred
- 1999 Had featured role in the teen comedy “American Pie”
- 2000 Cast as a young girl whose parents send her to a camp when they think she’s a lesbian in the comedy “But I’m a Cheerleader”
- 2001 Reprised part in “American Pie 2″
- 2002 Co-starred in the Holocaust drama “The Grey Zone”; screened at Toronto
- 2003 Cast as a club kid in the feature “Party Monster”
- 2004 Cast in “Blade: Trinity”
- Had recurring role on the CBS soap “As the World Turns”
- Raised primarily in NYC and on Long Island; lived for about three years (c. 1987-1990) in Israel
Stacy Ferguson Biography
Stacy Ferguson was born on March 27th, 1975 in Hacienda Heights, California to parents Terri and Pat Ferguson. She has a younger sister named Dana (she is three years younger).
Her first professional acting appearance was not an appearance at all, but the use of her voice on the cartoon The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show in which she voiced the character of Sally at the age of eight in 1983. The following year she also leant her voice to two other Charlie Brown cartoons – It’s Flashbeagle Charlie Brown in 1984 and Snoopy’s Getting Married, Charlie Brown in 1985.Her next appearance was on a video named Be Smebody or Be Somebody’s Fool, an educational video where Mr. T and members of New Edition tells kids how to do the right thing. Stacy appears in the video in some of the skits. She also did some modeling and commercials on the side as well.
It was in 1984, however, that she got her big break when she received a role in the kid’s television series Kids Incorporated along side another future celebrity, Jennifer Love Hewitt. She appeared on this show until 1989. The cast of the show won the Young Artists Ensemble Award in 1984 (shared with Ryan Lambert, Renee Sands, Rahsaan Patterson and Martika) and was nominated fir the Young Artist Award for Outstanding Young Ensemble Cast in 1990 (shared with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sean O’Riordan, Kenny Ford Jr.. Devyn Puett and Richard Shoff). The cast of the show also did a TV special (Kids Incorporated: Rock in the New Year) and a video (Kids Incorporated: Chartbusters) in 1986.
She made her debut on the big screen in 1986 with the release of the horror/comedy Monsters in the Closet.
Stacey took a hiatus from show business for a few years and enjoyed herself in school and doing normal teenage stuff. In 1997 she ended her time off and connected with Renee Sands (from her time in Kids Incorporated) and Sefanie Ridel to form the pop-band Wild Orchard. They released their self-titled debut album, Wild Orchard, in 1997 and it did fairly well on the charts. The following year, they recorded Oxygen, which was even more successful and included the hit song “Declaration.†In 1998, she also appeared briefly in the movie Outside Ozona.
In 1999, Stacy, made her way back to Saturday morning television on a series called Great Pretenders. Herself and the other two members of Wild Orchard hosted a TV show in which the audience would vote for the best contestant to lip-sync a song. The band began to lose popularity and in 2001, their record label refused to release their third album.
Stacy went into an emotional and mental downturn (including to turning to drugs for a short while). Wild Orchard dissolved and she bounced around from job to job dancing in nightclubs and performing backup singing. While doing backup, she met William of the Black Eyed Peas. She performed and did backup for the band in 2001 and 2002, especially afterKim Hill left. Stacy, who changed her name to “Fergie†was instrumental in making their album Elephunk (2002) such a success. They asked her to become a full time member of the band in 2003. The members of the Black Eyed Peas are Fergie, will.i.am, Taboo and apl.de.ap.
In May, 2004, she was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World by People magazine.
The Black Eyed Peas released their fourth album entitled Monkey Business in June of 2005 and it has already sold very well.
In July 2005, she became engaged to actor Josh Duhamel (from Las Vegas and All My Children)
She continues to be a part of the Black Eyed Peas and is also continuing with her movie career. She is going to be in the movie Poseidon in 2006, based on the 1972 movie The Poseidon Adventure. She also has hinted on having a solo career and has recently appeared on the soundtrack of 50 First Dates (starring Adam Sandler).
Favorites: food = lasagna, pizza and banana splits.
Jessica Alba Biography
One of the crop of bright-eyed, dewy-skinned young actors to attain teen idol Dom and a regular paycheck during the late 1990s, Jessica Alba closed out the century as one of Hollywood’s more promising new talents.
Alba took her first acting class at the age of 12, and nine months later, she landed her first agent. She got her start on television, making appearances on shows like Beverly Hills 90210, and she made her film debut in the 1994 kids comedy Camp Nowhere. Originally cast in a minor role in the film, she got her first big break when the principal actress dropped out and she was asked to take over. Following her debut, Alba did a great deal of work on television. She got her first substantial film role as the object of the protagonist’s disastrous affection in the teen horror comedy Idle Hands in 1999; that same year, she played one of the nasty popular girls who terrorize Drew Barrymore in the romantic comedy Never Been Kissed.
The following year Alba made waves on the small screen when she was cast in the much hyped Fox series Dark Angel . Executive produced by James Cameron?, the rising starlet was cast as a genetically-engineered woman who escapes from the lab and joins a cyber journalist named Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly?) in his never-ending fight against a crime in a post-apocalyptic future. Though the series was cancelled after two seasons, Alba continued to appear in such features as Paranoid (2000) and The Sleeping Dictionary (2003).
Andy Serkis Talks Tintin And The Hobbit
We saw the trailer for Serkis’s next film, The Cottage, a couple of days ago. The film is a small budget British horror/comedy, which is a lot different from what we have seen him in before. He brought Gollum to life in The Lord Of The Rings, and was the man behind King Kong. His next movie with Peter Jackson will be Tintin, the first movie in a planned trilogy. Empire got the chance to talk to Serkis, and he revealed some very interesting details.
On Tintin:
“It was on the Avatar stage,” Serkis told us, referring to James Cameron’s currently shooting 3D CG sci-fi bonanza. “We had this incredible week. Cameron was there, Peter Jackson was there (who’s directing one of the three Tintin films), and Steven Spielberg was there (who’s directing another). All in the same room!”
Which means that the film will be using the same technology as Avatar, which shows the characters in their (almost) final form on monitors, even though they’re only in lycra body stockings on set. “You’re on a bare, empty stage with actors standing around in blue Lycra with dots on, but [on the monitor] the director is looking into a fully rendered, three-dimensional virtual set, with the actors as their characters”.
On The Hobbit:
“I think I’d find it very hard to turn down the opportunity to play Gollum again, because he’s become very much a part of me. For good or bad, he’s still very much there!”.