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Mary Lynn Rajskub Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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A dark-haired performer who has made a her name in the industry with an original take on high-concept comedic stage productions as well as notable TV and film acting skills, Mary Lynn Rajskub proved a versatile and dynamic player. Appearing in extensive productions on stage in California, Rajskub started out as a San Francisco Art Institute student who found her comic side in performance pieces that played upon her skewed sense of humor and knack for bringing out the laughs in uncomfortable situations. Noticed by comedians Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, Rajskub was cast on their HBO concept comedy sketch series “Mr. Show with Bob and David” in 1995 and remained with the program until 1996 when she switched to the network’s “The Larry Sanders Show”, replacing friend Janeane Garofalo’s character as the show within a show’s new eager to please and often inappropriate booker.

Her often frenzied and daring portrayals proved Rajskub an energetic and versatile performer, a reputation she would further prove with stage appearances including the one-woman show “The Littlest Angel,” performed at Santa Monica’s Powerhouse Theater in 1996. A guest role on the failed sitcom “The Army Show” (The WB) marked one of the actress’ few television appearances until her offbeat comedy met its match in “The Downer Channel” (2001), a Steve Martin-produced sketch series on NBC.

Her film work has included a small role in the 1996 romantic comedy “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” and a part in “Man on the Moon” (1999), Milos Forman’s biopic of Andy Kaufman, another concept comedian to whom Rajskub has been likened. A small part in “Magnolia” (1999) and a relationship with score composer Jon Brion allied the actress with Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast her in his as yet untitled follow-up, starring Adam Sandler (and set for a 2002 release). Rajskub would also have memorable scenes in the comedies “Road Trip” and “Dude, Where’s My Car” (both 2000) as well as appearing as a guest at “The Anniversary Party” (2001), co-scripted and co-directed by Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Rajskub got her most prominent film role yet in her friend P.T. Anderson’s dark romantic comedy “Punch-Drunk Love,” playing one of Adam Sandler’s overbearing sisters, who sets him up with his eventual love (Emily Watson).

After a small role in the ‘fiction’ section of Todd Solondz’s bleak comedy “Storytelling” (2002), Rajskub gave an able supporting performance in the Reese Witherspoon-Josh Lucas romantic comedy, “Sweet Home Alabama” (2002). In “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002), she stood out as one of seven sisters constantly haranguing their only brother (Adam Sandler), a socially inept seller of toilet plungers who is set up with her co-worker after getting into trouble with a phone sex operator. Rajskub segued into television with an appearances on “Gilmore Girls” (WB, 2000- ) and “Good Morning Miami” (NBC, 2002-2004), then went back to the feature world, playing a congressional aide brought out of her shell when the effervescent Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) heads to Washington, D.C. in “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde” (2003).

In 2003, Rajskub began appearing on “24” (Fox, 2001- ) in a recurring role that over three seasons earned the actress a strong fan base and rising celebrity. As Chloe O’Brien, a senior analyst at the Counter Terrorism Unit who serves as a lifeline for agent Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland), Rajskub exuded a deft but dour persona despite her off screen charm and exuberance. At first her character had little more to do that spew techno-jargon to Agent Bauer. But as she gained more of a fan club—thanks to her tense delivery of crucial information—the writers developed her character further, even giving her a steamy office romance. Sworn to secrecy by the show’s producers, Rajskub left Chloe’s fate on the show unclear. Meanwhile, she costarred in “Mysterious Skin” (2005), a low budget coming-of-age drama in which she played a Kansas woman whose belief in her abduction by aliens lends a helping hand to unraveling the mystery surrounding a troubled 18-year-old (Brady Corbet) and his possible abduction. Rajskub then had a supporting role in the lame heist thriller, “Firewall” (2006), playing a hipster secretary opposite a miscast Harrison Ford as a computer security specialist forced to embezzle $100 million from a bank after a crew of mercenaries take his family hostage.

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Courtney Love Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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While some music sensations plunge into movies with fanfare, Courtney Love was as hot as hot could be on the music scene, but decided not to take the spotlighted route of Madonna and Whitney Houston, instead easing her way into the medium with independent pictures. After a handful of small roles, the lead singer of the group Hole found herself in the spotlight when Milos Forman cast her as Althea Leasure in the biopic “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996).

Non-headbangers may have been unaware of Love until the suicide of her husband, grunge rock king Kurt Cobain, in 1994: she seemed unable to tend to herself or their baby daughter and admitted using drugs to cope. Yet, Love was a major rock star in her own right, having formed the group Hole in 1989. In 1994, she was one of the subjects of the MTV documentary special “24 Hours in Rock ‘n Roll” and in 1995 was sufficiently mainstream for Barbara Walters to proclaim her one of the “The 10 Most Fascinating People of 1995″ in an ABC special.

Love is a product of the hippie era. Her father, Hank Harrison, was a disciple of (and for a short time the manager of) The Grateful Dead, and her mother, Linda Carroll, a therapist best-known as the woman who in 1993 convinced radical fugitive Katherine Ann Power to surrender to authorities after more than two decades on the run. Yet, Love’s childhood was not all flower power. Born Love Michelle Harrison, she was still a baby when her parents divorced. By court order, her father was not allowed to see her unsupervised until she became an adult. Love’s mother remarried and changed her daughter’s name to Courtney Michelle. Love bounced between New Zealand and the US, from guardian to guardian. By the time she was 13, Love, who had begun to shoplift, was sent to reform school.

From then on, she was on her own, surviving on a trust fund, traveling the world and finding employment as a stripper in Japan, Taiwan, and Alaska and singing with various bands, including Sugar Baby Doll and Faith No More. Love drifted into films and TV via the extra route (the 1985 film “Brewster’s Millions,” among others). She auditioned for the female title role in Alex Cox’s “Sid and Nancy” (1986), but was cast in the smaller role of Nancy Spungen’s friend Gretchen. Love also played the bitchy sexpot Velma in Cox’s “Straight to Hell” (1987), a film generally considered unwatchable by most critics.

Love entered the world of grunge rock in 1989, forming Hole and devoting herself to music. Among her albums were “Rat Bastard” (1990), “Pretty on the Inside” (1991), the critically acclaimed “Live Through This” (1994), and “Ask for It” (1995). By 1995, she was one of four subjects of the documentary “Not Bad for a Girl”, which focused on women in rock’n’roll. Also that year, she served as executive music coordinator of the rock score for the feature “Tank Girl,” billed as Courtney Love-Cobain.

Love’s foul-mouthed, drugged-out and lipstick-smeared persona failed to endear her to the general public, even after she became The Widow Cobain. But her performance in “The People vs. Larry Flynt” turned peoples’ heads and finally gained her a modicum of professional respect. Cast as the bisexual junkie stripper Althea Leisure over more established actresses (reportedly including Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino), Love faced additional hurdles, including weekly drug testing. Director Forman and co-star Woody Harrelson also contributed to defray the cost of insuring the novice performer. Love more than justified their faith by delivering one of the year’s acclaimed performance. While some disputed the merits of the picture, nearly all praised her charismatic, sharply-detailed turn which earned her citations from the New York and Boston critics.

Love also appeared in two other small roles in 1996, playing a waitress opposite Keanu Reeves in “Feeling Minnesota” and the colorful character Big Pink in Julian Schnabel’s “Basquiat.” After a brief role in the ensemble of “200 Cigarettes”, Love could be seen essaying another real-life person, film editor Lynn Margulies, in Forman’s “Man on the Moon” (both 1999), the biopic of comic actor Andy Kaufman in which she gave Forman another winning perfomance, (if not as incindiery as their first collaboration). Over the next few years, Love found herself embroiled in several personal disputes, both with her record company and the former members of Nirvana. The now-familiar drama surrounding her life continued to gain her critics and fans alike. Other artists supported her stance on standing up for musician’s rights while the Nirvana band members publically declared her insane in their battle of the right to Cobain’s music. She continued her acting career, despite the turmoil in her life and appeared in the well-received independent film “Julie Johnson” opposite Lili Taylor in 2001.

In 2002, she had a starring role in the little-seen action drama “Trapped,” where she played a kidnapper opposite Kevin Bacon, but the media was more firmly focused on the singer-actress’ increasingly more notorious personal exploits than on her career (which was sliding back into its earlier, stunt-filled stage with gigs like a purposefully provocative all-day hosting of the video music channel MTV2): in late 2002 she was named as a possible patient of her friend Winona Ryder’s physician, who lost his medical license for illegally dispensing perscription medicine; in early 2003 she was detained on a Virgin airlines flight for allegedly abusing the flight crew, but no formal charges were filed; later that same year Love was arrested after attempting to break into a Los Angeles home reportedly owned by her then-boyfriend/manager while under the influence of an unspecified intoxicant, and, shortly after being released on bail that night, was the subject of a Beverly Hills emergency call were she was rushed to the hospital after what was widely reported as a possible drug overdose. Appearing increasingly erratic and slurred in her public appearances–Love’s constant breast-flashing while guesting on David Letterman’s talk show in 2004 was more distrubing than erotic, and she appeared to be a semi-lucid train wreck on the panel of a 2005 Comedy Central roast of her friend Pamela Anderson despite constant declarations that she’d been sober for a year–the rocker continued to travel a rocky road: in 2004 she was arrested again–twice: for assualting a woman in her ex-boyfriend’s home with a beer bottle, and for disorderly conduct after allegedly striking a concert-goer in the head with a microphone; she only barely won a hard-fought bid to retain custody of her daughter; she faced lawsuits, leins and tax audits from her former legal team, travel agents, her condo board and the state of California; and a highly publicized 2005 fainting spell at a Hollywood hot spot which saw her rushed into an emergency room. The latter event in particular prompted a Los Angeles court to order her into rehab for 28 days after it was deemed that she had violated her probation by allegedly relapsing into drug use. She was ultimately sentenced to 180 days in county jail for violating her probation in three criminal cases. However, a judge ruled that the singer could serve her time at a live-in chemical dependency program and in 2006 ended Love’s house arrest for drug-related probation violations, saying she had put her “gnarly drug problem” behind her.

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Beverly D’Angelo Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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A striking and sultry blue-eyed blonde performer, Beverly D’Angelo could be a household name, if only she cared to be. Multi-talented, she first gravitated to art, working in the animation department of Hanna-Barbera before moving to Canada to pursue her singing career, most notably with rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins. It was there that Gower Champion spotted her and cast her as Ophelia in his Canadian production of “Rockabye, Hamlet” (1975), which moved the next year to Broadway for a short run. After smaller roles in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” and Michael Winner’s “The Sentinel” (both 1977), D’Angelo gained wide attention as the rebellious debutante Sheila in Milos Forman’s highly acclaimed film version of “Hair” (1979). She secured her reputation with a compelling portrayal of Patsy Cline in Michael Apted’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980), singing with style and accuracy the Patsy Cline songs for a soundtrack album which went gold.

D’Angelo first played Ellen Griswold, the role audiences most identify with her, in “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983) and then reprised the part opposite screen husband Chevy Chase in three equally light-weight sequels (1985, 1989 and 1997) which did well at the box office and made her a bunch of money. Though she has done her best by such forgettable misfires as “High Spirits” (1988) and “Man Trouble” (1992), D’Angelo made a memorably beautiful movie with then-boyfriend Irish director Neil Jordan, “The Miracle” (1991), just before breaking up with him. On TV, she won raves for her luminous Stella Kowalski in the 1984 TV remake of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (ABC) opposite Treat Williams and Ann-Margret. D’Angelo also starred as crime victim Mary Heard in the CBS miniseries “Hands of a Stranger” (1987), portrayed Kitty Menendez in the 1994 miniseries “Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills” (NET) and appeared with Bruce Davison and MacKenzie Astin in the HBO murder mystery movie “Widow’s Kiss” (1996).

D’Angelo returned to the New York stage in 1994 to star opposite Ed Harris in Sam Shepard’s play “Simpatico”, earning a Theatre World Award for her efforts. She sang eight songs for the soundtrack and acted in “Daddy’s Dyin’ . . . Who’s Got the Will” (1991) and also performed “Lovin’ You” for “Vegas Vacation” (1997). Her jazz band Blue Martini (which includes bassist brother Jeff) has afforded her the chance to display her singing talent, however, good friend John Schlesinger (who directed her in three movies) lamented, “She should be singing more. She should have a much wider audience.” Perhaps her wicked bedroom voice could make her a household name, but she would have to pursue the old Protestant work ethic more tenaciously than she has to date. The romantic in D’Angelo has often concentrated on her relationships at the expense of her career, but if the four movies she wrapped in 1997 (including Tony Kaye’s “American History X” 1998) are any indication, that may be a thing of the past.

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Claire Danes Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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To look upon the face of Claire Danes is to discover an exquisitely expressive canvas for all the emotional colorings of life. This remarkably self-possessed young performer brought startling authenticity as well as intelligence and complexity to her starring role in the landmark high school/family drama “My So-Called Life” (ABC, 1994-95). Danes’ often heartrending portrayal of a fifteen-year-old coping with the rigors of adolescence contributed to the cult series’ avalanche of kudos and won a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nod for its rising star. The low-rated, short-lived program counted Steven Spielberg and Winona Ryder among its followers.

A native New Yorker, Danes was encouraged to pursue her interest in acting by artistic parents and began studying modern dance at age six. By age nine, she was taking weekend acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, later starting her performing career on the off-off-Broadway stage with supporting roles in “Happiness”, “Punk Ballet” and “Kids on Stage,” even choreographing a solo dance piece for the latter. At age 11, Danes made her film acting debut portraying a molested child in “Dreams of Love” (released 1992), a student short from director Jeffrey Mueller and executive producer Milos Forman. The precocious actress arrived on the small screen in a memorable 1992 guest shot on the NBC crime drama series “Law & Order”, playing a volatile teen who, with her mother, was involved with a sleazy photographer. She also auditioned for “My So-Called Life” in 1992, at age 13, and filmed the pilot in early 1993. (It did not air until August 1994.)

Danes won strong notices for her feature debut as the doomed Beth in a well-received remake of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “Little Women” (1994), with Susan Sarandon and Winona Ryder. (The latter had lobbied for Danes to get the role.) Indeed, Spielberg hailed her as “one of the most exciting actresses to debut in ten years” and offered her a role in his Holocaust drama “Schindler’s List” (1993) which Danes declined for a variety of reasons. When “My So-Called Life” ended prematurely, though, the young thespian was quickly deluged with feature offers.

Danes next popped up in a flashback sequence playing a younger version of Anne Bancroft’s character in the Ryder vehicle “How to Make an American Quilt” and followed up with a small role as the wise-beyond-her-years daughter of Holly Hunter (and granddaughter of Bancroft!) in Jodie Foster’s “Home for the Holidays” (both 1995). Reportedly, Foster’s endorsement helped Danes win the plum role of Juliet opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo in “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” (1996), a highly stylized and purposefully anachronistic retelling of the classic story. By the time of that highly touted release, she had two other features in the can.

Danes played leads in “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday” (1996) as the daughter helping her father (Peter Gallagher) cope with the death of her mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) and “I Love You, I Love You Not” (1997), as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor (Jeanne Moreau). Positive advance word about the professional deportment of the ascendant star spurred more offers for work with such respected filmmakers as Oliver Stone, who cast her as a white trash princess in the odd “U-Turn” (1997), Francis Ford Coppola, who hired her to play an abused wife who falls for young lawyer Matt Damon in “John Grisham’s ‘The Rainmaker’” (1997), and Bille August, whose adaptation of “Les Miserables” (1998) appropriately featured the young actress as Cosette. Danes went on to play an appealingly strong-willed, unmarried and pregnant Polish-American alongside Gabriel Byrne and Lena Olin in the charming family saga “Polish Wedding” later that year.

1999 saw her take on a vastly different role than audiences had come to expect, with a starring turn as a drug offender turned crime fighter in Scott Silver’s uninspired feature update of the hit 1960s TV series “The Mod Squad”. While Danes performed well in the action genre, the film was critically panned, and saw little box office business. Similarly, her impressive turn in “Brokedown Palace” went largely unseen. Not unlike a feminized, updated “Midnight Express”, the harrowing film starred Danes as the more daring and gregarious of two recent high school graduates duped into importing drugs into Thailand. Alongside Kate Beckinsale, the actress proved her mettle with the edgy role, but the film would probably be best remembered for Danes’ candidly negative comments about the Manila filming conditions, which won her few fans in the Philippines. She next contributed her vocal talents to the English dubbing of Hayao Miyazaki’s acclaimed Japanese anime “Princess Mononoke”. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but her lackluster performance in this capacity proved the actress’ talents lie before the camera, where her proven skills and appeal would ensure her a long and illustrious career.

In 2002, she co-starred in the indie comedy feature “Igby Goes Down,” playing a prep school girl caught between two drastically different brothers; and portrayed Meryl Streep’s daughter Julia in “The Hours,” before doing a career about-face in 2003 by starring opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the action-packed sequel “Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines,” playing Kate Brewster, the love interest for humanity’s emerging messiah in its war against the machines, John Conner (Nick Stahl). After filming “Stage Beauty” (2004), in which she played a 17th Century stage dresser who becomes an actress after England’s king overrules the long tradition of men playing female roles in plays and becomes entangled with a displaced actor (Billy Cruddup) who specialized in portraying women, Danes got her first taste of tabloid celebrity when Cruddup left his several-months-pregnant girlfriend, actress Mary-Louise Parker, for a romance with her in 2003. She returned to the screen for “Shopgirl” (2005), an adaptation of Steve Martin’s bestselling 2001 novella which cast her as a forlorn Beverly Hills glove salesgirl who unexpectedly finds herself persued by a pair of polar opposite suitors, a successful sophisticate (Martin) and a Bohemian dreamer (Jason Schawartzman).

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