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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.

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Celebrity Biography
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Yancy Butler Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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Yancy Butler was raised in Greenwich Village, New York City during the seventies and early eighties as the only kid of, Joe and Leslie Butler.

Show business has long been in the family, as Joe Butler is a member of the folk rock band, The Lovin Spoonful and her mother was a company manager for Broadway shows. Her parents separated when Yancy was 12 years old.

At the age of 13, Yancy began studying at the prestigious HB Studios in New York. She also studied dance and ballet at the Joffrey and Ailey schools. When the time came for her to choose a college, Yancy went to the well known Sarah Lawrence College, where she did her B.A. in Liberal Arts. She has a 3.8 grade point average and received a Griggs Scholarship. She graduated from SLC in 1991.

With a dozen stage credits on her resume, Yancy soon landed her first real acting job: a guest star role in the drama “Law & Order”. This small part caught the attention of series creator, Dick Wolf, who offered her a lead in the sci-fi drama “Mann & Machine”. Naturally, she took this early opportunity with both hands and gained a deserving fan following for her portrayal as the android ‘Eve’.

In 1993, Yancy went on to star in her first full length film, the action thriller “The Hit List” with Jeff Fahey and James Coburn. Soon after that the husky voiced actress lead another Dick Wolf creation called “South Beach”, which had been created with her in mind. Set in the glamorous Miami Beach and surroundings, it co-starred John Glover and Eagle-Eye Cherry.

Aided by her good looks as well as considerable acting talent, Yancy made her theatrical motion picture debut opposite Jean Claude Van Damme in “Hard Target”. A very violent film by Hong Kong action mystro, John Woo.

In 1994 she took on the role, originally written for a man, opposite Wesley Snipes in the skydiving adventure “Drop Zone.” In between shooting these two big budget studio films, she starred in an independent film called “Annie’s Garden”.

Breaking away from the action genre for a bit, she joined the ensemble cast of the ballroom dance drama “Let It Be Me”, with Patrick Stewart and Campbell Scott. The film was made in 1995, but its distribution company went bust, which caused a big delay in its release. They eventually found a channel for the film to hit the screens in 1997.

Yancy went on to play the lead in three direct-to-video movies. An action, adventure: “Fast Money”; a psychological thriller: “The Ex” and also “Ravager”, a made for TV sci-fi thriller. During this time she also made a guest star appearance in the “NYPD Blue” episode ‘I Love Lucy’ - directed by Kathy Bates.

Her “NYPD Blue” appearance must have caught distinguished TV producer Steven Bochco’s attention when, later in 1997, she got cast in his latest police drama, “Brooklyn South”. The series won a People’s Choice Award and an Emmy, but still failed to catch on with enough viewers in the US and it got canceled.

Next, Yancy took on a part in a Disney remake of “Spin & Marty” as well as leads in the cable movie ‘Doomsday Man’ and the thriller ‘The Witness Files’.

Yancy has also done a fair amount of work using only her distinctive husky voice. She narrated a half dozen stories in audio books and did a voice-over for a cartoon called ‘The Wild Thornberrys’. The most prominent among this work were two interesting stories read from J.A. Jance novels, ‘Rattlesnake Crossing’ and ‘Outlaw Mountain’, which she did in 1999.

More recently, she portrayed Sara Pezzini in the ongoing fantasy series, “Witchblade” - based on the comic book by the same name.

She also starred opposite Joe Mantegna in the television movie, “Thin Air” - based on the popular series of Spencer mystery novels by Robert B. Parker.

In June of 2002 Yancy won a Saturn Award for best actress in a TV Series.

This unique actress has an equally unique name: Yancy is a native American mispronunciation of the word ‘Yankee’.

Celebrity Biography
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Elizabeth Banks Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

elizabeth_banks.jpg

A striking actress with a sophisticated, well-bred look, Elizabeth Banks quickly earned a reputation as one of the most promising young actresses in Hollywood. Originally hailing from Massachusetts, Banks received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her graduate degree at the American Conservatory Theater, where she garnered extensive stage credits in productions such as “Hurly Burly,” “Bethlehem,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “A Woman of No Importance” and “Uncle Vanya,” as well as the Guthrie Theater’s production of “Summer & Smoke.”

Bit parts under screen names including Elizabeth Casey and her birth name Elizabeth Maresal Mitchell gradually led to more prominent turns as in indie fare like the drama “Surrender Dorothy” (1998) and the far-out summer camp comedy “Wet Hot American Summer” (2001), “The Trade” (2001), small roles in big pictures like John Singleton’s “Shaft” remake (2000) and guest spots on TV series including “Law & Order: SVU,” HBO’s “Sex and the City” and NBC’s “Third Watch.” She first caught Hollywood’s attention in a minor but noticeable role as J. Jonah Jameson’s secretary Betty Brant in “Spider-Man” (2002), a role director Sam Raimi had added especially for her.

She followed that box office smash up with an appearance in director Guy Ritchie’s ill-received remake “Swept Away” (2002) as one of the socialites boating with Madonna, but she quickly rebounded with another small but eye-grabbing role in director Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” (2002), as a bank teller who is unwittingly instrumental in teaching young con artist Frank Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) some tricks of the con-artistry trade.

Her new cachet inspired Movieline magazine to dub her one of Young Hollywood’s up-and-comers, and she followed up on her potential with another small but winning roles, playing Jeff Bridges lively, devoted young second wife Marcela in the true-life story of racehorse and folk hero “Seabiscuit” (2003), before returning to the world of superheroic romance for the sequel “Spider-Man 2” (2004). Banks then gave a strong performance in “Heights” (2005), a weighty romantic drama in which she played a NYC photographer whose second thoughts about her pending marriage to a lawyer (James Mardsen) sparks life decisions for her and four others in the span of one night. Shifting gears effectively into high comedy for “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” (2005) Banks was a hoot as the sexually charged bookstore clerk who sets her eyes on Steve Carell’s intercourse-impaired electronics salesman.

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