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Anne Archer taking over Privileged role

Posted by Vogt
at June 25, 2008

Anne ArcherAnne Archer has joined the cast of the new CW series Privileged. She’ll be replacing Marsha Mason in the role of Laurel Limoges, a wealthy Palm Beach resident raising her orphaned granddaughters. Mason appeared in the drama’s pilot episode. Privileged is the series’ newest title. At different stages it was called How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls and, in the network’s recent upfront, Surviving the Filthy Rich.

The drama begins with twentysomething Megan Smith (played by Joanna Garcia) unexpectedly getting hired by Laurel Limoges to tutor the woman’s teen granddaughters. Laurel is a widow whose fortune comes from a successful cosmetics empire.

It’s unfortunate that Marsha Mason didn’t work out, but Anne Archer is a terrific fit for a show like this. She’s had more TV roles over the last few years. She played Melinda’s mother on Ghost Whisperer, and appeared in several episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as Dennis and Dee’s mom. It will be fun to compare her performance with Jessica Walters’ grandmother role, since Privileged is airing after 90210 on Tuesdays this fall. Which wealthy matriarch will rule the CW?

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Jennifer Lopez Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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A Bronx-born actress-singer-dancer of Puerto Rican descent, Jennifer Lopez quickly went from a rising starlet to leading lady, with her sultry, intelligent eyes, luxuriant wavy hair, and fluid body of legendary voluptuousness coming across well on the big screen. Lopez first won attention as a “fly girl”, one of the back-up dancers on the Fox variety series “In Living Color” and went on to act in several failed TV series before reaching the big time, leading in feature films and hitting the top of the Billboard charts. This daughter of a computer specialist and a kindergarten teacher always wanted to perform and began taking dance lessons at an early age. Lopez later danced in the European tour of “Golden Musicals of Broadway”, in the chorus behind Hinton Battle in the Japanese tour of “Synchronicity” and in numerous music videos and TV variety specials.

While she made her film debut in “My Little Girl” (1986), her real showbiz break did not come until she beat out 2,000 other aspirants, impressing choreographer Rosie Perez, and landing a spot in the chorus of “In Living Color”. Lopez stayed with the show from 1991-1993, when she elected to branch out into acting. TV roles came quickly, although the vehicles were not all that successful. She made her TV-movie debut as a nurse among crash victims in the dense Mexican jungle in “Nurses on the Line: The Crash of Flight 7″ (CBS, 1993). She went on to portray Melinda Lopez, a Latina maiden under the watchful eye of her father (Pepe Serna) in the short-lived CBS series “Second Chances” (1993-94), and repeated the role in “Hotel Malibu” (1994), an equally unsuccessful revamp of the former. She also appeared in “South Central” (Fox, 1994), as a co-worker of star Tina Lifford. In 1994, Lopez even co-hosted “Growing Up Roses” (CBS), a special recapping the best moments in Tournament of Roses Parade history.

TV proved too small a medium for Lopez, whose talent and charisma as well as hypnotic good looks cried out for the big screen. Her first feature success came with Gregory Nava’s “My Family/Mi Familia” (1995), which found her cast as the youthful version of the matriarch of the Mexican-American family, a woman who survived illegal deportation and near-drowning to return to her husband in Los Angeles. That same year, she co-starred as the pistol-packing Gloria Santiago opposite Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes in the action blockbuster “Money Train”. In 1996, she was Robin Williams’ sympathetic fifth grade teacher, (a role not specifically written for a Latina) in “Jack”, a fantasy by Francis Ford Coppola that starred Williams as a ten-year-old whose aging process is drastically accelerated.

Lopez was catapulted to prominence when she was cast in the title role of “Selena” (1997), the moving biopic about the beloved slain Tejano singer. Selena’s influential life and tragic death made for a truly compelling film, and the actress’ vibrant, intuitive portrayal set her apart from her peers and readied her for stardom. With strong reviews for her turn in the noirish thriller “Blood and Wine”, Lopez was poised for greater things, as evidenced by her casting alongside Nick Nolte and Sean Penn in Oliver Stone’s “U-Turn” (both also 1997). In 1998, Lopez solidified her leading lady status, starring opposite George Clooney in Steven Soderbergh’s subtly steamy action thriller “Out of Sight”. Displaying a winning sense of humor that added a down-to-earth charm to her undeniable sultriness, Lopez proved a good fit for heartthrob Clooney, and the two displayed the kind of onscreen fireworks that were notably missing in the actor’s prior efforts.

Winning rave reviews for her performance, Lopez was well on her way to superstardom, and made the most of her fame by releasing her debut album, a decidedly NYC-flavored dance record entitled “On the 6″ after the subway line that runs from her Bronx home into Manhattan. While the singles “If You Had My Love” and “Waiting For Tonight” tore up the charts and pumped out of nightclub speakers, Lopez was enjoying more screen success as the star of the odd sci-fi thriller “The Cell” (2000). Directed by famed commercial and music video visionary Tarsem, the film drew from various art influences, and made up for lagging plot devices with an sweet dose of eye candy. Lopez outfitted in ornate, elaborate and futuristic garb pleased audiences, though her courageous but slightly stilted performance as a child psychologist with a talent for probing the subconscious was less remarkable. In 2001, she tried her hand at fluffy romantic comedy, playing “The Wedding Planner” who quite literally falls for the groom (Matthew McConaughey). Lopez showed a surprising talent for the sillier side of things, and convincingly ditched her glamorous image for one of a frazzled workaholic prone to pratfalls and other embarrassing mishaps. Audiences flocked to the feel-good comedy, and the final week in January 2001 saw the film as well as her newly-released album “J.Lo” hit the top of their respective charts simultaneously.

Keeping up her career’s positive momentum, Lopez starred as a policewoman who falls for Jim Caviezel in the romantic thriller “Angel Eyes”(2001). In 2002, Lopez starred in Michael Apted’s thiller/drama “Enough”. In this film, Lopez played an abused woman who realized that the only way to escape her abuser (her husband) was to kill him. Both “Angel Eyes” and “Enough” performed wanly at the box office, but Lopez, who also released the poorly reviewed but popular album “This is Me…” in 2002, remained one of the most talked-about performers of her generation and a perennial fixture on magazine covers and entertainment news shows–a status that went into overdrive following her 2002 engagement to actor Ben Affleck. Her next film cast her in a mild, “Pretty Woman”-esque Cinderella mode for “Maid in Manhattan” (2002), in which she played a housekeeper at a high class New York hotel who falls for a handsome politician (Ralph Finnes).

Lopez’s public profile reached critical mass with the release of “Gigli” (2003), the mob-based action-comedy on which she first met (and presumably fell for) Affleck. After months of media hype surrounding the “Bennifer” relationship, public expectation of an on-screen romance between Lopez and Affleck was so high, the film was the subject of extensive reshooting and reconfiguring to accomodate the perceptions, although Lopez’s character was written and initially shot as a confirmed lesbian. The film, a gangster action-comedy in which Affleck plays an incompotent mob thug, was the victim of bad buzz for months before its release and received a critical drubbing–possibly even an over-harsh response–when it finally hit theaters, giving it almost “Ishtar”-like bomb status. Lopez continued to exist at the eye of the media storm when she and Affleck called off their wedding in September 2003 and split for good in early 2004, followed by press reports that she sought solace with Latin singing sensation Marc Anthony. Meanwhile, the “Bennifer” backlash was so intense, the makers of the next Affleck-Lopez collaboration, writer-director Kevin Smith’s middling romantic comedy “Jersey Girl” (2004) extremely downplayed Lopez’s involvement (and indeed, her role was small and brief, playing Affleck’s doomed wife in the film’s opening sequences). The final shocker came five months after the Lopez-Affleck split when Lopez suddenly married the newly divorced Anthony in surprise ceremony that perhaps solidified her off-screen reputation as the Elizabeth Taylor of her generation–although the couple took eight months before officially confirming their marriage and refused to discuss it further.

In midst of her busy life as a celebrity, Lopez also continued to make films: she was paired opposite Richard Gere as an icy dance instructor who rediscovers her passions as she teaches Gere’s obsessed family man how to move across the dance floor in the romance “Shall We Dance?” (2004), a role that made great use of her prowess as a dancer. In 2005 Lopez–who announced that she preferred it if the media dropped the “J-Lo” monicker–made headlines with her live duet with Anthony at the 47th annual Grammy Awards (their over-the-top, melodramatic performance of the song “Escapémonos” was snickered at by critics of her musical ability, though Anthony took home the Grammy for best Latin pop album for “Amar Sin Mentiras”) and she demonstrated her continual entreprenurial spirit with a new fragrance launch, the debut of her Sweetface clothing line (which prompted protests from animal activists due to its use of fur), and a new album, “Rebirth,” a return to club-style dance beats which launched to initially disappointing sales. Her next film, the comedy “Monster-In-Law” (2005), pitted her effectively against screen legend Jane Fonda (in her first role in 15 years): in the film Lopez’s sweet-natured temp finds the man of her dreams, only to be menaced by his meddling, over-protective mother who hopes to drive her away. Candy-sweet on the outside at first, Lopez eventually reveals the inner steel that made her more than a match for the icon Fonda. Her next film, Lasse Halstrom’s “An Unfinished Life” (2005) was released long after completion due to the complexities of the restructuring of Miramax following the departure of Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and while Lopez generally recieved good notices for her role as a widowed mother in an abusive relationship who seeks shelter with her estranged father-in-law (Robert Redford),

The actress also developed and executive produced the TV series “South Beach” (UPN, 2005 - ), an ensemble drama about three young adults whose dreams and aspirations lead them to Miami. She next was set to star in “Bridge and Tunnel” (lensed 2006), a romantic comedy in which she played a stock trader who depends on a suburban teen who day-trades on his home computer.

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Felicity Huffman Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Felicity Huffman.jpg

Often lauded for her stage work, Felicity Huffman won a new round of fans as the smart, competent producer Dana Whitaker on the ABC series “Sports Night” (1998-2000). Although born in Westchester County, New York, she was raised in Colorado. Returning east to attend NYU, Huffman joined the Atlantic Theater Company, co-founded by David Mamet and William H Macy. Mamet offered the actress her first screen role, a bit part in “Things Change” (1988), and she was also tapped as Madonna’s understudy and successor in Mamet’s Broadway play “Speed-the-Plow” (also 1988).

Over the course of the next ten years, Huffman alternated between acclaimed stage roles (most often with the Atlantic Theater Company) and TV roles. She made her small screen debut as a series regular portraying the government security officer who aids an elderly man who seems to be growing younger in “Stephen King’s ‘Golden Years’” (CBS, 1991). Guest roles on series like “Law & Order” and “The X-Files” followed. Huffman was tapped to play Edward Asner’s daughter in the ABC sitcom “Thunder Alley” but was replaced after the pilot. She bounced back from that disappointment with a stage success in Mamet’s “The Cryptogram” (1995) and in a supporting turn in the playwright’s film “The Spanish Prisoner” (1998) before landing “Sports Night,” the Aaron Sorkin-penned sit-com that made her a well-known name.

Her real-life husband Macy, whom she married in 1997, joined the series in its second season, sparking an on-screen partnership that would endure through many projects: they also co-starred in the cable telepic “A Case of Murder” (1999), a comedy-mystery Macy adapted from the Donald Westlake novel; they both appeared in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” (1999); she had an uncredited turn in Macy’s award-winning TNT telepic “Door To Door,” which he also co-wrote; they reunited in the Showtime mini-series “Out of Order” (2003); and co-starred in the legal potboiler telepic “Reversible Errors” (2004).

After “Sports Night” and away from Macy, Huffman also kept busy solo on the small screen with parts in the telepics “The Heart Department” (2001), “Snap Decision” (2001) and, most impressively, in director John Frankenheimer’s acclaimed HBO drama “The Path to War” (2002), playing First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson. She also scored a pair of high-profile recurring roles, playing Julia Wilcox, Frasier Crane’s caustic co-worker and eventual love interest on the hit sit-com “Frasier” from 2003-2004, and Charlotte Ellis in the legal drama “The D.A.” After a stint on the big screen as Kate Hudson’s late older sister in the comedy “Raising Helen” (2004), Huffman returned to series drama in the offbeat serial drama “Desperate Housewives” (ABC, 2004 - ), playing Lynette Scavo, a former corporate ladder-climber turned stay-at-home mom who struggles with her insecurities when she can’t control her wild children and gets little support from her husband. The show’s mega-popularity provided Huffman’s career with fresh energy–she scored an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the series’ debut season, as well as a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series–though she continued to remain the most private and low-profile of her co-stars.

Later that same year Huffman had an astonishing turn on the big screen in the indie “Transamerica” (2005) playing a pre-operative transsexual who, on the brink of her transforming surgery, discovered that in her youth she had fathered a son, who contacts her as a troubled teen hustler on the run. Despite the gender-bending premise, the film followed a traditional road movie dynamic, and Huffman won widespread praise for her nearly unrecognizable, fully formed performance. All the attention she received resulted in a Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, which almost guaranteed the actress a nomination from the Academy Awards. And she was indeed one of the nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role when they were announced the morning of January 31, 2006.

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Salma Hayek Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Salma Hayek.jpg

Touted by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez as the first Mexican star to play the female lead in an American movie since Dolores Del Rio, the stunningly beautiful and charismatic Salma Hayek scorched stateside cineplexes as the fiery border town bookseller who romances Antonio Banderas’ vengeful “mariachi” in “Desperado” (1995). She had previously won the hearts of her countrymen with two TV roles in the late 1980s, first as an innocent schoolgirl in “Nuevo Amancer” and subsequently as the comely bad girl protagonist of “Teresa” in the extremely popular primetime soap. Fearing that Mexican audiences valued her looks more than her thespian skills–despite several acting awards–Hayek left Mexico at the height of her vogue and headed for L.A. She then took a year-and-a-half off from acting to learn English.

By 1992, Hayek was landing TV guest shots and appeared as a recurring character on a family sitcom, “The Sinbad Show” (Fox, 1993-94), before winning a supporting role in Alison Anders’ well-regarded indie feature “Mi Vida Loca/My Crazy Life” (1993). Hayek’s English skills had blossomed but roles remained elusive. Writer-director Rodriguez heard her lament on comic Paul Rodriguez’s talk show and cast her as the female lead in his first 35mm project, “Roadracers” (Showtime, 1994), the hyper-stylized premiere installment of the “Rebel Highway” TV-movie series. His ultimate goal was to cast her as the female lead in his studio-produced sequel to 1992’s low-budget marvel “El Mariachi;” the ploy worked, allowing Hayek to beat out all the standard Anglos that the studio attempted to impose upon the production.

Additional Hollywood assignments followed including further collaborations with Rodriguez on two other projects–a cameo with Banderas in the ill-conceived feature “Four Rooms” (also 1995) and as a blood-sucking snake-dancer in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted vampire outing, “From Dusk Till Dawn” (1996). Hayek has stated her intention to alternate between working in Hollywood genre fare and Mexican art films (e.g., 1995’s “Midaq Alley/El Callejon de los Milagros”). She idled for awhile in Hollywood, though, with unremarkable supporting roles in Cindy Crawford’s debut outing, “Fair Game” (1995), and the convicts on the run actioner “Fled” (1996).

Hayek then essayed her first romantic comedy lead opposite Matthew Perry in the underperforming “Fools Rush In” (1997). Cast as a Mexican woman who hastily marries an American and then proceeds to fall in love with him, she made a valiant effort, but critics and audiences were not impressed. “Breaking Up” (1997), which paired her with Russell Crowe as a couple who constantly separate and reconcile, also failed to excite audiences. She fared somewhat better as the fiery gypsy dance Esmeralda to Mandy Patinkin’s “The Hunchback” in the 1997 TNT TV-movie but her role in the highly anticipated “54″ (1998) was abbreviated when executives demanded reshoots and a change in the storyline.

In 1999, Hayek was cast as the female lead in the western action flick, “Wild Wild West” and appeared in director Kevin Smith’s controversial comedy “Dogma.” She followed up with more serious fare, taking a small role in Steven Soderbergh’s acclaimed anti-drug ensemble drama “Traffic” and appearing as a sexually controlling actress in Mike Figgis’ experimental multi-screen drama “Timecode” (she would later reunited with Figgis for his next split-screen effort “Hotel”). She also produced and starred as the Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo in the drama bio pic “Frida” (2002). For years Hayek fought to get the film made, eventually becoming the movie’s producer, and the actress powered the the project into production by the sheer force of her desire to bring the life story of her fellow countrywoman to the screen. While reaction to the film–directed by avant garde auteur Julie Taymor–was mixed, Hayek’s intense performance was roundly praised. She was able to transcend both her sex symbol status and the limits of her ethnicity when she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for her efforts. In 2003 Hayek reunited twice with director Robert Rodriguez, first for a humorous cameo in “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” and then to reprise her role as Carolina–if only in flashback–in the successful and entertaining third outing in the El Mariachi series “Once Upon a Time in Mexico.” She then demonstrated her highly combustible sexual chemistry with co-star Pierce Brosnan in the aimable caper comedy “After the Sunset” (2004), playing the lover/partner of Brosnan’s retired master jewel thief who finds himself tempted by the prospect of one last score, putting their relationship in jeopardy.

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