Sep 30, 2024 Research in Progress–22,192

Occupational Inheritance: 14/52= 0.26 percent

A: 7=/

B: 24 (7)

C: 21 (7)

N=52

 

Black: 16 out of 249

Winners: 5 out of 85

Nominees: 11 out of 163

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A to Z (includes Jeffrey Wright and Colman Domingo)

Boseman, Chadwick: No

Cheadle, Don (Black): No

Dexter, Gordon

Domingo, Colman:

Ejiofor, Chiwetel

Fishburne, Laurence

Foxx, Jamie

Freeman, Morgan

Howard, Terrence

Kaluuya, Daniel

Poitier, Sidney: N0

Smith, Will

Washington, Denzel

Whitaker, Forest

Winfield, Paul

Wright Jeffrey, 2023

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JEWISH 

23 out of 248

Allen, Woody

Arkin, Alan

Chalamet (half)

Curtis, Tony

Douglas, Kirk

Douglas, Melvin (father)

Douglas, Michael

Dreyfuss, Richard

Garfield, Andrew

Garfield, John

Hoffman, Dustin

Lukas, Paul

Muni, Paul

Newman, Paul

Sellers, Peter

Steiger, Rod

Topol

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It includes the nominees of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

 

Occupational Inheritance in Acting Profession

Occupational inheritance refers to the phenomenon where sons and daughters follow in the career paths of their parents. This trend has been documented in engineering, medicine, military, and education, but not in the acting profession.

Over the past 95 years of the Academy Awards (first given in 1929), 84 men have won the Best Actor Oscar (some more than once), and 160 men have been nominated.

In 2020, the five nominees were: Riz Ahmed, Chadwick Boseman (black, posthumous), Anthony Hopkins (winner, second Oscar), Gary Oldman (previous winner) Steven Yeun (Asian).

In 2021, the nominees were: Xavier Bardem, Cumberbatch, Andrew Garfield, Will Smith, Denzel Washington

In 2022, the nominees were all first-timers: Austin Butler, Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser, Paul Mescal, Bill Nighy

Winners: 85 (males); 96 (roles)

Nominees: 163

Total: 248

 

OCCUPATIONAL INHERITANCE

A (7): None Occupational Inherit

No: 7

Abrahams, F. Murray, 1984: No

Affleck, Cassey, 2016: No

Ahmed, Riz: No

Allen, Woody: No

Arkin, Alan: No

Arliss, George: N0

Ayres, Lew: N0

 

Abrahams, F. Murray, 1984, No

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Father: Auto mechanic; immigrant

Syrian-US; mother, Italian-US

2 young brothers

Abraham was born October 24, 1939, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, son of Fahrid “Fred” Abraham, an automotive mechanic. He described himself as Syrian-American and Italian-American.

His father emigrated with family from Muqlus, Ottoman Syria, a small village, age 5 due to famine of Mount Lebanon; his paternal grandfather was priest in the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch.

His mother, one of 14 children, was Italian American, daughter of Italian immigrant who worked in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania.

He had 2 younger brothers, Robert and Jack, killed in separate car accidents.

Affleck, Cassey, 2016: No

Falmouth, Massachusetts

Mother: Radcliffe College-and Harvard-educated elementary school teacher.

Father: auto mechanic, carpenter, bookie, electrician, bartender, and janitor at Harvard University.

Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt was born August 12, 1975, in Falmouth, Massachusetts, to Christopher Anne “Chris” Boldt and Timothy Byers Affleck. The surname “Affleck” is of Scottish origin. He also has Irish, German English, and Swiss ancestry.

His mother was Radcliffe College-and Harvard-educated elementary school teacher. His father worked sporadically as auto mechanic, carpenter, bookie, electrician, bartender, and janitor at Harvard University. In the mid-1960s, a stage manager, director, writer and actor with the Theater Company of Boston. During childhood, his father was “a disaster of a drinker”. Affleck first started acting by “reenacting what was happening at home” during role play exercises at Alateen meetings. After his parents divorced when he was 9, Affleck older brother Ben lived their mother and visited father weekly.

Ahmed, Riz (Brit Pakistani): No

Born: Wembley, suburb in London Borough of Brent

Parents: Immigrants from Pakistan

Father: shipping broker

Training: Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Education: Christ Church, Oxford University, Philosophy, Politics, Economics

Ahmed born on December 1, 1982 in Wembley, suburb in London Borough of Brent, to British-Pakistani family of Muhajir background.

His parents moved to England from Karachi, Pakistan, during the 1970s. Ahmed’s father is shipping broker, and he is a descendant of Shah Muhammad Sulaiman, first Muslim Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court during British rule in India.

Ahmed attended Merchant Taylors’ School, Northwood, through scholarship program. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford University, with degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). He experienced a culture shock at Oxford, nearly dropping out due to isolating atmosphere. Instead, Ahmed organized parties to celebrate cultures which did not conform to the dominant “elitist, white” and “black-tie” culture of Oxford.

He later studied acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Allen, Woody, US, Jewish (director): No

Brooklyn, NYC

Mother: bookkeeper

Father: jewelry engraver and waiter

Midwood High School, grad in 1953.

Allen was born in New York City November 30, 1935. His family lived in Brooklyn, the birth took place at Mount Eden Hospital in the Bronx. He is Jewish.

Allen’s parents were Nettie (née Cherry; 1906–2002), a bookkeeper at family’s delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg (1900–2001), jewelry engraver and waiter.

His grandparents were immigrants to the U.S. from Austria and the Lithuanian city of Panevėžys. They spoke German, Hebrew and Yiddish. He and his younger sister, film producer Letty, were raised in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood. Both their parents were born and raised Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Allen’s parents did not get along; he had estranged relationship with authoritarian, ill-tempered mother.

He was sent to interfaith summer camps when he was young. While attending Hebrew school for 8 years, he went to Public School 99 (now Isaac Asimov School for Science and Literature) and Midwood High School, graduating in 1953.

More interested in baseball than school and his strong arm ensured selection to teams. He impressed students with talent for cards and magic tricks.

Arkin, Alan (winner of Supp. Actor): No

US, Bklyn, NYC

Upper Mid Class

Father: Painter, writer

Mother: Teacher

Arkin was born in Brooklyn New York, on March 26, 1934, the son of David I. Arkin, a painter and writer, and his wife, Beatrice (née Wortis), a teacher.

He was raised in a Jewish family with “no emphasis on religion”. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Germany.

His parents moved to Los Angeles when Alan was 11, but an 8-month Hollywood strike cost his father his job as set designer. During the 1950s Red Scare, Arkin’s parents were accused of Communists, and his father was fired when he refused to answer questions about his political ideology. David Arkin challenged the dismissal, but he was vindicated only after his death.

Arkin had been taking acting lessons since age 10, became scholarship student at drama academies, Stanislavsky student Benjamin Zemach, who taught Arkin psychological approach to acting. Arkin attended Los Angeles State College from 1951 to 1953, and also Bennington College.

 

Arliss, George, 1930, UK: N0

London

Upper middle

Father: publisher

Arliss was born in London. He started work in the publishing office of his father, but left at age 18 to go on the stage.

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Ayres, Lew, US: No

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Parents divorced when he was 4

Father: Musician (amateur); court reporter

Moved to San Diego, CA

Ayres was born in Minneapolis to Irma Bevernick and Louis Ayres, who divorced when he was 4. Louis, an amateur musician and court reporter, remarried soon afterwards.

As a teen, he and his mother moved with his step-father, William Gilmore, and half brother and sister to San Diego, California

Leaving high school before graduating, he started a small band which traveled to Mexico. He returned later to pursue acting career, but continued working full-time as a musician. He played banjo and guitar for big bands, including Henry Halstead Orchestra. He recorded earliy Vitaphone movie shorts called “Carnival Night in Paris” (Warner, 1927).

Ayres wrote, “I was a member of Henry Halstead’s orchestra in 1927 at the Mission Beach Ballroom in San Diego, CA for the summer. My instruments were tenor banjo, long-neck banjo and guitar. After hiatus, I rejoined Mr. Halstead with a new group, including Phil Harris, on New Year’s Eve the same year for the opening night of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, a memorable occasion.” He left national tour to pursue full time acting career.

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B (24):

7 of 24=Occupational Inheritance

Bale, Christian: ?

Bancroft, George: N0

Banderas, Antonio (Spanish): No

Bardem, Javier (winner of supp. actor): Yes

Barrymore, Lionel: Yes

Barthelmess, Richard: Yes

Bates, Alan: Yes

Baxter, Warner: No

Beatty, Warren: Yes

Beery, Wallace: No

Benigni, Roberto (Italian): No

Bichir, Demian (Mexico): No

Bogart, Humphrey: No

Borgnine, Ernest: No

Boseman, Chadwick: No

Boyer, Charles: No

Branagh, Kenneth: No

Brando, Marlon: Yes (mother)

Bridges, Jeff (nominee, supp. actor): Yes

Brody, Adrien (US): No

Brynner, Yul (          ): No

Burton, Richard (Wales, Brit): No

Busey, Gary: No Data

Butler, Austin: No

 

 

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Bale, Christian (winner of Supp. Actor) (British): ?

Child actor

Christian Charles Philip Bale was born January 30, 1974 in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, to English parents—Jenny James, a circus performer, and David Bale, an entrepreneur and activist.

Bale has remarked, “I was born in Wales but I’m not Welsh—I’m English.” He has two elder sisters, Sharon and Louise, and a half-sister from his father’s first marriage, Erin. One of his grandfathers was comedian while the other was stand-in for John Wayne.

Bale and his family left Wales when he was 2, and after living in Portugal and Oxfordshire, England, they settled in Bournemouth. The family had lived in 15 towns by the time he was 15, Bale described the frequent relocation as being driven by “necessity rather than choice” and that it had a major influence on his career selection.

He attended Bournemouth School, later saying he left school at age 16. Bale’s parents divorced in 1991, and at age 17, he moved with his sister Louise and their father to Los Angeles.

Bale trained in ballet as a child. His first acting role came at 8 in commercial for the fabric softener Lenor. He also appeared in a Pac-Man cereal commercial. After his sister was cast in a West End musical, Bale considered taking up acting professionally.

He did not find acting appealing but pursued it at the request of those around him because he had no reason not to do so. After participating in school plays, Bale performed opposite Rowan Atkinson in the play “The Nerd” in the West End in 1984.

He did not undergo any formal acting training.

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Bancroft, George: N0

Worcester, MA.

Bancroft was born on October 3, 1800, in Worcester, MA.

His family had been in Massachusetts Bay since 1632. George’s father, Aaron Bancroft, was distinguished as a revolutionary soldier, a leading Unitarian clergyman, and author of a popular biography of George Washington.

Bancroft began his education at Phillips Exeter Academy. He entered Harvard College at thirteen years of age and graduated with the Class of 1817.

After Harvard, Bancroft’s father sent him abroad to study in Germany, at the universities of Göttingen, and Berlin. At Göttingen, he studied Plato with Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren, history with Heeren and Gottlieb Jakob Planck, and languages and scripture interpretation with Albert Eichhorn, natural science with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German literature with Georg Friedrich Benecke, French and Italian literature with Artaud and Bunsen, and classics with Georg Ludolf Dissen. In 1820, he received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen.

Banderas, Antonio (Spanish): No

José Antonio Domínguez Bandera was born on August 10, 1960 in Málaga to Civil Guard gendarme officer José Domínguez Prieto (1920–2008) and schoolteacher Ana Bandera Gallego (1933–2017). He has younger brother named Francisco. As a little boy, Banderas wanted to become a professional football player until broken foot sidelined his dreams at the age of 15. He showed a strong interest in the performing arts and formed part of the ARA Theatre-School run by Ángeles Rubio-Argüelles y Alessandri (wife of diplomat and filmmaker Edgar Neville) and the College of Dramatic Art, both in Málaga. His work in the theater and his performances on the streets landed him a spot with the Spanish National Theatre.

Banderas began acting studies at the School of Dramatic Art in Málaga, and made his acting debut at a small theater in Málaga. He was arrested by the Spanish police for performing in a Bertolt Brecht play, due to political censorship under Franco. He had three or four such arrests while he was working with theater troupe that toured all over Spain and was giving performances in small town theaters and on the street. Banderas began working in small shops during Spain’s post-dictatorial cultural movement known as the La Movida Madrileña.

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Bardem, Javier (winner of supp. actor): Yes

Bardem was born on March 1, 1969 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands, Spain. His mother, Pilar Bardem (1939–2021), was an actress, and his father, José Carlos Encinas Doussinague (1931–1995), was the son of a cattle rancher.  He changed jobs more than 10 times, leading to evictions and the children hungry. The two separated shortly after Javier’s birth. His mother raised him and his elder siblings, Carlos and Mónica, alone (another sibling died after birth), both of whom have also pursued an acting career. His father died of leukemia in 1995.

Bardem comes from a long line of filmmakers and actors dating back to the earliest days of Spanish cinema. He is a grandson of actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro (sister of actresses Mercedes and Guadalupe), and a nephew of screenwriter and director Juan Antonio Bardem. On the latter’s side, he is a cousin of filmmaker Miguel Bardem.He comes from a political background, as his uncle Juan Antonio was imprisoned by Franco for his anti-fascist films.

Bardem was brought up as Roman Catholic by grandmother.

As child, he spent time at theatres and on film sets. At age 6, he made his first film, in Fernando Fernán Gómez’s El Pícaro (The Scoundrel). He also played rugby for the junior Spanish National Team. Though he grew up in  family full of actors, Bardem did not see himself going into the family business, and painting was his preferred medium.  He went on to study painting for four years at Madrid’s Escuela de Artes y oficios. He took acting jobs to support his painting but felt he was a bad painter and eventually abandoned it as a career.

 

Barrymore, Lionel: Yes

 

Barthelmess, Richard: Yes

Mother actress; father died when he was 1.

Alla Nazimova influential figure.

Bates, Alan: Yes         

Bates was born at the Queen Mary Nursing Home, Darley Abbey, Derby, England, on 17 February 1934, the eldest of three boys born of Florence Mary (née Wheatcroft), a housewife and a pianist, and Harold Arthur Bates, an insurance broker and a cellist. They lived in Allestree, Derby, at the time of Bates’ birth, but briefly moved to Mickleover before returning to Allestree.

Both parents were amateur musicians who encouraged Bates to pursue music. However, by the age of 11, having decided to become an actor, he studied drama instead.[2] He further developed his vocation by attending productions at Derby’s Little Theatre.

Bates was educated at the Herbert Strutt Grammar School, Derby Road, Belper, Derbyshire (now “Strutts”, a volunteer led business and community centre) and later gained a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where he studied with Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole, before leaving to join the RAF for National Service at RAF Newton.

Bates’s stage debut was in 1955, in You and Your Wife, in Coventry.

 

Baxter, Warner: No

Baxter was born on March 29, 1889. in Columbus, Ohio, to Edwin F. Baxter, born October 1, 1867, Marysville, Union County, Ohio, and Jennie (Jane) B. Barrett, born December 30, 1869, Columbus. Jennie Barrett was the daughter of Leroy Barrett and Hattie Snider.

Edwin Baxter owned a cigar stand in Columbus. Edwin F. Baxter, son of William E. Baxter and Mary C. Miller Baxter, died on September 16, 1889, in Columbus. Baxter was not quite five months old when his father died. Baxter’s mother survived her son by ten years. Jane/Jennie Barrett Baxter died on March 29, 1962, at her home in Beverly Hills, California.

Baxter and his mother lived with her brother in Columbus. They later moved to New York City, where he became active in dramatics, participating in school productions and attending plays. In 1898, the two moved to San Francisco, where he graduated from Polytechnic High School. When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck, Baxter and mother lived in Golden Gate Park for eight days and then went to live with friends in Alameda for three months. In 1908, they returned to Columbus. After selling farm implements for a living, Baxter worked for 4 months as the partner of Dorothy Shoemaker in an act on the Keith Vaudeville Circuit.

 

Beatty, Warren: Yes

mother: teacher

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Beery, Wallace: No

Father: police officer

Beery was born the youngest of 3 boys in 1885 in Clay County, Missouri, near Smithville. The Beery family left the farm in the 1890s and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where the father was a police officer.

Beery attended the Chase School in Kansas City and took piano lessons, as well, but showed little love for academic matters. He ran away from home twice, the first time returning after a short time, quitting school and working in the Kansas City train yards as an engine wiper. Beery ran away from home second time at age 16, and joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant elephant trainer. He left 2 years later, after being clawed by leopard.

Wallace Beery joined older brother Noah in NYC in 1904, finding work in comic opera as baritone, and began to appear on Broadway and in summer stock theatre. He appeared in “The Belle of the West” in 1905. His most notable role in 1907 in “The Yankee Tourist” to good reviews

Benigni, Roberto (Italian): No

Father: Bricklayer, carpenter

Mother: fabric maker

Benigni was born October 25, 1952 in Manciano La Misericordia (a frazione of Castiglion Fiorentino), son of Isolina Papini (1919–2004), a fabric maker, and Luigi Benigni (1919–2004), bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer.

He has three sisters: Bruna (born 1945), Albertina (born 1947) and Anna (born 1948). He was raised Catholic and served as altar boy; later in his life he became atheist, but then resumed his interest in religious topics, such as the Ten Commandments and the Song of Songs, and returned to practicing Catholicism.

His first experiences as a theatre actor took place in 1971, in Prato. During that autumn he moved to Rome in some experimental theatre shows, some of which he also directed. In 1975, Benigni had his first theatrical success with Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia, written by Giuseppe Bertolucci.

Benigni became known in Italy in the 1970s for TV series Onda Libera, on RAI2, produced by Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted the satirical piece The Hymn of the Body Purged (L’inno del corpo sciolto, a scatological song about the joys of defecation). Great scandal for the time, the series was suspended due to censorship.

His first film was 1977’s Berlinguer, I Love You, also by Bertolucci.

His popularity increased with L’altra domenica (1976–1979), another TV show of Arbore’s as lazy film critic who never watches the films he’s asked to review.

Bernardo Bertolucci then cast him in small speechless role as window upholsterer in the 1979 film La Luna which had limited American distribution due subject matter.

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Bichir, Demian (Mexican)= No

Mexican of Lebanese origins

Training: Lee Strasberg

After starring in telenovelas, he began to appear in Hollywood films.

He was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for role in A Better Life in 2011; age 58.

Bichir was born in Torreón. His parents are Alejandro Bichir and Maricruz Nájera. His paternal family is of Lebanese origin.

His brothers are Odiseo and Bruno.  He worked at the National Theater Company, performed Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky, and won awards at the Mexican Association of Theater Critics.

He attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, and worked at Rosa Mexican Restaurant.

He is American Civil Liberties Union Ambassador of Immigration Rights.

His wife Stefanie Sherk committed suicide by drowning in the swimming pool April 12, 2019.

Bichir has a daughter, Gala.

Bichir played Fidel Castro in Che and an emigrant in A Better Life.

He starred in the crime series The Bridge, and Tarantino’s western, The Hateful Eight.

His directorial debut film A Circus Story & A Love Song premiered at Morelia Film Fest

Other films including Alien: Covenant, The Nun. and Chaos Walking.

He starred in the remake series “Grand Hotel.”

He stars in Angelina Jolie’s adapted film of Alessandro Baricco’s novel Without Blood.

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Bogart, Humphrey: No

Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born on Xmas Day 1899 in NYC, eldest child of Belmont DeForest Bogart and Maud Humphrey. The name “Bogart” from the Dutch surname, “Bogaert”. Belmont and Maud married in June 1898. He was a Presbyterian, of English and Dutch descent, and descendant of Sarah Rapelje (first female European Christian child born in New Netherland). Maud was Episcopalian of English heritage, and descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland.

Humphrey was raised Episcopalian, but was non-practicing for most of his adult life.

Bogart’s father was a cardiopulmonary surgeon. Maud was commercial illustrator who received her art training in NY and France. She later became art director of fashion magazine The Delineator and militant suffragette. Maud used drawing of baby Humphrey in ad campaign for Mellins Baby Food. She earned over $50,000 a year–large sum, and considerably more than her husband’s $20,000.

The Bogarts lived in Upper West Side apartment, and had a cottage on a 55-acre estate on Canandaigua Lake in upstate NY. When he was young, Bogart’s friends at the lake would put on plays.

He had two younger sisters. Bogart’s parents were busy in their careers, and frequently fought. Very formal, they showed little emotion towards their children. Maud told her offspring to call her “Maud” instead of “Mother”, and showed little, if any, physical affection for them. When she was pleased, she “[c]lapped you on the shoulder, almost the way a man does”, Bogart recalled. “I was brought up very unsentimentally but very straightforwardly. A kiss, in our family, was an event. Our mother and father didn’t glug over my two sisters and me.”

Bogart was teased as a boy for his curls, tidiness, the “cute” pictures his mother had him pose for, the Little Lord Fauntleroy clothes he was dressed, and for his first name.

He inherited from his father tendency to needle, fondness for fishing, lifelong love of boating, and attraction to strong-willed women.

Bogart attended the private Delancey School until the fifth grade and then attended the prestigious Trinity School. He was indifferent, sullen student who showed no interest in after-school activities. Bogart later attended Phillips Academy, a boarding school to which he was admitted based on family connections. Although his parents hoped that he would go on to Yale University, Bogart left Phillips in 1918 after one semester (although the Phillips Academy website claims he was in the graduating class of 1920). He failed 4 out of 6 classes. Versions: he was expelled for throwing the headmaster (or groundskeeper) into Rabbit Pond on campus. Another cited smoking, drinking, poor academic performance, inappropriate comments made to the staff. Others: Bogart withdrawn by father for failing to improve grades. His parents were disappointed.

Borgnine, Ernest: No

CT

Parets: Italian immigrants

Borgnine was born Ermes Effron Borgnino (Italian) on January 24, 1917, in Hamden, Connecticut, the son of Italian immigrants. His mother, Anna (née Boselli; 1894–c. 1949), hailed from Carpi, near Modena, while his father Camillo Borgnino (1891–1975) was a native of Ottiglio near Alessandria.

Borgnine’s parents separated when he was 2 years old, and he then lived with his mother in Italy for about four and a half years. By 1923, his parents had reconciled, the family name was changed from Borgnino to Borgnine, and his father changed his first name to Charles.

Borgnine had younger sister, Evelyn Borgnine Velardi (1925–2013). The family settled in New Haven, CT, where Borgnine graduated from James Hillhouse High School. He took to sports while growing up, but showed no interest in acting.

Boseman, Chadwick (2020, black): No

Chadwick Aaron Boseman was born and raised in Anderson, South Carolina, the son of Carolyn (née Mattress) and Leroy Boseman, both African-American. His mother was a nurse, and his father worked at a textile factory and managed an upholstery business. In his youth, Boseman practiced martial arts, and continued training as an adult.

As child, he wanted to become an architect. DNA testing indicated that some of his ancestors were Jola people from Guinea-Bissau, Krio people and Limba people from Sierra Leone, and Yoruba people from Nigeria.

Boseman graduated from T. L. Hanna High School in 1995, where he played on basketball team. In his junior year, he wrote play, Crossroads, and staged it at the school after classmate was shot and killed. He competed in Speech and Debate in the National Speech and Debate Association at T. L. Hanna. He placed eighth in Original Oratory at the 1995 National Tournament. He was recruited to play basketball at college but chose the arts instead, attending college at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and graduating in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing.

While at Howard, he worked in an African American–oriented bookstore near the university; he drew on his experience there for his play Hieroglyphic Graffiti.

His teachers at Howard included Al Freeman Jr. and Phylicia Rashad, who became a mentor. Rashad helped raise funds, from her friend and actor Denzel Washington, so that Boseman and other classmates could attend the Oxford Summer Program of the British American Drama Academy at Balliol College, Oxford, in England.

Boseman wanted to write and direct, and began studying acting to learn how to relate to actors. He attended program in 1998, and developed appreciation for Shakespeare; he studied dramatists Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. He also traveled to Africa while at college, working in Ghana with professor Mike Malone “to preserve and celebrate rituals with performances on a proscenium stage”; he said it was “one of the most significant learning experiences of [his] life”.  In the U.S., he took film studies, graduating from New York City’s Digital Film Academy.

 

Boyer, Charles (French): No

Father: Merchant

Boyer was born in Figeac, Lot, France, son of Augustine Louise Durand and Maurice Boyer, a merchant. Boyer (whose surname comes from boièr, the Occitan word for “cowherd”) was shy small-town boy who discovered the movies and theatre at age 11.

Boyer performed comic sketches for soldiers while working as  hospital orderly during World War I. He began studies briefly at the Sorbonne, and was waiting for chance to study acting at the Paris Conservatory.

He went to the capital city to finish his education, but spent time pursuing theatrical career. In 1920, his quick memory led to replace the lead man in stage production, Aux jardins de Murcie. He was successful.  He appeared in play La Bataille and Boyer became a theatre star overnight.

In the 1920s, he played suave and sophisticated ladies’ man on the stage but also appeared in silent films.

 

Branagh, Kenneth (Irish, Brit) (nom, director and supp. actor): No

Working class; moved to England at age 9

Father: plumber

Kenneth Charles Branagh was born in Belfast on 10 December 1960, the son of working-class Protestant parents Frances (née Harper) and William Branagh. His father was a plumber and joiner who ran company that specialized in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings.

He is the middle of three children, with an older brother and younger sister, and lived in the Tigers Bay area of Belfast. He was educated at Grove Primary School.

In early 1970, at age 9, Branagh moved with family to England to escape the Troubles; they settled in Berkshire, where Branagh grew up in Reading and attended Whiteknights Primary School and Meadway School in Tilehurst. He appeared in school productions such as Toad of Toad Hall and Oh, What a Lovely War!

At school, Branagh learned to speak with RP accent to avoid bullying. Discussing his identity, he later said, “I feel Irish. I don’t think you can take Belfast out of the boy.” He also attributes his “love of words” to his Irish heritage.

He attended the amateur Reading Cine & Video Society (now called Reading Film & Video Makers) and was a keen member of Progress Theatre, of which he is now the patron. After disappointing A-level results in English, history, and sociology, he went on to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

In 1980, RADA’s principal Hugh Cruttwell asked Branagh to perform a soliloquy from Hamlet for Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to the academy.

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Brando, Marlon (US, nominee, supp. actor): Yes

Omaha, Nebraska

Two elder sisters

Mother: stage actress

Father: salesman

Family moved a lot; parents separated; mother took them to Santa Ana, CA

Expelled from school, 1941

Unfit for military service; knee

Dramatic Workshop of the New School, influential German director Erwin Piscator

Marlon Brando Jr. was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, as the only son of Marlon Brando Sr. and Dorothy Pennebaker. His father was a salesman who often travelled out-of-state and his mother was a stage actress, often away from home. His mother’s absence resulted in Marlon becoming attached to the family’s housekeeper, who eventually left to get married causing Brando to develop abandonment issues. His two elder sisters were Jocelyn and Frances.

In 1930, when Brando was only 6 years old, the family moved to Evanston, Illinois, where Brando mimicked other people, developed a reputation for pranking and met Wally Cox, whom he remained friends with until Cox’s death in 1973.

In 1936, his parents separated and Dorothy took her children to Santa Ana, California.

Two years later, they reconciled and Marlon Sr. purchased a farmhouse in Libertyville, Illinois. Brando attended Libertyville High School, excelling at sports and drama, but failing in every other subject. Consequently, he was held back for a year and with his history of misbehaving, he was expelled in 1941.

Brando’s father sent his son to Shattuck Military Academy, where he himself studied before. There, Brando continued to excel at acting until 1943 when he was put on probation for being insubordinate to an officer during maneuvers. He was confined to the campus, but sneaked into town and was caught. The faculty voted to expel him although he was supported by the students who thought expulsion was too harsh. Brando was invited back for the following year but decided instead to drop out of high school.

He then worked as a ditch-digger as a summer job arranged by his father and tried to enlist in the Army, but his routine physical revealed that a football injury he had sustained at Shattuck had left him with a trick knee; he was classified physically unfit for military service.

Brando decided to follow his sisters to New York, studying at the American Theatre Wing Professional School, part of the Dramatic Workshop of the New School, with influential German director Erwin Piscator.

In a 1988 documentary, Marlon Brando: The Wild One, Brando’s sister Jocelyn remembered, “He was in a school play and enjoyed it … So he decided he would go to New York and study acting because that was the only thing he had enjoyed. That was when he was 18.”

In the A&E Biography episode on Brando, George Englund said Brando fell into acting in New York because “he was accepted there. He wasn’t criticized. It was the first time in his life that he heard good things about himself.” He spent his first few months in New York sleeping on friends’ couches. For a time he lived with Roy Somlyo, who later became a four time Emmy winning Broadway producer.

Brando was an avid student and proponent of Stella Adler, from whom he learned the techniques of the Stanislavski system. This technique encouraged the actor to explore both internal and external aspects to fully realize the character being portrayed. Brando’s remarkable insight and sense of realism were evident early on. Adler used to recount that when teaching Brando, she had instructed the class to act like chickens, and added that a nuclear bomb was about to fall on them. Most of the class clucked and ran around wildly, but Brando sat calmly and pretended to lay an egg. Asked by Adler why he had chosen to react this way, he said, “I’m a chicken—what do I know about bombs?” Despite being commonly regarded as method actor, Brando disagreed. He claimed to have abhorred Lee Strasberg’s teachings:

After I had some success, Lee Strasberg tried to take credit for teaching me how to act. He never taught me anything. He would have claimed credit for the sun and the moon if he believed he could get away with it. He was an ambitious, selfish man who exploited the people who attended the Actors Studio and tried to project himself as an acting oracle and guru. Some people worshipped him, but I never knew why. I sometimes went to the Actors Studio on Saturday mornings because Elia Kazan was teaching, and there were usually a lot of good-looking girls, but Strasberg never taught me acting. Stella (Adler) did—and later Kazan.

Brando was the first to bring a natural approach to film acting. According to Dustin Hoffman in his online Masterclass, Brando would often talk to camera men and fellow actors about their weekend even after the director would call action. Once Brando felt he could deliver the dialogue as natural as that conversation he would start the dialogue.

In his 2015 documentary, Listen To Me Marlon, he said before that actors were like breakfast cereals, meaning they were predictable. Critics would later say this was Brando being difficult, but actors who worked opposite would say it was just all part of his technique.

 

Bridges, Jeff (nominee, supp. actor): Yes

Father: Lloyd Bridges

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Brody, Adrien (US): No

Child actor

Queens, NYC

Mother: photographer; Catholic

Class: Upper-middle

Father: history professor and painter; Jewish

Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York City, the son of Sylvia Plachy, a photographer, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor and painter Brody’s father is of Polish Jewish descent; Brody’s mother, who was raised Catholic, was born in Budapest, Hungary, and is the daughter of a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat father and a Czech Jewish mother, although Brody says he was raised “without a strong connection” to either Judaism or Christianity.

As child, Brody performed magic shows at children’s birthday parties as “The Amazing Adrien”. He attended I.S. 145 Joseph Pulitzer Middle School and New York’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. His parents enrolled him in acting classes to distance him from the dangerous children with whom he associated.

He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Brody attended Stony Brook University before transferring to Queens College for a semester.

Taking acting classes as a child, by age thirteen, he appeared in an Off-Broadway play and a PBS television film. After appearing in Bullet in 1996 with Tupac Shakur and Mickey Rourke, Brody hovered on the brink of stardom, receiving an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his role in the 1998 film Restaurant, and later praise for his roles in Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.

He received recognition when he was cast as the lead in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002). To prepare for the role, Brody withdrew for months, gave up his apartment and his car, broke up with his then-girlfriend, learned how to play Chopin on the piano; at 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) tall, he lost 30 pounds (14 kg), dropping him to 130 lb (59 kg).

The role won him Best Actor, making him, at age 29, the youngest actor ever to win the award, and, to date, the only winner under the age of thirty. He also won a César Award for his performance.

Brody appeared on Saturday Night Live on May 10, 2003, his first TV work. During this appearance, he controversially gave an introduction for Jamaican reggae musical guest Sean Paul, while wearing faux dreadlocks and using a Jamaican accent. It was reported at the time that he had improvised the bit, causing him to be banned from Saturday Night Live, however it was later revealed it was part of the dress rehearsal too. Other TV appearances include NBC’s The Today Show, and on MTV’s Punk’d after being tricked by Ashton Kutcher.

 

Brynner, Yul (Swiss/Russian): ?

Wealthy Swiss-Russian family of landowners, silver mining developers

Father: mining engineer, inventor of Swiss-German and Russian descent

Mother: hailed from Russian intelligentsia, studied to be actress and singer

Parets divorced when he was 4

Education: China, Yul & sister Vera attended school run YMCA.

Yul Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Briner on July 11, 1920, in the city of Vladivostok. He had Swiss-German, Russian, Buryat (Mongol) and purported Romani ancestry.

He was born into wealthy Swiss-Russian family of landowners and silver mining developers in Siberia and the Far East. At the time the territory was controlled by the Far Eastern Republic and Vladivostok was partially under Japanese control.

In October 1922, the Red Army occupied Vladivostok, and most of the Briner family’s wealth was confiscated and nationalized at the end of the Russian Civil War. The Briners were stripped of home ownership, but the family continued living in their house under a temporary status.

Brynner’s father, Boris Yuliyevich Briner, was a mining engineer and inventor of Swiss-German and Russian descent, who graduated from Mining University in Saint Petersburg in 1910. The actor’s grandfather, Jules Briner, was a Swiss citizen who moved to Vladivostok in the 1870s and established a successful import/export company.[16] Brynner’s paternal grandmother, Natalya Yosifovna Kurkutova, was a native of Irkutsk and a Eurasian of partial Buryat ancestry.

Brynner’s mother, Marousia Dimitrievna (née Blagovidova), hailed from the Russian intelligentsia and studied to be an actress and singer; she was allegedly of Russian Romani ancestry. Brynner felt strong personal connection to the Romani people and in 1977 he was named honorary president of the International Romani Union, a title that he kept until his death.

In 1922, after the Soviet Union, Yul’s father Boris Briner was required to relinquish his Swiss citizenship and all family members were made Soviet citizens. Brynner’s father’s work required extensive travel, and in 1923, in Moscow he fell in love with an actress, Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova, who was the ex-wife of actor Aleksei Dikiy, and stage partner of Michael Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre.  Katerina Kornakova would help Brynner with her letter of recommendation asking Michael Chekhov to employ him in his theatre company in America.

In 1924, Yul’s father divorced his mother and continued to support her and his children. His father also adopted girl, because his new wife was childless, and many years later, after the death of his father, Brynner would take his adopted sister into his care. The father and son relationship remained complex and emotionally traumatic.

Boris Briner and Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova lived in Moscow, but eventually they moved to Harbin, Manchuria, under Japanese control. There the family established business in international trade.

In 1927, Brynner, with his mother and his elder sister, Vera (January 17, 1916 – December 13, 1967), emigrated from Vladivostok, Russia to Harbin, China. There, young Yul and his sister Vera attended a school run by the YMCA.

In 1930, Brynner’s father gave him an important birthday present – an acoustic guitar. That guitar and the following music lessons made a lasting influence on Brynner’s artistic development. His natural curiosity, creativity, and imagination became now focused on mastering the guitar technique and studying classical and contemporary music. Brynner studied music under the guidance of his elder sister, Vera, who was a classically trained opera singer. After several years of arduous studies, Brynner became an accomplished guitar player and singer.[11]

In 1933, fearing a war between China and Japan, Brynner, with sister Vera and their mother, moved to Paris. There, on the 15th of June, 1935, Brynner, 14, made his debut at the “Hermitage” cabaret in Paris, where he played his guitar and sang in the Russian and Roma languages. After initial success, he continued performing at various Parisian nightclubs, sometimes accompanying his sister, playing and singing Russian and Roma songs. At that time, Brynner was a student at a lyceum in Paris, where he studied French. His classmates and teachers were aware of his strong character, as he was often involved in fist fighting. In the summer of 1936, Brynner worked as a lifeguard at a resort beach in Le Havre. There he joined a French circus troupe, trained as a trapeze acrobat and worked with a circus troupe for several years,[19] but after sustaining a back injury he left the circus troupe owing to near-unbearable pain, causing him to take narcotics; soon Brynner developed a drug dependency.

While buying opium from dealer, Brynner met Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) and the two became lifelong friends. Cocteau introduced Brynner to Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Marceau, Jean Marais, and bohemian milieu of Paris. The experience and connections eventually helped him in his career of acting, directing, and producing.

By 1937, Brynner’s efforts to control his spinal pain with opium and other drugs eventually led to drug abuse. Seventeen-year-old Brynner became a drug addict and the family tried to help him treat the illness. He spent a year in Lausanne, Switzerland treating his drug addiction at a Swiss clinic for drug addicts and at Lausanne University Hospital under the generous patronage of his aunt Vera Dmitrievna Blagovidova-Briner, his mother’s sister. His aunt Vera Dmitrievna was a physician trained at a medical school in Saint Petersburg, Russia, before the revolution, and later practiced in China and Switzerland. The year-long treatment in Switzerland, which included hypnotherapy, had a lasting effect on Brynner’s health. Yul never used illicit drugs again in his life, though he became addicted to cigarette smoking which gradually deteriorated his lungs and negatively affected his health much later in his life.

In 1938 Brynner’s mother was diagnosed with leukemia, and the two briefly moved back to China seeking help from his father, who continued supporting them. In Harbin, Brynner’s father had a lucrative trade business and lived with his second wife, actress Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova, who was a former member of the Moscow Art Theatre. Katerina Kornakova gave Brynner his first professional acting lessons by showing him scenes from her repertoire at Moscow Art Theatre, and instructing him how to respond to her lines using his voice tone and body language. During their first lessons, Katerina Kornakova demonstrated and explained to Brynner the principles of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s school of acting, and the innovative ideas of Michael Chekhov, who founded his school.

Brynner was impressed with the new experience, enabling him to act on a much higher level than his work as a circus acrobat. His father initially tried to prepare his son for a management position at their family business, but changed his mind after watching several acting lessons and witnessing Brynner’s happiness.

Katerina Kornakova was impressed with Brynner’s intellectual and physical abilities and recommended him to study acting with her former partner Michael Chekhov. Brynner took the letter of recommendation from his stepmother and also accepted money and blessings from his father. With the generous support from both his father and stepmother, Brynner became encouraged and confident in his future success as an actor. At the same time, Brynner’s mother’s illness progressed and required special medical treatment that was available only in the United States, so Brynner took his mother on a long trip across the world.

In 1940, speaking little English, Brynner and mother immigrated to the US aboard the President Cleveland, departing from Kobe, Japan, arriving in San Francisco on October 25, 1940.

His final destination was New York , where his sister already lived. Vera, a singer, starred in The Consul on Broadway in 1950[23] and appeared on television in the title role of Carmen. She later taught voice in New York.

During World War II Brynner worked as a French-speaking radio announcer and commentator for the US Office of War Information, broadcasting to occupied France. He also worked for the Voice of America, broadcasting in Russian to the Soviet Union during WWII. At the same time, during the war years, he studied acting in Connecticut with the Russian actor Michael Chekhov, and also worked as a truck driver and stage hand for Michael Chekhov’s theatre company. Brynner was introduced to Michael Chekhov on the recommendation from his father’s second wife, actress Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova, former acting partner of Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre.

By the time he turned 21, Brynner had made international journeys around the world traveling between Asia, Europe, and America.

In 1941, Brynner performed as a singer and guitar player at the “Blue Angel” club in New York. There he met and fell in love with Marlene Dietrich. She was 40, Brynner was 21; it was a mutually beneficial relationship, and the two became lifelong friends.

In 1941, Brynner made his debut in Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that premiered on the 2nd of December 1941. In it, Brynner appeared as Fabian and delivered only a few lines in his broken English with a noticeable Russian accent. The job helped to start adding English to the list of languages he spoke, which included French, Japanese, Hungarian, and some Russian. The show was soon closed, as were many other Broadway productions, after the attack on Pearl Harbor as America declared war on Japan and Nazi Germany. Soon Brynner found a job as a radio commentator delivering war propaganda in French and Russian at the Voice of America radio station. He had little acting work during the next few years[16] but among other acting stints he co-starred in a 1946 production of Lute Song with Mary Martin. He also did some modeling work and was photographed nude by George most famous part in the TV series Anna and the King (1972) which ran for 13 episodes.

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Burton, Richard (Wales, Brit): No

Working class

Father: coal miner (drunk)

Mother: barmaid at pub; died when he was 2; raised by sister

12th of 13 children

Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. on 10 November 1925 in a house at 2 Dan-y-bont in Pontrhydyfen, Glamorgan, Wales.

He was the 12fth of 13 children born into the Welsh-speaking family of Richard Walter Jenkins Sr. (1876–1957), and Edith Maude Jenkins (née Thomas; 1883–1927). Jenkins Sr., called Daddy Ni by the family, was a coal miner, while his mother worked as a barmaid at pub called the Miner’s Arms in the village of Pontrhydyfen, where she met and married her husband.

According to biographer Melvyn Bragg, Daddy Ni was a “twelve-pints-a-day man” who sometimes went off on drinking and gambling sprees for weeks, and that “he looked very much like me”. His mother to be “a very strong woman” and “a religious soul with fair hair and a beautiful face”.

Richard was barely 2 when his mother died on 31 October, six days after the birth of Graham, the family’s thirteenth child. Edith’s death of postpartum infections; It occurred because of “hygiene neglect”.

According to biographer Michael Munn, Edith “was fastidiously clean”, but her exposure to the dust from the coal mines resulted in her death. Following Edith’s death, Richard’s elder sister Cecilia, whom he affectionately addressed as “Cis”, and her husband Elfed James, also miner, took him under their care. Richard lived with Cis, Elfed and their two daughters, Marian and Rhianon, in their three bedroom terraced cottage on 73 Caradoc Street, Taibach, a suburban district in Port Talbot, “a tough steel town, English-speaking, grind and grime”.

Richard remained grateful and loving to Cis throughout his life, later going on to say: “When my mother died she, my sister, had become my mother, and more mother to me than any mother could ever have been … I was immensely proud of her … she felt all tragedies except her own”. Daddy Ni would occasionally visit the homes of his grown daughters but was otherwise absent.[20] Another important figure in Richard’s early life was Ifor, his brother, 19 years his senior. A miner and rugby union player, Ifor “ruled the household with the proverbial firm hand”. He was also responsible for nurturing a passion for rugby in young Richard.

Although Richard also played cricket, tennis, and table tennis, biographer notes rugby union football to be his greatest interest. On rugby, Richard said he “would rather have played for Wales at Cardiff Arms Park than Hamlet at The Old Vic”. The Welsh rugby union center, Bleddyn Williams believed Richard “had distinct possibilities as a player”.

From the age 5 to 8, Richard was educated at the Eastern Primary School while he attended the Boys’ segment of the same school from eight to twelve years old. He took scholarship exam for admission into Port Talbot Secondary School[a] in March 1937 and passed it.

Biographer Hollis Alpert: both Daddy Ni and Ifor considered Richard’s education to be “of paramount importance” and planned to send him to the University of Oxford. He became the first member of his family to go to secondary school.

He displayed excellent speaking and singing voice since childhood, winning an eisteddfod prize as a boy soprano. During his tenure at Port Talbot Secondary School, Richard showed interest in reading poetry and English and Welsh literature.

He earned pocket money by running messages, hauling horse manure, and delivering newspapers.

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Busey, Gary: No Data

Texas

Interested in acting in college

Busey was born in Goose Creek, Texas. While he was in fourth grade, Busey moved from Goose Creek to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he later attended Bell Junior High School, then attended and graduated from Nathan Hale High School.

Busey attended Coffeyville Community College before attending Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, on a football scholarship, where he became interested in acting.

After a knee injury, he then transferred to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to study theater. He quit school just one unit short of graduation.

Butler, Austin: No

Mother: aesthetician

Butler was born on August 17, 1991, in Anaheim, California, the son of Lori Anne (née Howell), an aesthetician, and David Butler.

The two divorced when he was 7. He has an older sister, Ashley (born in 1986), who worked as a background actor alongside him on Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.

When Butler was 13, he was approached by rep from background acting management company at the Orange County Fair who helped him get started in the entertainment industry. He found that he enjoyed it and soon began taking acting classes.

Butler attended public school until the 7th grade, when he left to be homeschooled to better accommodate his work schedule. He continued his homeschooling until the 10th grade and later passed the CHSPE, the state’s high school equivalency diploma.

 

B=24

—

C (26)

7 of 26= Occupational inheritance

Cage, Nicolas US: No

Cagney, James: No

Caine, Michael (UK) No

Calhern, Lewis: No

Carney, Art, US: No

Carell, Steve, US No

Chalamet, Timothee: No; Child actor:

Chaplin, Charlie (UK): Yes; child actor

Cheadle, Don (Black): No

Chevalier, Maurice (French): No

Clift, Montgomery (US): No; but child actor

Clooney, George: Yes? father journalist; aunt Rosemary Clooney

Colman, Ronald (UK): No

Conti, Tom (Scottish): No

Cooper, Bradley US:: No

Cooper, Gary (US): No

Cooper, Jackie (US): Yes

Costner, Kevin (US): No

Courtenay, Tom (UK): No

Cranston, Bryan (US): Yes (father, wannabe)

Crawford, Broderick (US): Yes; child actor

Crosby, Bing (US): No

Crowe, Russell (New Zealand/Aussie): No

Cruise, Tom (US): No

Cumberbatch, Benedict (UK): Yes (both parents)

Curtis, Tony (US, Jewish): No

 

 

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C

Cage, Nicholas: Yes

Long Beach, CA

Mother, dancer

Cage was born in Long Beach, California, to August Coppola, a professor of literature, and Joy Vogelsang, a dancer and choreographer. He was raised in a Catholic family. His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of German and Polish ancestry. His paternal grandparents were composer Carmine Coppola and actress Italia Pennino, and his paternal great-grandparents were immigrants from Bernalda, Basilicata. Through his father, he is a nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and of actress Talia Shire, and a cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, film producer Gian-Carlo Coppola, and actors Robert and Jason Schwartzman.

Cage is the youngest of 3 sons. His two brothers are New York radio personality Marc “The Cope” Coppola and director Christopher Coppola. He attended Beverly Hills High School, which is known for its many alumni who became entertainers. He aspired to act from an early age and also attended UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. His first non-cinematic acting experience was in a school production of Golden Boy. He said he started acting because he “wanted to be James Dean. I saw him in Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden. Nothing affected me—no rock song, no classical music—the way Dean affected me in Eden. It blew my mind. I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do’.”

At age 15, he tried to convince his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, to give him a screen test, telling him “I’ll show you acting.” His outburst was met with “silence in the car”. By this stage of his career, Coppola had already directed Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Robert De Niro. Although early in his career Cage appeared in some of his uncle’s films, he changed his name to Nicolas Cage to avoid the appearance of nepotism as Coppola’s nephew.

His choice of name was inspired by the Marvel Comics superhero Luke Cage and composer John Cage.

Cagney, James: No

Working class

2nd of 7 children

Father: bartender and boxer

James Francis “Jimmy” Cagney was born in 1899 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. His biographers disagree as to the actual location: either on the corner of Avenue D and 8th Street, or in a top-floor apartment at 391 East 8th Street, the address that is on his birth certificate. His father, James Francis Cagney Sr. (1875–1918), was of Irish descent. At the time of his son’s birth, he was a bartender and amateur boxer, although on Cagney’s birth certificate, he is listed as a telegraphist. His mother was Carolyn Elizabeth (née Nelson; 1877–1945); her father was a Norwegian ship’s captain, and her mother was Irish.

Cagney was the second of 7 children, two of whom died within months of their births. He was sickly as an infant—so much so that his mother feared he would die before he could be baptized. He later attributed his sickly health to the poverty his family endured. The family moved twice while he was young, first to East 79th Street, and then East 96th Street. He was confirmed at St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan; his funeral service would eventually be held in the same church.

The red-haired, blue-eyed Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City, in 1918, and attended Columbia College, where he intended to major in Art. He also took German and joined the Student Army Training Corps, but he dropped out after one semester, returning home upon the death of his father during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Cagney held a variety of jobs early in his life: junior architect, copy boy for the New York Sun, book custodian at the New York Public Library, bellhop, draughtsman, and night doorkeeper. He gave all his earnings to his family. While Cagney was working for the New York Public Library, he met Florence James, who helped him into an acting career. Cagney believed in hard work, later stating, “It was good for me. I feel sorry for the kid who has too cushy a time of it. Suddenly he has to come face-to-face with the realities of life without any mama or papa to do his thinking for him.”

He started tap dance as a boy (a skill that eventually contributed to his Academy Award) and was nicknamed “Cellar-Door Cagney” after his habit of dancing on slanted cellar doors. He was a good street fighter, defending his older brother Harry, a medical student, when necessary. He engaged in amateur boxing, and was a runner-up for the New York state lightweight title. His coaches encouraged him to turn professional, but his mother would not allow it. He also played semi-professional baseball for a local team, and entertained dreams of playing in the Major Leagues.

His introduction to films was unusual. When visiting an aunt who lived in Brooklyn, opposite Vitagraph Studios, Cagney would climb over the fence to watch the filming of John Bunny movies. He became involved in amateur dramatics, starting as a scenery boy for a Chinese pantomime at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House (one of the first settlement houses in the nation) where his brother Harry performed, and Florence James directed.

He was initially content working behind the scenes and had no interest in performing. One night, however, Harry became ill, and although Cagney was not an understudy, his photographic memory of rehearsals enabled him to stand in for his brother without making a single mistake.

Caine, Michael (British) winner of 2 Supp. Actor): No

Working class

Mother: cook and charwoman

Father: fish market porter

Memoirs, 2010

Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite at St Olave’s Hospital in the Rotherhithe district of London on 14 March 1933, the son of cook and charwoman Ellen Frances Marie (née Burchell; 1900–1989) and fish market porter Maurice Joseph Micklewhite (1899–1956).

His father was Catholic, of Anglo-Irish and Romani descent.[15] Caine was raised in his mother’s Protestant faith. He had a younger brother, Stanley (1935–2013), who also became an actor, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He grew up in London’s Southwark district; during the Second World War, he was evacuated 100 miles (160 km) north to North Runcton, Norfolk, where he made his acting debut at the village school and had a pet horse called Lottie.

After the war, Caine’s father was demobilized and the family were rehoused by the council in Marshall Gardens in London’s Elephant and Castle area, where they lived in a prefabricated house made in Canada as much of London’s housing stock had been destroyed during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941. Caine later wrote in his autobiography, “The prefabs, as they were known, were intended to be temporary homes while London was reconstructed, but we ended up living there for eighteen years—and for us, after a cramped flat with an outside toilet, it was luxury.”

At age 10, Caine acted in school play as the father of the ugly sisters in Cinderella. His trousers’ zipper was undone, prompting the audience to laugh, which inspired him to pursue acting career.

In 1944, he passed his eleven-plus examination, winning  scholarship to Hackney Downs School.

After a year there, he moved to Wilson’s School in Camberwell, which he left at age 16 after gaining School Certificates in six subjects.

He then worked briefly as a filing clerk and messenger for film company in Victoria and film producer Jay Lewis on Wardour Street.

In 1952, national service, between 1952 and 1954 he served in the British Army’s Royal Fusiliers, first at the British Army of the Rhine Headquarters in Iserlohn, West Germany, and then on active service in the Korean War.

Caine, seeing first-hand how the communists used the human wave attacks practiced by North Korea and China, left him with the sense that their governments did not care about their citizens, and made him realize that Leftism was certainly not what its supporters would have the masses believe. He thought he was going to die, the memory of which stayed with him and “formed his character”.

In his 2010 autobiography The Elephant to Hollywood: “The rest of my life I have lived every bloody moment from the moment I wake up until the time I go to sleep.”

 

Calhern, Lewis (also supp): N0

Bkly, NYC

Father: tobacco dealer

Class: middle

Parents: German immigrants; changed his last Germanic name

Spotted by stage manager due to height

Carl Henry Vogt (February 19, 1895 – May 12, 1956), known professionally as Louis Calhern, was American stage and screen actor. Well known to film noir fans for his role as the pivotal villain in 1950’s The Asphalt Jungle, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes in the film The Magnificent Yankee later that year.

Calhern was born Carl Henry Vogt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1895, the son of German immigrants Eugene Adolf Vogt and Hubertina Friese Vogt. He had one known sibling, a sister. His father was a tobacco dealer. His family left New York while he was in elementary school and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he was raised.

While playing high school football, stage manager from a touring theatrical stock company noticed the tall, handsome youth and hired him as a bit player. Another source states “Grace George hired his entire high school football team as supers for Shakespearean play.”

Due to the anti-German sentiment during WWI, he changed his German given name, Carl. His stage name is amalgam hometown of St. Louis and his first and middle names, Carl and Henry (Calhern).

Carney, Art (US): No

Mount Vernon, New York

Youngest of 6

Middle Class

Father: newspaperman, publicist

Carney, the youngest of six sons (his brothers were Jack, Ned, Robert, Fred, and Phil), was born in Mount Vernon, New York, the son of Helen (née Farrell) and Edward Michael Carney, a newspaperman and publicist.

His family was Irish American and Catholic.

He attended A.B. Davis High School

Carney was drafted into the US Army in 1943 as infantryman and machine gun crewman during World War II. In the Battle of Normandy serving in the 28th Infantry Division, he was wounded in the leg by shrapnel and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. his right leg was ¾-inch shorter than his left.

Carney was awarded a Purple Heart, the American Campaign Medal, the European–African–Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal, and was discharged as private in 1945.

Carney was a comic singer with the Horace Heidt orchestra, heard on radio during the 1930s, the hugely successful Pot o’ Gold, the first big-money giveaway show in 1939–41.

Carney’s film career began with an uncredited role in Pot o’ Gold (1941), the radio program’s spin-off feature film, playing a member of Heidt’s band.

Carney, a gifted mimic, worked steadily in radio during the 1940s, playing character roles and impersonating celebrities such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. He can be seen impersonating Roosevelt in a 1937 promotional film for Stewart-Warner refrigerators that is preserved by the Library of Congress. as well as during his appearance as a Mystery Guest on What’s My Line.

Carell, Steve: No

Concord, MA

Youngest of 4

Middle class (upper middle)

Father: mechanical engineer

Mother: psychiatric nurse

Steven John Carell Carell was born on August 16, 1962 at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts, the youngest of four brothers, and raised in nearby Acton, Massachusetts.

His father, Edwin A. Carell (1925–2021) was mechanical engineer, and his mother, Harriet Theresa (née Koch; 1925–2016), was a psychiatric nurse. His maternal uncle, Stanley Koch, worked with scientist Allen B. DuMont to create the cathode ray tubes.

His father was of Italian and German descent and his mother was of Polish ancestry. His father’s surname was originally Caroselli but it was changed to Carell in the 1950s.

Carell was raised Roman Catholic and was educated at Nashoba Brooks School, The Fenn School, and Middlesex School. He played ice hockey and lacrosse while in high school. He played the fife, performing with other members of his family, and later joined a reenacting group portraying the 10th (North Lincoln) Regiment of Foot. He attributed his interest in history to this, earning a degree in the subject from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, in 1984.

While at Denison, Carell was member of Burpee’s Seedy Theatrical Company, student-run improvisational comedy troupe, and was goalie on the school’s Big Red hockey team for four years. He also spent time as a disc jockey under the name “Sapphire Steve Carell” at WDUB, the campus radio station.

Chalamet, Timothee (US/French): No

NYC

Older sister, actress

Mother: Real estate broker (half Jew); former dancer

Father: Editor for UNICEFF

Class: Middle

Uncle/Aunt: filmmaker

LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts

Columbia (anthropology); NYU (acting)

debt 2014: age 19

Timothée Hal Chalamet was born on December 27, 1995, in New York City, and grew up in the federally subsidized artists’ building Manhattan Plaza in Hell’s Kitchen. He has an older sister, Pauline Chalamet, who is an actress.

His mother, Nicole Flender, is a third-generation New Yorker, of half Russian Jewish and half Austrian Jewish descent. She is a real estate broker at The Corcoran Group, and former Broadway dancer; Flender earned her bachelor’s degree in French from Yale University, and has been language and dance teacher.

His French father, Marc Chalamet, is editor for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and former New York correspondent for Le Parisien. Marc is from Nîmes and is of Protestant background.

Timothée’s paternal grandmother, who had moved to France, was originally Canadian. On his mother’s side, he is a nephew of husband-and-wife filmmakers and producers Rodman Flender and Amy Lippman.

Chalamet is bilingual in English and French, and holds dual US and French citizenship due to his French father. Growing up, Chalamet spent summers in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small French village two hours away from Lyon, at the home of his paternal grandparents. He stated that his time in France led to cross-cultural identity issues. Chalamet attended PS 87 William T. Sherman School for elementary school, and later the selective Delta program at MS 54 Booker T. Washington Middle School, which he described as miserable due to the lack of a creative outlet within the school’s academically rigorous environment.

Inspired by: Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight (2008) inspired him to establish a career in acting.

His acceptance into Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts was turning point in appreciation for acting.

His sophomore-year drama teacher at LaGuardia was impressed by his audition that he insisted on Chalamet’s acceptance into the school even though he had been rejected in the interview (due to his middle school record), saying “I gave him the highest score I’ve ever given a kid auditioning.”

During high school, Chalamet dated Madonna’s daughter Lola Leon, a fellow student, for a year. He starred in school musicals as Emcee in Cabaret and Oscar Lindquist in Sweet Charity, graduating in 2013. He is also a YoungArts alumnus.

After high school, Chalamet, 17, attended Columbia University for one year, majoring in cultural anthropology, and was  resident of Hartley Hall. He later transferred to NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study to pursue his acting career more freely, having found it difficult to assimilate to Columbia directly after filming Interstellar. Upon leaving Columbia, Chalamet moved to Concourse, Bronx.

As child, Chalamet appeared in commercials and acted in two horror short films called Sweet Tooth and Clown before making his television debut on an episode of the long-running police procedural series Law & Order (2009), playing a murder victim. He followed this with a minor role in the TV film Loving Leah (2009). In 2011, he made his stage debut in the Off-Broadway play The Talls, a coming-of-age comedy set in the 1970s, in which he played a sexually curious 12-year-old. The chief theatre critic of New York Daily News wrote, “Chalamet hilariously captures a tween’s awakening curiosities about sex.”

In 2012, he had recurring roles in the drama series Royal Pains and the thriller series Homeland, in which he played Finn Walden, the rebellious son of the Vice President. Chalamet was nominated for a SAG Award for Best Ensemble.

In 2014, Chalamet made his feature debut in minor role in Jason Reitman’s Men, Women & Children. In the same year, he played Tom Cooper, the son of Matthew McConaughey’s character, in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar

Chaplin, Charlie (UK; US): Yes

South London

Working class: poverty and hardship

Parents: Music Hall entertainers.

Father: alcoholic, died at 38

Mother: mental asylum

At 14, performed; at 16 West End for over 2 yrs

Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. born on April 16, 1889 to Hannah Chaplin (née Hill) and Charles Chaplin Sr. His paternal grandmother came from the Smith family, who belonged to Romani people.

There is no official record of his birth, though Chaplin believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in South London. His parents had married four years previously, at which time Charles Sr. became the legal guardian of Hannah’s first son, Sydney John Hill.

Chaplin’s parents were both music hall entertainers. Hannah, the daughter of a shoemaker, had brief and unsuccessful career under the stage name Lily Harley, while Charles Sr., a butcher’s son, was a popular singer.

They never divorced, but Chaplin’s parents were estranged by around 1891. The following year, Hannah gave birth to a third son, George Wheeler Dryden, fathered by music hall entertainer Leo Dryden. The child was taken by Dryden at six months old, and did not reenter Chaplin’s life for thirty years.

Chaplin’s childhood was fraught with poverty and hardship, making his eventual trajectory “the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories ever told” according to his authorised David Robinson. Chaplin’s early years were spent with his mother and brother Sydney in the London district of Kennington. Hannah had no means of income, other than occasional nursing and dressmaking, and Chaplin Sr. provided no financial support. As the situation deteriorated, Chaplin was sent to Lambeth Workhouse when he was seven years old. The council housed him at the Central London District School for paupers, which Chaplin remembered as “a forlorn existence”. He was briefly reunited with his mother 18 months later, before Hannah was forced to readmit her family to the workhouse in July 1898. Boys were sent to Norwood Schools, another institution for destitute children.

I was hardly aware of a crisis because we lived in a continual crisis; and, being a boy, I dismissed our troubles with gracious forgetfulness.

In September 1898, Hannah was committed to Cane Hill mental asylum; she had developed a psychosis seemingly brought on by an infection of syphilis and malnutrition. Chaplin and his brother Sydney were sent to live with their father, whom the young boys scarcely knew. Charles Sr. was by then severe alcoholic, and life there was bad enough to provoke a visit from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Chaplin’s father died two years later, at 38 years old, from cirrhosis of the liver.

Hannah entered a period of remission but, in May 1903, became ill again. Chaplin, then 14, had the task of taking his mother to the infirmary, from where she was sent back to Cane Hill.[26] He lived alone for several days, searching for food and occasionally sleeping rough, until Sydney – who had joined the Navy two years earlier – returned. Hannah was released from the asylum eight months later, but in March 1905, her illness returned, permanently. “There was nothing we could do but accept poor mother’s fate”, Chaplin later wrote, and she remained in care until her death in 1928.

Between his time in the poor schools and his mother succumbing to mental illness, Chaplin began to perform on stage. He later recalled making his first amateur appearance at the age of five years, when he took over from Hannah one night in Aldershot. This was an isolated occurrence, but by the time he was nine Chaplin had, with his mother’s encouragement, grown interested in performing. He later wrote: “[she] imbued me with the feeling that I had some sort of talent”. Through his father’s connections, Chaplin became a member of the Eight Lancashire Lads clog-dancing troupe, with whom he toured English music halls throughout 1899 and 1900.[e] Chaplin worked hard, and the act was popular with audiences, but he was not satisfied with dancing and wished to form a comedy act.

Chaplin was touring with the Eight Lancashire Lads, his mother ensured that he still attended school but, by age 13, he had abandoned education. He supported himself with jobs, while nursing his ambition to become an actor.

At 14, shortly after his mother’s relapse, he registered with theatrical agency in London’s West End. The manager sensed potential in Chaplin, who was promptly given his first role as a newsboy in Harry Arthur Saintsbury’s Jim, a Romance of Cockayne.[38] It opened in July 1903, but the show was unsuccessful and closed after two weeks. Chaplin’s comic performance, however, was singled out for praise in many of the reviews.

Saintsbury secured a role for Chaplin in Charles Frohman’s production of Sherlock Holmes, where he played Billy the pageboy in three nationwide tours. His performance was so well received that he was called to London to play the role alongside William Gillette, the original Holmes.[f] “It was like tidings from heaven”, Chaplin recalled. At 16 years old, Chaplin starred in the West End production at the Duke of York’s Theatre from October to December 1905.

He completed one final tour of Sherlock Holmes in early 1906, before leaving the play after more than two-and-a-half years.

 

 

Cheadle, Don (Black, US): No

EGOT

Born: Kansas City, Missouri

1 of 3; brother, sister

Mother: teacher

Father: clinical psychologist

Class: Middle

Education: Hartley Elementary School in Lincoln, Nebraska

East High School in Denver, Colorado, 1982 (performed)

Training California Institute of the Arts

Donald Frank Cheadle Jr. (born November 29, 1964), recipient of multiple accolades, including 2 Grammy Awards, a Tony Award, 2 Golden Globes and 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards. He also earned nominations for Oscar Award, two British Academy Film Awards and 11 Primetime Emmy Awards.

His Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony nominations make him one of few black individuals to be nominated for the four major American entertainment awards (EGOT).

After roles in Hamburger Hill (1987), and as the gangster “Rocket” in the film Colors (1988), Cheadle built his career in the 1990s with roles in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), Rebound: The Legend of Earl ‘The Goat’ Manigault (1996), Rosewood (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), and Bulworth (1998). His collaboration with director Steven Soderbergh resulted in the films Out of Sight (1998), Traffic (2000), The Ocean’s Trilogy (2001–2007), and No Sudden Move (2021). Cheadle was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Rwandan hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina in the historical drama film Hotel Rwanda (2004). He was the co-producer of Crash, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005. Cheadle extended his global recognition with his role as James “Rhodey” Rhodes / War Machine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe beginning with Iron Man 2 (2010), and garnered a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his guest appearance as the character in the Disney+ miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021). He will lead the film Armor Wars as part of the franchise.

His TV includes appearances in Night Court (1988), The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990), Booker (1990), Picket Fences (1993–1995), The Bernie Mac Show (2002), ER (2002), and as Marty Kaan in House of Lies (2012–2016) for which he won a Golden Globe Award in 2013 and four Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

From 2019 to 2021, Cheadle starred in series Black Monday, earning two Emmy Award nominations.

In 2016, he received his Grammy Award, winning Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media for the soundtrack Miles Ahead. In 2022, he received a second Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for his narration of the audiobook Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation from John Lewis; he also received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop.

Cheadle was born in Kansas City, Missouri to Bettye Cheadle (née North), a teacher, and Donald Frank Cheadle Sr., a clinical psychologist. He has a sister, Cindy, and a brother, Colin.

His family moved from city to city in his childhood. He attended Hartley Elementary School in Lincoln, Nebraska from 1970 to 1974.

Cheadle graduated in 1982 from East High School in Denver, Colorado. During high school, he played saxophone in jazz band, sang in choirs, and was active in the theater department, performing in musicals, plays, and mime shows.

Cheadle attend the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater in 1986.

Cheadle became eligible for his Screen Actors Guild card when he appeared as burger joint employee in the 1985 comedy Moving Violations.

In 1987, he received a small role in the 7th season of Hill Street Blues, where he played a teenager with learning difficulties.

Appearance in Hamburger Hill, then secured role of Jack in the April 1, 1988, “Jung and the Restless” episode of Night Court; though his character was 16 Cheadle was 23.

 

Chevalier, Maurice, French: No

Paris

Working class

Father: French house painter

Mother: lace maker (Belgian)

Chevalier was born on September 12, 1888, in Paris to Victor Charles Chevalier (1854-), C

Chevalier was born on September 12, 1888, in Paris to Victor Charles Chevalier (1854-), French house painter, and Joséphine (née Van Den Bossche, 1852–1929) a lace-maker of Belgian (Flemish) descent.

He had two brothers, Charles (1877-1938) and Paul (1884–1969). Victor, an alcoholic, deserted the family in 1896, leaving Joséphine to feed and take care of the children; forced to work longer hours, she was hospitalized for overwork in 1898.

Charles, the eldest, took over some responsibilities but was married in 1900, leaving his mother to take care of Maurice and Paul.

Paul was forced to find work, and secured job at a metal-engraving factory; the brothers became very close with their mother during this time, nicknaming her “La Louque“, which Maurice would later name his estate after.

Determined to be acrobat, Maurice left school aged 10 but abandoned this after a severe injury. He tried other jobs: carpenter’s apprentice, electrician, printer, and doll painter. Chevalier hold down a job at mattress factory, and became interested in performing; while daydreaming his finger was crushed in a machine and he was forced to stop working.

While recovering, in 1900, he offered his services as performer to the skeptical owner of a nearby cafe. Chevalier performed his first song there, V’la Les Croquants, although his performance was met with laughter as he had sung three octaves too high.

Discouraged, Maurice returned home, where his mother and brother Paul encouraged him to continue practicing. He continued singing, unpaid, at the café until a member of the theatre saw him and suggested he try for a local musical. Chevalier got the part, and began to make a name as a mimic and a singer.

His act in l’Alcazar in Marseille was successful, on his return to Paris he was met by an admiring crowd.

In 1909, he became partner of biggest female star in France, Fréhel. However, due to her alcoholism and drug addiction, their liaison ended in 1911.

Chevalier became addicted to cocaine during this time, a habit he quit because he had no access to the drug as a prisoner of war in World War I. After splitting with Fréhel, he then started relationship with 36-year-old Mistinguett at the Folies Bergère, where he was younger dance partner; they played out a public romance.

When World War I broke out, Chevalier was in national service, already in the front line, where he was wounded by shrapnel in the back in the first weeks of combat and was taken as a prisoner of war in Germany for two years, where he learned English.

In 1916, he was released through secret intervention of Mistinguett’s admirer, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, the only king of neutral country related to both the British and German royal families.

 

Clift, Montgomery (US, nom, supp. actor): No

Omaha, Nebraska

Upper Middle Class

Father: vice-president of Omaha National Trust Company

twin sister, older brother

Family traveled a lot, Chicago, Florida, NYC

Dalton

Broadway debut at age 14

Edward Montgomery Clift was born on October 17, 1920, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, William Brooks “Bill” Clift (1886–1964), was the vice-president of Omaha National Trust Company. His mother was Ethel Fogg “Sunny” Clift (née Anderson; 1888–1988).

His parents were Quakers and met as students at Cornell University, marrying in 1914. Clift had a twin sister, Roberta (who later went by “Ethel”), who survived him by 48 years, and an older brother, William Brooks Clift, Jr. (1919–1986), known as “Brooks,” who had son with actress Kim Stanley and was later married to political reporter Eleanor Clift.

Clift had English and Scottish ancestry on his father’s side, wealthy relatives who hailed from Chattanooga, Tennessee. His mother, Sunny, was adopted; she maintained that Clift’s true maternal great-grandfathers were the US postmaster-general Montgomery Blair and Union commander Robert Anderson, a part of her lineage that was clarified to her (when she came of age) by Dr. Edward Montgomery, the family doctor who delivered her.

Clift’s mother’s determination that her children should be brought up in the style of aristocrats. As long as Clift’s father was able to pay for it, he and his siblings were privately tutored, travelled extensively in America and Europe, became fluent in German and French, and led protected life, sheltered from the destitution and communicable diseases that became legion following the First World War.

At age 7, aboard a European ship, a boy forced Clift’s head underwater in the swimming pool for so long that a gland in his neck burst from his struggle to breathe; he had long scar from the resulting infection and operation.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s ruined Clift’s father financially; Bill was forced to downsize and move to Chicago to take new job while Sunny continued traveling with the children. In 1957 issue of McCall’s magazine, Clift quipped, “My childhood was hobgoblin, my parents traveled a lot…That’s all I can remember.”

Clift had shown an interest in acting as child living in Switzerland and France and took part in local production age 13, when his family was forced to downsize and relocate from Chicago to Sarasota, Florida.

He had a small non-paying role. Close to a year later the family moved again, settling in New York City.

Clift debuted on Broadway at age 14 as Harmer Masters in the comedy Fly Away Home, which ran from January to July 1935 at the 48th Street Theatre.

Clift spent a short time at Dalton School in Manhattan but struggled with traditional schooling. He continued to flourish onstage and appeared in works by Moss Hart and Cole Porter, Robert Sherwood, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, and Thornton Wilder, creating the part of Henry in the original production of The Skin of Our Teeth.

Clift proved to be a successful young stage actor working with, among others, Dame May Whitty, Alla Nazimova, Mary Boland, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Fredric March, Tallulah Bankhead, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn Fontanne. In 1939, as a member of the cast of the 1939 Broadway production of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, Clift participated in one of the first television broadcasts in the United States. The Hay Fever performance was broadcast by NBC’s New York television station W2XBS (the forerunner of WNBC) and was aired during the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

At age 20, he appeared in the Broadway production of There Shall Be No Night, which won the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

 

Clooney, George (US, Supp. Actor): No

Lexington, Kentucky

Mother: beauty queen, city councilwoman

Father: anchorman, TV host, five years on the AMC

Class: Upper-Middle

Education: Blessed Sacrament School in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, St. Michael’s School in Worthington, Ohio; then Western Row Elementary School (a public school) in Mason, Ohio, from 1968 to 1974; and St. Susanna School in Mason

Education: Northern Kentucky University, 1979 to 1981, major broadcast journalism, briefly attended the University of Cincinnati, but did not graduate.

Training: Beverly Hills Playhouse acting school, 5 years

Clooney was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky.

His mother, Nina Bruce (née Warren), was a beauty queen and city councilwoman. His father, Nick Clooney, is a former anchorman and television host, including five years on the AMC

Clooney is of Irish, German, and English ancestry.[18] His maternal great-great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Sparrow, was the half-sister of Nancy Lincoln, mother of President Abraham Lincoln, making Clooney and Lincoln half-first cousins five times removed. Clooney has an older sister named Adelia (known as Ada). Cabaret singer and actress

Rosemary Clooney was an aunt. Through Rosemary, his cousins include actors Miguel Ferrer, Rafael Ferrer, and Gabriel Ferrer, married to singer Debby Boone.

Clooney was raised a strict Roman Catholic but said he did not know if he believed “in Heaven or even God.” Yes, we were Catholic, big-time, whole family, whole group.”

He began his education at the Blessed Sacrament School in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. He attended St. Michael’s School in Worthington, Ohio; then Western Row Elementary School (a public school) in Mason, Ohio, from 1968 to 1974; and St. Susanna School in Mason, where he served as an altar boy.

The Clooneys moved back to Kentucky when George was midway through the 7th grade. In middle school, Clooney developed Bell’s palsy, medical condition that partially paralyzes the face. The malady went away within a year.

Larry King, he stated that “yes, it goes away. It takes about nine months to go away. It was the first year of high school, which was a bad time for having half your face paralyzed.” He also described positive outcome of the condition: “It’s probably great thing that it happened to me because it forced me to engage in a series of making fun of myself. And I think that’s an important part of being famous. The practical jokes have to be aimed at you.”

After his parents moved to Augusta, Kentucky, Clooney attended Augusta High School. He earned all As and a B in school, and played baseball and basketball. He tried out to play professional baseball with the Cincinnati Reds in 1977, but he did not pass the first round of player cuts and was not offered a contract.

He attended Northern Kentucky University from 1979 to 1981, majoring in broadcast journalism, and very briefly attended the University of Cincinnati, but did not graduate from either. He earned money selling women’s shoes, insurance door to door, stocking shelves, working in construction, and cutting tobacco.

Clooney’s first role was as extra in TV mini-series Centennial in 1978, which was based on the novel of the same name by James A. Michener and was partly filmed in Clooney’s hometown of Augusta, Kentucky.

Clooney’s first major role in 1984 in the short-lived CBS sitcom E/R (not to be confused with ER, the long-running medical drama). He played a handyman on The Facts of Life and appeared as Bobby Hopkins, a detective, on episode of The Golden Girls.

His first prominent role was a semi-regular supporting role in the sitcom Roseanne, playing Roseanne Barr’s supervisor Booker Brooks, then construction worker on Baby Talk, a co-starring role on the CBS drama Bodies of Evidence as Detective Ryan Walker, and then a year-long turn as Det. James Falconer on Sisters.

In 1988, Clooney played one of the lead roles in the comedy-horror film Return of the Killer Tomatoes. In 1990, he starred in the short-lived ABC police drama Sunset Beat.

During this period, Clooney student at Beverly Hills Playhouse acting school for five years.

 

Colman, Ronald (UK): No

Richmond, Surrey, England

Father: Silk merchant; sudden death

The third son 0f 5; one died

Class: Middle

Educated: boarding school in Littlehampton

Intent: engineer

Ronald Charles Colman was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the third son (his eldest brother died in infancy in 1882) and fifth child of Charles Colman, a silk merchant, and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His surviving siblings were Gladys, Edith, Eric and Freda.

He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he discovered that he enjoyed acting, despite shyness.

He intended to study engineering at Cambridge, but his father’s sudden death from pneumonia in 1907 made it financially impossible.

He became amateur actor, and member of the West Middlesex Dramatic Society in 1908–09. He made first appearance on the professional stage in 1914.

While working as clerk at the British Steamship Company in the City of London, he joined the London Scottish Regiment in 1909 as a Territorial Army soldier.

At World War !, he was mobilized, and sent to France in September 1914.

On October 31, 1914, at the Battle of Messines, Colman was wounded by shrapnel in his ankle, which gave him a limp that he would attempt to hide throughout his acting career. He was mustered out as invalid in 1915.

His fellow Hollywood actors Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall, Cedric Hardwicke, and Basil Rathbone all in service with London Scottish in the war.

Colman had recovered from his wartime injuries to appear at the London Coliseum on 19 June 1916 as Rahmat Sheikh in The Maharani of Arakan, with Lena Ashwell, at the Playhouse in December that year as Stephen Weatherbee in the Charles Goddard/Paul Dickey play The Misleading Lady, and at the Court Theatre in March 1917 as Webber in Partnership.

Ge appeared in Eugène Brieux’s Damaged Goods. At the Ambassadors Theatre in February 1918, he played George Lubin in The Little Brother. In 1918, he toured the UK as David Goldsmith in The Bubble.

In 1920, Colman went to America and toured with Robert Warwick in The Dauntless Three and then with Fay Bainter in East Is West.

He married his first wife, Thelma Raye, in 1920; they divorced in 1934. At the Booth Theatre in NY in January 1921, he played the Temple Priest in William Archer’s play The Green Goddess. With George Arliss at the 39th Street Theatre in August 1921, he appeared as Charles in The Nightcap.

In September 1922, he had success as Alain Sergyll at the Empire Theatre (NY) in La Tendresse, which became his final stage work.

Conti, Tom (Scottish, UK): No

Father: Italian

Parents (both): hairdressers

Class: working

Educated at independent Catholic boys’ school Hamilton Park

Training: Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow.

 

Tommaso Antonio Conti was born on November 22, 1941 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, the son of hairdressers Mary McGoldrick and Alfonso Conti.

He was brought up Roman Catholic, but is now antireligious. His father was Italian, while his mother was born and raised in Scotland to Irish parents.

Conti was educated at independent Catholic boys’ school Hamilton Park and at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, both in Glasgow.

Conti is a theatre, film, and television actor. He began working with the Dundee Repertory in 1959. He appeared on Broadway in Whose Life Is It Anyway? in 1979, and in London, he played the lead in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell at the Garrick Theatre.

Leading role in the TV versions of Frederic Raphael’s The Glittering Prizes and Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests, Conti appeared in the “Princess and the Pea” episode of the family television series Faerie Tale Theatre, guest-starred on Friends and Cosby, and played opposite Nigel Hawthorne in long-running series of Vauxhall Astra car ads in the UK in mid-1990s.

Conti has appeared in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence; Reuben, Reuben; American Dreamer; Shirley Valentine; Miracles; Saving Grace; Dangerous Parking, and Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase.

Conti’s novel The Doctor, about former secret operations pilot for intelligence services, was published in 2004.

He appeared in the hit BBC sitcom Miranda alongside Miranda Hart and Patricia Hodge, as Miranda’s father, in the 2010 seasonal episode “The Perfect Christmas.”

Cooper, Bradley (US, nominee, supp. actor): No

Abington Township, near Philadelphia

Upper Middle Class

Mother, local NBC affiliate

Father, stockbroker for Merrill Lynch.

Education: Villanova University, 1; Georgetown University, major English and minor French.

Wished to attend Valley Forge Military Academy and move to Japan as a ninja

Training Master of Fine Arts acting from Actors Studio Drama School at The New School, NY

Cooper was born on January 5, 1975, in Abington Township, near Philadelphia, and grew up in the nearby communities of Jenkintown and Rydal.

His mother, Gloria (née Campano), worked for the local NBC affiliate. His father, Charles Cooper, worked as a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch. Cooper’s father was of Irish descent, while his mother is of Italian ancestry (from Abruzzo and Naples).

He has older sister, Holly. He had cholesteatoma in his ear soon after his birth, and punctured his eardrum when diving at an early age.

“I never lived the life of ‘Oh, you’re so good-looking’. People thought I was a girl when I was little, because I looked like a girl – maybe because my mother would keep my hair really long.” He excelled at basketball, and enjoyed cooking: “I used to have buddies come over after kindergarten and I’d cook them food. I prided myself in taking whatever was in the fridge and turning it into lasagna.” He initially wanted to attend Valley Forge Military Academy and move to Japan to become a ninja.

At early age, his father introduced him to films like The Elephant Man, which inspired him to be an actor. Coming from a family of non-actors, Cooper says his parents initially wanted him to pursue a career in finance and were against acting, but they eventually changed their perceptions when they saw Cooper play the part of Joseph Merrick in an excerpt from the play The Elephant Man.

While attending Germantown Academy, he worked at Philadelphia Daily News. In school he was neither “the smartest person” nor “the coolest kid” and “didn’t have anything going on!”

After graduating high school in 1993, Cooper attended Villanova University for one year before transferring to Georgetown University, where he majored in English and minored in French. Cooper graduated with honors from Georgetown in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was a member of the Georgetown Hoyas rowing team and acted with Nomadic Theatre.

While at Georgetown, Cooper became fluent in French and spent six months as an exchange student in Aix-en-Provence, France.

In his TV debut, Sex and the City in 1999, he made a brief appearance opposite Sarah Jessica Parker.

Cooper served presenter on the tourism series Globe Trekker (2000), which took him to Peru and Croatia, and had recurring role in the short-lived series The Street.

Cooper had been interested in diplomacy when he auditioned for the master class graduate degree at the Actors Studio and was selected by James Lipton.

In 2000, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in acting from the Actors Studio Drama School at The New School in New York City. There, he trained with coach Elizabeth Kemp: “I was never able to relax in my life before her.” She advised him on many films.

While studying in New York City, Cooper worked as doorman at the Morgans Hotel, and interacted with de Niro and Sean Penn in question-and-answer master class sessions, which were later featured episodes of Inside the Actors Studio.

Cooper, Gary

Helena, Montana

younger of 2 sons; English parents

Father: prominent lawyer, rancher, Montana Supreme Court justice.

Class: upper-middle

Education: Central Grade School in Helena

England, 1909-12

hip; misguided therapy

Art courses at Montana Agricultural College, Bozeman.

Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946) His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior.

Cooper’s father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice.

His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana.

In 1906, Charles purchased the 600-acre (240 ha) Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent summers at ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.

Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Cooper and his brother lived with their father’s cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned social graces, he never adjusted to the formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911.

His mother accompanied her sons to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.

When Cooper was 15, he injured hip in car accident. He returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style.

He left Helena High School after 2 yrs in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy.

In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics.  Cooper later called Davis “the woman partly responsible for [his] giving up cowboying and going to college”.

Cooper was still attending high school in 1920, when he took art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington.

Cooper especially admired Russell’s Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross’ Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena.

In 1922, to continue his art education, Cooper enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically, but was not accepted into the school’s drama club.

His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited in the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook.

During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as tour guide driving yellow open-top buses. Despite promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent month in Chicago looking for work as artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to local Independent newspaper.

In autumn 1924, Cooper’s father left Montana Supreme Court and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer estates of two relatives, Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father’s request.

Film Extra:

After briefly working unpromising jobs, he met friends from Montana, working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Westerns for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay “Slim” Talbot, who took him to see casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became friends and hunting companions; Talbot later worked as Cooper’s stuntman and stand-in for three decades.

Cooper, Jackie, US: Yes

Los Angeles, California

John Cooper Jr was born in Los Angeles, California.

Father left at 4

Mother: stage pianist; uncle, screenwriter; stepfather was C.J. Bigelow, studio production manager

Cooper’s father, John Cooper, left the family when Jackie was two years old. His mother, Mabel Leonard Bigelow (née Polito), was a stage pianist.

Cooper’s maternal uncle, Jack Leonard, was a screenwriter and his maternal aunt, Julie Leonard, was an actress married to director Norman Taurog.

Cooper’s stepfather was C.J. Bigelow, studio production manager.

His mother was Italian American (her family’s surname was changed from “Polito” to “Leonard”); Cooper was told by his family that his father was Jewish. The two never reunited after he had left the family.

Cooper, then a member of Our Gang, flirts with schoolteacher Miss Crabtree in School’s Out (1930)

Cooper first appeared in films as extra with his grandmother, who took him to her auditions hoping it would help her get extra work. At age 3, Jackie in Lloyd Hamilton comedies under the name of “Leonard.”

Cooper graduated to bit parts in features such as Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 and Sunny Side Up. His director in those films, David Butler, recommended Cooper to director Leo McCarey, who arranged an audition for the Our Gang comedy series produced by Hal Roach. In 1929, Cooper signed a three-year contract after joining the series in the short Boxing Gloves.

He initially was cast as a supporting character, but by the early 1930 his success led to becoming one of Our Gang’s major characters, called Jackie in the series, replacing Harry Spear, who left after his contract expired. He was the main character in the 1930 entries The First Seven Years and When the Wind Blows.

His most notable performances explore his crush on schoolteacher Miss Crabtree, (June Marlowe) in the trilogy Teacher’s Pet, School’s Out, and Love Business.

Costner, Kevin, US: No

Born: Lynwood, California, grew up in Compton, California.

youngest of 3 boys; one died

Middle Class

Mother: welfare worker

Father: electrician, utilities executive.

Meeting by chance, inspired by Richard Burton

Acting lessons five nights a week,

Costner was born on January 18, 1955, in Lynwood, California, and grew up in Compton, California

His parents were William and Sharon Costner.mHe is the youngest of three boys, the second of whom died at birth.

Sharon Rae Costner (née Tedrick) was a welfare worker, and William Costner was an electrician and a utilities executive.

Costner’s father’s heritage originates with German immigrants to North Carolina in the 1700s, and Costner also has English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry.

Costner was raised Baptist. He was not academically inclined in school, but did play sports (especially football), take piano lessons, write poetry, and sing in the First Baptist Choir.

Inspired by: watching the 1962 film How the West Was Won as child inspired his love for Western films.

Costner spent his teenage years in different parts of California as his father’s career progressed. A period when he “lost a lot of confidence”, having to make new friends often.

Costner lived in Ventura, then in Visalia. Costner attended Mt. Whitney High School where he was in the marching band.

Costner graduated from Villa Park High School in 1973.

He played baseball at Villa Park and was teammates with Dennis Burtt.

He earned a BA from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) in 1978.While at CSUF, he became brother in the Delta Chi fraternity.

Costner became interested in acting and dancing while in last year of college.

Chance Meeting, Inspired by Burton

In 1978, while on an airplane returning from his honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, Costner had chance encounter with actor Richard Burton.

At that time, Costner was uncertain about whether he should become an actor, and he approached Burton. Burton encouraged him to pursue acting. Costner asked Burton whether it was possible to be actor without experiencing turmoil in private life; Burton thought it was possible. Costner credits Burton with inspiring him to become an actor.

Having agreed to undertake a job as marketing executive, Costner began taking acting lessons five nights a week, with the support of his wife.

His marketing job lasted 30 days. He took work which allowed him to develop his acting skills via tuition, including working on fishing boats, as a truck driver, and giving tours of stars’ Hollywood homes to support the couple while he also attended auditions.

Costner made his film debut in Sizzle Beach, U.S.A. (1981).

Filmed in the winter of 1978–79, the film was not released until 1981 and re-released in 1986. The release complications and lack of documentation led many to believe that Costner’s debut was in The Touch (also known as Stacy’s Knights), in 1983 with Eve Lilith and Andra Millian.

Costner played a minor role as “Frat Boy #1” in the Ron Howard film Night Shift (1982). He appears at the climax of a frat-style, blow-out party in the New York City morgue, when the music is suddenly stopped by a frantic Henry Winkler. Costner can be seen holding a beer and looking surprised at the sudden halt of celebration.

Costner appeared in commercial for the Apple Lisa and Table for Five in 1983, and had small role in the nuclear holocaust film Testament.

Later, he was cast in The Big Chill and filmed several scenes that were planned as flashbacks, but they were removed from the final cut. His role was that of Alex, the friend who committed suicide, the event that brings the rest of the cast together.

Costner was a friend of director Lawrence Kasdan, who promised the actor a role in a future project, Silverado (1985) and a breakout role for Costner.

He also starred that year in Fandango and American Flyers and appeared alongside Kiefer Sutherland in hour-long special episode of Spielberg’s Amazing Stories.

 

Courtenay, Tom, UK

Kingston, Yorkshire

Father: Boat painter in fish docks

Class: working

Educated: University College London, where he failed degree.

Training: Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), London.

Courtenay was born on February 25, 1937 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, the son of Annie Eliza (née Quest) and Thomas Henry Courtenay, a boat painter in Hull fish docks.

He attended Kingston High School and study English at University College London, where he failed his degree. After this he studied drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.

Stage debut: 1960

Courtenay made his stage debut in 1960 with the Old Vic theatre company at the Lyceum, Edinburgh, before taking over from Albert Finney in Billy Liar at the Cambridge Theatre in 1961. In 1963, he played that same title role in the film version, directed by John Schlesinger. He said of Albert Finney, “We both have the same problem, overcoming the flat harsh speech of the North.”

Film Debut

Courtenay’s film debut was in 1962 with Private Potter, directed by Finnish-born director Caspar Wrede, who had first spotted Courtenay while he was still at RADA. This was followed by The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, directed by Tony Richardson and Billy Liar, two highly acclaimed films and performances which helped usher in the British New Wave of the early-to-mid-1960s.

For these performances awarded the 1962 BAFTA Award for most promising newcomer and the 1963 BAFTA Award for best actor respectively

He was the first to record the song Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got Lovely Daughter, doing so for the TV play The Lads. The song was released by Decca on a 45 rpm record.

 

Cranston, Bryan, US: Yes

Hollywood, LA

second of 3 children

Father: wanna be actor; left family at 111 (later directed Bryan)

Canoga Park High School, member of the chemistry club

Los Angeles Valley College in 1976; police degree

Bryan Lee Cranston was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on March 7, 1956, the second of three children born to Annalisa “Peggy” (née Sell), a radio actress, and Joseph Louis Cranston, an actor and former amateur boxer.

His father was of half Irish, quarter Austrian Ashkenazi Jewish, and quarter German descent, while his mother was the daughter of German immigrants. He has an older brother, Kyle, and a younger sister, Amy. Cranston was raised in Canoga Park, Los Angeles.

His father held many jobs before become an actor, but did not secure enough roles to provide for his family. He eventually walked out on the family when Cranston was 11 years old, and they did not see each other again until a 22-year-old Cranston and his brother Kyle decided to track him down.

Cranston later starred in a film directed by his father entitled The Big Turnaround in 1988. He then maintained a relationship with his father until the latter’s death in 2014.

Cranston based his portrayal of Walter White on his own father, who had a slumped posture “like the weight of the world was on his shoulders”.  After his father left, he was raised partly by his maternal grandparents and lived on their poultry farm in Yucaipa, California.

He called his parents “broken people” who were “incapacitated as far as parenting” and caused the family to lose house in foreclosure.

In 1968, when he was 12 years old, he encountered Charles Manson while riding horses with his cousin at the Spahn Ranch. This happened about a year before Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders.

Cranston graduated from Canoga Park High School, where he was a member of the school’s chemistry club, and earned associate degree in police science from Los Angeles Valley College in 1976. While at Los Angeles Valley College he took acting class for elective, which inspired him pursue a career in acting: At 19 years old, all of a sudden, my life changed.”

After college, Cranston began acting career in local and regional theaters, getting his start at the Granada Theater in the San Fernando Valley. He had performed as a youth, but his show-business parents had mixed feelings about their son being involved in the profession, so he did not act until years later.

Cranston was ordained as a minister when he was 19 by the Universal Life Church, and performed weddings for $150 a service to help with his income on Catalina Island, where he spent his summers working. He also worked as a waiter, night-shift security guard at the gates of a private LA community, truck loader, camera operator for a video dating service, and a CCTV security guard at a supermarket.

Cranston started working regularly in the 1980s, doing minor roles and ads.

He was an original cast member of the ABC soap opera Loving, where he played Douglas Donovan from 1983 to 1985. Cranston starred in the short-lived series Raising Miranda in 1988.

Cranston played Tom Logan in an episode of the first season of the TV series Baywatch in 1989. Cranston’s voice acting includes English dubbing of Japanese anime (for which he primarily used the non-union pseudonym Lee Stone), including Macross Plus and Armitage III: Poly-Matrix, and most notably, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie as Fei-Long, and the children’s series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Cranston did voice work for the 1993–94 first season of that series, playing characters such as Twin Man and Snizzard, for which he was paid about $50 an hour for two or three hours of daily work.

 

Crawford, Broderick, US: Yes

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Child actor

Parents: vaudeville performers, as his grandparents

Education: preparatory high school Dean Academy (now Dean College) in Franklin, Massachusetts.

Crawford was accepted by Harvard College, butafter 3 weeks dropped out to work as stevedore on the New York docs

William Broderick Crawford (December 9, 1911 – April 26, 1986), best known for his portrayal of Willie Stark in the film All the King’s Men (1949), which earned him Oscar and Golden Globe.

Often cast in tough-guy roles, he achieved recognition for his starring role as Dan Mathews in the crime TV series Highway Patrol (1955–1959).

Crawford was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Lester Crawford (né Lester Crawford Pendergast) and Helen Broderick, who were both vaudeville performers, as his grandparents had been.

Lester appeared in films in the 1920s and 1930s. Helen Broderick had a career in Hollywood comedies, including the Astaire and Rogers musicals Top Hat and Swing Time.

Young William joined his parents on the stage, working for producer Max Gordon.

After graduating from preparatory high school Dean Academy (now Dean College) in Franklin, Massachusetts.

Crawford was accepted by Harvard College where he enrolled. However, after 3 weeks he dropped out to work as stevedore on the New York docs

Crawford returned to vaudeville and radio, a period with the Marx Brothers in the radio comedy show Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel.

Stage debut: He played his first serious character as a footballer in She Loves Me Not at the Adelphi Theatre, London in 1932.

Typecasting: Crawford was stereotyped as fast-talking tough guy early in his career and often played villainous parts.

He gained fame in 1937 as Lenny in Of Mice and Men on Broadway.

He moved to Hollywood and began working in films.

Film debut: Crawford made his film debut for Sam Goldwyn in Woman Chases Man (1937).

He was in Start Cheering (1938) at Columbia but missed out on reprising his stage performance as Lenny in the film version of Of Mice and Men, losing it to Lon Chaney Jr.

Crosby, Bing, US:

Tacoma, Washington

4th of 7 children

Father: bookkeeper

Class; working

Mother, second-generation Irish-American.

Inspired by Al Jolson, at age 14

Education: Gonzaga High School, 1920; Gonzaga University for 3 years but did not earn degree. baseball team

Crosby was born on May 3, 1903, in Tacoma, Washington, in a house his father built at 1112 North J Street.

In 1906, his family moved to Spokane in Eastern Washington state, where he was raised. In 1913, his father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The house sits on the campus of his alma mater, Gonzaga University, as a museum housing over 200 artifacts from his life and career, including his Oscar.

He was the fourth of seven children: brothers Laurence Earl “Larry” (1895–1975), Everett Nathaniel (1896–1966), Edward John “Ted” (1900–1973), and George Robert “Bob” (1913–1993); and two sisters, Catherine Cordelia (1904–1974) and Mary Rose (1906–1990).

His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby (1870–1950), bookkeeper, and Catherine Helen “Kate” (née Harrigan; 1873–1964). His mother was a second-generation Irish-American.

His father was of Scottish and English descent; an ancestor, Simon Crosby, emigrated from England to New England in the 1630s during the Puritan migration to New England. Through another line, also on his father’s side, Crosby is descended from Mayflower passenger William Brewster (c. 1567 – 1644).

In 1917, Crosby took summer job as property boy at Spokane’s Auditorium, where he witnessed some of the acts, including Al Jolson, who held him spellbound with ad-libbing and parodies of Hawaiian songs. He later described Jolson’s delivery as “electric”.

Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He attended for 3 years but did not earn degree. As freshman, he played on university’s baseball team. The university granted him honorary doctorate in 1937.

On November 8, 1937, after Lux Radio Theatre’s adaptation of She Loves Me Not, Joan Blondell asked Crosby his nickname:

Crosby: “Well, I’ll tell you, back in the knee-britches day, when I was a wee little tyke, a mere broth of a lad, as we say in Spokane, I used to totter around the streets, with a gun on each hip, my favorite after school pastime was a game known as “Cops and Robbers”, I didn’t care which side I was on, when a cop or robber came into view, I would haul out my trusty six-shooters, made of wood, and loudly exclaim bing! bing!, as my luckless victim fell clutching his side, I would shout bing! bing!, and I would let him have it again, and then as his friends came to his rescue, shooting as they came, I would shout bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing!”
Blondell: “I’m surprised they didn’t call you “Killer” Crosby! Now tell me another story, Grandpa!
Crosby: “No, so help me, it’s the truth, ask Mister De Mille.”
De Mille: “I’ll vouch for it, Bing.”

That story was whimsy for dramatic effect; the AP had reported as early as February 1932—as would later be confirmed by both Bing himself and his biographer Charles Thompson—that it was in fact a neighbor—Valentine Hobart, circa 1910—who had named him “Bingo from Bingville” after comic feature in local paper called The Bingville Bugle which the young Harry liked. In time, Bingo got shortened to Bing.

Crowe, Russell, New Zealand, Aussie: No

Wellington, New Zealand

Parents: set caterers

Father: hotel manager

Class: middle

Family moved to Australia at 4

National Institute of Dramatic Art, Australia

Crowe was born in Strathmore Park, a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, on April 7, 1964, the son of film set caterers Jocelyn Yvonne (née Wemyss) and John Alexander Crowe.

His father also managed a hotel. His maternal grandfather, Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer who was appointed an MBE for filming footage of World War II as a member of the New Zealand Film Unit. Crowe is Māori, and identifies with Ngāti Porou through one of his maternal great-great-grandmothers.

His paternal grandfather, John Doubleday Crowe, was a Welsh man from Wrexham, while another of his grandparents was Scottish.

His other ancestry includes English, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, and Swedish. He is a cousin of former New Zealand national cricket captains Martin and Jeff Crowe, and the nephew of cricketer Dave Crowe.

When Crowe was 4, his family moved to Australia and settled in Sydney, where his parents pursued their career in film set catering.

His mother’s godfather was the producer of the Australian TV series Spyforce, and Crowe was hired for line of dialogue episode of the series at age five or six, opposite series star Jack Thompson.

In 1994, Thompson would play the supportive father of Crowe’s gay character in The Sum of Us.

Crowe also appeared briefly in the serial The Young Doctors. In Australia, he was educated at Vaucluse Public School and Sydney Boys High School, before his family moved back to New Zealand in 1978 when he was 14. He continued his secondary education at Auckland Grammar School, with his cousins and brother Terry, and Mount Roskill Grammar School before leaving school at the age of 16 to pursue his acting ambitions.

Music performer:

Under guidance from good friend Tom Sharplin, Crowe began performing career as a musician in early 1980s performing under the stage name “Russ Le Roq”. He released several New Zealand singles, including “I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando”, “Pier 13”, and “Shattered Glass”, none of which charted. He managed an Auckland music venue called “The Venue” in 1984.

When he was 18, he was featured in A Very Special Person…, a promotional video for the theology-ministry course at Avondale University, a Seventh-day Adventist tertiary education provider in New South Wales, Australia.

Crowe left New Zealand and returned to Australia at the age of 21, intending to apply to the National Institute of Dramatic Art. He said, “I was working in theatre show, and talked to a guy who was then the head of technical support at NIDA. I asked him what he thought about me spending 3 years at NIDA. He told me it’d be a waste of time. He said, ‘You already do the things you go there to learn, and you’ve been doing it for most of your life, so there’s nothing to teach you but bad habits.'”

From 1986 to 1988, he was given his first professional role by director Daniel Abineri, in a New Zealand production of The Rocky Horror Show.  He played the role of Eddie/Dr Scott.

He repeated this performance in further Australian production of the show, which also toured New Zealand.

In 1987, age 23, Crowe spent 6 months busking when he could not find other work.

In the 1988 Australian production of Blood Brothers, Crowe played the role of Mickey.

He was cast again by Daniel Abineri as Johnny, in the stage musical Bad Boy Johnny and the Prophets of Doom in 1989.

Cruise, Tom (US, nominee, supp. actor): 

Syracuse, New York

Father: electrical engineer; bully, abusive

Mother: special education teacher

3 sisters

Education: Cruise attended 15 schools in 14 years.

Poverty

Mother left father; moved back to US

Busboy in NY; moved to LA, signed with CAA

Cruise, Tom: No

Cruise was born on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, New York. electrical engineer Thomas Cruise Mapother III (1934–1984) and special education teacher Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer; 1936–2017).

His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and had English, German, and Irish ancestry.

Cruise has three sisters named Lee Anne, Marian, and Cass. One of his cousins, William Mapother, is also actor who appeared alongside Cruise in five films.

Cruise grew up in near poverty and had Catholic upbringing.

Class: middle

His father as “a merchant of chaos”, a “bully”, and a “coward” who beat his children. “My father was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life—how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! There’s something wrong with this guy. Don’t trust him. Be careful around him.'”

Cruise attended 15 schools in 14 years.

Education: graduated from Glen Ridge High School, New Jersey, 1980

 

Cruise spent part of his childhood in Canada; when his father took a job as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces, his family moved in late 1971 to Beacon Hill, Ottawa. He attended the new Robert Hopkins Public School for his fourth and fifth grade education. He first became involved in drama in fourth grade, under drama teacher George Steinburg. He and six other boys put on an improvised play to music called IT at the Carleton Elementary School drama festival. Drama organizer Val Wright was in the audience and later said that “the movement and improvisation were excellent … a classic ensemble piece.”[

In sixth grade, Cruise went to Henry Munro Middle School in Ottawa. That year, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sisters back to the US

In 1978, she married Jack South. Cruise briefly took Catholic Church scholarship and attended the St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio; he aspired to become a Franciscan priest before leaving after a year. Priests at the seminary said Cruise chose to leave the school when his family relocated again; former classmate said that they both asked to leave after getting caught taking liquor.

In his senior year of high school, he played football for the varsity team as a linebacker, but was cut from the squad after getting caught drinking beer.

He went on to star in the school’s production of Guys and Dolls.

In 1980, he graduated from Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

Cruise’s biological father died of cancer in 1984.

At age 18, with the blessing of his mother and stepfather, Cruise moved to New York City to pursue an acting career.

After working as a busboy in New York, he went to Los Angeles to try out TV roles. He signed with CAA and began acting in films.

He first appeared in bit part in the 1981 Endless Love, followed by a major supporting role as a crazed military academy student in Taps later that year.

In 1983, Cruise was part of the ensemble cast of The Outsiders. That same year he appeared in All the Right Moves and Risky Business, which has been described as “A Generation X classic, and career maker for Tom Cruise.”

He also played the lead in the Ridley Scott Legend, released in 1985, a bomb.

By 1986’s Top Gun, his status as a superstar had been cemented.

Cruise followed up Top Gun with Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986), which came out the same year, and which paired him with Paul Newman. Their chemistry won praise among critics.

In 1988, Cruise starred in Cocktail, a film that was a box office success but failed with critics. His performance earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor.

Later that year he starred with Dustin Hoffman in Barry Levinson’s Rain Man, which won Best Picture Oscar and Cruise the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Best Supporting Actor.

In 1989, Cruise portrayed real-life paralyzed Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone’s war epic Born on the Fourth of July.

 

Cumberbatch, Benedict (UK): Yes

London district of Hammersmith

Parents: actors Timothy Carlton (born Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch) and Wanda Ventham

half sister

Victoria University of Manchester, drama.

Training as actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), graduating, MA in classical acting.

Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born on July 19, 1976 at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in the London district of Hammersmith, to actors Timothy Carlton (born Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch) and Wanda Ventham.

He grew up in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. He has half-sister, Tracy Peacock, from his mother’s first marriage.

Cumberbatch attended boarding schools from the age of 8, attending Brambletye, a prep school near East Grinstead, West Sussex.

He undertook secondary schooling as arts scholar at Harrow School. He was a member of the Rattigan Society, Harrow’s principal club for the dramatic arts, which was named after Old Harrovian and playwright Sir Terence Rattigan. He was in numerous Shakespearean works at school and made his acting debut as Titania, Queen of the Fairies, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he was 12.

His first leading role was as Eliza Doolittle in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, in a production by the Head of Classics, James Morwood, who observed that Cumberbatch “acted everyone else off the stage”.

Cumberbatch’s drama teacher, Martin Tyrell, called him “the best schoolboy actor” he had ever worked with.[33] Despite his abilities, Cumberbatch’s drama teacher at Harrow warned him against a career in acting, calling it a “tough business”.[34]

After leaving Harrow, Cumberbatch took gap year to volunteer as English teacher at a Tibetan monastery in Darjeeling, India.

He then attended Victoria University of Manchester, where he studied drama. He continued training as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), graduating with an MA in classical acting.

In January 2018, Cumberbatch succeeded Timothy West as president of LAMDA.

Since 2001, Cumberbatch had major roles in plays at the Regent’s Park Open Air, Almeida, Royal Court and Royal National Theatres.

He was nominated for an Olivier for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for his role as George Tesman in Hedda Gabler, which he performed at the Almeida Theatre on 16 March 2005 and at the Duke of York’s Theatre when it transferred to the West End on 19 May 2005.  This transfer marked his first West End appearance.

He achieved the “Triple Crown of London Theatre” in 2011, the Olivier Award, Evening Standard Award, Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for his performance in Frankenstein.

 

Curtis, Tony (Jewish): No

East Harlem, NY

Parents: Jewish emigrants from Hungary

Father: Tailor

Mother: schizophrenia

Class: working

Discovered, spotted; chance; military service

Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925, at the Fifth Avenue Hospital corner of East 105th Street in East Harlem, Manhattan the first of three boys born to Helen (née Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz.

His parents were Jewish emigrants from Hungary: his father was born in Ópályi, near Mátészalka, and his mother was a native of Nagymihály (now Michalovce, Slovakia); she later said she arrived in the U.S. from Válykó (now Vaľkovo, Slovakia). He spoke only Hungarian until the age of 6, delaying his schooling.

His father was a tailor and family lived in the back of the shop. His mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. His youngest brother Robert was institutionalized with same mental illness.

When Curtis was 8, he and his brother Julius were placed in orphanage for a month because their parents could not afford to feed them. Four years later, Julius was struck and killed by a truck.

Curtis joined a neighborhood gang whose crimes were playing truant from school and minor pilfering at the local dime store.

When Curtis was 11, a friendly neighbor saved him from a life of delinquency by sending him to a Boy Scout camp, where he was able to work off his energy and settle down. He attended Seward Park High School. At 16, his first small acting part in a school play.

Curtis enlisted in the United States Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Inspired by Cary Grant’s role in Destination Tokyo and Tyrone Power’s in Crash Dive (1943), he joined the Pacific submarine force. Curtis served aboard a submarine tender, the USS Proteus, until the end of the Second World War. On September 2, 1945, Curtis witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay from his ship’s signal bridge about a mile away.

After discharge from Navy, Curtis attended City College of New York on the G.I. Bill. He then studied acting at The New School in Greenwich Village under the influential German stage director Erwin Piscator. His contemporaries included Elaine Stritch, Harry Belafonte, Walter Matthau, Beatrice Arthur, and Rod Steiger.

Discovered

While still at college, Curtis was discovered by Joyce Selznick, the notable talent agent, casting director, and niece of film producer David O. Selznick.

In 1948, Curtis arrived in Hollywood at age 23. autobiography, Curtis described how by chance he met Jack Warner on the plane to California, and also how he briefly dated Marilyn Monroe before either was famous.

 

All A B and C