Research in progress, Aug 23, 2025
It includes the nominees of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
N: 7
O:
P: 10; only Penn Yes
Q: 1, No
Total=23
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
In 2023, four of the nominees were first timers: Colman Domingo (Guatemala), Paul Giamatti, Cillian Murphy (Irish), Jeffrey wright (black); the fifth was Bradley Cooper
Winners: 86 (males); 98 (roles)
Nominees: 160
(includes 2023 nominees, Jeffrey Wright)
Total: 248
Black: 16 out of 248
Winners: 5 out of 86= 5.0%
Nominees: 11 out of 160: 7%
Boseman, Chadwick: No
Cheadle, Don (Black): No
Dexter, Gordon
Domingo, Colman, 2023 (Guatemala)
Ejiofor, Chiwetel
Fishburne, Laurence
Foxx, Jamie
Freeman, Morgan
Howard, Terrence
Kaluuya, Daniel
Poitier, Sidney
Smith, Will
Washington, Denzel
Whitaker, Forest
Winfield, Paul
Wright, Jeffrey, American Fiction
JEWISH
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
Parks, Larry (blacklisted)
Sellers, Peter
Steiger, Rod
Topol
—–
N (7)
Neeson, Liam, Irish: No
Newman, Paul: No, Jewish
Nicholson, Jack: No
Nighy, Bill: No (working class)
Niven, David: No
Nolte, Nick: No
Norton, Edward:
Neeson, Liam (Nomimee), No
Northern Irish
Mother: cook
Father: primary school caretaker
William John Neeson OBE (born June 7, 1952) is a Northern Irish actor. He has received several accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Tony Awards. In 2020, he was placed seventh on The Irish Times list of Ireland’s 50 Greatest Film Actors.
Neeson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2000.
In 1976, Neeson joined the Lyric Players’ Theatre in Belfast for 2 years.
His early film roles include Excalibur (1981), The Bounty (1984), The Mission (1986), The Dead Pool (1988), and Husbands and Wives (1992).
He rose to prominence portraying Oskar Schindler in Spielberg’s holocaust drama Schindler’s List (1993) for which he earned Best Actor nomination.
He followed by starring in Nell (1994), Rob Roy (1995), Michael Collins (1996), and Les Misérables (1998). He took blockbuster roles portraying Qui-Gon Jinn in George Lucas’ space opera Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), Ra’s al Ghul in Batman Begins (2005) and Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy (2005–2010).
He also starred in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002), the romantic comedy Love Actually (2003), the drama Kinsey (2004).
Beginning in 2009, Neeson became a star of action thriller series Taken (2008–2014), The A-Team (2010), The Grey (2011), Wrath of the Titans (2012), and A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014).
His collaborations with director Jaume Collet-Serra, and starred in four of his films: Unknown (2011), Non-Stop (2014), Run All Night (2015), and The Commuter (2018). He also starred in Scorsese’s religious epic Silence (2016), the fantasy drama A Monster Calls (2016), Steve McQueen’s heist drama Widows (2018), Coen brothers’ western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), romantic drama Ordinary Love (2019).
Tony Nomination
Neeson is also known for his work on stage. He made his Broadway debut in 1993 with his performance as Matt Burke in the revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination.
He then starred as Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss in 1998.
He received his second Tony nomination for the 2002 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
Neeson was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, the son of cook Katherine “Kitty” Neeson (née Brown) and primary school caretaker Bernard “Barney” Neeson.
Raised Catholic, he was named Liam after a local priest. The third of four siblings, he has three sisters, Elizabeth, Bernadette, and Rosaleen. He attended St Patrick’s College, Ballymena from 1963 to 1967, and later recalled that his love of drama began there.
He said that growing up as a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant town made him cautious, and once said he felt like a “second-class citizen” there,[12] but has also said he was never made to feel “inferior or even different” at the town’s predominantly Protestant technical college.[13] “It would be colourful to imagine I had a rebellious, uproarious Irish background,” he has said, “but the facts were much greyer. Irish, yes. But all that nationalistic stuff, crying into your Guinness and singing rebel songs—that was never my scene.”[14] He has described himself as “out of touch” with the politics and history of Northern Ireland until becoming aware of protests by fellow students after Bloody Sunday, a massacre in Derry in 1972 during the Troubles, which encouraged him to learn more local history.[13][15] In a 2009 interview, he said, “I never stop thinking about [the Troubles]. I’ve known guys and girls who have been perpetrators of violence and victims. Protestants and Catholics. It’s part of my DNA.”
At age nine, Neeson began boxing lessons at the All Saints Youth Club, and went on to win a number of regional titles before quitting at 17.[17] He acted in school productions during his teens.[18] His interest in acting and decision to become an actor were also influenced by Ian Paisley, founder of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), into whose Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster he sneaked. He said, “[Paisley] had a magnificent presence and it was incredible to watch him just Bible-thumping away… it was acting, but it was also great acting and stirring too.”[19] In 1971, he joined a physics and computer science course at Queen’s University Belfast before leaving to work for the Guinness Brewery.
At Queen’s, he discovered a talent for football and was spotted by Seán Thomas at Bohemian FC. There was a club trial in Dublin and Neeson played one game as a substitute against Shamrock Rovers FC, but was not offered a contract.
After leaving university, Neeson returned to Ballymena, where he worked in a variety of casual jobs, such as a forklift operator at Guinness and a lorry driver.[citation needed] He also attended teacher training college for two years in Newcastle upon Tyne before again returning to his hometown. In 1976, he joined the Lyric Players’ Theatre in Belfast, where he performed for two years. He got his first film experience in 1977, playing Jesus Christ and The Evangelist in the religious film Pilgrim’s Progress (1978). He moved to Dublin in 1978 when he was offered a part in Ron Hutchinson’s Says I, Says He, a drama about The Troubles, at the Project Arts Centre. He acted in several other Project productions and joined the Abbey Theatre (the National Theatre of Ireland).[citation needed] In 1980, he performed with Stephen Rea, Ray McAnally and Mick Lally, playing Doalty in Brian Friel’s play Translations, the first production of Friel’s and Rea’s Field Day Theatre Company, first presented in the Guildhall in Derry on 23 September 1980.
Nicholson, Jack (Winner)
Neptune City, New Jersey
Mother: showgirl, unmarried
Father (not biological): showman (already married)
Manasquan High School, voted “Class Clown”
Trained to be an actor with group, the Players Ring Theater
Film debut in low-budget teen drama The Cry Baby Killer (1958), in title role; aged 21
Nicholson frequently collaborated with the film’s producer, Roger Corman.
John Joseph Nicholson was born on April 22, 1937, in Neptune City, New Jersey, the son of a showgirl, June Frances Nicholson (stage name June Nilson; 1918–1963).
Nicholson’s mother was of Irish, English, German, and Welsh descent.
Nicholson has identified as Irish, comparing himself to the playwright Eugene O’Neill, whom he played in the film Reds: “I’m not saying I’m as dark as he was … but I am a writer, I am Irish, I have had problems with my family.”
His mother married Italian-American showman Donald Furcillo (stage name Donald Rose; 1909–1997) in 1936, before realizing that he was already married.
Latvian-born Eddie King (originally Edgar A. Kirschfeld), June’s manager, may have been Nicholson’s biological father, rather than Furcillo. Other sources suggest June Nicholson was unsure of the father’s identity.
As June was only 17 and unmarried, her parents agreed to raise Nicholson as their own child without revealing his true parentage, with June acting as his sister.
In 1974, Time magazine researchers learned, and informed Nicholson, that his “sister” June was actually his mother, and his other “sister”, Lorraine, was really his aunt. By this time, both his mother and grandmother had died (in 1963 and 1970, respectively). It was “a pretty dramatic event, but it wasn’t what I’d call traumatizing … I was pretty well psychologically formed”.
Nicholson grew up in Neptune City. Before starting high school, his family moved to an apartment in Spring Lake, New Jersey.
“Nick” attended Manasquan High School, where he was voted “Class Clown” by the Class of 1954.
He was in detention every day for whole school year. A theatre and a drama award at the school are named in his honor.
In 2004, Nicholson attended his 50-year high school reunion accompanied by his aunt Lorraine.
In 1957, Nicholson joined the California Air National Guard, an effort to “dodge the draft”; the Korean War era’s Military Selective Service Act was still in force, and draftees were required to perform up to two years of active duty. After completing the Air Force’s basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Nicholson performed weekend drills and two-week annual training as a firefighter assigned to the unit based at the Van Nuys Airport.
During the Berlin Crisis of 1961, Nicholson was called up for months of extended active duty, and he was discharged at the end of his enlistment in 1962.
Nicholson first came to California in 1950, when he was 13, to visit his sister. He was office worker for animation directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at MGM cartoon studio. They offered him an entry-level job as animator, but he declined, citing his desire to become an actor.
His first day as working actor (on Tales of Wells Fargo) was May 5, 1955, which he considered lucky, as 5 was the jersey number of his boyhood idol, Joe DiMaggio.
He trained to be an actor with a group called the Players Ring Theater, after which he found small parts performing on the stage and in TV soap operas.
He made his film debut in a low-budget teen drama The Cry Baby Killer (1958), playing the title role.
For the next decade, Nicholson collaborated with film’s producer Roger Corman. Corman directed Nicholson in The Little Shop of Horrors as masochistic dental patient and undertaker Wilbur Force; in The Raven; The Terror, where he plays a French officer seduced by an evil ghost; and The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Nicholson worked with director Monte Hellman on low-budget westerns; Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting. They initially failed to interest U.S. distributors but gained cult success on the French art-house circuit and were later sold to TV.
Nicholson appeared in two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, and starred as rebellious dirt-track race driver in the 1960 The Wild Ride.
Bill Nighy (Nominee)
Father: manage garage
Mother: psychiatric nurse
Rejected by RADA; went Guildford School of Dance and Drama
William Francis Nighy was born on December 12, 1949 in Caterham, Surrey, the son of Alfred Martin Nighy (1913–1976) and Catherine Josephine, (née Whittaker) (1915–2003). His father managed a car garage after working in the family chimney sweeping business; his mother was a psychiatric nurse of Irish descent born in Glasgow, Scotland.
Nighy was brought up as Roman Catholic and served as altar boy; he gave up “being a practicing Catholic” as teenager. He has two elder siblings, Martin and Anna. He attended the John Fisher School, a Roman Catholic grammar school in Purley, he was nicknamed “Knucks” because of his hands and was member of the theatre group.
As a child he was known to be insecure and shy; as teenager he became an avid reader, works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He left school at the age of 15, without qualifications, and later with a friend travelled to Paris hoping and failing “to write a novel”.
He worked in a local employment office and as a messenger for The Croydon Advertiser and The Field. He then applied RADA, but was rejected and instead enrolled at the Guildford School of Dance and Drama to train for the stage.
After working in various regional theatre productions in his early twenties in theatres such as the Cambridge Arts Theatre and Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, a friend of Nighy’s suggested he audition for the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. During his audition he asked to start again about 5 times, according to fellow actor Jonathan Pryce, who said that “either he was a very good actor, or a madman”.
During his time at the Everyman he worked alongside fellow actors Julie Walters and Pete Postlethwaite, and writers Ken Campbell and Willy Russell. He was also member of the travelling theatre group Van Load, Nighy’s most frequent collaborators, writer and director David Hare.
Niven, David (Winner)
Father killed in WWI; Stepfather Politician
James David Graham Niven was born on March1, 1910 at Belgrave Mansions, Grosvenor Gardens, London, to William Edward Graham Niven (1878–1915) and his wife, Henrietta Julia (née Degacher) Niven (1878–1932).
He was named David after his birth on St David’s Day. Niven later claimed he was born in Kirriemuir, in the Scottish county of Angus in 1909, but his birth certificate disproves this. He had two older sisters and a brother: Margaret Joyce Niven (1900–1981), Henry Degacher Niven (1902–1953), and the sculptor Grizel Rosemary Graham (1906–2007), who created the bronze sculpture Bessie that is presented to the annual winners of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Niven’s father, William Niven, was of Scottish descent; he was killed in the First World War serving with the Berkshire Yeomanry during the Gallipoli campaign on August 21, 1915. Niven’s paternal great-grandfather and namesake, David Graham Niven, (1811–1884) was a physician.
Niven’s mother, Henriette, was born in Brecon, Wales. Her father was Captain (brevet Major) William Degacher (1841–1879) of the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, who was killed at the Battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879. Though born William Hitchcock, in 1874, he and his older brother Lieutenant Colonel Henry Degacher (1835–1902), both followed their father, Walter Henry Hitchcock, in taking their mother’s maiden name of Degacher.
After her husband’s death in Turkey in 1915, Henrietta Niven remarried in London in 1917 to Conservative politician Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt (1869–1961). The family moved to Rose Cottage in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight after selling London home.
Comyn-Platt and Niven’s mother may have been in an affair well before her husband’s death in 1915 and that Comyn-Platt was actually Niven’s biological father, a supposition that had some support among Niven’s siblings. Niven is said to have revealed that he knew Comyn-Platt was his real father a year before his own death in 1983.
After his mother remarried, Niven’s stepfather sent him away to boarding school. Niven described the bullying, isolation, and abuse he endured as a six-year-old. Older pupils would regularly assault younger boys, while the schoolmasters were not much better.
Nick Nolte: No
Pa: farmer’s son; football
Ma: department store buyer
Nolte: kicker on the football team in high school; Pasadena City College, ASU in Tempe (football scholarship),
Nolte was born on February 8, 1941, in Omaha, Nebraska.
His father, Franklin Arthur Nolte (1904–1978), was a farmer’s son who ran away from home, nearly dropped out of high school and was a three-time letter winner in football at Iowa State University (1929–1931).
His mother, Helen (née King; 1914–2000), was a department store buyer, and then became an expert antique dealer, co-owning a prestigious and successful antique shop despite having no formal education in the area.
His ancestry includes German, English, Scots-Irish, Scottish and Swiss-German. Nolte’s maternal grandfather, Matthew Leander King, invented the hollow-tile silo and was prominent in early aviation. His maternal grandmother ran the student union at Iowa State University. He has an older sister, Nancy, who was an executive for the Red Cross.
Nolte attended Kingsley Elementary School in Waterloo, Iowa. He studied at Westside High School in Omaha, where he was the kicker on the football team. He also attended Benson High School, but was expelled for hiding beer before practice and being caught drinking it during a practice session.
After high school graduation in 1959, he attended Pasadena City College in Southern California, Arizona State University in Tempe (on a football scholarship), Eastern Arizona College in Thatcher and Phoenix College in Phoenix. At Eastern Arizona, Nolte lettered in football as a tight end and defensive end, in basketball as a forward, and as a catcher on the baseball team. Poor grades eventually ended his studies, at which point his career in theatre began in earnest. While in college, Nolte worked for the Falstaff Brewery in Omaha.
After stints at the Pasadena Playhouse and the Stella Adler Academy in Los Angeles, Nolte spent several years traveling the country and working in regional theaters, including the Old Log Theater in Minnesota for three years.
O (5)
O’Herlihy, Dan:
Olivier, Laurence (Winner)
Olmos, Edward James, Hispanic:
O’Neal, Ryan:
O’Toole, Peter:
—–
P
Pacino
Parks, Larry: No
Pacino, Al: No
East Harlem
Only child
Parents: Sicilian immigrants, divorced when he was 2
Father: Insurance salesman
Mother
Ambitions to become baseball player
High School of Performing Arts
Acting, mother disagreed so he left home
Rejected by Actors Studio as teenager
After 4 years at HB Studio, Pacino auditioned for Actors Studio
Alfredo James Pacino was born in East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on April 25, 1940, the only child of Sicilian Italian-American parents Rose (née Gerardi) and Salvatore Pacino.
His parents divorced when he was two years old.
He then moved with his mother to the South Bronx to live with her parents, Kate and James Gerardi, who were Italian emigrants from Corleone
Pacino’s father was from San Fratello and moved to work as insurance salesman and restaurateur in Covina, California.
In his teenage years, Pacino was known as “Sonny” to his friends. He had ambitions to become a baseball player and was also nicknamed “The Actor”.
He attended Herman Ridder Junior High School, but soon dropped out of most of his classes except for English. High School of Performing Arts, after gaining admission by audition. His mother disagreed with his decision and, after an argument, he left home.
To finance his acting studies, Pacino took low-paying jobs as messenger, busboy, janitor, and postal clerk, as well as once working in the mailroom for Commentary.
Pacino began smoking and drinking at age 9, and used marijuana casually at age 13, but he abstained from hard drugs. His two closest friends died from drug abuse at the ages of 19 and 30.
Growing up in the South Bronx, Pacino got into fights and was considered troublemaker at school. He acted in basement plays in New York’s theatrical underground but was rejected as teenager by the Actors Studio.
Inspired by: Pacino joined the HB Studio, where he met acting teacher Charles Laughton, who became his mentor and best friend.
In this period, he was often unemployed and homeless, and sometimes slept on the street, in theaters, or at friends’ houses.[
In 1962, Pacino’s mother died at the age of 43. The following year, his maternal grandfather also died. Pacino recalled it as the lowest point of his life and said, “I was 22 and the two most influential people in my life had gone, so that sent me into a tailspin.”
After four years at HB Studio, Pacino successfully auditioned for the Actors Studio. The Actors Studio is organization of professional actors, theater directors, and playwrights in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Pacino studied “method acting under acting coach Lee Strasberg, who appeared with Pacino in The Godfather Part II and in …And Justice for All.
Parks, Larry, Nominee: No
Olathe, Kansas; raised in Joliet, Illinois
Father: No Data
Mother: No Data
Jewish
Joliet Township High School in 1932
Inspired by John Garfield?
Samuel Lawrence Klusman Parks (December 13, 1914 – April 13, 1975) was an American stage and film actor. His career arced from bit player and supporting roles to top billing, before it was ended when he admitted to having once been a member of a Communist Party cell, which led to his blacklisting by all Hollywood studios.
His best known role was Al Jolson, whom he portrayed in two films: The Jolson Story (1946) and Jolson Sings Again (1949).
Parks was born in Olathe, Kansas, the son of Nellie (Klusman) and Frank H. Parks. He was raised in his mother’s religion of Judaism. He was raised in Joliet, Illinois, and graduated from Joliet Township High School in 1932.
He attended the University of Illinois as a pre-med student and played in stock companies for a few years. He went to Hollywood at the suggestion of John Garfield, who said a part in Warner film called Mama Ravioli was being held for him. The movie was cancelled, but Parks wound up signing a movie contract with Columbia Pictures in 1941.
As did most Columbia contract players, he played supporting roles in higher-budgeted films, and larger roles in B pictures.
Parks could be seen in Mystery Ship (1941) and Harmon of Michigan (1941). He could be seen in the “A” films You Belong to Me (1941) and Three Girls About Town (1941). He could also be seen in Sing for Your Supper (1941), Harvard, Here I Come (1942), Blondie Goes to College (1942), Canal Zone (1942), Alias Boston Blackie (1942), North of the Rockies (1942), Hello, Annapolis (1942), and Submarine Raider (1942).
Peck, Gregory (Winner)
Occu Inherit: No
La Jolla, CA
Father: Chemist-pharmacist
Catholic
Parents divorced at 5
Catholic military school; San Diego High School;
UC Berkeley, English major
Inspired by: recruited by Edwin Duerr, director of university’s Little Theater
Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916, in the neighborhood of La Jolla in San Diego, California, to Bernice Mae “Bunny” (née Ayres; 1894–1992), and Gregory Pearl Peck (1886–1962), a Rochester, New York–born chemist and pharmacist.
His father was of English (paternal) and Irish (maternal) heritage, and his mother was of English and Scots ancestry. She converted to her husband’s religion, Catholicism, and Peck was raised as a Catholic.
Through his Irish-born paternal grandmother Catherine Ashe (1864–1926), Peck was related to Thomas Ashe (1885–1917), who participated in the Easter Rising less than three weeks after Peck’s birth and died while being force-fed during a hunger strike in 1917.
Peck’s parents divorced when he was 5, and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother, who took him to the movies every week.
At the age of 10, he was sent to a Catholic military school, St. John’s Military Academy in Los Angeles. While he was a student there, his grandmother died. At 14, he moved back to San Diego to live with his father. He attended San Diego High School and, after graduating in 1934, enrolled for one year at San Diego State Teacher’s College (now San Diego State University). While there, he joined the track team, took his first theatre and public-speaking courses, and pledged the Epsilon Eta fraternity.
Peck had ambitions to be a doctor and later transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, as an English major and pre-medical student. Standing 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m), he rowed on the university crew. Although his tuition fee was only $26 per year, Peck still struggled to pay and took a job as a “hasher” (kitchen helper) for the Gamma Phi Beta sorority in exchange for meals.
At Berkeley, Peck’s deep, well-modulated voice gained him attention, and after participating in a public speaking course, he decided to try acting.
He was encouraged by an acting coach, who saw in him perfect material for university theatre, and he became more and more interested in acting. He was recruited by Edwin Duerr, director of the university’s Little Theater, and appeared in five plays during his senior year, including as Starbuck in Moby Dick.
Peck later said about his years at Berkeley that “it was a very special experience for me and three of the greatest years of my life. It woke me up and made me a human being.”
Penn, Sean, Winner
Occup Inherit: Yes
Penn was born in Santa Monica, California, to actor and director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan (née Annucci).
His older brother is musician Michael Penn. His younger brother, actor Chris Penn, died in 2006.
His father was Jewish, the son of emigrants from Merkinė, Lithuania, while his mother was a Catholic of Irish and Italian descent. Penn was raised in a secular home in Malibu, California, and attended Malibu Park Junior High School and Santa Monica High School, as Malibu had no high school at that time.
He began making short films with his childhood friends including actors Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen, who lived near his home.
Penn appeared in a 1974 episode of the Little House on the Prairie TV series as an extra when his father, Leo, directed some of the episodes. Penn launched his film career with the action-drama Taps (1981), where he played a military high school cadet.
A year later, he appeared in the hit comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), in the role of surfer-stoner Jeff Spicoli; his character helped popularize the word “dude” in popular culture.
Next, Penn appeared as Mick O’Brien, a troubled youth, in the drama Bad Boys (1983). The role earned Penn favorable reviews and jump-started his career as a serious actor.
Penn played Andrew Daulton Lee in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), which closely followed an actual criminal case. Lee was a former drug dealer, convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union and originally sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled in 1998. Penn later hired Lee as his personal assistant, partly because he wanted to reward Lee for allowing him to play Lee in the film; Penn was also a firm believer in rehabilitation and thought Lee should be reintegrated into society, since he was a free man again.
P (10)
Pacino, Al: No
Parks, Larry: No
Peck, Gregory: No, Upper Midde class
Penn, Sean: Yes
Phoenix, Joaquin: No
Pidgeon, Walter: No
Pitt, Brad: No
Poitier, Sidney: No
Powell, William: No
Pryce, Jonathan: No
Pryce, Jonathan:
Father: former coal miner, small general grocery shop with his wife
Pryce was born John Price on 1 June 1947 in Carmel, Flintshire, the son of Margaret Ellen (née Williams) and Isaac Price, a former coal miner who ran a small general grocery shop with his wife.
He has two older sisters and was raised a Welsh Presbyterian. He was educated at Holywell Grammar School and, at the age of 16, went to art college before he started training to be a teacher at Edge Hill College (now Edge Hill University) in Ormskirk, Lancashire.
While studying, he took part in a college theatre production. An impressed tutor suggested he should become an actor, and applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) for an application form on his behalf. Pryce was subsequently awarded a scholarship to RADA. When he joined Equity, he took “Jonathan Pryce” as his stage name because his birth name was too similar to that of a performer already represented by Equity.
While at RADA, he worked as a door-to-door salesman of velvet paintings.
Discouraged by: Despite finding RADA “strait-laced” and being told by his tutor that he could never aspire to do more than playing villains on Z-Cars, Pryce joined the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool upon graduation and eventually became its artistic director. He performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Nottingham Playhouse.[12][13] To gain his Equity card, he made his first screen appearance in a minor role in “Fire & Brimstone”, a 1972 episode of the science fiction drama series Doomwatch. He then starred in two television films directed by Stephen Frears: Daft as a Brush and Playthings.
After leaving Everyman, Pryce joined Richard Eyre at the Nottingham Playhouse and starred in Trevor Griffiths’ play Comedians, in a role specially written for him. The production moved to the Old Vic Theatre in London. Pryce reprised the role on Broadway in 1976, this time directed by Mike Nichols, and for which Pryce won the 1977 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. It was around this time that he appeared in his first film role, playing the character Joseph Manasse in the drama Voyage of the Damned, starring Faye Dunaway. He did not, however, abandon the stage, appearing from 1978 to 1979 in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s productions of The Taming of the Shrew as Petruchio, and Antony and Cleopatra as Octavius Caesar.
Quinn, Anthony (Nominee) No
Chihuahua, Mexico
El Paso, Texas, East Los Angeles
Father: moved to LA, assistant cameraman
Inspired by: architect Frank Lloyd Wright
Initially cast as ethnic villain (once Indian)
Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca was born April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution to Manuela “Nellie” (née Oaxaca) and Francisco “Frank” Quinn.
Frank Quinn was born to an Irish immigrant father from County Cork and a Mexican mother. Frank reportedly rode with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, then later moved to the East Los Angeles neighborhood of City Terrace and became an assistant cameraman at a movie studio.
In Quinn’s autobiography, The Original Sin: A Self-portrait by Anthony Quinn, he denied being the son of an “Irish adventurer” and attributed that tale to Hollywood publicists. Quinn later said he was not accepted in Mexico because of his surname.
When he was 6, Quinn attended a Catholic church and even contemplated becoming a priest, but at the age of 11, he joined the Pentecostals at the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which was founded and led by the evangelical preacher Aimee Semple McPherson.
For a time, Quinn played in the church’s band and was an apprentice preacher with the evangelist. “I have known most of the great actresses of my time, and not one of them could touch her,” Quinn once said of the spellbinding McPherson, whom he credited with inspiring Zorba’s gesture of the dramatically outstretched hand.
Quinn grew up first in El Paso, Texas, and later in East Los Angeles and in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles, California. He attended Hammel Street Elementary School, Belvedere Junior High School, Polytechnic High School, and Belmont High School in Los Angeles, with future baseball player and General Hospital star John Beradino, but left before graduating. In June 1987, Tucson High School in Arizona awarded him an honorary high-school diploma.
As a young man, Quinn boxed professionally to earn money, then studied art and architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright at the designer’s Arizona residence and his Wisconsin studio, Taliesin. The two men became friends. When Quinn mentioned that he was drawn to acting, Wright encouraged him. Quinn said he had been offered $800 per week by a film studio and did not know what to do. Wright replied, “Take it, you’ll never make that much with me.” The contract was for only $300 per week.
After a short time performing on stage, Quinn launched his film career performing character roles in the 1936 films The Plainsman (as Cheyenne Indian after Custer’s defeat with Gary Cooper), Parole (in which he made his debut), and The Milky Way, his first picture, though he was not credited. He played “ethnic” villains in Paramount films such as Dangerous to Know (1938) with Anna May Wong and Road to Morocco with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and played more sympathetic Crazy Horse in They Died with Their Boots On with Errol Flynn.
