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Mike Nichols

Mike Nichols (born 6 November 1931) is an American television, stage and film director, writer, and producer. Nichols is one of only ten people to have won all the major American entertainment awards: an Oscar, Grammy, Emmy and Tony Award.

Early years:
Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany, the son of Brigitte Landauer (his maternal grandparents are Gustav Landauer and Hedwig Lachmann) and Igor Nicholaievitch Peschkowsky, a physician.He and his German-Russian Jewish family moved to the United States to flee the Nazis in 1939 . Read the rest of this entry »

Roman Polanski

Director, actor. Born Raimund Polanski, on August 18, 1933, in Paris, France. At the age of three, Polanski moved with his family to his father’s native city of Krakow, Poland. In 1941, his parents were imprisoned in various Nazi concentration camps, where his mother eventually died in Auschwitz. In order to escape deportation, Polanski lived with several different Polish families until he was reunited with his father in 1944. Read the rest of this entry »

Henry Wadsworth

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American educator and poet whose works include “Paul Revere’s Ride”, The Song of Hiawatha, and “Evangeline”. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside [...]

Henry Fonda

Born May 16, 1905 in Grand Island, Nebraska. He was the oldest of three children, born to William Brace Fonda and Herberta (nee Jaynes). William Fonda worked as a printer. When Fonda was still an infant, the family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where his father opened a print shop. As a child, Fonda liked to [...]

Bill Murray

I’m a nut, but not just a nut.
— Bill Murray
THE idea that Bill Murray could have ended up as somebody’s doctor is too terrifying to contemplate. Luckily, he was put on probation, and he subsequently dropped out of college (and pre-med studies) after being busted for pot possession at O’Hare Airport.

Philip Kaufman

Born in Chicago, IL, writer/director Philip Kaufman makes accessible American art films and stays out of the Los Angeles area, preferring the home base of San Francisco, working with his wife, Rose, and his son Peter. After studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School, he taught English in Europe and began work [...]

Lily Tomlin

Mary Jean “Lily” Tomlin (born September 1, 1939) is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer. She has won multiple awards from many quarters, including Tony Awards, Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award and has also been nominated for an Academy Award.
Early life
Tomlin was born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, [...]

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985), best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, writer, actor and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television, and radio. Welles was also an accomplished magician, starring in troop variety spectacles in the war years. Noted for his innovative dramatic productions as [...]

Peter Coyote

Coyote was born in New York City, the son of Ruth (nee Fidler) and Morris Cohon, an investment banker. His father was of Sephardic Jewish descent and his mother came from a working-class Ashkenazi Jewish family. Her father, trained as a rabbi in Russia, fled the Czar’s draft, and eventually ran a small candy-store in [...]

Katharine Hepburn

My greatest strength is . . . common sense. I’m really a standard brand–like Campbell’s tomato soup or Baker’s chocolate.
— Katharine Hepburn
KATHARINE HEPBURN, who says she’s “revered rather like an old building,” always makes the lists of the world’s most admired women. Her career spans more than six decades, and she is the only actor [...]