About City Connect Cambridge

City Connect was first established in Cambridge and aims to spread to other cities nationally and internationally in the future. City Connect's online magazine style website reaches out to a wide audience and has something for everyone. City Connect offers a comprehensive range of features and articles, such as news, film and music reviews, trends and hot topics, dating advice, culture and style to name but a few. City Connect also holds networking events to join our writers, advertisers and readers together. City Connect events range from the casual to the formal, but everyone with a passion for networking is welcome.

Happy Birthday Beyoncé Knowles

City Connect proudly celebrates the birthday of Beyoncé Knowles, the beautiful and talented singer, actress and fashionista who recently announced that she is pregnant with her first child by husband Jay-Z. Will this new revelation ruin her career or is this the beginning of an exciting new chapter in Beyoncé’s life? City Connect looks at her story so far…

Biography

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles born September 4, 1981, often known simply as Beyoncé, is an American R&B recording artist, actress and fashion designer. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, she enrolled in various performing arts schools and was first exposed to singing and dancing competitions as a child. Knowles rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of the R&B girl group Destiny’s Child, one of the world’s best-selling girl groups of all time.

During the hiatus of Destiny’s Child, Knowles released her debut solo album Dangerously in Love in 2003, which spawned the number-one hits “Crazy in Love” and “Baby Boy” and became one of the most successful albums of that year, earning her a then record-tying five Grammy Awards. Following the group’s disbandment in 2005, Knowles released her second solo album, B’Day in 2006. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and included the hits “Irreplaceable” and “Beautiful Liar”. Her third solo album I Am… Sasha Fierce was released in 2008, and included the anthemic “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”. The album earned Knowles six Grammys at the 52nd Grammy Awards, breaking the record for most Grammy Awards won by a female artist in one night. In 2011, Knowles released her fourth studio album 4, which became her fourth consecutive solo number-one album on the Billboard 200. This made Knowles the second female artist and third artist overall, to have her first four studio albums debut atop the chart.

Apart from her work in music, Knowles has also launched a career in acting. In 2001, she made her debut in the musical film Carmen: A Hip Hopera, prior to appearing in major films, including Dreamgirls (2006), which earned her two Golden Globe nominations, and Cadillac Records (2008). In 2004, Knowles and her mother introduced their family’s fashion line, House of Deréon; Knowles has also endorsed brands such as Pepsi, Tommy Hilfiger, Armani and L’Oréal. In June 2010, Knowles was ranked second on Forbes list of the 100 Most Powerful and Influential celebrities in the world, and first on its list of the Most Powerful and Influential musicians in the world.

Knowles has earned numerous awards and accolades. She is one of the most honored artists by the Grammys, and third among female artists, with a total of 16 Grammy Awards—13 as a solo artist and 3 as a member of Destiny’s Child. At the 2011 Billboard Music Awards, Knowles was honored with the Billboard Millennium Award for recognizing her career achievements and influence in the music industry. She was ranked the 4th Artist of the 2000s decade by Billboard, and was listed the most successful female artist of the 2000s, as well as the top radio artist. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), also recognized Knowles as the top certified artist of the 2000s. As of May 2010, Knowles has sold more than 11.2 million albums and 25 million singles in the United States. As of September 2009, she has sold 75 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time.

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Happy Birthday Sacha Baron Cohen

This week’s Born This Day feature celebrates the birthday of Sacha Baron Cohen, the English stand-up comedian, writer and actor. A graduate of Cambridge University, Sacha Baron Cohen is most widely known for writing and playing four unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, Brüno, and Admiral General Aladeen. He has encountered many controversies regarding some of his comic characters.

Sacha Baron Cohen married Australian actress Isla Fisher on 15 March 2010. After three years of study, Fisher converted to Judaism in early 2007. She received the approval of Baron Cohen’s observant Jewish parents. Baron Cohen and Fisher have two daughters: Olive, born in 2007, and Elula, born in 2010.

"Ali G", "Borat", "Bruno",

Sacha Baron Cohen with his wife Isla Fisher

Characters played by Sacha Baron Cohen

Ali G

Sacha Baron Cohen shot to fame when his comic character Ali G, an uneducated, boorish junglist, hailing from Staines, started appearing on the British television show The 11 O’Clock Show on Channel 4, which first went to air 8 September 1998. A year after the premiere of the show, GQ named him comedian of the year. He won Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards, and was nominated for Best British Entertainment Performance at the British Academy Television Awards. Da Ali G Show began in 2000, and won the BAFTA for Best Comedy in the following year. Also in 2000, Baron Cohen as Ali G appeared as the limousine driver in Madonna’s 2000 video “Music”, directed by Jonas Ã…kerlund, who was also responsible for directing the titles for Da Ali G Show. In 2002, Ali G was the central character in the feature film Ali G Indahouse, in which he is elected to the British Parliament and foils a plot to bulldoze a community centre in his hometown, Staines. His television show was exported to the United States in 2003, with new episodes set there, for HBO. Ali G’s interviews with celebrities (often politicians) gained notoriety partly because the subjects were not privy to the joke that Ali G, rather than being a real interviewer, was a comic character played by Baron Cohen. The resulting willingness of Baron Cohen’s targets to answer his frequently risqué questions often created surprising conversations. Interviewees have included: astronaut Buzz Aldrin, real estate mogul Donald Trump, businessman and billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed and former Conservative Party MP Neil Hamilton. Sacha Baron Cohen is a supporter of Comic Relief and as Ali G has hosted an interview with footballer David Beckham and his wife, ex-Spice Girl Victoria Beckham.

Borat

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, a feature film with Borat at the centre, was screened at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and released in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2006, in the United States on 3 November 2006 and Australia November 2006. The film is about a journey across the United States in an ice cream truck, in which the main character is obsessed with the idea of marrying Pamela Anderson. The film is a mockumentary which includes interviews with various American citizens that poke fun at American culture, as well as sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, jingoism.

Brüno

Another alter ego Sacha Baron Cohen performed as is ‘Brüno’, a flamboyantly gay, allegedly-19-year-old, Austrian fashion show presenter who often lures his unwitting subjects into making provocative statements and engaging in embarrassing behaviour, as well as leading them to contradict themselves, often in the same interview. Brüno asks the subjects to answer ‘yes or no’ questions with either “Vassup” (whats up) or “Ich don’t think so” (No); these are occasionally substituted with “Ach, ja!” (Ah yes!) or “Nicht, nicht” (“Nicht” means “not” in German). In one segment on Da Ali G Show, he encouraged his guest to answer questions with either “Keep them in the ghetto” or “Train to Auschwitz”. Brüno’s main comedic satire pertains to the vacuity and inanity of the fashion and clubbing world. In May 2009, at the MTV Movie Awards, Baron Cohen appeared as ‘Brüno’ wearing a white angel costume, a white jock strap, white go-go boots, and white wings; and did an aerial stunt where he dropped from a height (using wires) onto Eminem. Baron Cohen landed on Eminem’s lap, with his rear in Eminem’s face, prompting Eminem to exit the venue with fellow rappers D12. Eminem later admitted to staging the stunt with Baron Cohen. After an intense bidding war that included such Hollywood powerhouses as DreamWorks, Sony, and 20th Century Fox; Universal Pictures paid a reported $42.5 million for the film rights. The film was released in July 2009.

Admiral General Aladeen

Baron Cohen’s 2012 film, The Dictator, was described by its press as “the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed”. Baron Cohen played Admiral General Aladeen, a dictator from a fictional country called the Republic of Wadiya. Borat and Bruno film director Larry Charles directed the film. The main target of the film’s satire was Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was still alive when the film was written. The producers of the film were concerned it would anger Gaddafi, possibly even resulting in a terrorist attack, so they released deliberate misinformation saying that the film was loosely based on a romance novel written by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In 2012, Sacha Baron Cohen will be starring in the film adaptation of the stage musical Les Misérables as the villanous character Thénardier.

It has been announced that Sacha Baron Cohen will star as Freddie Mercury of the rock band Queen in Mercury, an upcoming film about the period in the band’s history from 1971 to the Live Aid concert in 1985. It was Baron Cohen himself who contacted screenwriter Peter Morgan with the idea of portraying the flamboyant lead singer. Time magazine commented with approval on his singing ability and physical resemblance to Mercury. The film is due for release in 2014.

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Happy Birthday Ioan Gruffudd

Continuing our Born This Day series, today we celebrate the birthday of Ioan Gruffudd, the Welsh actor best known for playing the role of Dr. Reed Richards, in the film Fantastic Four (2005) and the sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007). Ioan Gruffudd also played the role of Andrew Martin in the US thriller television series Ringer (2011-2012) opposite Sarah Michelle Geller.

Ioan Gruffudd at World Premiere of Fantastic 4

Biography

Gruffudd was born on 6 October 1973 in Llwydcoed, near Aberdare, Cynon Valley, in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Tâf, South Wales. The popular Welsh name “Ioan” is an equivalent of “John”, and “Gruffudd” corresponds to the anglicised “Griffith”. He has been quoted as saying, “I’m determined not to lose my name. It’s who I am. It has neither aided my progress nor hampered it. It’s just who I am. My character… my make-up. My culture and heritage is a very rich one. So what if it’s difficult for people to pronounce? We all learned how to say Schwarzenegger.”

Gruffudd started his acting career at the age of 13 in a Welsh television film called Austin (1986) and then later moved on to the Welsh language soap opera Pobol y Cwm (People of the Valley) from 1987 to 1994. In 1992, aged 18, he began attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. However, he was only given small parts in the Academy’s productions, and feeling isolated and directionless, almost dropped out several times. However, in 1995 in his final year, he was cast in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler as George (Jörgen) Tesman, the husband of Hedda, the lead character. This performance led to him being offered the lead role in the 1996 TV remake of Poldark.

After playing Oscar Wilde’s lover John Gray in 1997’s Wilde he took his first international role as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe in the blockbuster film Titanic. He later landed the role of Horatio Hornblower in Hornblower, the Meridian production of the C. S. Forester novels (1998–2003), shown on ITV1 and A&E. Gruffudd has said: “It was quite something for an unknown actor to get the lead. So I will always be grateful to Hornblower. … I would love to play this character through every stage of his life. I think it would be unique to have an actor playing him from the very early days as a midshipman, through till he’s an Admiral. So, I would love to play this character till he perishes.”

His television work includes playing the character Pip in the BBC TV production of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1999), Lt. John Feeley in BBC One’s “Warriors” (1999) and architect Philip Bosinney in ITV’s adaptation of The Forsyte Saga (2002). He has starred in the films 102 Dalmatians (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001) and King Arthur (2004).

In 2007, he starred in the historical drama Amazing Grace as William Wilberforce, the British abolitionist, receiving critical acclaim for the role. Gruffudd has also portrayed characters of both Marvel Comics and DC Comics, having appeared as Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards) in Marvel’s Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and provided the voice of Mister Miracle in DC’s Justice League Unlimited (2004-06).

In 2008, he appeared in the Julia Roberts-Ryan Reynolds film, Fireflies in the Garden. In 2008, he also appeared in The Secret of Moonacre. In 2009, he starred alongside Josh Brolin in W., a biopic about the life of U.S. President George W Bush, in which Gruffudd played Tony Blair. In 2011, he played the financier of a cave dive in Sanctum.

Between September 2011 and April 2012 Ioan Gruffudd played the role of Andrew Martin in the US thriller television series Ringer until the show’s cancellation in 2012.

In June 2012, Ioan filmed the fantasy adventure movie Mariah Mundi and the Midas Box throughout the South West of England, playing the role of Charles Mundi, the movie is schedule for release in 2013.

Gruffudd lives with his wife, actress Alice Evans, in Los Angeles, California. The couple met during the production of 102 Dalmatians, and married on 14 September 2007 in Mexico. On 20 April 2009, Gruffudd and his wife announced they were expecting their first child together.

Gruffudd enjoys being in Los Angeles because “it’s the easiest place in the world to drive, and it’s a real pleasure to do that in my black Jag XK8. I’ve gone all out.” According to Gruffudd: “There’s a physicality and confidence to Americans; they’re very present. That’s something I enjoy being around because it rubs off on you. Although an actor friend of mine visited recently and said, ‘It’s no wonder they write such terrible scripts these days, there’s no pain! Everything’s so nice you can’t be bothered.'”

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Happy Birthday Colin Firth

 City Connect celebrates the birthday of Academy Award winner Colin Firth who was born this day in 1960 and turns 51 today. Read all about Firth’s acting career in the biography that follows.

Biography

Colin Andrew Firth, CBE (born 10 September 1960) is an English film, television, and stage actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

In 2011, Firth received the Academy Award for his portrayal of King George VI in The King’s Speech, a performance that also earned him the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. The previous year, he received his first Academy Award nomination, for his leading role in A Single Man, a performance that won him a BAFTA Award.

He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011. In April 2011, Time magazine included Firth in its list of the world’s 100 Most Influential People.

Firth is married to Italian film producer/director Livia Giuggioli and lives in both London and Italy. They have two sons.  Firth started to learn Italian when he and Giuggioli began to date and he now is fluent in the language.

In a 2006 interview with French magazine Madame Figaro, Firth was asked “Quelles sont les femmes de votre vie?” (Who are the women of your life?). Firth replied: “Ma mère, ma femme et Jane Austen” (My mother, my wife and Jane Austen).

Firth has been a long-standing supporter of Survival International, a non-governmental organisation that defends the rights of tribal peoples.

Firth has been involved in a campaign to stop the deportation of a group of asylum seekers, because he believed that they might be murdered on their return to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Firth argued that “To me it’s just basic civilisation to help people. I find this incredibly painful to see how we dismiss the most desperate people in our society. It’s easily done. It plays to the tabloids, to the Middle-England xenophobes. It just makes me furious. And all from a government we once had such high hopes for”. As a result of the campaign, a Congolese nurse was given a last-minute reprieve from deportation.

Firth has also been involved in the Oxfam global campaign Make Trade Fair, in which several other celebrities participated as well in order to bring more attention to the issues involved. The campaign has focused on several trade practices seen as unfair to third world producers especially, including dumping, high import tariffs, and labour rights such as fair wages. Firth remains deeply committed to this cause, making efforts such as supporting fair trade coffee in his daily life.

In 2011, Firth collaborated with colleagues at the University College London to conduct a study probing differences in the volume of various brain regions in conservatives and liberals, with the results suggesting that conservatives have greater amygdala volume and liberals have greater volume in their anterior cingulate cortex.

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Happy Birthday Martin Freeman

On 8th September, City Connect celebrates the birthday of English actor Martin Freeman who was born on this day in 1971. Martin Freeman is known for his roles as Tim Canterbury in the BBC’s Golden Globe-winning comedy The Office, Dr. Watson in Sherlock starring opposite Benedict Cumberbatch and more recently as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit film trilogy.

Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins (2013)

Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins (2013)

Biography

Martin Freeman has appeared in at least 18 TV shows, 14 theatre productions, and several radio productions. He is notable for his role as Tim Canterbury in The Office. He appeared in the sitcom Hardware. He also appeared in several films, including Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G Indahouse (2002) and Richard Curtis’ Love Actually (2003).

Martin Freeman began to move into more serious dramatic roles on television with his appearance as Lord Shaftesbury in the 2003 BBC historical drama Charles II: The Power and The Passion. Martin Freeman also starred in the BBC television series The Robinsons and had a cameo in episode 1 of Black Books. In 2007, he appeared in The All Together written and directed by Gavin Claxton, as well as the Bill Kenwright theatre production of The Last Laugh.

In May 2009 he starred in Boy Meets Girl, a four-part drama that charts the progress of characters Veronica and Danny after an accident which causes them to swap bodies.

He currently plays Dr. John Watson in Sherlock, the BBC contemporary adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories. The first episode, “A Study in Pink”, was broadcast on 25 July 2010 to critical acclaim. For his performance in the role he won the BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actor, 2011 and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. He accepted the role of Bilbo Baggins, the main character in the three-part Peter Jackson film series The Hobbit. Accolades that his performance in the first part, An Unexpected Journey, garnered him include Best Hero at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards and Best Actor at the 18th Empire Awards.

Freeman appeared in all three of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, commencing with a brief non-speaking role in Shaun of the Dead as Yvonne’s boyfriend, Declan, followed by a brief cameo in Hot Fuzz as a police officer. He is a main cast member in the 2013 finale to the trilogy, The World’s End.

He is a lifelong fan of Motown music and is a vegetarian.

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Happy Birthday Stephen Fry

City Connect celebrates the birthday of actor and writer Stephen Fry. Fry is known for his erudite personality which is evident in his writing and TV appearances on such programmes as BBC’s QI.

He is notable as a person with Bipolar Disorder (sometimes called manic depression) and Fry presented a two-part BBC documentary on the condition. Other celebrities such as Frank Bruno and Catherine Zeta Jones have since talked about their experiences having been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Click here to read our previous coverage of Catherine Zeta Jones’ announcement that she was a person with Bipolar Disorder.

Biography

Stephen Fry was born on 24 August 1957. He is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation “The Cellar Tapes”, which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and the duo also played the title roles in Jeeves and Wooster.

As a solo actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, and is the host of the quiz show QI. He also presented a 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 U.S. states in six episodes. Fry has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones.

Apart from his work in television, Fry has contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines, and has written four novels and two volumes of autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot and The Fry Chronicles. He also appears frequently on BBC Radio 4, starring in the comedy series Absolute Power, being a frequent guest on panel games such as Just a Minute, and acting as chairman for I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, where he was one of a trio of hosts who succeeded the late Humphrey Lyttelton. Fry is also known in the UK for his audiobook recordings, particularly as reader for all seven Harry Potter novels.

Fry’s career in television began with the 1982 broadcasting of The Cellar Tapes, the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue which was written by Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. The revue caught the attention of Granada Television, who, keen to replicate the success of the BBC’s Not the Nine O’Clock News, hired Fry, Laurie and Thompson to star alongside Ben Elton in There’s Nothing to Worry About!. A second series, re-titled Alfresco, was broadcast in 1983 and a third in 1984; it established Fry and Laurie’s reputation as a comedy double act. In 1983, the BBC offered them their own show, which became The Crystal Cube, a mixture of science fiction and mockumentary that was axed after the first episode. Undeterred, Fry and Laurie appeared in an episode of The Young Ones in 1984, and Fry in Ben Elton’s 1985 series, Happy Families. In 1986 and 1987 Fry and Laurie also performed sketches on the LWT/Channel 4 show Saturday Live.

Forgiving Fry and Laurie for The Crystal Cube, the BBC commissioned a sketch show in 1986 that was to become A Bit of Fry & Laurie. The programme ran for 26 episodes spanning four series between 1986 and 1995, and was very successful. During this time Fry starred in Blackadder II as Lord Melchett, made a guest appearance in Blackadder the Third as the Duke of Wellington, then returned to a starring role in Blackadder Goes Forth as General Melchett. In 1988, he became a regular contestant on the popular improvisational comedy radio show Whose Line Is It Anyway?. However, when it moved to television, he only appeared three times: twice in the first series and once in the ninth.

Between 1990 and 1993, Fry starred as Jeeves (alongside Hugh Laurie’s Bertie Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster, 23 hour-long adaptations of P.G. Wodehouse’s novels and short stories.

In 2003, Fry began hosting the TV game show QI (Quite Interesting), a British comedy panel game television quiz show. QI was created and co-produced by John Lloyd, and features permanent panellist Alan Davies. QI has the highest viewing figures for any show on BBC Four. In 2006, Fry won the Rose d’Or award for “Best Game Show Host” for his work on the series.

A foray into documentary-making has seen Fry fronting the Emmy Award-winning The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive in 2006, and in 2007 a documentary on the subject of HIV and AIDS, HIV and Me. Also in 2006, he appeared in the genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing his family tree to discover his Jewish ancestry. His six-part travel series Stephen Fry in America began on BBC One on 12 October 2008. In May 2008, it was announced that a five-part companion series, More Fry in America, had been commissioned for BBC Four; it was to feature in-depth essays excluded from the first series due to time constraints.[21] No further information about the project has since been released.

Fry has also been involved in nature documentaries, having narrated Spectacled Bears: Shadow of the Forest for the BBC Natural World series in 2008. In the television series Last Chance to See, Fry together with zoologist Mark Carwardine sought out endangered species, some of which were featured in Douglas Adams and Carwardine’s 1990 book/radio series of the of the same name. The resulting programmes were broadcast in 2009.

From 2007 to 2009, Fry appeared in and was executive producer for the legal drama Kingdom, which ran for three series on ITV. He has also taken up a recurring guest role as psychiatrist Dr. Gordon Wyatt in the popular American drama Bones.

Fry narrates the English language version of the Spanish children’s animated series Pocoyo. Fry has lent himself and his voice to many advertisements, starting with an appearance as “Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar” in a 1982 advert for Whitbread Best Bitter. Fry has said in his memoirs that after receiving his payment for this work – £25,000 – he has never subsequently experienced “what one could call serious money troubles”. He has since appeared in adverts for products such as Marks and Spencer, Twinings, Kenco, Vauxhall, Direct Line, Calpol, Heineken, Alliance & Leicester, After Eights, Trebor, Panama cigars and Orange Mobile.

Since the publication of his first novel, The Liar (1991), Fry has written three additional novels, several non-fiction works and two volumes of autobiography. Making History (1997) is partly set in an alternative universe where Adolf Hitler’s father is made infertile and his replacement proves a rather more effective Führer. The book won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. The Hippopotamus (1994) is about Edward (Ted/Tedward) Wallace and his stay at his old friend Lord Logan’s country manor in Norfolk. The Stars’ Tennis Balls (2000) is a modern retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo. Fry’s book, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, is a guide to writing poetry.

Once a columnist in The Listener and The Daily Telegraph, he now writes a weekly technology column in the Saturday edition of The Guardian. His blog attracted more than 300,000 visitors in its first two weeks of existence.

Fry wields a considerable amount of influence through his use of the social networking site Twitter. He is frequently asked to promote various charities and causes, often inadvertently causing their websites to crash because of the sheer volume of traffic generated by his large number of followers, as Fry notes on his website: “Four thousand hits a second all diving down the pipeline at the same time for minutes on end.” Fry uses his influence to recommend underexposed musicians and authors (which often see large increases in web hits and sales) and to spread contemporary issues in the world of media and politics, notably the dropping of an injunction against The Guardian and the lambasting of Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir over her article on deceased Boyzone member Stephen Gately.

In October 2009 Fry sparked debate amongst users again when he announced an intention to leave the social networking site after criticism from another user on Twitter. He retracted the intention the next day. In October 2010, Fry left Twitter for a few days following press criticism of a quote taken from an interview he had given, with a farewell message of “Bye bye”. After returning, Fry explained that he had left Twitter to “avoid being sympathised with or told about an article I would otherwise never have got wind of”.

In November 2009 Fry’s Twitter account reached 1,000,000 followers. He commemorated the million followers milestone with a humorous video blog in which a ‘Step Hen Fry’ clone speaks from the year 2034 where MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have combined to form ‘Twit on MyFace’.

In November 2010 Fry achieved 2,000,000 followers on Twitter.

On 2 January 2010 it was announced that Fry was “switching off his connections with the outside world” in order to complete a second volume of his autobiography.

Fry’s use of the word “luvvie” in The Guardian on 2 April 1988 is given by the Oxford English Dictionary as the earliest recorded use of the word.

Fry has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, specifically stating he suffers from Cyclothymia, referring to it as “bipolar lite”.He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1995 while appearing in a West End play called Cell Mates and subsequently walked out of the production, prompting its early closure and incurring the displeasure of co-star Rik Mayall and playwright Simon Gray. Mayall’s comedy partner, Adrian Edmondson, made light of the subject in his and Mayall’s second Bottom live show. After walking out of the production, Fry went missing for several days while contemplating suicide. He abandoned the idea and left the United Kingdom by ferry, eventually resurfacing in Belgium.

Fry has spoken publicly about his experience with bipolar disorder, which was also depicted in the documentary Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic-Depressive. In the programme, he interviewed other sufferers of the illness including Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss and Tony Slattery. Also featured were chef Rick Stein, whose father committed suicide, Robbie Williams, who talks of his experience with major depression, and comedienne/former mental health nurse Jo Brand. He is also involved with the mental health charity Stand to Reason.

Fry is one of the tallest British celebrities in modern times. He is said to be between 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) to 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m), in height.

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Happy Birthday Catherine Deneuve

City Connect celebrates the birthday of the actress Catherine Deneuve who was born on this day in 1943. She is considered one of France’s most successful actresses and has starred in seven English-language films, most notably the 1983 cult classic The Hunger.

Biography

Catherine Deneuve has gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion (1965) and Belle de jour (1967). Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that film and The Last Metro (1980).

As Catherine Dorléac, she made her film debut at age eleven in Les Collégiennes (1957), filmed in 1955 but not released until two years later. Deneuve subsequently began using her mother’s surname professionally so she wouldn’t be confused with her elder sister, Françoise Dorléac, who was using their father’s name.

Deneuve then starred in films such as Vice and Virtue (1962), directed by Roger Vadim. The film that brought her stardom was Jacques Demy’s 1963 musical Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. She made two more films with Demy , most notably another musical, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), with Dorléac – who was killed in a car accident the following year – as her twin sister. Further prominent films from this early time in her career included Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s La Vie de château (1966), which employed her ‘underused comic skills’, and Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967), – as the ‘ haut-bourgeois housewife who achieves sexual satisfaction working in a Parisian brothel.’ In the Polanski film, Deneuve first portrayed the character archetype for which she would be nicknamed the “ice maiden”, playing a beautiful Belgian girl, an emotionally distant and mysterious woman ‘going homicidally insane in Kensington.’ Her work for Buñuel would be her most famous, and her screen persona as “a cold, remote erotic object which dreams are made on” reached a peak, according to the critic Philip French, in her second Buñuel film Tristana, (1970). Deneuve remained active in European films throughout the 1960s and 70s, but limited her appearances in American films of the period to The April Fools (1969) and Hustle (1975).

Shortly before his death in 1980, Alfred Hitchcock had planned to direct Deneuve in an adaptation of the spy novel The Short Night. Her most notable films during the decade were François Truffaut’s Le Dernier métro (1980), which garnered her the César Award for Best Actress, and Tony Scott’s cult classic The Hunger (1983), her third American film in which she starred as a bisexual vampire, featuring David Bowie and Susan Sarandon. Deneuve’s sex scene with Sarandon in The Hunger brought her a significant lesbian following.

Deneuve won a second Cesar Award and received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for her performance in Indochine (1992), which also won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Deneuve is one of the distinct few to receive an Oscar nomination for a non-English speaking role. Her other significant films were André Téchiné’s Ma saison préférée (1993) and Les Voleurs (1995). In 1997, Deneuve was the protagonist in the music video for the song N’Oubliez Jamais sung by Joe Cocker. In 1998 she won acclaim and the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival for her performance in Place Vendôme. In 1999 Deneuve appeared in five films, including: Est-Ouest, Le temps retrouvé, and Pola X. Her part in Lars von Trier’s musical drama Dancer in the Dark (2000) alongside Icelandic singer Björk was subject to considerable critical scrutiny. The film was selected for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Deneuve’s fourth and most recent American film to date was The Musketeer (2001). She shared the Silver Bear Award for Best Ensemble Cast at the Berlin International Film Festival for her performance in 8 Women (2002). In 2005, Deneuve published her diary A l’ombre de moi-meme (“In My Own Shadow”, published in English as Close Up and Personal: The Private Diaries of Catherine Deneuve); in it she writes about her experiences shooting the films Indochine and Dancer in the Dark; and working with leading men such as Burt Reynolds, Jack Lemmon, Vincent Perez, William Hurt, John Malkovich, Alain Delon, Gerard Depardieu, and Marcello Mastroianni. In 2006, she headed the jury at the Venice Film Festival. She made another brief return to Hollywood with a guest-starring role on the FX TV series Nip/Tuck during its fourth season in November 2006. She also lent her voice to the Oscar-nominated animated feature Persepolis (2007). In 2008, she appeared in her 100th film, Un conte de Noël. That same year she was honored at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival for her contributions to European cinema.

In 2010 Deneuve starred in the period comedy Potiche (2010). Her latest film is the musical Les Bien-aimés (2011) co-starring her real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni. Although they share four previous acting credits, this is the first time Deneuve and Mastroianni have shared a scene together.

During an interview at the Cannes Film Festival with Ali Naderzad, Deneuve was asked which was her own favorite film. “I still say it was The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. To do a film completely with music like an opera was an incredible experience. But to work with music all the time, it’s such a lift, you know? It’s an opera, it’s very different.”

One of the world’s great beauties, her image was used to represent Marianne, the national symbol of France, from 1985 to 1989. She was the face of Chanel No. 5 in the late 1970s and she caused sales of the perfume to soar in the United States – so much so that the American press, captivated by her charm, nominated her as the world’s most elegant woman.

In 1983, American Home Products retained her to represent their cosmetics line. The company hired world-renowned photographer Richard Avedon and Catherine Deneuve to promote its line of Youth Garde cosmetics in which she famously proclaimed “Look closely. Next year I will be 40.”

She is considered the muse of designer Yves Saint Laurent; he dressed her in the films Belle de Jour, La Chamade, La sirène du Mississipi, Liza, and The Hunger. In 1992, she became a model for his skincare line.

In 2001, she was chosen as the new face of L’Oréal Paris.

Deneuve is involved with the charities: Children Action, Children of Africa, Orphelins Roumains and Reporters Without Borders. Deneuve has also been involved with various charities in the fight against AIDS and cancer.

Deneuve speaks fluent French, Italian, English and is semi-fluent in German. In 1965, the 21-year old Deneuve married British photographer David Bailey. They divorced in 1972 but remain friends.

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Happy Birthday Alfred Hitchcock

On 13 August City Connect celebrates the anniversary of the birth of Alfred Hitchcock, one of the most famous and innovative film directors and producers of the 20th century. He is best remembered as a pioneer in the genre of psychological thrillers and as the director of such famous films as North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was born on 13 August 1899 and died on 29 April 1980. After a successful career in England in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. In 1956 he became an American citizen while retaining his British citizenship.

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person’s gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing. His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside “icy blonde” female characters.

Many of Hitchcock’s films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or “MacGuffins” meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock’s films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon.

Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. Often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker, he came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, which said: “Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else.” The magazine MovieMaker has described him as the most influential filmmaker of all-time, and he is widely regarded as one of cinema’s most significant artists.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Hitchcock directed what many see as his three greatest films: North by Northwest (1959),  Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963).

In North by Northwest, Cary Grant portrays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive who is mistaken for a government secret agent. He is hotly pursued by enemy agents across America, apparently one of them being Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint).

Psycho is almost certainly Hitchcock’s most well known film. Produced on a highly constrained budget of $800,000, it was shot in black-and-white on a spare set. The unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early demise of the heroine, the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer were all hallmarks of Hitchcock, copied in many subsequent horror films. After completing Psycho, Hitchcock moved to Universal, where he made the remainder of his films.

The Birds, inspired by a Daphne Du Maurier short story and by an actual news story about a mysterious infestation of birds in California, was Hitchcock’s 49th film. Hitchcock signed up Tippi Hedren as his latest blonde heroine opposite Rod Taylor. The scenes of the birds attacking included hundreds of shots mixing actual and animated sequences. The cause of the birds’ attack is left unanswered.

The latter two films were particularly notable for their unconventional soundtracks, both orchestrated by Bernard Herrmann: the screeching strings played in the murder scene in Psycho exceeded the limits of the time, and The Birds dispensed completely with conventional instruments, instead using an electronically produced soundtrack and an unaccompanied song by school children (just prior to the infamous attack at the historic Bodega Bay School).

Hitchcock’s films sometimes feature characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers. In North by Northwest, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant’s character) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him. In The Birds, the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself of a clinging mother. Norman Bates has troubles with his mother in Psycho.

Hitchcock heroines tend to be lovely, cool blondes who seem proper at first but, when aroused by passion or danger, respond in a more sensual, animal, or even criminal way. In Rear Window, Lisa (Grace Kelly) risks her life by breaking into Lars Thorwald’s apartment. The best known example is in Psycho where Janet Leigh’s unfortunate character steals $40,000 and is murdered by a reclusive psychopath.

Hitchcock worked several times with the same actors, notably Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly.

Hitchcock is famous for playing cameo roles appearing briefly in many of his own films, usually playing upon his portly figure in an incongruous manner, for example, seen struggling to get a double bass onto a train, or walking dogs in the background. He is quoted as saying that “the length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder”.

Hitchcock died on 29 April 1980. He passed away peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure in his Bel Air, Los Angeles, California home at the age of 80, survived by his wife and their daughter. His funeral service was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills. Hitchcock’s body was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

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Happy Birthday Chris Hemsworth

On 11 August, City Connect celebrates the birthday of Australian actor Chris Hemsworth who was born on this day in 1983. Chris Hemsworth first became known for his role as Kim Hyde in the Australian TV series Home and Away before starting his film career portraying Lieutenant Commander George Kirk in Star Trek (2009). Chris Hemsworth is best known for portraying Thor in the Marvel Studios films Thor (2011) and Marvel’s The Avengers (2012). In 2012 Chris Hemsworth also starred in The Cabin in the Woods and Snow White and the Huntsman.

Chris Hemsworth in 2012

Biography

Chris Hemsworth was born in Melbourne, the son of Leonie, an English teacher, and Craig Hemsworth, a social-services counsellor. He was raised both there and in the Northern Territory, in a little Aboriginal community in the Outback, called Bulman. He has stated, “My earliest memories were on the cattle stations up in the Outback, and then we moved back to Melbourne and then back out there and then back again. Certainly most of my childhood was in Melbourne but probably my most vivid memories were up there in Bulman with crocodiles and buffalo. Very different walks of life.” He attended high school at Heathmont College before his family again returned to the Northern Territory, and then moved a few years later, to Phillip Island. He is the middle of three boys; Luke (older) and Liam (younger) are both actors.

In 2004, Chris Hemsworth auditioned for the Australian soap opera Home and Away role of Robbie Hunter (played by Jason Smith), but did not receive the part. He was subsequently recalled for the part of Kim Hyde and moved to Sydney to join the cast, appearing in 185 episodes of the series. He left the cast of Home and Away on 3 July 2007.

In 2009, Chris Hemsworth portrayed James T. Kirk’s father, George Kirk, in the opening scenes of J. J. Abrams’ film Star Trek. He played the character Kale in the thriller A Perfect Getaway the same year. Chris Hemsworth went on to play Sam in Ca$h, which was the first film he shot when he arrived in the United States. The film’s director, Stephen Milburn Anderson, said Hemsworth had only been in the United States for six weeks when he had auditioned for the role, recalling, “Here’s a guy who is young, has the right look, is a very good actor and, let’s face it, he’s beautiful. So I say, we need to get this guy in. I was very impressed”. In November 2010 The Hollywood Reporter named Chris Hemsworth as one of the young male actors who are “pushing – or being pushed” into taking over Hollywood as the new “A-List”. MTV Networks’ NextMovie.com named him one of its “25 Breakout Stars to Watch for in 2011”.

Chris Hemsworth is best known for his role as the Marvel Comics superhero Thor in the 2011 Marvel Studios film Thor. He and cast-mate Tom Hiddleston, who ultimately played the antagonist Loki, had each auditioned for the role, for which Hemsworth said he put on 20 pounds of muscle. Chris Hemsworth reprised the role in the 2012 film The Avengers as one of the six superheroes sent to defend Earth from his adopted brother, Loki.

Chris Hemsworth starred in the 2012 horror film The Cabin in the Woods and played the role of Jed Eckert in Red Dawn, scheduled for November 2012. Also in 2012, Chris Hemsworth starred opposite Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron in the film Snow White & the Huntsman as the Huntsman.

In 2013, Chris Hemsworth will reprise his role as Thor in the sequel Thor: The Dark World, set to start filming in August 2012. He is also set to star in Ron Howard’s action film Rush as Formula 1 driver James Hunt. Additionally, Chris Hemsworth is scheduled to star in the 2014 thriller Shadow Runner.

Chris Hemsworth began dating Spanish actress Elsa Pataky in early 2010 after meeting through their mutual representatives. They married in December 2010. The couple have a daughter together, India Rose Hemsworth, born 11 May 2012.

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Happy Birthday Natalie Portman

On 09 June, City Connect celebrates the birthday of Israeli-born American actress Natalie Hershlag – better known by her stage name Natalie Portman – who was born on this day in 1981. Natalie Portman played Nina Sayers, a veteran ballerina, in Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan, a role of which critic Kurt Loder wrote: “Portman gives one of her most compelling performances in this film, which is saying something.” In 2011, Natalie Portman won both the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Black Swan.

Natalie Portman - Black Swan Movie Poster

Biography

Natalie Portman’s first film role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon, but mainstream success came when she was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (released in 1999, 2002 and 2005).

Portman as Padmé Amidala

In 1999, Natalie Portman enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology while still working as an actress. She completed her bachelor’s degree in 2003.

In 2001, Natalie Portman opened in New York City’s Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, directed by Mike Nichols; she played the role of Nina alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The play opened at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

In 2005, Natalie Portman received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for her performance as Alice in the drama Closer.

Natalie Portman hosted Saturday Night Live on March 4, 2006. In a SNL Digital Short, she portrays herself as an angry gangsta rapper (with Andy Samberg as her Flavor Flav-esque partner in Viking garb) during a faux-interview with Chris Parnell, saying she cheated at Harvard University while high on marijuana and cocaine.

She won a Constellation Award for Best Female Performance, and a Saturn Award for Best Actress for her starring role in V for Vendetta (2006). Natalie Portman portrayed Evey Hammond, a young woman who is saved from the secret police by the main character, V. Portman worked with a voice coach for the role, learning to speak with an English accent, and she famously had her head shaved. Natalie Portman has commented on V for Vendetta‘s political relevance and mentioned that the main character, who recruits Evey to join an underground anti-government group, is “often bad and does things that you don’t like” and that “being from Israel was a reason I wanted to do this because terrorism and violence are such a daily part of my conversations since I was little.” She said the film “doesn’t make clear good or bad statements. It respects the audience enough to take away their own opinion”.

Natalie Portman played the leading role of Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) starring opposite Eric Bana as Henry VIII and Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn.

Movie Poster for The Other Boleyn Girl

Natalie Portman appeared in Paul McCartney’s music video “Dance Tonight” from his 2007 album Memory Almost Full, directed by Michel Gondry. She co-starred in the Wes Anderson short film Hotel Chevalier, opposite Jason Schwartzman. In May 2008, Natalie Portman served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury, and in 2009, she starred opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in the drama film Brothers, a remake of the 2004 Danish film of the same name.

In 2008, Natalie Portman at age 27 made her directorial debut at the Venice Film Festival. “Eve“, a short movie about a young woman who is dragged along on her grandmother’s romantic date, was screened out of competition. Natalie Portman said she had always had a fascination with the older generation, and drew inspiration for the character from her own grandmother.

In 2011, Natalie Portman won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, Independent Spirit Awards, and the BAFTA Award for her lead performance as Nina Sayers in Black Swan. To prepare for the role, she went through five to eight hours of dance training each day for six months and lost 20 pounds.

Natalie Portman began dating ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied in 2009. The couple met while she was filming Black Swan, for which Millepied was the choreographer. In December 2010, she announced that she was engaged to Millepied and confirmed her pregnancy. Natalie Portman gave birth to their first child, a son named Aleph Portman-Millepied, in 2011. In February 2012, it was confirmed that Natalie Portman and Millepied had married in a private ceremony.

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Happy Birthday Cher Lloyd

On 28 July, City Connect celebrates the birthday of Cher Lloyd who was born on this day in 1993. Cher Lloyd rose to fame when she finished fourth in the seventh series of The X Factor in 2010. Shortly afterwards, Cher Lloyd was signed by Simon Cowell to Sony Music subsidiary Syco Music. Cher Lloyd’s debut album Sticks + Stones peaked at number four in the UK Albums Chart and features the singles “Swagger Jagger“, “With Ur Love ft. Mike Posner“, “Want U Back” and “Beautiful People“.

Cher Lloyd in 2011

Biography

Cher Lloyd had previously auditioned for The X Factor twice before (when the minimum age was lower) singing ballads, but did not make it through. In 2010, she successfully passed the audition stages and got through Boot Camp, going on to judges’ houses. Cheryl Cole had been selected as mentor to the Girls. At judges’ houses she was unable to complete her song. She was given a second chance, but broke down sobbing and could not complete the song. Despite this, she was still picked as one of the final three girls by Cheryl Cole.

Cher Lloyd managed to reach the final of The X Factor being saved from the public vote by the judges along the way even though semi final voting statistics after the show revealed that Lloyd had the fewest votes. In the final she performed a mash-up of “The Clapping Song” and “Get Ur Freak On”, followed by a duet with will.i.am, which was a mashup of “Where Is the Love?” and “I Gotta Feeling”. Lloyd was then eliminated in fourth place, having received the fewest public votes.

After The X Factor final, it was announced that Cher Lloyd had been signed by Syco Music. Songwriter Autumn Rowe and producer RedOne worked on her debut album, released in November 2011. The debut single, “Swagger Jagger” was released on 31 July 2011 and peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart on 7 August 2011.

"Swagger Jagger" "X Factor" "Sticks + Stones" "Cheryl Cole"

Cher Lloyd in the video for Swagger Jagger

With Ur Love” featuring Mike Posner was Cher Lloyd’s second single and was released on 30 October 2011. The single sold 74,030 copies in its first week becoming the highest-selling number four single since Rihanna’s “Only Girl (In the World)“.

Cher Lloyd confirmed the album’s title “Sticks + Stones” on her Twitter. The album was released on 7 November 2011 and peaked at number four. It has sold 198,199 copies in the UK as of January 2012.

On 21 November 2011, Cher Lloyd announced her debut headlining UK tour, the Sticks + Stones Tour, set for March and April 2012. In December 2011, two more dates were added due to popular demand for tickets. Also in December 2011, Cher Lloyd signed a record deal with L.A. Reid to Epic Records in the United States. She released her debut album in the United States in April 2012.

Want U Back” was the third single from her debut album. The single version features vocals from American rapper Astro and was released in February 2012. The single peaked at number twenty-six on the UK Singles Chart, due to digital downloads from the album. Cher Lloyd confirmed via her official website that “Beautiful People” will be the fourth single from the album, but there is no official release date announced as of May 2012.

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Happy Birthday Helena Bonham Carter

On 26 May, City Connect celebrates the birthday of English actress Helena Bonham Carter CBE who was born on this day in 1966. She is known for her roles in films such as Merchant-Ivory’s A Room with a View and The Wings of the Dove as well as for frequently collaborating with director and domestic partner Tim Burton in films such as Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows.

A two-time Academy Award nominee for her performances in The Wings of the Dove and The King’s Speech, Bonham Carter’s acting has been further recognised with six Golden Globe nominations, an International Emmy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to drama.

    Helena Bonham Carter in 2011

Biography

Bonham Carter’s first starring film role was as Lady Jane Grey in Lady Jane (1986), which was given mixed reviews by critics. Her breakthrough role was Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View, which was filmed after Lady Jane, but released beforehand. These early films led to her to being typecast as a “corset queen,” and “English rose,” playing pre- and early 20th century characters, particularly in Merchant-Ivory films. She played Olivia in Trevor Nunn’s film version of Twelfth Night in 1996. One of the high points of her early career was her performance as the scheming Kate Croy in the 1997 film adaption of The Wings of the Dove which was highly acclaimed internationally and it netted her first Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations.

Bonham Carter played villainess Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter series. Bonham Carter received positive reviews as Lestrange, described as a “shining but underused talent”. She then played Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd’s (Johnny Depp) amorous accomplice in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway musical, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The film was directed by Tim Burton and Bonham Carter received a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Actress for her performance.

Bonham Carter joined the cast of partner Tim Burton’s 2010 film, Alice in Wonderland as The Red Queen. Bonham Carter’s role was an amalgamation of two roles, The Queen of Hearts and The Red Queen.

In early 2009, Bonham Carter was named one of The Times newspaper’s top 10 British Actresses of all time. Bonham Carter appeared on the list with fellow actresses Julie Andrews, Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Audrey Hepburn.

In 2010, Bonham Carter played Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in the film The King’s Speech. As of January 2011, Bonham Carter had received numerous plaudits for her performance, including winning her first BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Bonham Carter starred as author Enid Blyton in the BBC Four television biopic, Enid. It was the first depiction of Blyton’s life on the screen, and Bonham Carter received her first Television BAFTA Nomination for Best Actress, for the biopic. In 2012 she starred in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows and she will be taking on the role of Miss Havisham in Mike Newell’s adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations.

In April 2012, Bonham Carter appeared in Rufus Wainwright’s music video for his single “Out of the Game“, featured on the album of the same name.

In 2001, Bonham Carter began her current relationship with director Tim Burton, whom she met while filming Planet of the Apes. Burton has taken to casting Bonham Carter in his films, including Big Fish, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows. They live in Belsize Park, London.

Bonham Carter is known for her unconventional sense of fashion, which has been described as “shabby chic”. Despite her often controversial fashion choices, Vanity Fair named her on its 2010 Best-Dressed List and she was selected by Marc Jacobs to be the face of his autumn/winter 2011 advertising campaign. She cites Vivienne Westwood and Marie Antoinette as her main style influences.

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Happy Birthday Winona Ryder

City Connect celebrates the birthday of American actress Winona Ryder who was born on this day in 1971.

Biography

Winona Ryder made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder’s first significant role came in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988) as a goth teenager, which won her critical and commercial recognition. After making various appearances in film and television, Ryder continued her career with the cult film Heathers (1989), a controversial satire of teenage suicide and high school life, which drew Ryder further critical and commercial attention.

Having played diverse roles in many well-received films, Ryder won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination in the same category for her role in The Age of Innocence in 1993, as well as another Academy Award nomination for Little Women the following year for Best Actress. In 2000, Ryder received a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.

Ryder’s personal life has been widely reported by the media. Her relationship with actor Johnny Depp in the early 1990s was highly publicized and received much scrutiny by the media and tabloid press. A much talked about 2001 shoplifting incident led to a four-year hiatus from acting. She has also revealed her personal struggle with anxiety and depression, briefly checking into a clinic. In 2006, Ryder returned to the screen, and some media outlets called her performance “a remarkable comeback” to acting, having appeared in high-profile films such as Star Trek. In 2010, she was nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards, as the lead actress of When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story, and as part of the cast of Black Swan.

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Happy Birthday Vanessa-Mae

Today on City Connect, as part of our Born This Day series, we celebrate the birthday of Vanessa-Mae, the internationally known British violinist, who was born on 27 October 1978. Her music style is self-described as “violin techno-acoustic fusion”, as several of her albums prominently feature the techno style. A former child prodigy, she became a successful crossover violinist with album sales reaching several millions, having made her the wealthiest young entertainer in the United Kingdom in 2006.

Biography

Vanessa-Mae Vanakorn Nicholson was born in Singapore to Vorapong Vanakorn, an English hotelier of Thai descent, and Pamela Soei Luang Tan, a Chinese lawyer and semi-professional concert pianist. After her parents separated, her mother married Graham Nicholson, a British attorney who adopted Vanessa-Mae, and the family moved to England when Vanessa-Mae was four years old. She grew up in London and holds British citizenship. She began playing piano at the age of three and violin at five.

At the age of eight she attended the Francis Holland School in central London, and at eleven, after her concert debut in 1988, she enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London.

Vanessa-Mae became famous in the United Kingdom throughout her childhood making regular appearances on television (for example on Blue Peter) mostly involving classical music and conservative style. She made her international professional debut at the age of ten in 1988 at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany, and the same year made her concerto debut on stage with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. At the age of thirteen, she was the youngest soloist to record both the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky violin concertos, according to Guinness World Records.

On entering adolescence Vanessa-Mae broke away from her traditional classical influences and became known for her flashy, sexy style appearing in music videos in stylish outfits. Her first pop-style album, The Violin Player, was released in 1995. She appeared on the 1997 Janet Jackson album The Velvet Rope playing a violin solo on the song “Velvet Rope”.

Vanessa-Mae was managed by her mother, who owns a private recording label and music agency, until 1999, when Vanessa-Mae sacked her as her manager.

In April 2006, Vanessa-Mae was ranked as the wealthiest young entertainer under 30 in the UK in the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 having an estimated fortune of about £32 million stemming from concerts and record sales of over an estimated 10 million copies worldwide, which is an unprecedented achievement for a young female violinist.

In 2009 Vanessa-Mae took up residence in the Swiss alpine resort Zermatt. A skier since the age of five, she plans to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics as a downhill skier, representing Thailand.

Vanessa-Mae most often uses one of two types of violins, a Guadagnini acoustic violin or a Zeta Jazz model electric violin. The Guadagnini was made in 1761, and was purchased by her parents at an auction for £250,000 when she was ten. It was stolen in January 1995, but was recovered by the police two months later. She once dropped and broke it, but had it repaired.

In addition, she uses one of two Zeta Jazz Model electric violins, one of which is white and the other one of which features decals of the US flag. She has also been using a silver-grey Zeta Jazz Model electric violin since 2001. She also owns three Ted Brewer Violins two of which she uses on stage (a Crossbow and a Vivo2 Clear) and in publicity material. In addition to these violins, she sometimes buys violins and resells them later, giving the proceeds to charity.

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Happy Birthday Dannii Minogue

This week, Born This Day celebrates the birthday of Dannii Minogue – Kylie Minogue’s younger sister – who was born on 20 October 1971. Although Dannii Minogue first became known as an actress and singer, in recent years she has achieved fame as a talent show judge having joined The X Factor judging panel in 2007 for three seasons and she has appeared as a judge in all 7 seasons of Australia’s Got Talent. In 2010, Dannii Minogue launched Project D, a fashion line in collaboration with London-based designer Tabitha Somerset-Webb. In February 2012 Minogue officially opened Madame Tussauds Sydney, unveiling a waxwork of herself at the launch.

Danni Minogue at Madame Tussauds Sydney in 2012

Biography

Dannii Minogue rose to prominence in the early 1980s for her role in the soap opera Home and Away, before beginning her career as a pop singer in the early 1990s. Minogue achieved early success with hits such as “Love and Kisses”, “This is It”, “Jump to the Beat” and Baby Love, though by the release of her second album, her popularity as a singer had declined, leading her to make a name for herself with award-winning performances in musicals with Grease (1997) and also in Notre Dame De Paris (2000), as well as other acting credits in The Vagina Monologues (2000) and in Macbeth (1999) as Lady Macbeth. The late 1990s saw a brief return to music after Minogue reinvented herself as a dance artist with “All I Wanna Do”, her first number one UK Club hit.

In 2001, Minogue further returned to musical success with the release of her biggest worldwide hit to date, “Who Do You Love Now?”, while her subsequent album, Neon Nights, became the most successful of her career. In the UK, she has achieved twelve consecutive number one dance singles, becoming the best-performing artist on the UK Upfront Club Chart.

Since 2007, Minogue has established herself as a successful talent show judge and television personality. She is currently a judge on Australia’s Got Talent in Australia and, until 2010, The X Factor in the UK, where she was the winning judge in both 2007 and 2010 with Leon Jackson and Matt Cardle, respectively.

Since joining the X Factor and Australia’s Got Talent in 2007, Dannii Minogue has become a Style Icon, receiving critical acclaim from various fashion designers such Victoria Beckham and wearing dresses from J’Aton Couture, Antonio Berardi, Dolce & Gabbana, Marchesa, Philip Armstrong, Carla Zampatti, Gucci and Aurelio Costarella and has featured on fashion magazines like Cosmopolitan, InStyle and Vogue. The press in Britain have especially taken notice of her sense of fashion and different hair styles since Cheryl Cole joined the X Factor in 2008 often comparing both of them. The praise Dannii Minogue got from the tabloids on The X Factor lead her to set up her own line called Project D along with a fragrance. The first line from Project D by Dannii and Tabitha was sold exclusively by Selfridges in the United Kingdom, the Spring / Summer line was showcased by Minogue during the live first Sunday night show of the X Factor Season 7, wearing her Jingle prom-style dress. In August 2012 the label was rebranded and relaunched as Project D London.

Dannii Minogue in her Project D Jingle dress

Throughout her career, Dannii Minogue has often been compared with her more successful sister, Kylie. Referring to the comparison, Minogue said: “It is hard to be compared all the time to Kylie. On the other hand, however, people will always try to compare you to somebody. Look at Britney and Christina.” In an interview with Elle in April 2009, Kylie criticised X Factor judge Louis Walsh for his jibes at her sister: “I’m so proud of my sister and it annoys the hell out of me when comparisons between us are made. In England you lot don’t know where she came from. She was on TV every week from 7-years-old. It makes it harder for her when she gets Louis Walsh’s rather pathetic jibes – one of which is she hasn’t had a hit record and that’s just not true.” She also denied rumours that she did not get on with Cheryl Cole or former judge Sharon Osbourne as “so cheap”.

Dannii Minogue has performed multiple times at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and the London nightclub G-A-Y. She credits her gay following for much of her success, commenting that gay culture has “always been a part of [her] music”. Minogue openly supports gay rights causes for social equality and believes that same-sex marriages should be accepted by all governments.

Dannii promoting World AIDS Day

Dannii Minogue is an ambassador for the Terrence Higgins Trust, an organization that works to increase awareness of AIDS. She joined the charity in hope that her endorsement would encourage people to discuss safe sex and the disease more openly. In 2004, she posed nude, wrapped only in a red ribbon, to promote World AIDS Day in Australia and the UK. She has long been a supporter of breast cancer research and, in August 2008 became an ambassador for the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre Appeal.

In August 2008, Dannii Minogue began dating English model and ex-professional rugby league player Kris Smith (born 20 August 1978). They met in Ibiza, where Smith was celebrating his 30th birthday. It was announced on 9 January 2010 that Minogue was pregnant. This was confirmed on her personal Twitter page when she tweeted “Woo hoo I’m gonna be a mummy!”. Minogue gave birth via caesarean section to a boy, Ethan Edward Minogue Smith, at Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia on 5 July 2010.

In April 2012, Dannii Minogue announced on Twitter that “It brings me great sadness to tell you that Kris & I have separated. We still care for each other & ask for privacy at this difficult time, in particular for our son Ethan who remains our number one priority.” Smith also confirmed the split via his Twitter account.

In 2012, in an “unauthorised” biography about the life of Simon Cowell written by Tom Bower it was revealed that Cowell and Dannii Minogue had an affair during their time together on The X Factor in 2007.

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Happy Birthday Oscar Wilde

Today on City Connect, our Born This Day series celebrates the anniversary of the birth of inimitable playwright, poet and writer Oscar Wilde who was born on this day in 1854. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.

Biography

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.

Wilde’s parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin.

Wilde also profoundly explored Roman Catholicism, to which he would later convert on his deathbed. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States of America and Canada on the new “English Renaissance in Art”, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist.

At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.

At the height of his fame and success, whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde sued the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel. After a series of trials, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency with other men and imprisoned for two years, held to hard labour. In prison he wrote De Profundis (written in 1897 & published in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.

Upon his release Wilde left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.

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Happy Birthday Chuck Norris

On March 10, City Connect celebrates the birthday of Chuck Norris born on this day in 1940. Chuck Norris is an American martial artist and actor. After serving in the United States Air Force, he began his rise to fame as a martial artist. Chuck Norris appeared in a number of action films, such as Way of the Dragon in which he starred alongside Bruce Lee and was The Cannon Group’s leading star in the 1980s. Chuck Norris next played the starring role in the television series Walker, Texas Ranger from 1993 to 2001.

Chuck Norris in 2008

Biography

Norris joined the United States Air Force as an Air Policeman (AP) in 1958 and was sent to Osan Air Base, South Korea. It was there that Norris acquired the nickname Chuck and began his training in Tang Soo Do, an interest that led to black belts in that art and the founding of the Chun Kuk Do (“Universal Way”) form. When he returned to the United States, he continued to act as an AP at March Air Force Base, California. Norris was discharged in August 1962. He worked for the Northrop Corporation and opened a chain of karate schools including a storefront school in his then-hometown of Torrance on Hawthorne Boulevard. Norris’ official website lists celebrity clients at the schools; among them Steve McQueen, Chad McQueen, Bob Barker, Priscilla Presley, Donny Osmond and Marie Osmond.

In 1969, Norris won Karate’s triple crown for the most tournament wins of the year, and the Fighter of the Year award by Black Belt Magazine. Chuck Norris retired with a karate record of 183–10–2. On July 1, 2000, Norris was presented the Golden Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Karate Union Hall of Fame.

In 1969, Norris made his acting debut in the Dean Martin film The Wrecking Crew. In 1972 he acted as Bruce Lee’s nemesis in the movie Way of the Dragon (titled Return of the Dragon in its U.S. distribution), which is widely credited with launching him toward stardom. In Asia, Norris is still known primarily for this role.

Norris Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

 Norris’ first starring role was 1977’s Breaker! Breaker!, and subsequent films such as Good Guys Wear Black (1978), The Octagon (1980), An Eye for an Eye (1981), and Lone Wolf McQuade proved his increasing box office bankability. In 1984, Norris starred in Missing in Action, the first of a series of prisoner of war rescue fantasies themed around the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue that were released under Cannon Films.

Contrary to reports, Norris publicly said he was never offered the part of the Sensei of the Cobra Kai dojo in the film The Karate Kid. Over the next four years, Norris became Cannon’s most prominent star, appearing in eight films, including Code of Silence, The Delta Force, and Firewalker, in which he co-starred with Academy Award winner Louis Gossett, Jr.

In late 2005, Norris became the object of an ironic internet meme known as “Chuck Norris Facts”, which document fictional, often absurdly heroic feats and characteristics about Norris. Norris has written his own response to the parody on his website, stating that he does not feel offended by them and finds some of them funny.

On March 28, 2007, Commandant Gen. James T. Conway made Norris an honorary United States Marine during a dinner at the commandant’s residence in Washington, D.C. On December 2, 2010, Norris was given the title honorary Texas Ranger by Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Chuck Norris made Honorary Marine in 2007

In addition to being an action superstar, Chuck Norris is also a philanthropist. He is known for his contribution towards organizations such as Funds for Kids, Veteran’s Administration National Salute to Hospitalized Veterans, the United Way, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation in the form of donations as well as fund-raising activities.

His time with the U.S. Veterans Administration as a spokesperson, was inspired by his experience serving the United States Air Force in Korea. His objective has been to popularize the issues such as Pensions and Healthcare, which concern hospitalized war veterans. Due to his significant contributions, and continued patriotism, he received the Veteran of the Year award in 2001 at the American Veteran Awards.

Chuck Norris awarded Veteran of the Year - 2001

Additionally, Norris supports the Vijay Amritraj Foundation, which aims at bringing hope, help and healing to the defenceless and innocent victims of disease, tragedy and circumstance in India. Through his donations, he has helped the foundation support paediatric HIV/AIDS homes in Delhi, a blind school in Karnataka, and a mission that cares for HIV/AIDS infected adults, as well as mentally ill patients in Cochin.

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Happy Birthday John Lennon

City Connect celebrates the anniversary of the birth of John Lennon who was born on this day in 1940. Lennon rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Along with fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.

Biography

Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager, forming his first band, The Quarrymen evolving into The Beatles in 1960.

Lennon marriage to his first wife Cynthia Powell began just as Beatlemania took hold across the UK. He performed on the evening of his wedding day, and would continue to do so almost daily from then on. Their son Julian was born on 8 April 1963. Cynthia attributes the start of the marriage breakdown to LSD, and as a result, she felt that Lennon slowly lost interest in her. Following his affair with Yoko Ono, Lennon and Cynthia divorced with Lennon giving her £100,000 and custody of Julian.

As the Beatles disintegrated towards the end of the 60s, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced the critically acclaimed albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and iconic songs such as “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine”. Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, his writing, his drawings, on film, and in interviews, becoming controversial through his political and peace activism.

After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. He moved to New York City in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon’s administration to deport him, while his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 on Ono’s request for him to become a househusband and he devoted the next five years to looking after his infant son Sean. Lennon re-emerged in 1980 with a new album, Double Fantasy.

Three weeks after the release of this album, Lennon was murdered. At around 10:50 pm on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in The Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times at the entrance to the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:07 pm. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman.

Ono issued a statement the next day, saying “There is no funeral for John,” ending it with the words, “John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him.” His body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York’s Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life; as of 2011, he remains in prison, having been denied parole six times.

Music historians Schinder and Schwartz, writing of the transformation in popular music styles that took place between the 1950s and the 1960s, say that The Beatles’ influence cannot be overstated: having “revolutionized the sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock and roll’s doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts”, the group then “spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock’s stylistic frontiers”. Liam Gallagher, his group Oasis among the many who acknowledge the band’s influence, identifies Lennon as a hero; in 1999 he named his first child Lennon Gallagher in tribute. On National Poetry Day in 1999, after conducting a poll to identify the UK’s favourite song lyric, the BBC announced “Imagine” the winner.

In a 2006 Guardian article, Jon Wiener wrote: “For young people in 1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon’s courage in standing up to [US President] Nixon. That willingness to take risks with his career, and his life, is one reason why people still admire him today.” Whilst for music historians Urish and Bielen, Lennon’s most significant effort was “the self-portraits … in his songs [which] spoke to, for, and about, the human condition.”

Lennon continues to be mourned throughout the world and has been the subject of numerous memorials and tributes. In 2010, on what would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday, the John Lennon Peace Monument was unveiled in Chavasse Park, Liverpool, by Cynthia and Julian Lennon. The sculpture entitled ‘Peace & Harmony’ exhibits peace symbols and carries the inscription “Peace on Earth for the Conservation of Life · In Honour of John Lennon 1940–1980”.

The Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership is regarded as one of the most influential and successful of the 20th century. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) with the other Beatles in 1965. Lennon was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted him eighth. Between 2003 and 2008, Rolling Stone recognised Lennon in several reviews of artists and music, ranking him fifth of “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” and 38th of “The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time”, and his albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, 22nd and 76th respectively of “The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.

As of 2010, Lennon’s solo album sales in the United States exceed 14 million units, and as writer, co-writer or performer, he is responsible for 25 number-one singles on the US Hot 100 chart.

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Happy Birthday Truman Capote

City Connect pays tribute to Truman Capote who was born this day in 1924. Capote was an acclaimed author of many classic works of American Literature including his famous crime novel “In Cold Blood” and the novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” which was turned into a hit film starring Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly and George Peppard.

Biography

Truman Streckfus Persons, known as Truman Capote, (born 30 September 1924 – died 25 August 1984) was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a “nonfiction novel.” At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.

Capote rose above a childhood troubled by divorce, a long absence from his mother and multiple migrations. He discovered his calling by the age of 11, and for the rest of his childhood he honed his writing ability. Capote began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of one story, “Miriam” (1945), attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, resulting in a contract to write Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Capote earned the most fame with In Cold Blood (1966), a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home, a book Capote spent four years writing, with much help from Harper Lee, who wrote the famous To Kill a Mockingbird. A milestone in popular culture, it was the peak of his career, although it was not his final book. In the 1970s, he maintained his celebrity status by appearing on television talk shows.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories (1958) brought together the title novella and three shorter tales: “House of Flowers,” “A Diamond Guitar” and “A Christmas Memory.” The heroine of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Holly Golightly, became one of Capote’s best known creations, and the book’s prose style prompted Norman Mailer to call Capote “the most perfect writer of my generation.”

For Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s was a turning point, as he explained to Roy Newquist (Counterpoint, 1964):
“I think I’ve had two careers. One was the career of precocity, the young person who published a series of books that were really quite remarkable. I can even read them now and evaluate them favorably, as though they were the work of a stranger… My second career began, I guess it really began with Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It involves a different point of view, a different prose style to some degree. Actually, the prose style is an evolvement from one to the other—a pruning and thinning-out to a more subdued, clearer prose. I don’t find it as evocative, in many respects, as the other, or even as original, but it is more difficult to do. But I’m nowhere near reaching what I want to do, where I want to go. Presumably this new book is as close as I’m going to get, at least strategically.”

Capote was 5 feet 3 inches tall and openly homosexual. One of his first serious lovers was Smith College literature professor Newton Arvin, who won the National Book Award for his Herman Melville biography in 1951. It was to Arvin that Capote dedicated Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Capote was well known for his distinctive, high-pitched voice and odd vocal mannerisms, his offbeat manner of dress and his fabrications. He often claimed to know intimately people whom he had in fact never met, such as Greta Garbo. He professed to have had numerous liaisons with men thought to be heterosexual, including, he claimed, Errol Flynn. He traveled in an eclectic array of social circles, hobnobbing with authors, critics, business tycoons, philanthropists, Hollywood and theatrical celebrities, royalty, and members of high society, both in the US and abroad. Part of his public persona was a longstanding rivalry with writer Gore Vidal. Their rivalry prompted Tennessee Williams to complain: “You would think they were running neck-and-neck for some fabulous gold prize.”

Capote died in Los Angeles on August 25, 1984, aged 59 from liver cancer leaving behind his longtime companion, author Jack Dunphy. After his death, his perpetual nemesis and fellow writer Gore Vidal described Capote’s demise as “a good career move”.

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Happy Birthday Catherine Zeta-Jones

City Connect celebrates the birthday of Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones who recently separated from husband Michael Douglas who was born on the same day as her and is 25 years her senior. Catherine Zeta-Jones has announced she has Bipolar II Disorder and sought treatment for the condition in April 2011, checking herself into a mental health facility in Connecticut. Read our article about her brave announcement here. For more about Catherine’s life and work, read her biography below.

Biography

Catherine Zeta-Jones CBE (born 25 September 1969) is a Welsh actress. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of UK and US television programmes and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies an won an Oscar for her role as Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of the musical Chicago.

Her role as Mariette in the successful British television adaptation of H. E. Bates’ The Darling Buds of May brought her to public attention and made her a British tabloid darling. She briefly flirted with a musical career. In 1990, Zeta-Jones participated in a television commercial for the German Deutsche Bahn at the age of 21, playing the part of a young woman eloping with her lover from a joyless marriage, a role which apparently helped in promoting her acting career. She continued to find moderate success with a number of television projects, including The Return of the Native (1994) based on the novel of the same name and the mini-series Catherine the Great (1995). She also appeared in Splitting Heirs (1993), a comedy starring Eric Idle, Rick Moranis and John Cleese. In 1996, she was cast as the evil aviatrix Sala in the action film, The Phantom, based on the comic by Lee Falk. The following year, she co-starred in the CBS mini-series Titanic.

Career success, 1998–2003

Steven Spielberg, who noted her performance in the mini-series Titanic, recommended her to Martin Campbell, the director of The Mask of Zorro. Zeta-Jones subsequently landed a lead role in the film, alongside compatriot Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas. She learned dancing, riding, sword-fighting and took part in dialect classes to play her role as Elena. Commenting on her performance, Variety noted, “Zeta-Jones is bewitchingly lovely as the center of everyone’s attention, and she throws herself into the often physical demands of her role with impressive grace.” She won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Female Newcomer and received an Empire Award nomination for Best British Actress and a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress.

In 1999, she co-starred with Sean Connery in the film Entrapment, and alongside Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor in The Haunting. The following year, she starred in the critically acclaimed Traffic with future husband Michael Douglas. Traffic earned praise from the press, with the critic for the Dallas Observer calling the movie “a remarkable achievement in filmmaking, a beautiful and brutal work”. Zeta-Jones’ performance earned her her first Golden Globe nomination, as Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture as well as many other nominations and acclaim.

She took the lead role of America’s Sweethearts, a 2001 romantic comedy film which also starred Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal and John Cusack. The film received unfavorable reviews, with Los Angeles Weekly stating that the film “isn’t just banal, it’s aggressively, arrogantly banal.” However, it was a hit at the box office grossing over $138 million worldwide. Her character in the film was Gwen Harrison who is a film star.

In 2002, Zeta-Jones continued her momentum and played murderous vaudevillian Velma Kelly in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Chicago. Her performance was well received by critics. Chicago was a commercial success, grossing more than $306 million worldwide, and received universal acclaim. In 2003, Zeta-Jones garnered an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance. Also that year, she starred as serial divorcee Marilyn Rexroth in the black comedy Intolerable Cruelty with George Clooney.

2004–present

In 2004, she played air hostess Amelia Warren in The Terminal as well as Europol agent Isabel Lahiri in Ocean’s Twelve, the sequel to Ocean’s Eleven. She and the cast members were nominated for the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast. In 2005, she reprised her role as Elena in The Legend of Zorro, the sequel to The Mask of Zorro. The film grossed over $142 million worldwide.

In 2007, she starred opposite Aaron Eckhart and Abigail Breslin in the American romantic comedy drama No Reservations. The film garnered mixed or average reviews but was successful commercially, grossing $92 million worldwide.

In 2008, Zeta-Jones starred alongside Guy Pearce and Saoirse Ronan in Death Defying Acts, a biopic about legendary escapologist Harry Houdini at the height of his career in the 1920s. In 2009, Zeta-Jones starred in romantic comedy The Rebound, in which she played a 40-year old mother of two who falls in love with a younger man, played by Justin Bartha.

In August 2009, it was announced she would return to her musical roots and make her Broadway debut in the revival of A Little Night Music with Angela Lansbury, beginning December 2009. For her performance, Zeta-Jones received an Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award, as well as a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical.

In 2012, she featured in Stephen Frears’ Lay the Favorite starring Bruce Willis, which premièred at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. In 2012, she also appeared in Playing for Keeps with Gerard Butler and Rock of Ages, alongside Tom Cruise and Alec Baldwin. Her 2013 projects included Broken City and Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, the latter being their third collaboration.

Apart from her acting career, Zeta-Jones is also an advertising spokeswoman, currently the global spokeswoman for cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden. She has appeared in numerous TV commercials for the phone company T-Mobile, and one for Alfa Romeo. She is also the spokeswoman for Di Modolo jewellery. Zeta-Jones was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours.

Personal life

Zeta-Jones met actor Michael Douglas, who shares the same birthday as her, and is exactly 25 years her senior, at the Deauville Film Festival in France in August 1998, after being introduced by Danny DeVito. They began dating in March 1999, even though Douglas was still married. Zeta-Jones claims that when they met, he used the line “I’d like to father your children.” They became engaged on 31 December 1999, and were married at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on 18 November 2000, just weeks after Douglas’ divorce was finalized. A traditional Welsh choir (Côr Cymraeg Rehoboth) sang at their wedding. Her Welsh gold wedding ring includes a Celtic motif and was purchased in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth. They have two children. Their son, Dylan Michael Douglas (named after Dylan Thomas), was born on 8 August 2000, with Zeta Jones’ pregnancy incorporated into her role in Traffic. Their daughter, Carys Zeta Douglas, was born on 20 April 2003. The family currently lives in New York City.

In August 2013, People claimed that Douglas and Zeta-Jones began living separately in May 2013, but have not taken any legal action towards separation or divorce. A representative for Zeta-Jones subsequently confirmed that they “are taking some time apart to evaluate and work on their marriage.”

In April 2011, Zeta-Jones sought treatment for Bipolar II Disorder, checking herself into Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut. Zeta-Jones “proactively” checked into a health care facility again in April 2013 for further treatment related to her bipolar disorder.

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Happy Birthday Stephen King

On 21 September City Connect celebrates the birthday of Stephen King, the bestselling horror and science fiction author. His books have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide, many of which have been adapted into feature films, television movies and comic books. Read his biography to find out more about his life and work.

Biography

Stephen King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction.  As of 2011, King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, five non-fiction books, and nine collections of short stories. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

Stephen King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. When King was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of “going to buy a pack of cigarettes,” leaving his mother to raise King and his adopted older brother, David, by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned, speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend’s death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King’s darker works, but King himself has dismissed the idea.

King’s primary inspiration for writing horror fiction was related in detail in his 1981 non-fiction Danse Macabre, in a chapter titled “An Annoying Autobiographical Pause”. King makes a comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of an H.P. Lovecraft collection of short stories that had belonged to his father. The cover art—an illustration of a yellow-green Demon hiding within the recesses of a Hellish cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which “that interior dowsing rod responded to.”

In 1973, King’s novel Carrie was accepted by publishing house Doubleday. King actually threw an early draft of the novel in the bin after becoming discouraged with his progress writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. His wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it. His advance for Carrie was $2,500, with paperback rights earning $400,000 at a later date. This first novel by King revolves around the eponymous Carrie, a shy high-school girl, who uses her newly discovered telekinetic powers to exact revenge on those who tease her. Sissy Spacek starred in the title role of the 1976 film adaptation and was nominated for that year’s Academy Award for Best Actress.

Soon after the release of Carrie in 1974, his mother died of uterine cancer. After his mother’s death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where King wrote The Shining (published 1977). The novel was adapted into the 1980 classic horror movie of the same name starring Jack Nicholson and was directed by Stanley Kubrick.

His 1987 novel, Misery, was adapted into a highly successful film starring Kathy Bates and James Caan. Kathy Bates won the 1990 Best Actress Oscar for her performance.

In 2006, King published an apocalyptic novel, Cell. The story follows a New England artist struggling to reunite with his young son after a mysterious signal broadcast over the global cell phone network turns the majority of his fellow humans into mindless vicious animals. King noted in the book’s introduction that he does not use cell phones.

In 2008, King published both a novel, Duma Key, and a collection, Just After Sunset. The latter featured 13 short stories, including a novella, N., which was later released as a serialized animated series that could be seen for free, or, for a small fee, could be downloaded in a higher quality; it then was adopted into a limited comic book series.

In 2009, King published Ur, a novella written exclusively for the launch of the second-generation Amazon Kindle and available only on Amazon.com, and Throttle, a novella co-written with his son Joe Hill, and released later as an audiobook Road Rage, which included Richard Matheson’s short story “Duel”. On November 10 that year, King’s novel Under the Dome was published. It is a reworking of an unfinished novel he tried writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and at 1,074 pages, it is the largest novel he has written since 1986’s It. It debuted at No. 1 in The New York Times Bestseller List.

On February 16, 2010, King announced on his website that his next book would be a collection of four previously unpublished novellas called Full Dark, No Stars. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy, an original novella issued first by independent small press Cemetery Dance Publications and later released in mass-market paperback by Simon & Schuster.

King’s next novel, 11/22/63, was published in 2011 and was nominated for the 2012 World Fantasy Award Best Novel. The eighth Dark Tower volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole, was published in 2012. King’s next book is Joyland, a novel about “an amusement-park serial killer”, published on April 8, 2012. It will be followed by the sequel to The Shining (1977), titled Doctor Sleep, scheduled to be published in late 2013.

King’s formula for learning to write well is: “Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can’t expect to become a good writer.” He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met. He also has a simple definition for talent in writing: “If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the electricity bill with the money, I consider you talented.”

When asked why he writes, King responds: “The answer to that is fairly simple—there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That’s why I do it. I really can’t imagine doing anything else and I can’t imagine not doing what I do.” He is also often asked why he writes such terrifying stories and he answers with another question “Why do you assume I have a choice?”

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Happy Birthday Agatha Christie

City Connect celebrates the anniversary of the birth of bestselling author and playwright Agatha Christie who was born on this day in 1890. Christie created two well-known characters in her detective novels: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Poirot is the only fictional character to have been given an obituary in The New York Times. Read her biography below for more information on her life and work.

Biography

Dame Agatha Christie, DBE, (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 80 detective novels – especially those featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple – and her successful West End theatre plays.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling writer of books of all time and, with William Shakespeare, the best-selling author of any type. She has sold roughly four billion copies of her novels. According to Index Translationum, Christie is the most translated individual author, with only the collective corporate works of Walt Disney Productions surpassing her. Her books have been translated into at least 103 languages.

Christie’s stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run: it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952 and as of 2011 is still running after more than 24,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honour, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year Witness for the Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play. Most of her books and short stories have been filmed, some many times over (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and 4.50 From Paddington for instance), and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics.

In 1968, Booker Books, a subsidiary of the agri-industrial conglomerate Booker-McConnell, bought a 51 percent stake in Agatha Christie Limited, the private company that Christie had set up for tax purposes. Booker later increased its stake to 64 percent. In 1998, Booker sold its shares to Chorion, a company whose portfolio also includes the literary estates of Enid Blyton and Dennis Wheatley.

Almost all of Agatha Christie’s books are whodunits, focusing on the British middle and upper classes. Usually, the detective either stumbles across the murder or is called upon by an old acquaintance, who is somehow involved. Gradually, the detective interrogates each suspect, examines the scene of the crime and makes a note of each clue, so readers can analyze it and be allowed a fair chance of solving the mystery themselves. Then, about halfway through, or sometimes even during the final act, one of the suspects usually dies, often because they have inadvertently deduced the killer’s identity and need silencing. In a few of her novels, including Death Comes as the End and And Then There Were None, there are multiple victims. Finally, the detective organises a meeting of all the suspects and slowly denounces the guilty party, exposing several unrelated secrets along the way, sometimes over the course of thirty or so pages. The murders are often extremely ingenious, involving some convoluted piece of deception. Christie’s stories are also known for their taut atmosphere and strong psychological suspense, developed from the deliberately slow pace of her prose.

In late 1926, Agatha’s husband, Archie, revealed that he was in love with another woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. On 8 December 1926 the couple quarreled, and Archie Christie left their house Styles in Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress at Godalming, Surrey. That same evening Agatha disappeared from her home, leaving behind a letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public, many of whom were admirers of her novels. Despite a massive manhunt, she was not found for 11 days.

On 19 December 1926 Agatha was identified as a guest at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (now the Old Swan Hotel) in Harrogate, Yorkshire, where she was registered as ‘Mrs Teresa Neele’ from Cape Town. Agatha gave no account of her disappearance. Although two doctors had diagnosed her as suffering from psychogenic fugue, opinion remains divided as to the reasons for her disappearance. One suggestion is that she had suffered a nervous breakdown brought about by a natural propensity for depression, exacerbated by her mother’s death earlier that year and the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. Public reaction at the time was largely negative, with many believing it a publicity stunt while others speculated she was trying to make the police believe her husband had killed her.

Author Jared Cade interviewed numerous witnesses and relatives for his sympathetic biography, Agatha Christie and the Missing Eleven Days, and provided a substantial amount of evidence to suggest that Christie planned the entire disappearance to embarrass her husband, never thinking it would escalate into the melodrama it became.

The Christies divorced in 1928. In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan (Sir Max from 1968) after joining him in an archaeological dig. Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and remained so until Christie’s death in 1976.

To honour her many literary works, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1956 New Year Honours. The next year, she became the President of the Detection Club. In the 1971 New Year Honours she was promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, three years after her husband had been knighted for his archeological work in 1968. They were one of the few married couples where both partners were honoured in their own right. From 1968, due to her husband’s knighthood, Christie could also be styled as Lady Mallowan.

From 1971 to 1974, Christie’s health began to fail, although she continued to write. In 1975, sensing her increasing weakness, Christie signed over the rights of her most successful play, The Mousetrap, to her grandson. Recently, using experimental textual tools of analysis, Canadian researchers have suggested that Christie may have begun to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia.

Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her Winterbrook House in the north of Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire (formerly part of Berkshire). She is buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary’s, Cholsey.

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Happy Birthday Lord Attenborough

City Connect celebrates the 88th birthday of The Rt Hon Lord Attenborough, CBE – better known as actor, producer and director Richard Attenborough. He became a life peer in 1993 and his title is Baron of Richmond upon Thames in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. He is an acclaimed actor, director and producer and has won countless awards over the years including BAFTAs, Oscars and Hollywood Golden Globes.

Lord Attenborough is probably best known as the director and producer of the film Gandhi which depicted the life and assassination of India’s great political and ideological leader Mahatma Gandhi. The film won 8 Oscars, 5 BAFTA Awards, 5 Hollywood Golden Globes and the Directors’ Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement.

Biography

Lord Attenborough was born in Cambridge, England on 29 August 1923. He is the elder brother of naturalist and wildlife filmmaker Sir David Attenborough. His father was a don at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. During the Second World War Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force.

Lord Attenborough’s film career began in 1942 as a deserting sailor in In Which We Serve, a role which would help to type-cast him for many years as spivs or cowards in films like London Belongs to Me (1948), Morning Departure (1950), and his breakthrough role as a psychopathic young gangster in the film of Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock (1947). Lord Attenborough worked prolifically in British films for the next thirty years, and in the 1950s appeared in several successful comedies for John and Roy Boulting, including Private’s Progress (1956) and I’m All Right Jack (1959). Early in his stage career, Lord Attenborough starred in the London West End production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, which went on to become the world’s longest-running stage production. Both he and his wife were among the original cast members of the production, which opened in 1952 and as of 2010 is still running.

In the 1960s, he expanded his range of character roles in films such as Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) and Guns at Batasi (1964), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM). In 1963 he appeared in the ensemble cast of The Great Escape as Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (“Big X”), the head of the escape committee. It was his first appearance in a major Hollywood film blockbuster and his most successful film up to that time.

In 1967 and 1968, he won back-to-back Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor, the first time for The Sand Pebbles starring Steve McQueen and the second time for Doctor Dolittle starring Rex Harrison. He won another Golden Globe, for Best Director, for Gandhi in 1983. Six years prior to Gandhi he played the ruthless General Outram, in Indian director Satyajit Ray’s period piece The Chess Players. He has never been nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category.

He took no acting roles following his appearance in Otto Preminger’s version of The Human Factor in 1979 until his appearance as the eccentric developer John Hammond in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park in 1993 and the popular film’s 1997 sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The following year, he starred in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street as Kris Kringle. Since then he has made occasional appearances in supporting roles, including as Sir William Cecil in the 1998 historical drama Elizabeth.

In the late 1950s, Lord Attenborough formed a production company, Beaver Films, with Bryan Forbes and began to build a profile as a producer on projects including The League of Gentlemen (1959), The Angry Silence (1960) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961), also appearing in the first two of these as an actor.

His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), and his acting appearances became more sporadic—the most notable being his portrayal of serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place (1971). He later directed two epic period films: Young Winston (1972), based on the early life of Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far (1977), an all-star account of Operation Market Garden in World War II. He won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Director for his historical epic, Gandhi, a project he had been attempting to get made for many years. As the film’s producer, he also won the Academy Award for Best Picture. His most recent films as director and producer include Chaplin (1992) starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Charlie Chaplin and Shadowlands (1993), based on the relationship between C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. The star of the latter was Anthony Hopkins, who also appeared in three other films for Lord Attenborough: Young Winston, A Bridge Too Far and the thriller Magic (1978).

Lord Attenborough also directed the screen version of the musical A Chorus Line (1985); and the apartheid drama Cry Freedom based on the life and death in police custody of prominent anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko and the experiences of Donald Woods. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films.

Lord Attenborough is the patron of the UWC movement (United World Colleges) whereby he continually contributes greatly to the colleges that are part of the organisation. He has frequented the United World College of Southern Africa (UWCSA) Waterford Kamhlaba. With his wife, he founded the Richard and Sheila Attenborough Visual Arts Centre. He also founded the Jane Holland Creative Centre for Learning at Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland in memory of his daughter who died in the tsunami on 26 December 2004. He passionately believes in education, primarily education that does not judge upon colour, race, creed or religion. His attachment to Waterford is his passion for non-racial education, which were the grounds on which Waterford Kamhlaba was founded. Waterford was one of his inspirations for directing the Cry Freedom motion picture based on the life of Steve Biko.

A lifelong supporter of Chelsea Football Club, Lord Attenborough served as a director of the club from 1969–1982 and between 1993 and 2008 held the honorary position of Life Vice President. On the 30 November 2008 he was honoured with the title of Life President at the club’s stadium, Stamford Bridge.

In December 2008 Lord Attenborough suffered a fall at his home and was briefly in a coma. His health deteriorated after the fall and in May 2011, David Attenborough revealed in the Telegraph newspaper that his brother was now in a wheelchair but is still capable of holding a conversation and talking about old times. David Attenborough also said that his brother has been “watching his beloved Chelsea in the Premiership”. Lord Attenborough’s spokesman has confirmed that the actor/director probably won’t be making any more films.

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Happy Birthday Kim Cattrall

On 21 August City Connect celebrates the birthday of Kim Cattrall who has proved to audiences that there is life after Samantha and the runaway success of Sex and the City with her latest movie roles and successful stage career. Cattrall is as busy as ever and looks fabulous in her fifties!

Biography

Kim Victoria Cattrall (born 21 August 1956) is an English-Canadian actress. She is known for her role as Samantha Jones in the HBO comedy/romance series Sex and the City, and for her leading roles in the 1980s films Police Academy, Big Trouble in Little China, Mannequin, and Porky’s.

For her role as Samantha Jones, she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2002 and received four nominations for the role. Her success in Sex and the City also led her to receive two Screen Actors Guild Awards out of seven nominations (including two for Outstanding Female Actress in a Comedy Series) and five Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Comedy Actress.

In 1982, Cattrall played P.E. teacher, Miss Honeywell (Lassie), in Porky’s, followed two years later by a role in the original Police Academy. In 1985, she starred in three movies: Turk 182, City Limits, and Hold-Up, the latter with French star Jean-Paul Belmondo. In 1986, she played Kurt Russell’s brainy flame in the action film Big Trouble in Little China. In 1987, her lead role in Mannequin proved a huge success with audiences. One of her best-known film roles is that of Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Aside from her film work, Cattrall is also a stage and theatre actress, with performances in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Wild Honey to her credit. In 1997, she was cast in Sex and the City, Darren Star’s series which was broadcast on HBO. As Samantha Jones, Cattrall gained international recognition. She capitalized on her success by appearing in steamy television commercials promoting Pepsi One.

Her film work continued during Sex and the City when she appeared in Britney Spears’ first film venture, Crossroads. Sex and the City ended as a weekly series in spring 2004 with 10.6 million viewers. Cattrall reprised the role of Samantha Jones in the Sex and the City film, released on 30 May 2008. She also appeared in the sequel released in May 2010. She was nominated for 5 Emmy Awards for her role in the show.

In 2005, she appeared in the Disney picture Ice Princess, in which she played ice skating coach Tina Harwood of the film’s lead character. She portrayed Claire, a paralyzed woman who wants to die, in the West End drama revival of Whose Life Is It Anyway?. In October 2006, she appeared in a West End production of David Mamet’s The Cryptogram at the Donmar Warehouse in London.

Since late 2005, she has appeared in a number of British television commercials for Tetley Tea. In July 2006, a commercial for Nissan cars, which featured Cattrall as Samantha Jones, was withdrawn from New Zealand television, apparently because of complaints about its innuendo.

In 2006, she starred alongside Brendan Gleeson in John Boorman’s 2006 film The Tiger’s Tail, a black comedy that focuses on the impact of the Celtic Tiger economy on Irish people. On ITV, she starred alongside David Haig, Daniel Radcliffe, and Carey Mulligan in My Boy Jack, the story of author Rudyard Kipling’s search for his son lost in World War I.

On 24 February 2010, Cattrall began a critically acclaimed run in the West End of London at The Vaudeville Theatre as leading lady, Amanda, opposite Matthew Macfadyen, almost twenty years her junior, in a revival of Noël Coward’s play Private Lives. She performed until 3 May 2010.

In 2010, Cattrall was named an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University in recognition of her contributions to the dramatic arts.

In 2011, Cattrall reprised her role as Amanda in the revival of Noël Coward’s play Private Lives opposite Canadian actor Paul Gross in Toronto and on Broadway.

From June to August 2013, Cattrall is scheduled to star in The Old Vic’s production of Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth, directed by Olivier Award-winner Marianne Elliott.

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Happy Birthday Charlize Theron

City Connect celebrates the birthday of award-winning actress and activist Charlize Theron who was born on this day – 7 August. Charlize Theron started life as a dancer and has now reached the dizzy heights of being an Academy Award winner. She has been named as John Galliano’s muse by the designer himself. You will either be familiar with Theron from her numerous films or because she is currently the face of J’Adore by Christian Dior.

Biography

Charlize Theron (born 7 August 1975) is a South African actress, film producer and former fashion model. She rose to fame in the late 1990s following her roles in 2 Days in the Valley, Mighty Joe Young, The Devil’s Advocate and The Cider House Rules.

She received critical acclaim and an Academy Award for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the film Monster, for which she became the first South African to win an Academy Award in a major acting category. She received another Academy Award nomination for her performance in North Country.

Theron was born in Benoni, Transvaal Province, South Africa and left home at 16 to start modelling. Although fluent in English, her first language is Afrikaans. After a knee injury cut chort her ballet career in New York, Theron moved to Los Angeles and her acting career skyrocketed in the late 1990s with box office successes like The Devil’s Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998) and The Cider House Rules (1999). She was on the cover of the January 1999 issue of Vanity Fair as the “White Hot Venus”.

After appearing in a few notable films, Theron starred as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003). Film critic Roger Ebert called it “one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema”. For this role, Theron won the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, as well as the SAG Award and the Golden Globe Award. She is the first South African to win an Oscar for Best Actress.

In 2012 Theron starred as Queen Ravenna in the fairy tale adaptation Snow White and the Huntsman which also starred Kirsten Stewart as Snow White and Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman.

Charlize Theron is involved in women’s rights organizations, and has marched in pro-choice rallies. She is also a supporter of animal rights and an active member of PETA. She appeared in a PETA ad for their anti-fur campaign. Charlize Theron is a supporter of same-sex marriage and attended a march to support that in Fresno, California, on 30 May 2009. She is a gay rights activist and refuses to get married until same sex marriage is legal in the United States.

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Happy Birthday Peter O’Toole

On 02 August City Connect celebrates the birthday of Peter O’Toole, the famous Irish actor who shot to stardom after his 1962 portrayal of T. E. Lawrence in the classic film Lawrence of Arabia.

Biography

Peter Seamus Lorcan O’Toole (born 2 August 1932) is a highly-honoured film and stage actor, now retired. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, and holds the record for most competitive Academy Award acting nominations without a win. He has won four Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and an Emmy, and was the recipient of an Honorary Academy Award in 2003 for his body of work.

After starting out in British theatre, O’Toole’s major break came when he was chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), after Marlon Brando proved unavailable and Albert Finney turned down the role. His performance was ranked number one in Premiere magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. The role introduced him to American audiences and earned him the first of his eight nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor – he is the most-nominated actor never to win the award.

Peter O’Toole has starred in countless films and was most recently seen in the 2004 blockbuster Troy where he played King Priam and the 2006 film Venus where he portrayed Maurice. O’Toole’s latest appearance on the small screen was in the second season of Showtime’s hit drama series The Tudors, portraying Pope Paul III, who excommunicates King Henry VIII from the Catholic church. O’Toole has narrated the forthcoming horror comedy film Eldorado, which was directed by Richard Driscoll.

In an interview with National Public Radio in December 2006, Peter O’Toole revealed that he knows all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A self-described romantic, O’Toole regards the sonnets as among the finest collection of English poems, reading them daily. In the movie Venus, he recites Sonnet 18, “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day.”

Peter O’Toole has written two memoirs. Loitering With Intent: The Child chronicles his childhood in the years leading up to World War II and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1992. His second, Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice, is about his years spent training with a cadre of friends at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The books have been praised by critics such as Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times, who wrote: “A cascade of language, a rumbling tumbling riot of words, a pub soliloquy to an invisible but imaginable audience, and the more captivating for it. O’Toole as raconteur is grand company.”

Peter O’Toole has said that the actor he most enjoyed working with was Katharine Hepburn, his close friend, with whom he played Henry II to her Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter.

On 10 July 2012, O’Toole released a statement that he was retiring from acting.

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