After being a child star Natalie Wood had a rising career as a mature actress (11/16/2010)
(...) She did not succeed on the small screen and returned to the movies, struggling through the awkward period of adolescence. It wasn't until Natalie Wood blossomed as a young adult and costarred with JAMES DEAN in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) that she emerged as a potential new star. Winning a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance brought her increased visibility, though James Dean was the focus of most people's attention. (...)

Bruce Willis played roles created by Damon Runyon or Raymond Chandler (11/13/2010)
(...) After appearing in Blind Date (1987) and Sunset (1988), both directed by Blake Edwards, Bruce Willis was cast in Die Hard (1988), one of the highest-grossing blockbusters of the year. Sequels would follow, but Bruce Willis avoided being typecast as a macho maverick action hero like Schwarzenegger or Stallone by appearing as the traumatized Vietnam War veteran in the film adaptation of Bobbie Ann Mason's novel In Country (1989). In 1991 he played the lead in the cult comedy-adventure Hudson Hawk (with Danny Aiello and Andie MacDowell). (...)

Kathleen Turner has a unique voice that made her famous (11/10/2010)
(...) She went on to choose an eclectic mix of films during the balance of the 1980s, including the STEVE MARTIN comedy romp, The Man With Two Brains (1983), and the intense, steamy Ken Russell indulgence, Crimes of Passion (1984). Then, in short order, she suddenly fulfilled the prophecies of the critics, scoring along with MICHAEL DOUGLAS in the $100-million-grossing Romancing the Stone (1984), followed by the disappointing but still commercially successful sequel, Jewel of the Nile (1985). Kathleen Turner played opposite Douglas yet again in the black comedy War of the Roses (1989). (...)

Jon Voight avoided leading roles and chose more complex ones (11/10/2010)
(...) Midnight Cowboy, however, was not Jon Voight's first film role. After acting in stock and on TV, he made his movie debut in Hour of the Gun (1967). Among other earlier films, he also worked with Hoffman in Madigan's Millions, a movie that was made in 1967 before either of them were stars and finally released in 1970 when they were both hot properties. (...)

Gene Tierney was another great beauty that shined in Hollywood (11/06/2010)
(...) She played Ellie May in Tobacco Road (1941), she was Belle in Belle Star (1941), and she was the female lead in ERNST LUBITSCH's Heaven Can Wait (1943), but it was Laura that hurled her into the Hollywood firmament of stars. In this romantic suspense movie directed by OTTO PREMINGER, a detective (played by Dana Andrews) falls in love with a portrait of Laura (Gene Tierney), thinking that the beautiful woman in the picture has been murdered. When she suddenly appears, alive and well, the two are drawn together while a thwarted murderer (Clifton Webb) continues his efforts to kill her. (...)

Shirley Temple was the greatest child star in Hollywood (11/05/2010)
(...) Her descent from the pinnacle came swiftly thereafter. By the end of the 1930s, Shirley Temple suffered several flops and the magic was gone. No longer a precious little girl, the pretty teenager had lost her audience. (...)

Elizabeth Taylor became a superstar thanks to her talent and great beauty (11/04/2010)
(...) Elizabeth Taylor continued acting in adolescent roles throughout the 1940s, but she never went through that difficult young ingenue period that destroyed so many child actresses' careers. Elizabeth Taylor exhibited a very rapid physical growth, becoming a stunning young woman while still in her teens. In fact, she was courted by none other than billionaire Howard Hughes when she was just 17. (...)

Barbra Streisand is one of the biggest female stars (10/30/2010)
(...) After high school, she took acting lessons but made little progress until she began to sing for extra money at a gay bar in Greenwich Village. It was her singing career that continued to thrive and opened doors for her, getting her a supporting role in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which had originally been written for a woman more than twice her age. It was during the run of that play that she met and married the show's star, Elliott Gould. (...)

Sharon Stone became famous in Basic Instinct (10/29/2010)
(...) In her first role, in Stardust Memories, she was cast as a bimbo who looked like Barbie; and in her second film, Deadly Blessing (1981), directed by Wes Craven, she played a drug-addicted model who becomes a stalker's victim. This was hardly an auspicious start in film, so she turned to television, appearing in Bay City Blues as a baseball player's wife in the short-lived series. Her next significant film was Irreconcilable Differences (1984), in which she played a waitress, showing some comic talent. (...)

Steven Spielberg is one of the top Hollywood success stories (10/28/2010)
(...) T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). The movie was the perfect blend of innocence and adventure, without evil villains, sex, violence, or even knock-out special effects, but it had more than its share of heart and humor, making it the most commercially successful movie in Hollywood history. (...)

Will Smith started as a rapper and became an actor (10/24/2010)
(...) His breakthrough role came later that year in an adaptation of John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation. Will Smith demonstrated his dramatic talents as a homosexual con man who lies his way into the affections of a wealthy couple played by Stockard Channing and DONALD SUTHERLAND. Smith drew critical applause for his performance, but next turned to the genre that would make him a household name - action. (...)

Norma Shearer was the First Lady of the screen (10/22/2010)
(...) Shearer was hoping she could get her two daughters into the movies. Norma edged into her film career as an extra in The Flapper (1920), quickly working her way up to a featured role in The Stealers (1920). She worked steadily thereafter in mostly unimportant movies, moving to Metro Pictures right before it became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. (...)

How Arnold Schwarzenegger became an actor and a politician (10/21/2010)
(...) Olympia. In fact, by the time he appeared as the focus of the highly regarded documentary Pumping Iron (1977), he had been world champion for eight consecutive years. Arnold Schwarzenegger arrived in the United States at 21 to continue his pursuit of bodybuilding fame. (...)

Winona Ryder is a talented actress that had some police problems (10/20/2010)
(...) Better roles were to follow. Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990) was a hit, and as the 15-year-old daughter of CHER in Mermaids (1990), she attracted a great deal of attention. Unfortunately, performing in three 1990 films took its toll: Winona Ryder caught the flu and had to turn down the meaty role of May Corleone in The Godfather: Part III (also 1990). (...)

Julia Roberts starred in many blockbuster hits (10/16/2010)
(...) Pretty Woman was the second-best-grossing film of 1990, earning more than $170 million. Joel Schumacher cast her next in Flatliners (1990), with Kevin Bacon and Kiefer Sutherland, followed by Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), a romantic thriller that transported her to a new genre, and Dying Young (1991), which was something of a flop for her because it only made $32 million, in contrast to the $100 million Sleeping with the Enemy had made. Regardless, STEVEN SPIELBERG cast her as Tinkerbell in his James M. (...)

Elvis Presley had an amazing success in music and films (10/15/2010)
(...) The family later moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and the young Elvis Presley seemed destined for a career as a truck driver until he hit it big at Sun Records. RCA quickly signed him in 1955, and his career began to soar. He had one hit song after another, and in 1956 he made his movie debut in Love Me Tender, a post–Civil War western in which he played a supporting role and sang four songs, including the title tune. (...)

Sidney Poitier is the first major black movie star of Hollywood (10/13/2010)
(...) His career was launched. Sidney Poitier continued to act on the stage and was soon offered the opportunity to play a doctor in one of Hollywood's earliest studio-financed antiracist films, No Way Out (1950). It was not his first film appearance, however. (...)

Sean Penn chooses his roles very carefully (10/10/2010)
(...) The next year, he had a defining role in Bad Boys (1983), playing a teenage killer in a reform school. Costarring with NICOLAS CAGE in Racing with the Moon (1984), he gave evidence of now mature acting. That same year, he was in a Louis Malle comedy, Crackers (1984), which did nothing for his career, but in 1985, he worked with Timothy Hutton in The Falcon and the Snowman, directed by John Schlesinger, an espionage thriller about stolen government secrets. (...)

Nick Nolte one of the leading men in Hollywood (10/01/2010)
(...) Though Heart Beat (1980) was a box-office disappointment, Nick Nolte was effective as Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac's friend. He was much more successful in his first "buddy" film, 48 Hrs. (1982), which paired him with EDDIE MURPHY in a cop drama rife with Murphy humor. (...)

Eddie Murphy lost his father when he was a child (09/22/2010)
(...) His first film was 48 Hours (1982), in which he costarred with NICK NOLTE; it was a smash hit and Eddie Murphy was highly praised as a natural actor. For his second film, he teamed with Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places (1983), which was another winner. Though Eddie Murphy shared top billing and did not carry either of his first two films, that changed with his third film, Beverly Hills Cop (1984). (...)

Walter Matthau came to fame rather late in his life (09/21/2010)
(...) Walter Matthau worked constantly from 1955 to 1965, appearing on Broadway, starring in a short-lived TV series, Tallahassee 7000 in 1959, and playing bad guys in the movies, most memorably in A Face in the Crowd (1957), King Creole (1958), and Charade (1963). He even directed himself in a film, a lowbudget affair called Gangster Story (1958). A highly respected actor, Walter Matthau merely needed the right vehicle to show off his abilities. (...)

Shirley MacLaine has been a star for over five decades (09/19/2010)
(...) If the way in which she rose to fame had been made into a movie, its screenwriter would have been accused of plagiarizing the 1933 movie classic 42nd Street. Shirley MacLaine had been in the chorus of Me and Juliet for 358 performances before getting another job in the chorus of a new musical, The Pajama Game. She had also been hired to understudy the star, Carol Haney. (...)

Nicole Kidman is one of the most talented actresses in film history (09/14/2010)
(...) In the first film, she demonstrates her dancing (the tall, statuesque Nicole Kidman has legs like CYD CHARISSE) and acting ability in a film that assaults the senses and divided audiences into detractors and enthusiastic fans. In the second Nicole Kidman plays, with the aid of a Herculean effort by the makeup department, Virginia Woolf; although there were some initial reservations about the casting, Nicole Kidman showed her acting range and has consequently established herself as one of the most outstanding actresses of her generation. Nicole Kidman was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for both roles and won it for the second. (...)

Jack Lemmon is famous for his great comedies (09/14/2010)
(...) During that long string of box-office winners, the actor showed great range, starring in, among others, the bleak drama The Days of Wine and Roses (1962), the bawdy sex comedy Irma La Douce (1963), the black comedy The Fortune Cookie (1966), which was also the first of his many acting collaborations with WALTER MATTHAU, and the purely entertaining The Odd Couple (1968), which not only continued Jack Lemmon's acting relationship with Matthau but also launched another long and fruitful association with playwright and screenwriter NEIL SIMON. Jack Lemmon had fewer hits in the 1970s as his comic persona, which best suited the late 1950s and the early 1960s, became passé. He was, nonetheless, able to help turn The Out-of-Towners (1970) and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) into hits, helped also by two very funny Neil Simon scripts. (...)

Jennifer Lopez is one of the most powerful stars in Hollywood (09/14/2010)
(...) Jennifer Lopez received much attention for her next role as undercover cop Grace Santiago in Money Train (1995), with stars Woody Harrelson and WESLEY SNIPES. Next, Jennifer Lopez played a piano teacher opposite ROBIN WILLIAMS in Jack in 1996; the same year, she played the title role in Selena (released in 1997), a biopic about the crossover Mexican singing sensation Selena Quintanilla Perez who was killed by the demented ex-president of her fan club in March 1995. Selena was her breakthrough movie role, enabling her to show off her multifaceted talents. (...)

Harvey Keitel became a celebrity with the help of Martin Scorsese (09/09/2010)
(...) Seventeen years later, in Thelma and Louise (1991), Harvey Keitel's role was much more sympathetic and compassionate as a detective. That compassion reappeared in the award-winning The Piano (1993), in which he played George, a colonial New Zealand landowner, opposite Holly Hunter as Ada, a mute Scots widow with a young daughter, who was married to an insensitive and cruel husband. In the course of a productive film career, Harvey Keitel has worked with some of the best actors (such as JACK NICHOLSON and De Niro) and a number of mainstream directors besides Scorsese, Tarantino, and Jane Campion: Nicolas Roeg (Bad Timing, 1980), Tony Richardson (The Border, 1982), BARRY LEVINSON (Bugsy, 1991), Phil Kaufman (Rising Sun, 1993), Wayne Wang (Smoke and Blue in the Face, both 1995), ROBERT ALTMAN (Buffalo Bill and the Indians, 1976), Ridley Scott (The Duellists, 1977), PAUL SCHRADER (Blue Collar, 1978), and Spike Lee (Clockers, 1995). (...)

Samuel Jackson has appeared in many films as well as plays (09/08/2010)
(...) He was given a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and received the New York Film Critics Circle Award as Best Supporting Actor. During the 1980s, he had a walk-on role in Milos Forman's Ragtime (1981), appeared on Broadway in two August Wilson plays, The Piano Lesson and Two Trains Running, and had small roles in Coming to America (1988) and Sea of Love (1989). After Jungle Fever, however, he played more and bigger roles. (...)

Dustin Hoffman had different jobs before he became a movie star (09/07/2010)
(...) Except for the contemporary love story John and Mary (1969), he has played such characters (in starring roles) as the 121-year-old Jack Crabb in Little Big Man (1970), the nerdy prisoner who befriends the STEVE MCQUEEN character in Papillon (1973), and a down-on-his-luck ex-con in Straight Time (1978). The mid-1970s was Dustin Hoffman's most consistently successful period. Among the top box-office films in which he gave winning performances were the controversial SAM PECKINPAH movie Straw Dogs (1972); his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Lenny Bruce in Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974); the real-life political thriller in which he played Carl Bernstein, All the President's Men (1976); and his last hit of the 1970s, Marathon Man (1976). (...)

Sir Anthony Hopkins played theatre before acting in movies (09/07/2010)
(...) So astonishing was this creation that Anthony Hopkins earned an Academy Award as Best Actor. He would go on, of course, to play Lecter in the unpleasant sequel, Hannibal (2001). When a novelist once complained to David Hare that "Tony seems to have no way of controlling his emotions," Hare responded, "He does have a way. (...)

William Hurt knows how to make a strong impression on screen (09/07/2010)
(...) He began his college career at Tufts University as a theology major but soon switched to theater. Upon graduation, he attended Juilliard to further his study of acting. Next, he traveled to Oregon, where he acted in a theater festival presentation of Long Day's Journey into Night in 1975. (...)

George Roy Hill was a film director with a big commercial success (09/04/2010)
(...) B. Shaw's The Devil's Disciple at Dublin's Gaiety Theater in 1948. Hooked on the stage, Hill continued his acting career in the United States, working in a radio soap opera, becoming a member of a Shakespearean repertory company and, later, acting on television. (...)

How Audrey Hepburn gained the attention of all Hollywood (09/02/2010)
(...) In 1968 Audrey Hepburn’s marriage to actor Mel Ferrer (they married in 1954) came to an end and, with it, so ended her Hollywood career for nearly a decade. The following year Audrey Hepburn wed a doctor and retired from the film business, living a relatively quiet life in Rome. She was finally lured back to the big screen in 1976 to play Maid Marian to SEAN CONNERY’s Robin Hood in Robin and Marian, a gentle comedy about heroes who grow old. (...)

Charlton Heston played in spectacular Hollywood productions (09/02/2010)
(...) He starred in highbrow live TV specials in the late 1940s such as Julius Caesar (as Antony, 1948), Of Human Bondage (1948), Wuthering Heights (1949), and Macbeth (1949). Although he acted in two 16mm amateur films, Charlton Heston made his professional film debut in Paramount’s Dark City (1950), a low-budget movie that did not set Hollywood afire. Not until his second film, the star-studded The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), for which he was chosen by CECIL B. (...)

What Goldie Hawn said when she won the Oscar (08/22/2010)
(...) Audiences loved her. So did film director BILLY WILDER, who saw her on the show and thought she would be just right for his film Cactus Flower (1969). Goldie Hawn was cast in the movie and came away with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. (...)

Harrison Ford starred in top grossing movies (08/19/2010)
(...) The film was a smash hit, and Harrison Ford became an instant star. He moved quickly to solidify his position in the industry, but his follow-up films, Heroes (1977), Force 10 from Navarone (1978), and Hanover Street (1979), received a tepid response at the box office. The latter film, however, received good reviews, particularly for Harrison Ford. (...)

Morgan Freeman is a very talented actor whose fame came rather late (08/19/2010)
(...) For this performance and for his role as a chaplain in Mother Courage and Her Children, he received Obie Awards. His first significant films were prison themed, particularly in ROBERT REDFORD's Brubaker and in Attica (both 1980), a TV movie about the violent inmate revolts at the New York State penitentiary. More significant film roles were to follow later in the decade. (...)

Greta Garbo was known to her fans simply as Garbo (08/19/2010)
(...) The great L. B. Mayer wasn't impressed with Greta Garbo, however, whom he thought to be too overweight for American audiences. (...)

The Wizard of Oz made Judy Garland a world star (08/19/2010)
(...) Judy Garland continued in the Andy Hardy films but, more significantly, she starred in For Me and My Gal (1942), which introduced GENE KELLY, and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), a landmark film that did not use a show-business background as a pretext for its musical numbers. Thanks to Judy Garland's luminous performance, the movie became MGM's second most lucrative film at that time, topped only by Gone With the Wind (1939), Judy Garland married VINCENTE MINNELLI, the director of Meet Me in St. (...)

Mel Gibson as an actor director and film producer (08/19/2010)
(...) Mel Gibson would later play similar roles in such movies as Conspiracy Theory (1997). Three years later he would cast himself against type by playing a melancholy, disfigured protagonist in The Man without a Face, which he also directed. All the while, he retained his popular base by appearing in less-serious films such as Maverick and the historical epic Braveheart (1995), which was proclaimed Best Picture by the Motion Picture Academy. (...)

Cary Grant grew up in extreme poverty (08/19/2010)
(...) The actress remains unknown; Cary Grant was discovered. He had been right—there was big money to be made in Hollywood; his starting salary was $450 per week. His first film was a musical, This Is the Night (1932), in which he had a modest role. (...)