Poet. Born September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. Eliot's distinguished family tree included an ancestor who arrived in Boston in 1670, and another who founded Washington University in St. Louis. Eliot's father was a businessman, and his mother was involved in local charities. Eliot took an undergraduate degree at Harvard, studied at the Sorbonne, returned to Harvard to study Sanskrit and then studied at Oxford. After meeting poet and lifelong friend Ezra Pound, Eliot relocated to England. In 1915, he married Vivian Haigh-
Actor, director. Born in St. Louis, Missouri. After graduating from Indiana University with a dual degree in speech and theater, Kline headed off to New York to enter the drama department at Julliard, which had just been created by actor John Houseman. Upon completion of the program, Kline joined Houseman's newly-formed group the Acting Company, along with William Hurt. Kline won starring roles in theater productions, both on and off Broadway, in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The School for Scandal, Scapin, and The Hostage Company, as well as
Poet. Born August 4, 1792 at Field Place near Horsham, Sussex,. He was the first son of a wealthy country squire. As a boy Shelley felt persecuted by his hardheaded and practical-minded father, and this abuse may have first sparked the flame of protest which, during his Eton years (1804-1810), earned him the name of "Mad Shelley." In the course of his first and only year at Oxford (1810-1811), Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg issued a pamphlet provocatively entitled The Necessity of Atheism. Their "atheism" was l
Actress. Born Susan Alexandra Weaver, on October 8, 1949, in New York City. At age 14, she took the name "Sigourney" from a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. Growing up on New York’s Upper East Side as the daughter of British actress Elizabeth Inglis and NBC president Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, Weaver was never a stranger to the illustrious lifestyle of a New Yorker in the limelight. After attending private schools in Manhattan and Connecticut, Weaver graduated from Stanford University with an English deg
Actor. Born July 13, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. Arguably the most bankable movie star ever, Harrison Ford came into his success relatively late in life. He grew up in the Chicago suburbs of Park Ridge and Morton Grove, where his father was an advertising executive, producer of TV commercials, and sometime radio actor. Never academically inclined, Ford failed out of tiny, conservative Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where he had majored in philosophy. After discovering drama in college, he did a season of summer stock in Williams Bay, Wiscon
Russian czar. Born Pyotr Alekseyevich, on June 9, 1672, in Moscow, Russia. Peter the Great was the fourteenth child of Czar Alexis by his second wife, Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina. Having ruled jointly with his brother Ivan V from 1682, when Ivan died in 1696, Peter was officially declared Sovereign of all Russia. Peter inherited a nation that was severely underdeveloped compared to the culturally prosperous European countries. While the Renaissance and the Reformation swept through Europe, Russia rejected westernization and remained isolated
Director, producer, writer. Born December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Spielberg began experimenting with 8mm short films when he was only in grade school; he won a prize at the age of 13 for the 40-minute war film Escape to Nowhere. He attended California State College (now California State University), where he received a B.A. in English in 1970. His 24-minute short, Amblin, was screened at the Atlanta Film Festival when Spielberg was still in college; its success earned the 20-year-old a seven-year contract with Universal-MCA as a televisi
Actor. Born on December 21, 1948, in Washington D.C., and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, under his grandmother’s strict guidance. His mother, Elizabeth Jackson, joined them when he was 10. An early film enthusiast, Jackson frequently saw films at the local movie theatre and gained exposure to the complicated messages surrounding the black presence on screen. Versions of Band of Angels were edited for the black audience in Chattanooga, omitting a scene in which Sidney Poitier slaps a white woman. Jackson’s early memories remained with him
Physicist and chemist. Born September 22, 1791, in Newington, Surrey. The family soon moved to London, where young Michael, one of 10 children, picked up the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to a bookbinder and bookseller. He read ravenously and attended public lectures, including some by Sir Humphry Davy. Faraday's career began when Davy, temporarily blinded in a laboratory accident, appointed Faraday as his assistant at the Royal Institution. With Davy as a teacher in analytical chemistr
Director, producer, screenwriter. Born February 5, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois. Raised in the working class Chicago neighborhood of Humboldt Park, Mann graduated from high school in 1960 and attended the University of Wisconsin, where he received his BA in English literature. After college, Mann did graduate work at the London Film School, earning his master’s degree in 1967. While in England, he worked at an advertising agency and honed his directorial skills on commercials, short films, and documentaries. Mann moved back to Chicago in
Actor, director, producer. Born Robert De Niro Jr., on August 17, 1943, in New York City. His parents, both artists, separated when he was two years old; De Niro lived mostly with his mother, who started a typesetting and printing business. While attending high school in New York, De Niro began taking drama classes. He studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory as a teenager, dropping out of high school at age 16 to act professionally and continue his studies at the prestigious Actors Studio. He later studied with noted acting teachers Lut
Actress, director, and producer. Born Alicia Christian Foster, on November 19, 1962, in Los Angeles, California. Foster’s father, Lucian, left the family before she was born; her mother, Evelyn, supported herself and her four children by working for a film producer. Advertising executives for Coppertone suntan lotion “discovered” Foster when she tagged along with her older brother Buddy, a child actor, to one of his auditions. At age three, she became the tow-headed, bare-bottomed “Coppertone girl” in a now-famous ad campaign.
The English poet and controversialist John Milton (1608-1674) was a champion of liberty and of love-centered marriage. He is chiefly famous for his epic poem "Paradise Lost" and for his defense of uncensored publication. The lifetime of John Milton spanned an age of sophistication, controversy, dynamism, and revolution. When he was born, England was illuminated by the versatile genius of Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and Inigo Jones. Christopher Wren was at the height of his powers when Milton died
Actress, born August 16, 1958, in New York City, New York. Raised with her sister, D'nette, in St. Petersburg, Florida by her single mother, Betty, a social worker. On a high school trip, Bassett became inspired to act after seeing a Kennedy Center production of Of Mice and Men, starring James Earl Jones. Encouraged by a high school teacher, Bassett went on to study at Yale on scholarship, earning a B.A. in Afro-American Studies and an M.F.A. in drama under the renowned stage director, Lloyd Richards. He cast her in the Broadway production
Actor. Born April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska. Brando grew up in Illinois, and after expulsion from a military academy, he dug ditches until his father offered to finance his education. Brando moved to New York to study with acting coach Stella Adler and at Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio. Adler has often been credited as the principal inspiration in Brando’s early career, and with opening the actor to great works of literature, music, and theater. While at the Actors' Studio, Brando adopted the "method approach," whic
Actor. Born Kevin Fowler, on July 26, 1959, in South Orange, New Jersey. He was the youngest of three children; his father wrote technical procedures and his mother was a private secretary. The family moved frequently and in 1963, they settled in Los Angeles, where young Kevin proceeded to become a self-described, “little terror.” After he burned down his sister’s treehouse, Kevin’s parents decided to enforce some extra discipline, and sent him to California’s Northridge Military Academy. He promptly won a leadership award, then got e
Actress, born May 5, 1958, in Topeka, Kansas, to A. Grant Bening, an insurance salesman, and Shirley Bening, a church singer. The youngest of four children, Bening has two brothers and one sister. The family grew up in San Diego, where Bening completed studies at Patrick Henry High School in just three years. Bening was studying drama at a San Diego college when she got a job as a dancer in The Green Show outside San Diego's Old Globe Theatre. This experience led to a walk-on in a Shakespeare production and several plays with the San Diego
Actor. Born Michael Andrew Fox, on June 9, 1961, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Fox began using the middle initial ‘J’ (presumably smoother-sounding than ‘A’) professionally to distinguish himself from another acting “Michael Fox.” Michael J. Fox first achieved stardom in 1982, as the acquisitive Reagan-era poster-boy Alex P. Keaton on the popular television sitcom Family Ties. Hailing from Canada, where he grew up the youngest of five children to Bill and Phyllis Fox, Michael struggled in school and was too small—he is five feet,
It is surely not easy to say what a home is, but it is certain, that it is not only a house. It´s feeling of security, relations, people we love, our family, things we can´t live without. To better explain this, I´d say an example that happened once. A girl had a boyfriend and he used to visit her every evening. One day he came and when the girl asked him when he wanted to go home he replied: „Home? I AM at home, because I´m with you!“ I think this fully explains the perception of a home. Some people even don´t need a house to f
Actor, screenwriter. Born October 8, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts. After his parents divorced when he was a young child, Damon moved with his mother and older brother from the tony Boston suburb of Newton to a more modest neighborhood in Cambridge. He appeared in several local theater productions as an adolescent and worked as an extra on movies filming in or around Boston alongside his childhood friend and fellow aspiring actor Ben Affleck. At 16, Damon auditioned for a New York casting agent and later landed his first film role, a one-line