Saturday, March 27, 2010

Who is Jane Lynch?

Who is Jane Lynch? The entertainment and acting world know Lynch as an Emmy winning American comedian, actress and singer. She is best known for her roles in comedies such as Best in Show, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and for her recurring role on Two and a Half Men. She is currently appearing in the Fox comedy series Glee.
Lynch was born July 14, 1960 and raised in Dolton, Illinois, the daughter of a housewife mother and a banker father.[2] She was raised in an Irish Catholic family[2] and attended Thornridge High School. She received her bachelor's degree in theatre from Illinois State University and her MFA from Cornell University, also in theatre.
Lynch's extensive theater background involved touring with The Second City comedy troupe and playing Carol Brady in The Real Live Brady Bunch. She also wrote and starred in the award-winning play Oh Sister, My Sister. Originally produced in 1998, the play kicked off the Lesbians in Theater program at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center in 2004.
Her breakthrough film role was as Christy Cummings, the butch lesbian personal dog handler to trophy wife Sheri Ann Cabot (Jennifer Coolidge) in director Christopher Guest's mockumentary Best in Show (2000). She also appeared in Guest's A Mighty Wind (2003) as porn actress-turned-folk singer Laurie Bohner and in For Your Consideration (2006) as an entertainment reporter.
Lynch is also a television performer. She starred with John Hannah and William Fichtner in 2002's MDs, and has made guest appearances in numerous television series, including Judging Amy, The West Wing, 7th Heaven, Friends, Felicity, Arrested Development, Two and a Half Men, Weeds, Boston Legal, The L Word, Criminal Minds, Help Me Help You, Gilmore Girls, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Psych and Monk among others.
In 2005, Lynch was named as one of POWER UP's "10 Amazing Gay Women in Showbiz".
Audiences and critics took notice of Lynch for her oddball turn in Judd Apatow's The 40 Year Old Virgin. She told Fresh Air's Terry Gross the role was originally intended for a man but, at the urging of Steve Carell's wife Nancy Walls, was offered to Lynch instead.[3] Since then, she has starred in a series of films including: Role Models, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Alvin & the Chipmunks, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Space Chimps, The Rocker, The Hammer, Another Cinderella Story, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Spring Breakdown.[4]

She recently starred in Julie and Julia, playing the role of Dorothy McWilliams, Julia Child's sister. Entertainment Weekly dedicated an article on their website towards the possibility of her performance receiving an Academy Award nomination.[5][6]
She also appeared in the crime drama "Criminal Minds" as Spencer Reid's schizophrenic mother. As of 2009, Lynch currently appears on the Fox series Glee. Lynch won glowing reviews for her role as the aggressive cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester. Mary McNamara of the LA Times wrote, "Lynch alone makes Glee worth watching."[7] Prior to her work with Glee, she was a series regular on the Starz comedy Party Down. Though the series was renewed for a second season, Lynch would not be returning due to her work on Glee.[8]
On December 15, 2009, Lynch received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role on Glee. The series itself also received nominations in three other categories.[9]
Lynch is openly lesbian and is engaged to be married to her partner Dr. Lara Embry in May 2010. Embry herself received much publicity surrounding a custody battle over two children with her former partner.[10]

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Who is Renée Kathleen Zellweger?

Who is Renée Kathleen Zellweger? The acting world knows he as an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire (1996), and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002), and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Cold Mountain (2003).

She has won three Golden Globe Awards and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2009,[1] and has established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses in recent years.[2]


Zellweger was born April 25, 1969 in Katy, Texas, a western suburb of Houston. Her father, Emil Erich Zellweger, is from Au, St. Gallen[3] in Switzerland and is a mechanical and electrical engineer who worked in the oil refining business.[4] Zellweger's mother, Kjellfried Irene (née Andreassen), is Norwegian-born and of Sami origin,[5][6] and is a nurse and midwife who moved to the United States in order to work as a governess for a Norwegian family in Texas.[7][8][9] Zellweger described herself as being raised in a family of "lazy Catholics and Episcopalians".[9] She has an older brother, Andrew.


In junior high school, Zellweger actively took part in several sports, including soccer, basketball, baseball and football.[9] She attended Katy High School, where she was a cheerleader, a gymnast, a member of speech team,[10] and a drama club member. Zellweger acted in several school plays and was voted the "Best Looking" of her class before graduating from high school in 1987. After high school, she went to the University of Texas at Austin to major in English language.[5] Zellweger was a good student, and made the Dean's List several times. At the beginning she took a drama class only because she needed a fine arts credit to complete her degree, but the experience made her appreciate how much she loved acting.[7] During this time, she supported herself by taking jobs as a waitress in Austin, Texas.[7][11] In 1991, Zellweger graduated from university with a BA degree in English. She considered moving to Hollywood but decided to stay in her home state, Texas, to seek more experience. Her first job after graduation was working in a beef commercial, at the same time she started to audition for roles around Houston.[7]

While still in Texas, Zellweger appeared in several films. One was A Taste for Killing (1992) as Mary Lou, followed by a minor role in ABC TV mini series named Murder in the Heartland (1993). The following year, she appeared in Reality Bites (1994), the directorial debut of Ben Stiller, and in the biopic film 8 Seconds, directed by John G. Avildsen.


Zellweger's first main part in a movie came with the 1994 horror story Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, alongside Matthew McConaughey. She played Jenny, a teenager who leaves a prom early with three friends and ended up getting into a car accident, which leads to their meeting a murderous family.[7] Her next movie was Love and a .45 (1994), in which she played the role of Starlene Cheatham, a woman who plans a robbery with her boyfriend. The performance earned her an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. She subsequently moved to Los Angeles, winning roles in the films Empire Records (1995) and The Whole Wide World (1996).[7] Zellweger first became widely known to audiences around the world with Jerry Maguire (1996), in which she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character.[7] She won the role over Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei.


Zellweger later won acclaim in One True Thing (1998) opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep, and in Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman.[7] The role garnered the actress her first of three Golden Globe Awards, but she was in the bathroom when future co-star Hugh Grant announced her name.[7] Zellweger later protested: "I had lipstick on my teeth!"[12]

In 2001, Zellweger gained the prized lead role as Bridget Jones, playing alongside Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, in the British romantic comedy film Bridget Jones's Diary, based on the 1996 novel Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding. The choice came amid much controversy since she was neither British nor overweight.[7] During casting Zellweger was told she was too skinny to play the chubby Bridget, so she quickly embarked on gaining the required weight and learning an English accent. She gained 20 pounds in order to complete her transformation to Bridget Jones.[13] Her dramatic weight fluctuations became the subject of much media interest. Her performance as Bridget received praise from critics, with Stephen Holden of The New York Times commenting, "Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real."[13] Along with receiving voice coaching to fine-tune her English accent, part of Zellweger's preparations involved spending three weeks working undercover in a "work experience placement" for British publishing firm Picador in Victoria, London.[7][14] As a result of her considerable efforts to effect author Helen Fielding's character, Zellweger caught the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and received her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination.[7]

In 2002, she starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander. She played an actress in the film, and a clip from her role in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation was shown as she discussed her career with the main character, Astrid Magnussen. The same year, she appeared as "Roxie Hart" in the critically acclaimed musical film Chicago, directed by Rob Marshall, co-starring Catherine Zeta Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, and John C. Reilly. The movie received an Academy Award for Best Picture, and Zellweger received positive reviews. The San Francisco Chronicle's web site SFGate commented, "Zellweger is a joy to watch, with marvelous comic timing and, in her stage numbers, a commanding presence."[15] The Washington Post noted that even though Zellweger couldn't dance well in real life, the audience "wouldn't know it from this movie, in which she dances up a storm."[16] As a result, she earned her second Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe Award.[7]

In 2004, Zellweger received an Academy Award, this time as Best Supporting Actress in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain opposite Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Zellweger has since starred in the sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, lent her voice to the DreamWorks animated features Shark Tale and Bee Movie, and starred in the 2005 Ron Howard film Cinderella Man opposite Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti. On May 24, 2005, Zellweger received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She produced and appeared in Miss Potter, based on the life story of acclaimed author Beatrix Potter, with Emily Watson and Ewan McGregor, released in December 2006. In 2008, she starred in the western Appaloosa with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen and the period comedy Leatherheads with fellow Oscar-winner George Clooney and John Krasinski (from The Office).

In 2008 she produced a film starring Harry Connick, Jr., about the true story of Dr. Denny Slamon. The film, called Living Proof, premiered in October 2008 on Lifetime Television. Craig Zadan and Neil Meron is also producing.[17]

In 2009, she starred alongside Chris Noth and Kevin Bacon in the feature film My One and Only,[18] as well as in the film New in Town, a comedy about a corporate executive from Miami who is sent to New Ulm, Minnesota, to oversee a small manufacturing company making minimal profits producing and selling pudding. She also had a cameo role in the animated film Monsters vs. Aliens in which she voiced the character of "Katie."



Zellweger dated director Joshua Pate, whom she began seeing in November 1997 after working on his film Deceiver. She also was rumored to have dated George Clooney.[11] Her first high-profile romance was with actor/comedian Jim Carrey. The relationship ended in December 2000. The two were rumored to have been engaged, but Zellweger frequently denied this claim. Zellweger poked fun at the prior relationship when she ended her opening monologue on Saturday Night Live by reading an entry from her own "diary", marked "Dear Diary, I can't believe I am dating Jim Carrey."

For two years, Zellweger dated The White Stripes singer Jack White.
The pair met while filming Cold Mountain, and later began dating after the film wrapped. They broke up two years later, after schedule demands kept them apart.[19] Friends said the split was amicable.[20]


On May 9, 2005, Zellweger married singer Kenny Chesney in a ceremony at the island of St. John. They had met in January at a tsunami relief benefit concert. Zellweger missed out on the engagement ring since the wedding was planned over a short span of time.[21] On September 15, 2005, after only four months of marriage, they announced their plans for an annulment. Zellweger cited "fraud" as the reason in the related papers.[22] After media scrutiny of her use of the word "fraud", she qualified the use of the term, stating it was "simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny's character. I would personally be very grateful for your support in refraining from drawing derogatory, hurtful, sensationalized or untrue conclusions. We hope to experience this transition as privately as possible."[22] The annulment was finalized in late December 2005.

In 2002, Zellweger bought a US$6.8-million home in Bel Air, then sold her previous home in the Hollywood Hills, bought for US$1.9M in 2000.[23] Due to the constant attention from the paparazzi, she purchased a home in Connecticut and moved there in 2005. She claims she rarely spends time there, and keeps a small apartment in New York where she "stops over" to do laundry before moving on to her next film. In January 2007, she admitted that she gets scared at home alone due to security problems and fans who send or leave mail at her homes; she said that she considered buying a gun for reasons of personal security.[24]

Zellweger and Marc Forster took part in the 2005 HIV prevention campaign of the Swiss federal health department.[25] Zellweger maintains a residence in the Roland Park area of Baltimore, Maryland.

Zellweger has been dating actor Bradley Cooper since 2009.[26]



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Who is Luther R. Campbell?

Who is Luther R. Campbell? The world know his as Luke Skyywalker, Uncle Luke or Luke. He is a record label owner, rap performer (taking the non-rapping role of promoter), and actor. He is perhaps best known as a one-time member and leader of 2 Live Crew, and star of his own show, Luke's Parental Advisory. As a result of one of the group's songs, which used a parody of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" Campbell was party to Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. which was argued in front of the US Supreme Court.

Campbell's was born December 22, 1960 work as a performer can be characterised as Southern Rap; most of it is part of the Miami Bass sub-genre. The sexual content of his group's lyrics caused controversy and led to legal cases. Usually, Campbell does not rap but rather shouts or chants—very often in a call and response manner, with him calling and the crowd responding. He was not an original member of the 2 Live Crew, only joining them after their first steps as a California rap crew. Only through Campbell did they become "Southern" rappers.

Campbell ran Luke Records, which shortened its name from Luke Skyywalker Records after George Lucas filed a legal case against them for infringing on the name of his Star Wars character, Luke Skywalker.

Luke actually began as a concert promoter in Miami, bringing all the hot rap groups of the early 1980s to the city. In 1985, 2 Live Crew's initial single (2 Live AKA Beat Box) was a smash hit on the South Florida club circuit, so Luke brought them from California to Miami for a performance. He took a special interest in the group and began managing them, and only after he saw a lack of stage presence in the front men did he insert himself into the group as their "hype man".

Luke's first solo LP, Banned in the USA, was basically a 2 Live Crew record, yet he did not offer royalties to the group for creating the album; rather, a small flat fee was paid. When 2 Live Crew's contracts with Luke Records ended in 1991, the group's producer (and Luke Records' in-house producer for the entire label) Mr. Mixx left the group and returned to California. However, the group did decide to do a sequel to their biggest album. Initially, Luke employed the label's second string producers The O.D.S. to produce the album, but it was not turning into the group's vision, so Luke recruited Mr. Mixx to return and produce the album as an independent producer (T-Shirt and Khakis Productions).

However, by the time of the album's completion, they sought to make it appear as if the group was totally intact. Shortly after, all members of the group drew up a lawsuit against Luke for unpaid royalties, which member Fresh Kid Ice backed out of and revamped a new 2 Live Crew with Luke in 1994. Finally a settlement was reached for the remaining plaintiffs. Shortly after this, label-mate MC Shy D would effectively sue Luke Records for $1.2 million dollars in unpaid royalties. The judge in the case, a former musician himself, verbally stated that he wanted to make an example of Luke.

Luke released a solo record (technically, his first) in 1991 entitled I Wanna Rock (also known as Doo Doo Brown), but he remained true to his call and response style rather than rapping, and hired outside producers. The song is seen as a pivotal point in Miami Bass, sparking what some call its third wave. He released it on the heels of the final 2 Live Crew album, going so far as to stop promotion on their album while the 2 Live Crew single "Pop that Coochie" was still in the charts. It is suggested that Luke wanted his solo song to be seen as the next 2 Live Crew single, despite not having rights to the group's name.

Luke Records filed for bankruptcy in the mid-1990s. Former Luke Records' Chief Financial Officer Lil Joe Weinstein acquired the Luke Records catalog, and reunified the original three members of 2 Live Crew without Luke during the mid-1990s to release music on Lil Joe Records. Some suggest Lil Joe deliberately forced Luke Records into bankruptcy over unpaid loans between the two men.


Campbell was also infamous in the late 1980s–early 1990s for his association with the University of Miami Hurricanes football team. Campbell told The Miami Herald that he offered "bounties" to Miami players for scoring touchdowns, intercepting passes, sacking quarterbacks, and knocking opposing players out of games. In 1993, he also once threatened to go public with various violations by the University of Miami's athletic department, specifically their football program, if Ryan Collins, an African-American player, wasn't named their starting quarterback for that season.

Campbell was interviewed about his involvement with the Miami Hurricanes for the documentary The U, which premiered December 12th, 2009 on ESPN.

Lil Jon (who used to produce Miami Bass records) has a vocal style not too dissimilar from Luke—in any case, they both (normally) do not rap and use guest rappers. Crunk music may be seen as the heir of Campbell's brand of Miami bass—both lyrically and musically.

Luke's latest album, My Life & Freaky Times, was released in March 2006 and featured Trick Daddy, Petey Pablo, Jacki-O, Pitbull, Dirtbag, and Big Tigger to name a few. The first singles serviced to radio and the clubs from the compilation album were "Holla At Cha Homeboy", featuring Pitbull & Petey Pablo, and the reggaeton-leaning "Pop That" by Plan B and Rey Chester Secretweapon.[1]

Campbell appeared in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories as DJ Luke for the hip-hop station Fresh 105 FM. Campbell hosts a sports talk show on Miami's 790 The Ticket with former football player Terry Kirby on Saturdays.


Luke has recently entered the adult film industry and cites on his MySpace page the need to clean up the "sometimes amateurish new courtship of Hip-Hop and Adult Entertainment".[1] He produced the Adult Entertainment movie "Luke's Bachelor Party" in 2007.

In December 2007 Campbell launched The Luke Entertainment Group and took the company public trading under the symbol LKEN on Pink Sheets. As of September 3, 2008, its current price is $0.01 per share.[2] With this launching of Luke Entertainment Campbell had bought an oil company with the stock trading symbol of FPPL. Luther Campbell is also a legendary DJ member of the The Worldwide DJ organization, The Core DJ's.

Luther Campbell is born of Bahamian parents and has four brothers living in various areas. He also has five children from previous relationships. He married lawyer Kristin Thompson on July 19, 2008 in Dallas, Texas.

Discography

Studio albums

Year Album Chart Positions
US US Hip-Hop
1990 The Luke LP 21 10

1992 I Got Shit on My Mind 52 20
1993 In the Nude 54 8
1994 Freak for Life 174 24

1996 Uncle Luke 51 8

1997 Changin' the Game - 49
2001 Somethin' Nasty 149 36





2006 My Life & Freaky Times -
"—" denotes the album failed to chart or not released






Compilation albums


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