Curated category
Academy Honorary Award recipients
- Orson WellesOrson Welles was born on the 6th of May 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and died on the 10th of October 1985. In between those dates, he directed what is…
- Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine. By 14, he had taken his own mother to an infirmary, watched her return to a mental…
- David LynchDavid Lynch was born on the 20th of January 1946 at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana, the son of a USDA research scientist and an English-language…
- James StewartJames Stewart gave away his only competitive Academy Award. He won Best Actor for the 1940 romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, then handed the statuette…
- Hayao MiyazakiHayao Miyazaki was born on the 5th of January 1941 in Akebono-cho, Hongō, Tokyo City, the second of four sons in a family that manufactured rudders for…
- Samuel L. JacksonSamuel Leroy Jackson was born on the 21st of December, 1948, in Washington, D.C., the only child of Elizabeth Harriett and Roy Henry Jackson.
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on the 9th of December 1916, the only son among seven children in a Russian-Jewish immigrant family in Amsterdam…
- Louis B. MayerLouis B. Mayer was the son of a Yiddish-speaking scrap metal dealer from a Ukrainian village, and he died the highest-paid man in the United States for nine…
- Elia KazanElia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou in Constantinople on the 7th of September, 1909, to Cappadocian Greek parents whose surname derived from the Turkish…
- Peter O'ToolePeter O'Toole holds a record no actor would wish for. He received eight Academy Award nominations for Best Actor across four decades, and never won a single…
- Buster KeatonBuster Keaton never smiled on screen. Not when a two-ton building facade toppled directly onto him, leaving only the gap of an open window between his body…
- Laurence OlivierLaurence Kerr Olivier was born on the 22nd of May 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest child of a nomadic Church of England clergyman who never quite found…
- Akira KurosawaAkira Kurosawa directed 30 feature films across six decades, and yet the moment that first made the world notice him came about almost by accident.
- Walt DisneyWalt Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22 wins from 59 nominations. Yet the man behind that record was, in private…
- Michelangelo AntonioniMichelangelo Antonioni died in Rome on the 30th of July 2007, the same day as Ingmar Bergman. Two titans of world cinema left on the same afternoon.
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard once said: "A film consists of a beginning, a middle and an end, though not necessarily in that order." That line, delivered with the offhand…
- Alec GuinnessAlec Guinness walked onto a stage for the first time on his 20th birthday, the 2nd of April 1934, earning a single pound a week and permitted to utter just…