Curated playlist
Academy Honorary Award recipients
- Orson WellesOrson Welles burned ten reels of his own Don Quixote film. He felt the 1969 Moon landings made its ending obsolete.
- Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin was in a workhouse twice before he turned nine. By 26 he was among the world's highest-paid people.
- David LynchDavid Lynch began as a painter who just wanted his canvases to move. That wish led him to film.
- James StewartJames Stewart gave his Oscar to his father for the shop window.
- Hayao MiyazakiHayao Miyazaki was told as a boy he would not live past 20. He went on to found Studio Ghibli in 1985.
- Samuel L. JacksonSamuel L. Jackson learned to cope with a childhood stutter by pretending to be other people.
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas insisted on giving blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo an on-screen credit for Spartacus.
- Louis B. MayerLouis B. Mayer pushed a junk cart as a boy, then became America's highest-paid man.
- Mel BrooksMel Brooks was 14 years old when he climbed onto a diving board at the Butler Lodge, a second-rate hotel in the Borscht Belt. He worked there as a pool-side tummler, an entertainer hired to keep the guests amused. On this day he wore a…
- Elia KazanIn 1952, Elia Kazan gave a congressional committee the names of eight former colleagues.
- Peter O'ToolePeter O'Toole asked the Academy to wait when it offered him an honorary Oscar. He hoped to win the award outright.
- Buster KeatonBuster Keaton's deadpan face began when he stopped laughing in his father's vaudeville act.
- Laurence OlivierLaurence Olivier's 1948 film Hamlet was the first non-American film to win Best Picture.
- Tom CruiseTom Cruise attended fifteen schools in fourteen years. He was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on the 3rd of July 1962 in Syracuse, New York. Today he is an American actor and film producer, and his career has now run for forty-five years. A…
- Akira KurosawaRashomon won Venice's Golden Lion in 1951 after its own studio entered it reluctantly.
- Walt DisneyIn 1928, Walt Disney lost his hit cartoon rabbit Oswald to Universal. Only Ub Iwerks stayed, and Mickey Mouse followed.
- Michelangelo AntonioniAfter a stroke took his speech, Michelangelo Antonioni kept directing films. He made Beyond the Clouds in 1995.
- Paul NewmanAt the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona, Paul Newman was 70 years and eight days old, and his team won its class. That made him the oldest driver to date on a winning team in a major sanctioned race. Newman was best known as a film star, and he…
- Robert RedfordRobert Redford died in his sleep at his home in Sundance, Utah, on the 16th of September 2025. He was 89 years old. After a private funeral, he was buried on his own property there. The man who ended his days in a place that carried his…
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard dropped his script and wrote dialogue day by day for the film Breathless.
- Alec GuinnessAlec Guinness privately called Star Wars "fairy-tale rubbish" in letters to friends.
- Quincy JonesQuincy Jones taped a sign to the entrance of a recording studio in 1985, and it read "Check Your Ego at the Door." Behind that door waited most of the major American recording artists of the day. Jones needed every one of them to work as…
- Jackie ChanOn the 25th of June 2013, Jackie Chan had to announce that he was still alive. A hoax Facebook page, created a few days earlier, had claimed that he was dead. Several people contacted him to congratulate him on a recent engagement. Soon…