Saturday, August 29, 2009

Jennifer Connelly

Jennifer Connelly

Jennifer Lynn Connelly (born December 12, 1970) is an American film actress and former child model. Although she has been working in the film industry since she was a teenager and catapulted to fame on the basis of her appearances in films like Labyrinth and Career Opportunities, she gained a new level of acclaim and exposure following her work in the 2000 drama Requiem for a Dream, and the 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the BAFTA and Golden Globe awards.

Jennifer Connelly Jennifer Connelly

Connelly was born in the Catskill Mountains of New York, the daughter of Ilene, an antiques dealer, and Gerard Connelly, a clothing manufacturer who worked in the garment industry. Connelly's paternal grandparents were of Irish Catholic and Norwegian descent, respectively, while her maternal grandparents were Jewish, their families having come from the Russian Empire and Poland (Connelly's mother was schooled in a yeshiva).

Jennifer Connelly

Connelly was raised in Brooklyn Heights, near the Brooklyn Bridge, and attended St. Ann's private school, except for four years the family spent living in Woodstock, New York. One of her father's friends was an advertising executive, who suggested that she audition at a modeling agency.

Jennifer Connelly

At the age of ten, Connelly's career started in newspaper and magazine ads, then moved to television commercials. These led to movie auditions and her first film role was as "young Deborah Gelly", a supporting role in Sergio Leone's 1984 gangster epic, Once Upon a Time in America, filmed mostly in 1982 when she was eleven. She next starred in Italian horror-director Dario Argento's Phenomena (1985) and in the coming-of-age movie Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Jennifer Connelly
Connelly became a star with her next picture, the fantasy Labyrinth (1986), playing Sarah, a teenager who wishes her baby brother into the world of goblins ruled by goblin king Jareth (David Bowie), so she then must journey through a labyrinth to retrieve him. The film disappointed at the box office, but gained a following among fantasy fans. Connelly starred in several obscure films, such as Etoile (1988) and Some Girls (1988). The Dennis Hopper-directed The Hot Spot (1990) was not a success, either critically or commercially. Another film, Career Opportunities, was more successful. It would be the first of seven movies in which she appeared nude. Connelly was featured on the cover of Esquire in August 1991, as part of the "Women We Love" feature.

Jennifer Connelly

She appeared alongside Jason Priestley in the Roy Orbison music video for "I Drove All Night" in 1992. Connelly began studying English at Yale, and two years later transferred to Stanford. The big-budget Disney film The Rocketeer (1991) similarly failed to ignite Connelly's career; after its failure, she took some time off from acting. The 1996 independent film Far Harbor played her against type and hinted at a much broader range than she had previously shown.

Jennifer Connelly

Connelly began to appear in smaller but well-regarded films, such as 1997's Inventing the Abbotts and 2000's Waking the Dead. She played a collegiate lesbian in John Singleton's 1995 ensemble drama, Higher Learning. The critically favored 1998 science fiction film Dark City afforded her the chance to work with such actors as Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Ian Richardson, and Kiefer Sutherland. Connelly revisited her ingenue image, although in a more understated way, for the 2000 biopic Pollock, in which she played Jackson Pollock's mistress.

Read More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Connelly

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Ashley Michele Greene

Ashley Michele Greene

Ashley Michele Greene (born February 21, 1987) is an American television and film actress. She is best known for playing Alice Cullen in the 2008 film Twilight, and will be reprising the role in its sequels.

Ashley Michele Greene Ashley Michele Greene

Greene was born in Jacksonville, Florida, the daughter of Michele, who works in insurance, and Joe Greene, a U.S. Marine who now owns his own concrete business. She grew up inMiddleburg and Jacksonville, and went to University Christian School before transferring toWolfson High School when she was in tenth grade. She moved to Los Angeles, California at the age of 17 to pursue an acting career. Greene has one sibling, an older brother named Joe, who still resides in Jacksonville with her parents. Greene is good friends with her Twilight co-stars, particularly Kellan Lutz, whom she knew before filming the movie.

Ashley Michele Greene

Greene initially planned to become a model, but was told that she wasn't tall enough to be a runway model and should instead focus on commercials. After taking commercial and acting classes, she fell in love with acting and realized that she preferred it over modeling. Greene thus graduated high school early at the age of 17 and moved to L.A. to pursue an acting career. Since then, she has appeared as a guest on many popular television programs, such asPunk'd and Crossing Jordan. Greene's big break came in 2008 when she was cast as Alice Cullen in Twilight, a film based on the novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. Greene will be reuniting with her Twilight co-star Kellan Lutz in the upcoming movie Warrior. She will also reprise her role as Alice in the 2009 sequel to Twilight, New Moon, and 2010's Eclipse. Greene will also be starring in an upcoming thriller film, Summer's Blood, which is set to be released in summer 2009.

Read More : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Greene