An updated list of celebrities has been announced for Betty White’s 90th Birthday: A Tribute to America’s Golden Girl, which will be transmitted on January 16 on NBC. The special, to be taped at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, will include musical performances and surprise appearances, with White taking the stage to share some memories and give […]
television
Bored at the Bolshoi?
What an extraordinarily unresponsive crowd to greet the opening of the newly restored Bolshoi Theatre. Ten seconds of timid clapping and then the television director honed in on bored faces, while bangs and scrapes came from the unlit stage during the scene changes. The whole approach, from lighting to graphics, was rather like that of […]
Dexter author concerned that people think his creation is ‘nice’
Jeff Lindsay, creator of serial killer Dexter, talking at Marseille’s Semaine Noire book festival, said, Some believe that Dexter cares about justice. Dexter doesn’t care about justice, he cares about killing. He’s attractive because he’s dangerous. It’s a mistake to think that Dexter is nice. He’s not nice – people romanticise him. He’s a serial […]
Angela Gheorghiu: The Rolling Stones have a big sound. You know why? Because they are plugged in!
Angela Gheorghiu is in London to promote a season of Royal Opera House filmed performances, three starring herself. The Royal Opera House is striving to build up opera and ballet audiences by piping 10 productions, five of them live, into 700 cinemas worldwide. The season opener was last night’s live broadcast of Gounod’s “Faust,” with Gheorghiu. Her […]
BBC Worldwide to sue Silvio Berlusconi’s TV network
BBC Worldwide is suing an Italian television network owned by Silvio Berlusconi over claims that it has copied Strictly Come Dancing. A hearing is due to take place on tomorrow about a new show called Baila!, which is set to debut on Mediaset’s Canale 5 later this month. BBC Worldwide contends it copies Strictly’s concept, which […]
Andy Whitfield, star of TV series Spartacus, dies of lymphoma at 39
Spartacus: Blood and Sand star Andy Whitfield has died. He was 39. Whitfield died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma yesterday in Sydney. In a statement, Whitfield’s wife, Vashti, called her husband a “beautiful young warrior” who died in the “arms of his loving wife.” Whitfield, a Welsh actor who lived in Australia, was virtually unknown to American audiences […]
Rita Moreno, as she approaches her 80th birthday
The effervescent Rita will be 80 in December. She’s still going strong with stage and television commitments. We’ve seen her go from the singing and dancing black-haired Anita in the film of West Side Story, to the gritty realism of strong-willed grey-haired Sister Pete in tv’s Oz. A remarkable career, a remarkable woman, who tonight opens in an autobiographical show Rita Moreno: […]
British actor John Wood dies at 81
John Wood – who won a Tony award in 1976 and appeared in numerous films and TV dramas and appeared in films such The Madness of King George and Shadowlands – has died at the age of 81. Wood, who was made a CBE in 2007 for services to drama, won the Tony for his role in […]
Tom Aldredge, character actor, dies at 83
Tom Aldredge, an Emmy-winning actor who for five decades was ubiquitous on stage and screen, seen in everything from Sondheim to “The Sopranos,” died on Friday in Tampa, Fla. He was 83. “I knew at the beginning I was nobody’s leading man,” Aldredge told The New York Times in 1985, when he was 57 and […]
Anna Massey dies at 73: “I don’t want any dramas in my life. If I’m in a drama, I want to be paid for it.”
Unfailingly subtle, sensitive and intelligent, Anna Massey was, as one admiring critic put it, “one of those splendid British actresses whom one is tempted to call Dame before their time”. Often cast in roles in which she portrayed the prim, the spinsterly or the repressed, in reality she was none of those things. Battles with […]
