Barbara Kent, one of the last surviving stars of silent films, who performed alongside Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo and Harold Lloyd has died at 103. A brunette, baby-faced beauty, both shapely and petite — most sources say she was under five feet tall — Ms. Kent made her film debut in “Prowlers of the Night,”…
Diane Keaton’s new memoir, Then Again, digs into the origin of her romance with Woody Allen all those many years ago. “He had a great body,” she writes. “I was in love with him before I knew him. He was Woody Allen … He was so hip, with his thick glasses and cool suits.” The…
Actor Zachary Quinto, known for portraying Spock in the 2009 blockbuster film “Star Trek,” has publicly come out as a gay man. In an interview with New York Magazine published yesterday, Quinto recalled a stage play he performed in last year, “Angels in America”, which was set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic and…
Oscar-nominated Australian actress Diane Cilento, who was once married to Sean Connery, has died aged 78. The star, who passed away at the Cairns Base Hospital, close by her Queensland home, rose to fame in the early 1960s opposite stars such as Charlton Heston. She was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for her role…
Why does Johnny Depp continue to make Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Is it for love of the character, or the desire to tell more stories in that world? Well … “Basically, if they’re going to pay me the stupid money right now, I’m going to take it,” Depp admits in the new issue of…
The jewelry from seven husbands. The wardrobe of a ’60s jet-setter. The memorabilia of a Hollywood icon, including a love poem by Bob Dylan that he scrawled on a framed publicity poster of himself and dedicated to “Elizabeth, Sweetheart, Dream angel, Queen-of-the world.” These are among more than 2,000 objects that belonged to Elizabeth Taylor…
Roman Polanski has received a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival, two years after his arrest in the city on sex charges. Polanski received a standing ovation before telling the audience: “What I can say? Better late than never.” He had been on his way to receive the award in 2009 when Swiss…
A bankruptcy judge in Florida ruled last week that photos taken in 1946 of Norma Jeane Dougherty – who went on to become Monroe – will be sold at auction to settle the debts of the photographer. His copyrights and images from Marilyn Monroe‘s first photo shoot are hitting the auction block. Joseph Jasgur’s photos, negatives…
On the eve of the release of a new Johnny English film, Johnny English Reborn, Rowan Atkinson talked to The Times’ Ginny Dougary. On driving fast cars “I always think the lap of a track is very similar to a ‘take’ in a film – and the good thing about a film is you can do take after…
Designer clothes owned by Hollywood legend and fashion icon Elizabeth Taylor, including haute couture by Chanel, Yves St. Laurent and Dior, will be sold at auction in New York, Christie’s said today. The silk chiffon dress that the Academy Award winning actress wore for her first wedding to actor Richard Burton will be among the…
When I was in tech rehearsals for “Merlin” [in 1983], I was asked to meet the great filmmaker Milos Forman, who was directing the film of “Amadeus.” I went to his apartment to discuss the role of Schikaneder. Milos was exceedingly charming, and at the end of the meeting he asked if I wouldn’t mind…
Dustin Hoffman will make his directorial debut with a film about retired opera singers. The Hollywood Reporter said yesterday that Hoffman is scheduled to begin shooting “Quartet” in London later this week. The film, based on Ronald Harwood’s tender play, is funded by the BBC, and will star Billy Connolly, Tom Courtenay, two-time Academy Award winner Maggie…
Stephen Fry is to return as the host of the Bafta film awards next year, taking over from Jonathan Ross. Fry hosted the event between 2001 and 2006, before deciding to step down. “The adorable Jonathan Ross has done a magnificent job since I last hung up my bow-tie… and I am honoured… to return to…
When the talkies arrived the Hollywood studios had a problem with the accents of their foreign stars. The only solution for Garbo, Deitrich et al was to make all their characters foreign. Greta Garbo’s first talking picture was 1930’s Anna Christie (“Garbo Talks!”) where she famously said “Gimme a vhiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don’t…
Sound designer and sound effects editor Frank Edward Warner, who won an Oscar for his sound editing work on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” died of natural causes in Arizona, on August 31. He was 85. Warner said that “sound is like music that gives us the emotion that the writer intended.” In 1966,…
An extraordinary collection of home-videos has been uploaded to YouTube taken by Roddy McDowall and his friends. And what friends! Clips include Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, Simone Signoret, Jack Lemmon, Jane Powell, Rock Hudson, Chrisopher Plummer, Jane Fonda, Julie Andrews, Lauren Bacall, Sal Mineo, Robert Redford, Kirk Douglas, Hope Lange and Merle Oberon. The videos…
Gwyneth Paltrow has received a letter from a woman who believes the actress may have inadvertently saved her life on the day of the attacks on New York nearly 10 years ago. Basically, what happened was I had gone to a yoga class very early. I was on the way home and it was the morning…
“There are no young people in it, there’s no sex, there’s no violence, no car chases and there’s no action and no vampires. “Watching two middle-aged men in a room talking, slowly becoming friends, is not exactly a pitch you put out there if you want a film to tear it up at the box…
Madonna thanked her ex-husbands for encouraging her to take up a career in movies, as she arrived in Venice on Thursday for the world premiere of her lavish royal drama “W.E.” The 53-year-old American has been married to actor and director Sean Penn and British film maker Guy Ritchie, and has spent much of the…
He may have been absent, but Roman Polanski made his presence felt at the Venice film festival today, September 1, with his comedy “Carnage,” in which Oscar-winner Kate Winslet‘s projectile vomit prompted the biggest laugh. Some of the adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s stage comedy “The God of Carnage” was written by the Franco-Polish film maker…
Antonio Banderas is working again with Pedro Almodovar on “La piel que habito” (“The Skin I Live In”): I just needed it after so many years in America. They make beautiful movies there but they play it safer. Maybe it’s because of the money that’s involved, but for a director like Pedro, money is just for…
The Times asked writers to choose their favourite romantic film, and explain the reasons for that choice. This is drastically edited look at the list; to read in full go here: Philip Collins on Brief Encounter (1945) If the joy of romance is contained in the contrast with the accompanying sadness, which it must be, then the…
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…
Madonna’s film about King Edward VIII’s romance with American divorcee Wallis Simpson will have its world premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival. W.E, which the singer directed, screens out of competition at the event, which runs from 31 August to 10 September. British actress Andrea Riseborough plays Mrs Simpson in the film, which contrasts…
Sony Pictures give us the first (official) glimpse of next year’s addition to the Spider-Man franchise: The Amazing Spider-Man. Britain’s Andrew Garfield plays the man in tights:
Woody Allen began shooting scenes in Rome today for his new film The Bop Decameron. Traffic near the Piazza Augusto Imperatore went into a tailspin as onlookers stopped to catch a glimpse of Hollywood star Penelope Cruz along with Italian actors Antonio Albanese and Alessandra Mastronardi on the set. The Bop Decameron is Allen’s first…
After much anticipation, gossip and hearsay, Woody Allen is poised to launch production on his new Rome feature, receiving an official send-off from the mayor of Rome who gave the filmmaker the city’s token of appreciation yesterday. To the delight of onlookers, Mayor Gianni Alemanno presented Allen with a statuette of the Eternal City’s Capitoline…
Twelve years after The Sixth Sense, Haley Joel Osment has returned to frequent dead people. This time around, he’s using them as science projects. Osment will star in “Wake the Dead”, an upcoming adaptation of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. Based on Steven Niles’ Frankenstein-themed graphic novels, Osment will play Victor Franklin, a college student morbidly experimenting…
Friends and fans of the late film composer John Barry – who died in January at the age of 77 – have celebrated his life and career at a memorial charity concert. Dame Shirley Bassey was amongst the performers at the event, held at the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Barry’s song Goldfinger, written for…
“The film industry today is very much a business thing. I remember when you were a young actor you would ask the day after a film opened: ‘How were the reviews?’ But today people only ask: ‘How much did the film make?’ It’s quite sad.”
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