#central school of speech and drama

[safedistancefrombeingsmart]

London’s Central drama school axes audition fees to end elite grip on the arts

Martin–as a former graduate– chimes in. 🙂

“None of us want drama schools to be the preserve of the well off. Ideally, they are places where people from all backgrounds can come together and learn from each other,” said Freeman, a Central graduate and star of The Responder, Sherlock and The Office. “Without my grant from Richmond council many years ago, I would never have been able to enjoy my three years at Central. That seems to have become harder and harder in recent years; who knows how many young actors are lost to us, due to lack of funds. I hope this inspires others to follow suit in trying to make attending drama school fairer for all.”

[highly-flammable]

Charlie Vickers went to the Andrew Garfield school of acting. No, literally. They are from the same alma mater and it just makes so much sense. The insane ability to disappear into roles and the layers and layers in the performances - they are truly teaching something special in that place.

[speculativism]

NEW WRITING!!!!!!

[neil-gaiman]

hi neil! i’ve recently been accepted onto the writing for performance course at royal central school of speech and drama (london), and i’m petrified to have my writing scrutinised. i’ve always been ‘the writer’ - i currently attend a film school for sixth form and there aren’t many writers - so it’s going to be weird for me.

i know getting scrutinised is what will make me a better writer, but i’m still a little nervous about the thought of it. do you have any advice on how to receive criticism about writing without it feeling too personal?

thanks :)

When the actors at Central are getting criticised, they are being criticised for their performance and that’s them standing there doing something. You have it much easier. If someone criticises something you’ve written they aren’t criticising you.

Learn from them. Get good.

[theholmwoodfoundation]

THE HOLMWOOD FOUNDATION PILOT EPISODE CAST/CREW - PART ONE

REBECCA ROOT - MADDIE TOWNSEND/MINA HARKER

Rebecca trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Theatre credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for the National Theatre (UK and Ireland tour); Rathmines Road for Fishamble at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin; Trans Scripts at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Bear / The Proposal at the Young Vic; and Hamlet at the Gielgud Theatre and Athens International Festival. TV, Film and Video Game credits include Monsieur Spade, This Is Christmas, Irvine Welsh’s Crime, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Heartstopper, Annika, The Rising, Sex Education, The Gallery, The Queen’s Gambit, Finding Alice, Creation Stories, Last Christmas, The Sisters Brothers, Colette, The Danish Girl, Flack, The Romanoffs, Moominvalley, Hank Zipzer, Boy Meets Girl, Doctors, Casualty, The Detectives, and Keeping Up Appearances.  Radio credits include Clare In The Community, Life Lines, The Hotel, and 1977 for BBC Radio 4. Guest appearances include Woman’s Hour, Front Row, Loose Ends, Saturday Live, and A Good Read.  She plays Tania Bell in the award-winning Doctor Who: Stranded audio dramas. Rebecca has also recorded numerous documentary narrations, audiobooks, and voice-overs. Rebecca is also a voice and speech coach, holding the MA in Voice Studies from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

SEAN CARLSEN - JEREMY LARKIN/ JONATHAN HARKER

Born in South Wales, Seán trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. He has worked extensively in audio drama, television, theatre and film.  Seán is perhaps best known to Doctor Who fans as Narvin in the Doctor Who audio series Gallifrey and has appeared on TV in Doctor Who - The Christmas Invasion and Torchwood. Recent TV credits include Mudtown (BBCiplayer/S4C), Dal y Mellt (Netflix), His Dark Materials (BBC1), All Creatures Great and Small (Channel 5), A Mother's Love (Channel 4) and Series 5 of Stella (Sky1).  Films include supporting leads in Boudica - Rise of the Warrior Queen, cult horror The Cleansing,  the lead in Forgotten Journeys and John Sheedy’s forthcoming film ‘Never Never Never’

SAM CLEMENS - ARTHUR JONES

Samuel Clemens trained at the Drama Centre London and is an award-winning director with over twenty years’ experience. Samuel has recently written and directed his debut feature film ‘The Waterhouse’ with Take The Shot Films & Featuristic Films and represented by Raven Banner Entertainment, which is due for release this coming year.  In addition, he has directed fourteen short films, winning awards all over the world including shorts ‘Surgery (multi-award winning), A Bad Day To Propose (Straight 8 winner 2021), Say No & Dress Rehearsal’. Samuel also directs critically acclaimed number one UK stage tours and fringe shows (Rose Theatre Kingston, Swansea Grand, Eastbourne, Yvonne Arnaud, Waterloo East Theatre) and commercials include clients JD Sports, Shell and Space NK. Samuel is also a regular producer and director for Big Finish Productions & Anderson Entertainment. He has cast, directed, produced and post supervised numerous productions of ‘Doctor Who – (BBC), The Avengers (Studio Canal), Thunderbirds, Stingray (Anderson Entertainment), Callan, Missy, Gallifrey’& Shilling & Sixpence Investigate’ and many more. Samuel has directed world class talent such as, Sir Roger Moore, Ben Miles, Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Alex Kingston, Frank Skinner, Rita Ora, Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley, Rufus Hound, David Warner, Celia Imrie, Samuel West, Youssef Kerkour, Sophie Aldred, Ian McNiece, Colin Baker, Olivia Poulet, Stephen Wight, Jade Anouka, Mimi Ndwendi, Michelle Gomez, Peter Davidson, Paul O’Grady and many more. Samuel is one of the founding members and directors at Take The Shot Films Ltd and is Head of Artistic Creation and Direction. Lastly, Samuel is a regular tutor at The London Film Academy, The Giles Foreman Centre for Acting & The Rose Youth Theatre and is a member of The Directors Guild UK. As for upcoming projects, Sam is currently in pre-production on his next feature film “On The Edge of Darkness”, which is based on his dad’s stage play “Strictly Murder”.

ATTILA PUSKAS - DRACULA

Attila Puskás is a native Hungarian Voice Actor born in Transylvania – Romania, so Romanian is in his bag of tricks too, but most of his work is done in English, in a Transatlantic Eastern European Accent, but is quite capable of Hungarian, Romanian and International Eastern European accents, plus Standard American. His voice range is Adult to Middle Aged (30-40+) due to his deep voice. Vocal styles can range from authoritive, brooding to calming and reassuring and much more. He’s most experienced in character work, like Animations and Games, but his skills encompass Commercials to Narration as well. He’s received training through classes and workshops, pushing him to the next level to achieve higher standards. Now on a journey to perfect these skills and put them to good use!

PART TWO: HERE

PART THREE: HERE

[maybe-boys-do-love]

The Trainee, full series review

As I reflect on The Trainee and our responses to it as an audience throughout its run I'm reminded of how easy it is to be cynical about life and media. We expect worst-case-scenarios, punishments, and villains. In fact, this kind of thinking offers our anxieties a sense of certainty and fulfillment: things are good or bad, people are competent authorities or incompetent assholes.

I saw so many of us waiting for the other shoe to drop during The Trainee. We looked for problems at Good Pick so that Ryan's tides could easily turn and he could become the hero. We predicted Joy or Judy or Jo (what's with all the J names??) would be revealed as some villain for their failures to properly mentor. Even up to the last episode, we expected Nine to receive some kind of legal action for plagiarizing concepts. But, as Toni Morrison wrote, "You have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good--and that's complicated." The Trainee was a show about being and becoming a good adult, and even rarer to see in our media, an adult who chooses goodness at work.

The series brought us so many situations that could've sparked drama or set off a firing process for one of the employees. Maybe you felt some of the problems should've been dealt with that way. The point of the series wasn't the consequences of actions, though. Each week, instead, the episodes restored the dignity of its characters so they could learn and grow and let others inspire them to move forward.

Jo's speech to the interns at their farewell party highlighted the central theme perfectly. "I remember the first day we met. I heard none of you were any good. I couldn't tell if three months later, you'd be any better. I just wanted you to find your own path and see your own worth." What kinds of grace and patience are we willing to give ourselves in order to seek out and work toward meaningful lives? And once we can offer this to ourselves how do we offer it to others?

The Trainee's philosophy forces you to review it differently. Did it have missteps or incongruities (grad school acceptance processes are apparently much faster in HK, for example)? Sure, but don't we all slip up here and there? I almost love The Trainee more for the quirky imperfections it holds within the compassionate light of its cinematic lens glares. Prepare for disappointment if you want passionate high-drama romance, but if you're feeling lost on your path in life and need a kind hand to comfort and guide you, I can't recommend a better internship than the one offered at Good Pick on The Trainee.

[olympic-paris]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

September 22

1939 – Bette Bourne, born Peter Bourne, is a British actor, drag queen and equal rights activist.

Born Peter Bourne in Hackney, east London, he made his stage debut at the age of four as one of the members of Madame Behenna and her Dancing Children. Encouraged to take part in amateur dramatics by his mother, he chose a career in the theatre at 16, working backstage at the Garrick Theatre, London.

He studied drama at Central School of Speech and Drama in London and went on to act on stage and on television throughout the 1960s. He appeared in TV series such as The Avengers and The Prisoner, and in 1969, he appeared alongside Sir Ian McKellen in a touring double bill of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II and Shakespeare's Richard II.

In the 1970s, he put his acting career on hold to become an activist with the Gay Liberation Front, becoming part of a gay commune in London. It was during this period that he started wearing drag and changed his name to "Bette".

In 1976, he joined the New York-based gay cabaret group, the Hot Peaches, performing with them in Europe, culminating in a show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. When this group went back to New York, Bourne formed his own troupe, Bloolips. Featuring songs such as Let's Scream Our Tits Off, the shows were mostly written by playwright John Taylor with titles like Lust in Space and The Ugly Duckling. He toured the UK and the rest of Europe throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, winning an Obie Award (Off Broadway Theater Award) for the New York production of Lust in Space.

1953 – Richard Fairbrass is an English singer and television presenter, born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey and raised in East Grinstead, West Sussex. He is the singer with the band Right Said Fred alongside his brother Fred Fairbrass, who became very popular for a short time in the UK in 1991 with their number 2 hit I'm Too Sexy, which they followed with Don't Talk Just Kiss and in 1992 Deeply Dippy, which was a number 1. Since then they have only occasionally troubled the lower reaches of the charts although they have had success in Europe and elsewhere.

I'm Too Sexy has entered popular culture and is often spoofed or parodied in shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy.

In April 2007 Fairbrass was reported to be planning to run for Mayor of London in the 2008 election. Shortly after, during a gay rights rally in Red Square, Moscow, on 27 May 2007 commemorating the 14th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia, Richard and Fred Fairbrass were assaulted by members of a counter-demonstration staged by ultra-nationalists. Richard Fairbrass sustained a cut under his eye. Speaking about the incident upon his return to the UK, Richard Fairbrass commented, "When it was over I actually felt more sorry for the guy that whacked me than I did for me ... How threatened can he be, how insecure is he to be threatened by a bisexual pop singer who's most famous for singing "I'm Too Sexy"?".

He is very open about his sexual orientation (bisexual) and once co-hosted (with Rhona Cameron) a TV series aimed at a lesbian and gay audience called Gaytime TV on BBC2. Richard had come out as bisexual in 1991 to The Sun. Richard's long term partner, from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, was Stuart Pantry, a BBC make-up artist. At the end In 2007, Richard said to the Metro: "My last relationship was with a girl, so I am on the cusp. I have never described myself as completely gay". Fairbrass has also said he appreciates "pretty guys who look like girls and girls who look like pretty guys."

1958 – Tim Miller was a little-known performance artist until he came to national attention as one of four people denied grants from the National Endowment for the Arts because of homosexual content in their shows. Since then he has built a reputation for his witty and engaging performances that are both poignant and politically acute. Miller's performances are rooted in his own life experiences, but they are also a form of glbtq activism.

Miller, the youngest of their four children, was born in Pasadena but grew up in nearby Whittier. As a youth Miller read the works of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg and always felt a sense of otherness. In Boys Like Us, he wrote:

I was seventeen going on eighteen and I was desperate for love and dick. I searched everywhere for it. I hung around the Whittier Public Library, leaning suggestively against the stacks in the psychology section, waiting to be picked up by some graduate student. I leaned too far, once, and almost knocked over an entire row of bookshelves.

He had an epiphany while watching a PBS show about Oscar Wilde, Feasting with Panthers (directed by Adrian Hall and Rick Hauser) in 1975. As he recalled in a 1992 interview, "It was like a lightning bolt from Zeus or Diana or somebody came right into our living room in Whittier, California. It was like I watched it and I said, 'Oh, OK. I'm gay, just like Oscar Wilde, just like Socrates.'" He shared the revelation with his family, all of whom were very supportive.

Miller's interest in performance began in high school, where he took classes in theater and dance. At nineteen he moved to New York and studied dance with Merce Cunningham.

Two years later, in 1980, Miller joined with Charles Moulton and Charles Dennis to found P.S. 122, a space for performance art. The name derives from the former school building that houses the project. After seven years in New York, Miller returned to California and founded another performance space, Highways, in Santa Monica.

Miller developed shows based on his personal life as a gay man and also as an activist on behalf of the glbtq community. As a member of ACT UP and other organizations Miller has participated in numerous demonstrations to call for funding of AIDS research and treatment and to promote equal rights for glbtq people. His civil disobedience has led to his arrest on several occasions. He was beaten up by police when he protested at the Republican National Convention in 1992.

Supported in part by grants for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Miller staged his autobiographical shows before small houses until May 1990, when he suddenly found himself at the center of a political maelstrom. In the wake of the controversy over NEA sponsorship of a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit, Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina led a campaign to prevent the NEA from funding "obscene or indecent" art.

In September 1989 a congressional committee adopted language to prohibit federal grants for art that "may be considered obscene, including, but not limited to, depictions of sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts and which, when taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." On the basis of this amendment, in June 1990 NEA chairman John E. Frohnmayer denied four of eighteen proposed grants despite the unanimous favorable recommendation of a panel of artists. Three of the artists—Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes—are openly gay or lesbian, and the fourth, Karen Finley, deals in her work with various aspects of sexuality including homosexuality. All were previous recipients of NEA grants. The NEA Four, as the group came to be known, sued the agency and Frohnmayer in federal court on the grounds that political rather than artistic motivations had led to the rejection of the grants.

"There is no question that the work of these artists is considered excellent in the arts community," stated Ellen Yaroshefsky, one of their lawyers, adding, "The works talk about the victimization and powerlessness of women in our culture, the victimization of gay people, and the victimization of people with AIDS, and all of them express the views that heterosexuals and homosexuals should be treated equally."

The case was eventually settled out of court in June 1993. The four plaintiffs each received their original grants and also $6,000 to compensate them for invasion of privacy because of alleged leaks of information about them by the NEA. The case cost the NEA over $200,000 in compensation to the plaintiffs' lawyers and also cost Frohnmayer his job after he admitted that he had departed from regular procedure by rejecting the panel's decisions on the NEA Four and by not permitting them to appeal his action.

Despite the settlement, however, the Clinton Justice Department appealed to preserve the "decency clause." After a trial court and a court of appeals declared the clause unconstitutional, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that the NEA could use "general standards of decency"--a decidedly vague concept--in making funding choices.

1959 – Mark Patton is an American actor and interior designer, known for A Nightmare on Elm Strret 2: Freddy's Revenge.

Mark Patton was born in Kansas City, Missouri. After graduating high school, Patton moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. Within a few months he landed the role of Joe Qualley in the 1982 Broadway production of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Patton reprised the role in the 1982 film of the same name. Although his character in the play and film was gay, Patton was not allowed to do an interview with the LGBT-interest magazine, The Advocate. Patton identified this as an early indicator of the homophobia in Hollywood at that time.

He is perhaps best known for his role in the 1985 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge as Jesse Walsh, a teen whose body becomes possessed by Freddy Krueger. Critics and audiences noted the gay subtext of the film, something deliberately inserted by screenwriter David Chaskin. Chaskin initially blamed the subtext on Patton's portrayal of Jesse.

Patton says he gave up on his acting career following being cast in a planned CBS series in which he would have played a gay character.

"They began to ask me if I would be comfortable playing a gay character and telling people I was straight if they began to question my sexuality?...All I could think about was how everyone I knew was dying from AIDS and we were having this bullshit conversation. My heart just broke and that was the line for me. I knew I would never be able to do what they were asking, so I walked away from Hollywood and decided to move on to a place where it was totally acceptable to be gay."

In 2004, on his 46th birthday, Patton was diagnosed with HIV along with pneumonia, thrush and tuberculosis. His medications interacted badly and he was hospitalized. Upon recovering, he moved to Mexico, where he met and later married Hector Morales Mondragon. The couple owns and operates an art store in Puerto Vallearta.

Patton appears in the A Nightmare on Elm Street documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, directed by Dan Farrands. In the documentary screenwriter Chaskin acknowledged that he was responsible for the film's gay subtext. Following his appearance in the documentary Patton began touring horror conventions where he is lauded as mainstream cinema's first male "scream queen". He donates most of his appearance fees to HIV treatment groups and charities benefiting LGBT youth such as The Trevor Project.

In December of 2015, it was announced that Patton was cast in the independent paranormal horror film, "Family Possessions", which is written and directed by Tommy Faircloth of Horse Creek Productions.

1972 – Matthew Rush is a bi-racial American gay pornographic film actor, magazine model, and a bodybuilder and personal trainer. He has competed at the Gay Games in Amsterdam and Sydney, Australia.

Rush was under a lifetime exclusive pornographic career contract with Falcon Studios that ended in 2009 so he could pursue other projects in the pornographic industry. His first post-Falcon project was a pornographic video and photo shoot with photographer Jon Royce on January 22, 2009.

Rush is a powerful top in many of his film roles, but he can also perform as a vocal bottom. His first post-Falcon porn shoot was with Pantheon Productions in San Francisco on January 23, 2009. In the film, titled Brief Encounters (Real Men, Vol. 17), Rush played a nasty son that "flip-flopped" with hairy daddy Tim Kelly. Rush's career was revitalized when he joined the website MenOver30.com in 2009. His easy going attitude and versatility has resulted with him receiving the 2010 Grabby Award and GayVN Award in the category "Best Versatile Performer".

Rush has appeared in the TV detective film Third Man Out, starring Chad Allen, and in the motion picture Another Gay Movie. From 2002 to 2005, he acted in a traveling stage production of Ronnie Larsen's Making Porn.

His retirement from the pornographic industry, announced in October 2011, was short lived when he returned to making pornographic films in January 2012.

1975 – On this date Oliver Sipple saved President Gerald Ford's life.

Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, just seventeen days after Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme had also tried to kill the president. Moore was 40 feet away from Ford when she fired a single shot at him. The bullet missed the President because bystander Oliver Sipple grabbed Moore's arm and then pulled her to the ground, using his hand to keep the gun from firing a second time. Sipple said at the time: "I saw [her gun] pointed out there and I grabbed for it. I lunged and grabbed the woman's arm and the gun went off."

Sipple, a decorated Marine and Vietnam War veteran, was immediately commended by the police and the Secret Service for his action at the scene. The news media portrayed Sipple as a hero. Though he was known to be Gay by various fellow members of the Gay community, Sipple had not made this public, and his sexual orientation was a secret from his family. He requested the press did not report this. Several days later Herb Caen, a columnist at The San Francisco Chronicle, exposed Sipple as a Gay man and a friend of Harvey Milk.

2003 – John Alcorn has a role as a jazz singer in Timothy Findley's The Piano Man's Daughter. John Alcorn is a Canadian jazz singer who is active in the Toronto jazz scene.

Born in Toronto, Ontario and raised in Trinidad, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and New Hampshire, Alcorn returned to Toronto as an adult and began performing in jazz clubs. He released his first album in 1999, and was named Male Vocalist of the Year by the Jazz Report Awards. He also earned a Dora Award in 1997 as music director and composer for Theresa Tova's play Still the Night.

Alcorn has also acted in a number of television films, including Must Be Santa and The Piano Man's Daughter.

Alcorn is the partner of puppeteer and dramatist Ronnie Burkett. His daughter, Coco Love Alcorn, is also a noted Canadian jazz and pop singer.

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Scottish actor Angus Macfadyen born 21st September 1963 in Glasgow.

MacFadyen had a nomadic upbringing; thanks to his father’s job with the World Health Organization, he spent his childhood and adolescence in places no less diverse than Africa, Australia, France, the Philippines, Singapore, and Denmark. He went on to attend the University of Edinburgh and received theatrical training at the Central School of Speech and Drama. MacFadyen got his professional start on the Edinburgh stage, appearing in a number of productions at the famed Fringe Festival.

Breaking into television in the early ‘90s, Angus appeared in a number of series for the BBC, including an acclaimed adaptation of David Leavitt’s The Lost Language of Cranes. Following the critical and commercial success of Braveheart, the actor got a rudimentary dose of recognition across the Atlantic, but remained largely unknown outside of the U.K. He starred with Gabriel Byrne and Bill Campbell in the World War II drama The Brylcreem Boys in 1996, playing a German pilot being held captive in neutral Ireland. Until 1998, when he portrayed Peter Lawford in the made-for-cable The Rat Pack, MacFadyen’s other screen appearances tended to be in films that were widely ignored by audiences and critics alike.

He has played Orson Welles in Tim Robbins’ 1999 film, Cradle Will Rock, Philip in the BBC’s production of The Lost Language of Cranes, Dupont in Equilibrium and Jeff Denlon in the Saw series of films

Some of you might remember Angus in the excellent Takin’ Over the Asylum which also starred two great actors in Ken Stott and David Tennant. We last say him on the big screen in very underrated The Lost City of Z

Angus reprised his role of The Bruce last year in Robert the Bruce, among the co-stars, playing his wife Elizabeth de Burgh is Mhairi Calvey, who aged just 5 was ‘Young Murron’ in Braveheart. While I enjoyed the film, I thought that maybe the role of The Bruce was maybe better suited to a younger actor, but it was his “baby”, and he strived for years to get the film made.

He also appeared in the TV series Strange Angel, about a rocket scientist in 1940s Los Angeles is secretly the disciple of occultist Aleister Crowley, played by our man. I have yet to see this, but must look it up. The series was canceled after two seasons.

Angus is currently part of the Outlander cast playing a Redcoat Brigadier-General. He had a small part in the Kevin Costner film Horizon: An American Saga and was King Ferrel in The Last Redemption. Angus has a few other projects on the go.

[ca-suffit]

https://www.tumblr.com/ca-suffit/759917664545243136/im-not-anon-so-i-can-send-you-this-but-if-you?source=share

This is very true. People often praise British actors for being trained or having a theatre background but the big drama schools have a connections monopoly and are also notoriously racist and anti working class. It is very hard to be successful in the upper echelons of acting in the UK and not have been to drama school, and even if you do as a poc you'll still start way at the bottom once you graduate Vs your white peers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52968493

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/06/drama-schools-accused-of-hypocrisy-over-anti-racism-statements

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/guildhall-drama-school-racism-report-b2393229.html this one is from just last year.

(post link)

thank u sm for sharing more info!!

[pers-books]

Pamela Salem 1944-2024

Friday, 23 February 2024 - Reported by Marcus

The actress Pamela Salem has died at the age of 80.

Pamela Salem appeared in three Doctor Who stories. In 1977 she played Toos in the acclaimed Fourth Doctor story The Robots of Death. Her voice was used as one of the voices of Xoanon in the previous story, The Face of Evil.   She returned to the series in 1988 playing Rachel Jensen alongside the Seventh Doctor in Remembrance of the Daleks. She later reprised her role as Jensen in the Big Finish audio spin-off series Counter-Measures and 1963: The Assassination Games. 

Pamela Salem was born in Bombay, India, and educated at Heidelberg University in Germany and later at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England.

Film work included the role of Miss Moneypenny in the 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again, starring Sean Connery. 

Other television appearances included parts in EastEnders, where she played mafia affiliate Joanne Francis, and as the evil witch Belor in ITV's Into the Labyrinth.

Other television guest appearances have included roles in the third episode of  Blake's 7, The Onedin Line, The Professionals, Howards' Way, Ever Decreasing Circles, Tripods and All Creatures Great and Small

She later moved to the United States where she continued her career in series such as Magnum, P.I., Party of Five, ER and The West Wing where she played a British prime minister.

[Source]

[jalwyn21]

Is it true that Joe’s exes still follow him? And that he’s in good terms all of them and Taylor made him unfollow one of them? 👀

Yup, Joe’s exes still follow him, some on instagram some on X, some on both. All but one.. 🙄 TS unfollowed him 🤭 So, yeah, it's safe to assume Joe is on good terms with all of them.. Don't think he's on good terms with TS though... 🤷‍♀️

To be fair I don't know if TS made him unfollow one of them, cause I don't know Joe personally 😅😅😅 but ... Back in 2020 Joe still followed her on insta, and during the first part of the lockdown he was stuck in California with TS. So, there was this online meeting with his former classmates from The Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. Celebrating 5 years since graduation or something... idk.. The ex was on that online chat too..

The next day Joe unfollowed her on insta. 😹😹😹 A bit suspicious, don't you think? So, yeah, I just assumed TS didn't want him following an ex on insta and made him unfollow her ... 😹😹😹 Like, why else would he just unfollow her in 2020? 😹😹😹 But, I don't know, you decide... 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Do the girls back home follow you on instagram like I do? 😹😹😹😹😹

[abirdie]

Gael García Bernal: Just Another Homeless Young Star

Article from the New York Times, 19 September 2004 (x)

By Ginger Thompson

MEXICO CITY - THE lunch rush has ended at a popular, upscale cafe, and one of the most attractive and acclaimed young movie actors in the world hobbles through the room of empty tables on crutches. He's so rumpled and heavily bundled up it looks as if he's spent the night on the street. Blushing and taking off his cap, he explains that he's just had hernia surgery. "I have been lifting heavy suitcases up and down a lot of stairs," he says. "I don't have my own place yet, so I stay with different friends." Unloading a big floppy satchel and laying his crutches on the floor, he shrugs, pulls off his jacket and takes a seat. Then, he makes eye contact. Gael García Bernal, it turns out, is a divine sight even in a post-operative state.

And if his life seems to be in a bit of disarray, his career is not. He's got two big films opening soon: The Motorcycle Diaries and Bad Education. Bad Education, which will be screened at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 9 and 10 before its commercial opening on Nov. 19, moved Mr. García into the coveted circle of Pedro Almodóvar (Mr. García had to learn to walk in high heels and wear mascara for his role as a drag queen). In Motorcycle Diaries, which arrives Friday, Mr. García plays the legendary revolutionary Che Guevara, who, as a young man on a long ride across South America, is awakened to the political injustices he fought to his death.

Mr. García isn't afraid of a fight. Unlike most young actors, he is driven by an agenda that goes beyond red carpets and glossy magazine covers: he has shown modern Mexico in all of its sometimes ugly, always complicated glory. The characters he has played cross lines, challenge taboos and reveal secrets, in a deeply Catholic country that prefers to keep public conversations polite. And his acting has helped bring international acclaim to films that are rescuing this country's stale movie industry.

At the same time, he's established himself well beyond the Mexican border, but he's not sure he wants to cross.

Hollywood can't get him to return calls. (He suggests they stop sending scripts with characters called, he says, "Chico From the Barrio.") He may be looking for his first grown-up apartment, but he's not going to be filling it with movie-star loot.

Mr. García blushes again. He explains that he's only 25, and he's been living a whirlwind. "I had a place when I was studying in London, but I couldn't pay for it, and so my solution was to stay with girlfriends," he says. "Then I began moving around so much I didn't need a place."

Those who know him say it's a rising star's way of keeping himself grounded, by not acquiring anything that cannot be stuffed into a backpack. Beyond Mr. García's smoldering good looks, there's a smart, well-read, cultured human being who rejects the superstar syndrome and has something to say. In a two-hour interview in Spanish, it becomes clear that roots mean more to Mr. García than roofs.

It's rainy season in Mexico City, and as the clouds roll in, the cafe turns dim. Mr. García's greenish-brownish-bluish eyes change with the light as he retraces his journey from Mexican soap operas to big, bold art films. He was born in Guadalajara, in the north of Mexico, and grew up here, where his parents worked as actors. Mr. García has said that he followed his parents into show business so that he could spend time with them. As a teenager, he got into the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Then he came back to Mexico City and won the starring role in Amores Perros, by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the film that would return his country to prominence on the international cinema circuit.

Mr. García played a poor city kid who wants so desperately to escape his lot in life and run away with his brother's wife that he enters his Rottweiler in barbaric, back-alley dogfights for money. The movie, which was nominated for the best foreign film Oscar, revealed unsightly sides of Mexican life that hadn't been seen before on film. But it was Mr. García's next role, as a sensual young man in Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También, that won him fans.

Again, it was the story of a road trip, but it was also a love triangle and a coming-of-age narrative about two teenagers overwhelmed by their own hormones. Its sex scenes struck a chord with moviegoers around the world -- everywhere, that is, but here, where audiences were put off by Mr. Cuarón's frankness. "That is why Mexican films can be so dry," Mr. García said. "In this country, everyone wants prostitutes to be poets, young people to speak like philosophers. But that's not the way movies should be. That's not real."

Mr. García's next film led to national protests here. In The Crime of Father Amaro, directed by Carlos Carrera, he played a predator priest who has an affair with a teenager and sends her to her death in a clandestine abortion clinic. The Catholic church pressured the Mexican government to ban the film -- which might have worked as recently as a decade ago. But in 2000, Mexicans ousted the authoritarian regime that had controlled the government for most of the last century, and they are less willing to tolerate censorship. Protests against Father Amaro by religious groups succeeded only in drawing more people to theaters.

"For so long they told us we were not ready for democracy," Mr. García says, speaking about the government. "We were always ready. And that's what people said over and over again, when they went to see Father Amaro. A lot of people who saw it said they thought it was a bad movie, but they were glad a movie like that existed."

In a way, that seems to be the thinking that drives Mr. García's free-agent film career (despite enormous demand, he's made almost no commitments to future projects). He says he gravitates toward roles that challenge him and that tell untold stories, or those that have been forbidden. Take his two latest films. Che Guevara is right up there with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as one of the most widely recognized, least understood figures in the world. The goal of The Motorcycle Diaries, he said, was to demystify Che. "In the end," Mr. García says, "he comes down to the same common denominators we all share at 23. We have all traveled and discovered ourselves in new places."

Walter Salles directed Mr. García in the story of the cross-continental road trip through labor camps and a leper colony that slowly transformed a starry-eyed Argentine medical student named Ernesto Guevara into the fierce revolutionary called Che. In a telephone interview from San Francisco, Mr. Salles says Mr. García immediately felt an affinity with an image of Che few people would recognize -- and some might not like. Mr. Salles's Che is not the lion depicted on posters and T-shirts. He's naïve, sickly, socially awkward and so painfully uncertain of himself that he's overshadowed by his dashing travel companion, Alberto Granado (played by Rodrigo de la Serna).

"It takes courage for an actor to portray an Ernesto Guevara who is introspective, who is living with his doubts, not with certitudes," Mr. Salles says. "This is the story of a young man who rebaptizes himself from the beginning to the end of a journey. At the beginning he is one man. At the end he is another. Gael had the capacity to understand the dimension of that arc." Mr. Salles continues: "He moves us in gentle strokes. In the end it's like walking two hours in the gentle rain. You're soaking wet, but you don't really know why."

Mr. García dropped everything to do Bad Education, he says, because of the "illusion of working with Almodóvar." There were lots of rumors about bitter disagreements between the actor and Mr. Almodóvar during the making of the film, in which Mr. García plays a drag queen who was abused by a priest as a boy. Some reports said that Mr. Almodóvar stopped filming at one point and demanded that Mr. García lose weight for the role.

Mr. García is discreet, but clearly, making the film was a trying experience. Colonial attitudes toward Mexico remain alive and well in Spain, he says. "When I arrived there to prepare for the movie, many people told me to take off my accent," he recalls. "Everyone said the same thing to me, I swear -- even journalists and Almodóvar, himself. They would tell me to take off my accent, like it was something dirty I had to clean up. I told them, 'What do you mean, take off my accent?' I told them I was going to put on a Spanish accent."

If Mr. García expresses some qualms about Mr. Almodóvar's methods, he's no less impatient with Hollywood's. "Hollywood has made some of the best movies in the world," he says. But then he goes on and on about how shallow it seems: "Poor, poor directors that make films in the United States. The big studios only allow them to make films if they meet certain conditions. And if those conditions ruin the integrity of the film, then the film is ruined, and it's a huge waste of time."

He says that no matter where he travels, he intends to keep his base here. This country lives an almost eternal identity crisis, he says, set as it is between one of the poorest corners of the world and the only remaining superpower. It makes for lots of great stories to tell. In fact, Mr. Garcia and his friend and Y Tu Mamá También co-star Diego Luna have been talking about producing a series of films from each of this country's 32 states. And his homeless days may finally be coming to an end: he's made a bid on a house. "This is the place that excites me," he says. "I have a strong itch that keeps me here, to be a part of this place. I think that if I abandon it, I'll become just another actor, like all the rest."

[lacasadelasmunecaspreciosas]

Fotos Martina García en Soho desnuda

Amar a morir, Rabia y Día naranja son las tres películas que Martina García estrena este año. Pero como cuando se trata de Martina mucho nunca es demasiado, le tenemos estas fotos para que se deleite.

Martina, Martina... ¿Qué se puede decir de Martina? Con esos ojos que tiene tal vez no sea necesario decir nada: todo lo que uno quisiera decir ya fue dicho por ellos. Y es que los ojos de Martina le dirán mucho más de lo que nosotros nunca podríamos, simplemente porque a esta mujer no se la puede definir fácilmente. ¿Inocente será la palabra, por su carita de niña buena? ¿O extravagante, como la describían algunos directores cuando llegaba a grabar vestida de gótica y de punk? ¿O tal vez intelectual, por haber estudiado Filosofía en la Universidad de la Sorbona y porque considera este hecho algo fundamental en su vida, de lo cual está muy orgullosa? Parecería que cada descripción que proponemos contradice a la anterior, pero en el caso de Martina es esta acumulación de opuestos la única forma de retratarla.La otra opción es describir a Martina desde su profesión, la actuación. Todos la recordamos en la novela Amor a la plancha, y en películas nacionales como Perder es cuestión de método, de Sergio Cabrera, o Satanás, de Andy Baiz, pero ella ha estado en el mundo de la actuación desde muchos años antes, cuando era apenas una niñita y salía en el programa infantil Los niños se toman el mundo. Martina estudió actuación con Paco Barrero en Bogotá, en The Central School of Speech and Drama en Londres, y con Juan Carlos Corazza en Madrid. Pues considera que, como en cualquier otra profesión, en la actuación hay mucho que aprender y es necesario prepararse, pero al mismo tiempo también está convencida de que es básico tener un don, que describe como mucha fuerza interior, valentía, criterio y extrema sensibilidad. Y como un bonus track, para terminar de entender a Martina, aquí está la respuesta que nos dio cuando le preguntamos que por qué había insistido en hacer estas fotos con un gatito: "La idea fue mía, lo pedí con insistencia, necesitaba un ser vivo y frágil para acercarme al desnudo con ternura e inocencia, y para que tuviera sentido".

[henrycavillmasterlist]

Blink of An Eye

Characters: Henry Cavill x OFC

Summary: Kinsley was born to a theater-enthused mother and a rancher father. They were settled in Columbia, KY where her father’s family had established a well-known ranch and while well off, Kinsley thrived in the theater. Her mother finally convinced her father to send her to London to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She quickly took to the teachings and made a name for herself, becoming a prominent student. It was one night, one stage when she came to the attention of the man that would change her life and her direction forever.

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[lboogie1906]

Joseph Marcell (August 18, 1948) is a British actor and comedian. He is known for his role as Geoffrey Butler, the butler on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-96).

Born in Saint Lucia, he moved to the UK, when he was 9 years old and grew up in Peckham, South London. He lives in Banstead, Surrey.

He studied speech and dance at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

As a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he appeared in productions of Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He has appeared in feature films and on television in Britain. He serves on the board of the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London where he is featured in a nationwide production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and King Lear.

He played Gonzalo in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest at Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in May 2016. He played Solly Two Kings in the play by August Wilson, Gem of the Ocean at the Tricycle Theatre, in London, in January 2016. He began rehearsals as Titus Andronicus, in July 2017, for the La Grande Shakespeare Company, in La Grande, Oregon. He married Judith M. Midtby (1975-80). He married Joyce T. Walsh (1995). He has two children. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence