Category: people

“The stuff I have done and said has never been for – and this is a word I really detest – controversy. I think the word is misused. I was raised in a household – we were all encouraged by my parents to speak your mind. Now, that does not mean you should speak every time there is an opportunity to. And so it has been a learning experience over the years that … I cannot talk about everything. I cannot do it. I cannot do it, cannot do it.”

“‘We’re as valid as anything by Beethoven,’ declared Jon Lord of his band, Deep Purple … [He] was not merely adopting a rebellious stance. An accomplished classical composer as well as rock musician, he believed with some justification that his group’s music was as profound in structure and as significant in cultural impact as any work from the symphonic canon.”

“[She was a] versatile actress who achieved fame on Broadway in the original production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical Oklahoma! in 1943 and five years later won an Oscar for best supporting actress in the landmark movie-drama Gentleman’s Agreement.”

Frieda Pinto, who plays the role of the titular Trishna in Michael Winterbottom’s new adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, on playing the role: “Sometimes you don’t put to rest what you opened up emotionally that day. It’s like walking around with an open wound. You are the open wound.”

“Film producer Richard Zanuck, who won the best picture Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy and was involved in such blockbuster films as Jaws and The Sting after his father, Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, fired him from 20th Century Fox, died Friday.”

Singh began his career as a wrestler, winning a world championship in 1968, but started appearing in movies as early as 1952. He appeared in 115 feature films, always doing his own stunts, but he was most famous for his portrayal of the monkey god Hanuman in the wildly popular 1980s TV serialisation of the Hindu epic Ramayana.

“On Monday the Arab news website Albawaba reported that the Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia actor Omar Sharif had converted to a kabbalistic sect of Judaism. Today a contradictory news report has emerged with Omar Sharif’s spokeswoman flatly denying that he has switched religions.”

“Kristin Chenoweth, the Tony Award-winning actress and Broadway singer, was injured on Wednesday by falling scaffolding on the Brooklyn set of the television series The Good Wife.“

“Reading, getting to know great poets and great prose was enormously helpful … It’s taught me a lot about the music of language … It behooves you to read as much poetry as you can – and to have a musical ear (which I fortunately have) – to know exactly where the climaxes are and where the codas are in your work.”

“[She] an active participant in the artistic ferment in and around the lofts of SoHo at midcentury and afterward. By the 1950s her work had begun to take on aspects of what would now be called multimedia performance, employing slides and chanting to add color and meter to the dance.” She founded and ran two companies and continued performing into her 80s.