Category: people

Alessandra Stanley: “[H]er last poignant appearances sometimes obscure a smaller, more gratifying story line of a celebrated beauty who worked against type to construct a more dignified second act. Long before Charlize Theron gained weight to make Monster and Nicole Kidman put on a fake nose to play Virginia Woolf, Ms. Fawcett scrubbed off her tawny good looks to play battered – and battering – women in The Burning Bed and Extremities.”

“No matter what anyone might try and claim today, Charlie’s Angels was an abysmal way to kill an hour. … The show, though, wasn’t the point. (At least that, I suspect, today’s youth would understand.) Watching Charlie’s Angels, having the FFM poster on your wall, clipping magazine pictures of the Angels in their bikinis and hanging them on the inside of your locker – these were more like badges, a way of participating in pop culture with as much sexual knowing as you could muster.”

She “was part of the first great wave of African-American singers to appear on the world’s premier stages in the postwar years. Active from the 1950s to the 1970s, she performed with the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the opera companies of Houston, Boston, San Francisco, Santa Fe, N.M., and Buenos Aires, among others.”

He was “a simultaneous[ly] zany and empathetic performer of the Off-Broadway stage whose short, but productive career saw him originate roles in plays by Nicky Silver and Douglas Carter Beane. […] [His] soft, malleable face and large brown eyes … could express a soulful sorrowfulness, a pained yearning or a verging sense of panic.”

“It has been nearly 40 years since Alan L. Bean walked on the moon as an Apollo astronaut, but he still wrestles with the experience every day, trying to recapture what he and other astronauts saw and felt in the medium of paint. … ‘When I left NASA, I made up my mind I was not going to be an astronaut who painted, but an artist who used to be an astronaut,’ he said. ‘It takes a while to change the heart.'”

“German actress Hanne Hiob, a daughter of playwright Bertolt Brecht, has died, officials said Wednesday. … Among other parts, she played the title roles in her father’s plays ‘Saint Joan of the Stockyards’ and ‘Carrar’s Rifles.'”

“Doctors have told Ms. Brueggergosman she has every chance of making a full recovery from an emergency procedure to repair a dissected aorta, a rare and often fatal affliction.”

“He’s a TV personality with a trademark booming voice, a writer, film-maker and gay activist who is not only an expert on world monarchy but part of the closest thing the French republic has to a royal family: the Mitterrand clan.” (He’s François’s nephew.)

“On Tuesday, Patti LuPone sent a note to Dave Itzkoff taking him to task for his coverage of her decision to stop a concert in Las Vegas to berate an audience member for using an electronic device. The post received an overwhelming number of readers’ comments (over 760 as of this writing). Theater coverage on NYTimes.com hasn’t been this animated since we posted a slide show of a shirtless Daniel Radcliffe in the London production of Equus.”

“Judi Dench is so loved by the UK’s filmgoing public that viewers are almost certain to make complaints whenever she swears on camera. The phenomenon was identified after the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) revealed in its annual report that a small number of viewers had complained about Dench’s foul mouth in the James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace.”