Sylvia Miles (September 9, 1924 – June 12, 2019) was an American actress. She was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performances in Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Farewell, My Lovely (1975).
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John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974). Waters wrote and directed the comedy film Hairspray (1988), which was later adapted into a hit Broadway musical and a 2007 musical film. Other films he has written and directed include Desperate Living (1977), Polyester (1981), Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), Pecker (1998), and Cecil B. Demented (2000). His films contain elements of post-modern comedy and surrealism.
As an actor, Waters has appeared in Sweet and Lowdown (1999), 'Til Death Do Us Part (2007), Mangus! (2011), Excision (2012), Suburban Gothic (2014), and has appeared in the Child's Play franchise with Seed of Chucky (2004) and third season of the television series Chucky (2024). He hosted and produced the television series John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You (2006). Throughout his career, Waters has often collaborated with actor and drag queen Divine and his regular cast of the Dreamlanders. More recently, he performs in his touring one-man show This Filthy World.
Waters also works as a visual artist and across different media, such as installations, photography, and sculpture. The audiobooks he narrated for his books Carsick and Mr. Know-It-All were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2015 and 2020, respectively. In 2018, Waters was named an officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023.
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Holly Woodlawn was a transgender Puerto Rican actress and Warhol superstar who appeared in his movies Trash and Women in Revolt. She was probably best known as the Holly in Lou Reed's hit pop song "Walk on the Wild Side".
Candy Darling (November 24, 1944 – March 21, 1974) was an American actress, best known as a Warhol Superstar and transgender icon. She starred in Andy Warhol's films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and was a muse of The Velvet Underground.
Divine (19 October 1945 – 7 March 1988), né Harris Glenn Milstead, was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Described by People magazine as the "Drag Queen of the Century", Divine often performed female roles in both cinema and theater and also appeared in women's clothing in musical performances. Even so, he considered himself to be a character actor and performed male roles in a number of his later films. He was often associated with independent filmmaker John Waters and starred in ten of Waters's films, usually in a leading role. Concurrent with his acting career, he also had a successful career as a disco singer during the 1980s, at one point being described as "the most successful and in-demand disco performer in the world."
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, into a conservative, wealthy middle class family, he became involved with John Waters and his acting troupe, the Dreamlanders, in the mid-1960s and starred in a number of Waters's early films such as Mondo Trasho, Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. These films have since become cult classics. In the 1970s, Milstead made the transition to theater and appeared in a number of productions, including Women Behind Bars and The Neon Woman, while continuing to star in such films as Polyester, Lust in the Dust and Hairspray.
The New York Times said of Milstead's '80s films: "Those who could get past the unremitting weirdness of Divine's performance discovered that the actor/actress had genuine talent, including a natural sense of comic timing and an uncanny gift for slapstick." He was also described as "one of the few truly radical and essential artists of the century… was an audacious symbol of man's quest for liberty and freedom." Since his death, Divine has remained a cult figure, particularly with those in the LGBT community.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet. He is considered to be one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation during the 1950s and the counterculture that soon followed. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression and was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions. He was one of many influential American writers of his time known as the Beat Generation, which included famous writers such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.
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Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury DBE (October 16, 1925 - October 11, 2022) was a British-American actress and singer who has appeared in theater, television, and film roles. Her career was spanned almost eight decades, much of it in the United States. Her work has received international attention. Her first film appearance was in the 1944 film Gaslight as a conniving maid, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Among her other films are The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Anastasia (1997).
She expanded her repertoire to Broadway musicals and television in the 1950s and was particularly successful in Broadway productions of Gypsy, Mame and Sweeney Todd. Lansbury is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her 12 year run as writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the U.S. television series Murder, She Wrote, in which she starred from 1984 to 1996. Her recent roles include Lady Adelaide Stitch in the 2005 film Nanny McPhee, Leona Mullen in the 2007 Broadway play Deuce, Madame Arcati in the 2009 Broadway revival of the play Blithe Spirit and Madame Armfeldt in the 2010 Broadway revival of the musical A Little Night Music.
Respected for her versatility, Lansbury has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, an Honorary Academy Award, and has been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and eighteen Emmy Awards.
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Taylor Mead was an American writer, actor and performer. Mead appeared in several of Andy Warhol's underground films filmed at Warhol's Factory, as well as in works by Robert Downey Sr., Adolfas Mekas, and Ron Rice.
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, Nixon previously served as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961, having risen to national prominence as a representative and senator from California. After five years in the White House that saw the conclusion to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, he became the only president to resign from the office, following the Watergate scandal.
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Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) was an American actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and his Oscar-nominated role in Friendly Persuasion (1956). He made his film debut in The Actress (1953) directed by George Cukor before experiencing success on Broadway with Elia Kazan’s production of Tea and Sympathy (1955).
He quickly became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, working alongside actors such as Henry Fonda (The Tin Star), Sophia Loren (Desire Under the Elms), Shirley MacLaine (The Matchmaker), Audrey Hepburn (Green Mansions), and Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, and Ava Gardner (On the Beach).
He left Hollywood in 1960 and had a successful career in Europe, where he co-starred with Ingrid Bergman (Aimez-vous Brahms?), Melina Mercouri (Phaedra), Brigitte Bardot (Une ravissante idiote), and Romy Schneider, Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, and Orson Welles (Le procès). He returned to Hollywood in 1968 with Pretty Poison, which became a cult classic.
In the decades that followed, his career continued to flourish alongside personalities like Diana Ross (Mahogany), Jeff Goldblum (Remember My Name), Elizabeth Taylor (Winter Kills), John Candy (Double Negative), and Lauren Bacall (Murder on the Orient Express). In 1973, he co-wrote The Last of Sheila with Stephen Sondheim.
During his career, he won a Golden Globe, a Cannes Award, and a David di Donatello Award, and was nominated for two Tony Awards and one Academy Award. Perkins died on September 12, 1992, of AIDS complications.
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989), the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975) and prior to that an actor.
Upon his college graduation, Reagan first moved to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in 1937 to Los Angeles, California. He began a career as an actor appearing in over fifty movie productions. Some of his most notable roles are in Knute Rockne, All American and Kings Row.
Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later spokesman for General Electric. His start in politics occurred during his work for General Electric.
Originally a member of the Democratic Party, he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After supporting of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980 presidential election.
Reagan left office in 1989. In 1994, the former president disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier in the year. He died ten years later at the age of 93.
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (born Eugene Louis Vidal; October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He unsuccessfully sought office twice as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the U.S. House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California).
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