Emmy award-winning TV, stage and film actor also known for her role in Young Sheldon died of cancer
Valerie Mahaffey, the Emmy-award winning actor known for her roles on Northern Exposure, Desperate Housewives and Young Sheldon, died on Friday. She was 71.
Her husband, actor Joseph Kell, said in a statement to Variety: “I have lost the love of my life, and America has lost one of its most endearing actresses. She will be missed.”
Continue reading...Director, composer and actor appeared at event in Clarksdale attended by hundreds after community petition
Hundreds of people packed inside a local auditorium on Thursday to see the hit film Sinners, set in their community and steeped in Mississippi Delta culture.
The special screening of the blockbuster horror film included an appearance by director Ryan Coogler and was made possible by a community petition.
Continue reading...Chronicle of the Years of Fire took the prize in 1975 for its portrayal of the Algerian war of independence, drawing on his own traumatic history
Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, the first Arab and African director to win the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, has died aged 91, his family said Friday.
The film-maker was awarded the prize in 1975 for Chronicle of the Years of Fire, a historical drama about the Algerian war of independence.
Continue reading...South African actor gained international recognition for his role in the drama which won best foreign language film
Presley Chweneyagae, the South African actor who gained international recognition for his leading role in the 2005 film Tsotsi, which won South Africa’s first ever Oscar for best foreign language film, has died. He was 40 years old.
His talent agency MLA on Tuesday confirmed Chweneyagae’s death and said South Africa had lost one of its “most gifted and beloved actors”.
Continue reading...The director of It Was Just an Accident was cheered by supporters as he arrived back in his home country, where his work has previously landed him in jail
Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi was given a hero’s welcome on his return to Tehran on Monday after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival, footage posted on social media showed.
After being banned from leaving Iran for years, forced to make films underground and enduring spells in prison, Panahi attended the film festival in person and sensationally walked away with the Palme d’Or for his latest movie It Was Just an Accident.
Continue reading...The German-French documentarian, who fled the Nazis twice as a child, spent his career exploring wartime atrocities and conflicts around the world
Marcel Ophuls, the Oscar-winning French film-maker whose documentary The Sorrow and the Pity uncovered the truth of the Vichy government’s collaboration with Nazi Germany during the second world war, has died aged 97.
Ophuls “died peacefully” on Saturday, his grandson Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert confirmed on Monday.
Continue reading...The drop in productions is causing alarm – can Tinseltown halt the exodus and reclaim its spot as the home of movie-making?
When Adam Scott was working on the hit TV show Parks and Recreation in the early 2010s, the Los Angeles studio where the show was filmed was packed – “every stage was filled and working”.
These days, he told his former co-star Rob Lowe in a much-discussed recent podcast conversation, “it’s quiet over there” – in part because “it’s just too expensive to shoot here”.
Continue reading...Director says his fifth movie with the actor will probably be their last project together as Washington ‘has been talking about retirement’
The collaboration between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington has spanned four decades and tackled many aspects of African American life. But Lee feels their latest venture, the kidnap drama Highest 2 Lowest, will probably be the duo’s swansong.
“This is the fifth one we’ve done together,” Lee said after the picture’s premiere at the Cannes film festival. “It has been a blessing, this body of work between us, doing films that people love. And I think this is it. He’s been talking about retirement. But five films together: that’s good, they stand up.”
Continue reading...Festival attendee was hospitalised by a falling tree on the celebrated Croisette boulevard
The producers of a Japanese film which screened at the Cannes film festival have called for an investigation and safety review after one of their team was struck and badly injured by a falling palm tree on the famous Croisette boulevard.
The incident occurred on Saturday as the team behind Brand New Landscape, which was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, were walking along Cannes’ celebrated seafront road when a three-metre tree fell on to the pavement. Local authorities said a man in his 30s was injured.
Continue reading...Comments at Cannes come after US president’s social media posts against Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift
Pedro Pascal has sharply criticised Donald Trump’s attacks against artists, as the director of a conspiracy theory satire starring the actor said he feared the political messages of films could be weaponised by US border guards.
“Fuck the people that try to make you scared,” the Game of Thrones and The Last of Us actor said at a press conference at the Cannes film festival, promoting Ari Aster’s new film Eddington. “And fight back. And don’t let them win.”
Continue reading...Over the course of an illustrious career, Strouse composed music for Broadway shows such as Bye Bye Birdie and Applause but was best known for Annie’s evergreen songs
The composer Charles Strouse, a three-time Tony award-winner whose hits included Annie, has died at the age of 96. His death at home in New York on Thursday was announced by his four children.
Over the course of a long and illustrious career, Strouse composed music for the Broadway shows Bye Bye Birdie, Golden Boy, Applause, Rags and Nick & Nora. But he was perhaps best known for his score for Annie which opened in New York in 1977 and ran for almost six years. The story of the plucky red-headed orphan featured evergreen songs (with lyrics by Martin Charnin) including Tomorrow, You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile and It’s the Hard-Knock Life, which was sampled by Jay-Z in a 1998 single. Annie received seven Tony awards, including best musical and best original score, and won the Grammy for best cast show album. It was adapted as a film in 1982.
Continue reading...The prolific performer played varied roles – from arms dealer to baseball star – and made the rare switch from Bond villain to Bond good guy
Tough-guy actor Joe Don Baker, a prolific performer in movies as varied as GoldenEye, Cape Fear and Mud, as well as the BBC TV series Edge of Darkness, has died aged 89.
Born in 1936, Baker grew up in small town Texas, and studied business administration at North Texas State College. After a period in the army, Baker moved to New York and joined the Actors’ Studio in the early 1960s, where he was a contemporary of Rip Torn. Baker made his Broadway debut in 1963 with the Actors’ Studio company, appearing in Marathon ’33, about the dance marathons of the Great Depression, and made his film debut in an uncredited role in 1967 in Cool Hand Luke. He also appeared in numerous TV series, including the pilot episode of a western show called Lancer in 1968, the making of which was fictionalised by Quentin Tarantino in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton in Baker’s role.
Continue reading...Theo Navarro-Mussy has a secondary role as a police officer in the film Dossier 137 by Dominik Moll which is to premiere on Thursday
The Cannes film festival said it had banned an actor in a prominent French film from the red carpet on Thursday because of sexual assault allegations against him.
Theo Navarro-Mussy has a secondary role as a police officer in the film Dossier 137 by Dominik Moll which is to premiere on Thursday in the festival’s main competition. According to French magazine Télérama, which broke the news, Navarro-Mussy was accused of rape by three former partners in 2018, 2019, and 2020, but the case was dropped last month for lack of evidence.
Continue reading...In Cannes to promote his Stalinist drama Two Prosecutors, the film-maker said he feared the US and Russia would soon ‘become equal’
One of Ukraine’s leading film-makers has spoken of the “nightmare” of an emergent alliance between authoritarian leaders in Russia and the US, as his new film on contemporary echoes with the Stalinist era opens at the Cannes film festival.
“The events that unfolded in the past 100 days really surprised many people all over the world,” said director Sergei Loznitsa, whose new film Two Prosecutors received its world premiere on Wednesday. “One couldn’t even imagine in a nightmare such a union, such an understanding between two authoritarian leaders.”
Continue reading...The star, who at 62 performed his own stunts for the forthcoming Final Reckoning, tells Cannes press conference ‘I don’t mind encountering the unknown’
Tom Cruise got stuck on the wing of a biplane shortly before it ran out fuel during the filming of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the director of the eighth instalment of the action franchise has revealed.
Speaking to an audience at the Cannes film festival hours before the film’s premiere, director Christopher McQuarrie recounted the filming of a stunt sequence in which Cruise, in his long-running role as the field agent Ethan Hunt, walked between between the two wings of a biplane as the aircraft was mid-air over South Africa.
Continue reading...French actor, 76, convicted of assaulting set dresser and assistant director during film shoot in Paris in 2021
Gérard Depardieu has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two women during a film shoot in 2021 and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence, in a turning point for the #MeToo movement in France.
Depardieu, France’s biggest film star who has made more than 200 films and TV series, is the highest-profile figure in the French film industry to be convicted of sexual assault after years of the country being accused of being slow to take women’s claims of abuse seriously.
Continue reading...Kaja Sokola says disgraced movie mogul forced her to touch his genitals in Manhattan apartment when she was 16
A former model has told a New York court that the disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her when she was 16, calling it the most “horrifying thing I ever experienced”.
Kaja Sokola told jurors at Weinstein’s retrial that he put his hand inside her underwear and made her touch his genitals at his Manhattan apartment in 2002 when she was 16.
Continue reading...The film-maker, whose credits also included many Madonna music videos, died of brain cancer
Director James Foley, whose credits included Glengarry Glen Ross and the Fifty Shades sequels, has died aged 71.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, his death was confirmed by his representative who said he died “peacefully in his sleep earlier this week following a years-long struggle with brain cancer”.
Continue reading...Oscar-winning actor gives first interview to Variety since working with Trump on plan to shake up Hollywood
Jon Voight, the actor who inspired Donald Trump’s surprise statement about placing a 100% tariff on foreign-made films, has given his first interview on the supposed plan to “give people back their dignity and their jobs”.
“Something has to be done, and it’s way past time,” the 86-year-old actor told Variety while he was, according to the magazine, “driving through what sounded like a car wash”.
Continue reading...Locals welcome plan but fear being pushed out of homes by theme park
When it was announced that Universal Pictures, one of the largest movie studios in the world, was opening its first theme park in Bedfordshire, fans were ecstatic.
Social media was filled with questions: Which film franchises will appear? How many rides would there be? Will there be a section dedicated to the Minions?
Continue reading...