My Idols
Some very different people, but all of whom I greatly admire.
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Born 8 May 1926, the younger brother of actor Lord Richard Attenborough. He never expressed a wish to act and, instead, studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, graduating in 1947, the year he began his two years National Service in the Royal Navy. In 1952, he joined BBC Television at Alexandra Palace and, in 1954, began his famous "Zoo Quest" series. When not "Zoo Questing", he presented political broadcasts, archaeological quizzes, short stories, gardening and religious programmes.
1964 saw the start of BBC2, Britain's third TV channel, with Michael Peacock as its Controller. A year later, Peacock was promoted to BBC1 and Attenborough became Controller of BBC2. As such, he was responsible for the introduction of colour television into Britain, and also for bringing Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) to the world.
In 1969, he was appointed Director of Programmes with editorial responsibility for both the BBC's television networks. Eight years behind a desk was too much for him, and he resigned in 1973 to return to programme making. First came "Eastwards with Attenborough", a natural history series set in South East Asia, then The Tribal Eye (1975) , examining tribal art. In 1979, he wrote and presented all 13 parts of Life on Earth (1979) (then the most ambitious series ever produced by the BBC Natural History Unit). This became a trilogy, with The Living Planet (1984) and The Trials of Life (1990).
His services to television were recognised in 1985, and he was knighted to become Sir David Attenborough. The two shorter series, "The First Eden" and "Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives" were fitted around 1993's spectacular Life in the Freezer (1993), a celebration of Antarctica and 1995's epic The Private Life of Plants (1995), which he wrote and presented. Filming the beautiful birds of paradise for Attenborough in Paradise (1996) in 1996 fulfilled a lifelong ambition, putting him near his favourite bird. Entering his seventies, he narrated the award-winning Wildlife Specials (1995), marking 40 years of the BBC Natural History Unit. But, he was not slowing down, as he completed the epic 10-part series for the BBC, The Life of Birds (1998) along with writing and presenting the three-part series State of the Planet (2000) as well as The Life of Mammals (2002). Once broadcast, he began planning his next projects.
He has received honorary degrees from many universities across the world, and is patron or supporter of many charitable organisations, including acting as Patron of the World Land Trust, which buys rain forest and other lands to preserve them and the animals that live there.- Actor
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Bruce Lee remains the greatest icon of martial arts cinema and a key figure of modern popular media. Had it not been for Bruce Lee and his movies in the early 1970s, it's arguable whether or not the martial arts film genre would have ever penetrated and influenced mainstream North American and European cinema and audiences the way it has over the past four decades. The influence of East Asian martial arts cinema can be seen today in so many other film genres including comedies, action, drama, science fiction, horror and animation... and they all have their roots in the phenomenon that was Bruce Lee.
Lee was born Lee Jun Fan November 27, 1940 in San Francisco, the son of Lee Hoi Chuen, a singer with the Cantonese Opera. Approximately one year later, the family returned to Kowloon in Hong Kong and at the age of five, a young Bruce begins appearing in children's roles in minor films including The Birth of Mankind (1946) and Fu gui fu yun (1948). At the age of 12, Bruce commenced attending La Salle College. Bruce was later beaten up by a street gang, which inspired him to take up martial arts training under the tutelage of Sifu Yip Man who schooled Bruce in wing chun kung fu for a period of approximately five years. This was the only formalized martial arts training ever undertaken by Lee. The talented and athletic Bruce also took up cha-cha dancing and, at age 18, won a major dance championship in Hong Kong.
However, his temper and quick fists got him in trouble with the Hong Kong police on numerous occasions. His parents suggested that he head off to the United States. Lee landed in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1959 and worked in a close relative's restaurant. He eventually made his way to Seattle, Washington, where he enrolled at university to study philosophy and found the time to practice his beloved kung fu techniques. In 1963, Lee met Linda Lee Cadwell (aka Linda Emery) (later his wife) and also opened his first kung fu school at 4750 University Way. During the early half of the 1960s, Lee became associated with many key martial arts figures in the United States, including kenpo karate expert Ed Parker and tae kwon do master Jhoon Rhee. He made guest appearances at notable martial arts events including the Long Beach Nationals. Through one of these tournaments Bruce met Hollywood hair-stylist Jay Sebring who introduced him to television producer William Dozier. Based on the runaway success of Batman (1966), Dozier was keen to bring the cartoon character the Green Hornet to television and was on the lookout for an East Asian actor to play the Green Hornet's sidekick, Kato. Around this time Bruce also opened a second kung fu school in Oakland, California and relocated to Oakland to be closer to Hollywood.
Bruce's screen test was successful, and The Green Hornet (1966) starring Van Williams aired in 1966-1967 with mixed success. His fight scenes were sometimes obscured by unrevealing camera angles, but his dedication was such that he insisted his character behave like a perfect bodyguard, keeping his eyes on whoever might be a threat to his employer except when the script made this impossible. The show was canceled after only one season (twenty-six episodes), but by this time Lee was receiving more fan mail than the series' nominal star. He then opened a third branch of his kung fu school in Los Angeles and began providing personalized martial arts training to celebrities including film stars Steve McQueen and James Coburn as well as screenwriter Stirling Silliphant. In addition he refined his prior knowledge of wing chun and incorporated aspects of other fighting styles such as traditional boxing and Okinawan karate. He also developed his own unique style Jeet Kune Do (Way of the Intercepting Fist). Another film opportunity then came his way as he landed the small role of a stand over man named Winslow Wong who intimidates private eye James Garner in Marlowe (1969). Wong pays a visit to Garner and proceeds to demolish the investigator's office with his fists and feet, finishing off with a spectacular high kick that shatters the light fixture. With this further exposure of his talents, Bruce then scored several guest appearances as a martial arts instructor to blind private eye James Franciscus on the television series Longstreet (1971).
With his minor success in Hollywood and money in his pocket, Bruce returned for a visit to Hong Kong and was approached by film producer Raymond Chow who had recently started Golden Harvest productions. Chow was keen to utilize Lee's strong popularity amongst young Chinese fans, and offered him the lead role in The Big Boss (1971). In it, Lee plays a distant cousin coming to join relatives working at an ice house, where murder, corruption, and drug-running lead to his character's adventures and display of Kung-Fu expertise. The film was directed by Wei Lo, shot in Thailand on a very low budget and in terrible living conditions for cast and crew. However, when it opened in Hong Kong the film was an enormous hit. Chow knew he had struck box office gold with Lee and quickly assembled another script entitled Fist of Fury (1972). The second film (with a slightly bigger budget) was again directed by Wei Lo and was set in Shanghai in the year 1900, with Lee returning to his school to find that his beloved master has been poisoned by the local Japanese karate school. Once again he uncovers the evildoers and sets about seeking revenge on those responsible for murdering his teacher and intimidating his school. The film features several superb fight sequences and, at the film's conclusion, Lee refuses to surrender to the Japanese police and seemingly leaps to his death in a hail of police bullets.
Once more, Hong Kong streets were jammed with thousands of fervent Chinese movie fans who could not get enough of the fearless Bruce Lee, and his second film went on to break the box office records set by the first! Lee then set up his own production company, Concord Productions, and set about guiding his film career personally by writing, directing and acting in his next film, The Way of the Dragon (1972). A bigger budget meant better locations and opponents, with the new film set in Rome, Italy and additionally starring hapkido expert In-shik Hwang, karate legend Robert Wall and seven-time U.S. karate champion Chuck Norris. Bruce plays a seemingly simple country boy sent to assist at a cousin's restaurant in Rome and finds his cousins are being bullied by local thugs for protection.
By now, Lee's remarkable success in East Asia had come to the attention of Hollywood film executives and a script was hastily written pitching him as a secret agent penetrating an island fortress. Warner Bros. financed the film and also insisted on B-movie tough guy John Saxon starring alongside Lee to give the film wider appeal. The film culminates with another show-stopping fight sequence between Lee and the key villain, Han, in a maze of mirrors. Shooting was completed in and around Hong Kong in early 1973 and in the subsequent weeks Bruce was involved in completing overdubs and looping for the final cut. Various reports from friends and co-workers cite that he was not feeling well during this period and on July 20, 1973 he lay down at the apartment of actress Betty Ting Pei after taking a headache medicine called Equagesic and was later unable to be revived. A doctor was called and Lee was taken to hospital by ambulance and pronounced dead that evening. The official finding was death due to a cerebral edema, caused by a reaction to the headache tablet Equagesic.
Fans worldwide were shattered that their virile idol had passed at such a young age, and nearly thirty thousand fans filed past his coffin in Hong Kong. A second, much smaller ceremony was held in Seattle, Washington and Bruce was laid to rest at Lake View Cemetary in Seattle with pall bearers including Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Dan Inosanto. Enter the Dragon (1973) was later released in the mainland United States, and was a huge hit with audiences there, which then prompted National General films to actively distribute his three prior movies to U.S. theatres... each was a box office smash.
Fans throughout the world were still hungry for more Bruce Lee films and thus remaining footage (completed before his death) of Lee fighting several opponents including Dan Inosanto, Hugh O'Brian and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was crafted into another film titled Game of Death (1978). The film used a lookalike and shadowy camera work to be substituted for the real Lee in numerous scenes. The film is a poor addition to the line-up and is only saved by the final twenty minutes and the footage of the real Bruce Lee battling his way up the tower. Amazingly, this same shoddy process was used to create Game of Death II (1980), with a lookalike and more stunt doubles interwoven with a few brief minutes of footage of the real Bruce Lee.
Tragically, his son Brandon Lee, an actor and martial artist like his father, was killed in a freak accident on the set of The Crow (1994). Bruce Lee was not only an amazing athlete and martial artist but he possessed genuine superstar charisma and through a handful of films he left behind an indelible impression on the tapestry of modern cinema.- Music Artist
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Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935 in East Tupelo, Mississippi, to Gladys Presley (née Gladys Love Smith) and Vernon Presley (Vernon Elvis Presley). He had a twin brother who was stillborn. In 1948, Elvis and his parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee where he attended Humes High School. In 1953, he attended the senior prom with the current girl he was courting, Regis Wilson. After graduating from high school in Memphis, Elvis took odd jobs working as a movie theater usher and a truck driver for Crown Electric Company. He began singing locally as "The Hillbilly Cat", then signed with a local recording company, and then with RCA in 1955.
Elvis did much to establish early rock and roll music. He began his career as a performer of rockabilly, an up-tempo fusion of country music and rhythm and blues, with a strong backbeat. His novel versions of existing songs, mixing 'black' and 'white' sounds, made him popular - and controversial - as did his uninhibited stage and television performances. He recorded songs in the rock and roll genre, with tracks like "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog" later embodying the style. Presley had a versatile voice and had unusually wide success encompassing other genres, including gospel, blues, ballads and pop music. Teenage girls became hysterical over his blatantly sexual gyrations, particularly the one that got him nicknamed "Elvis the Pelvis" (television cameras were not permitted to film below his waist).
In 1956, following his six television appearances on The Dorsey Brothers' "Stage Show", Elvis was cast in his first acting role, in a supporting part in Love Me Tender (1956), the first of 33 movies he starred in.
In 1958, Elvis was drafted into the military, and relocated to Bad Nauheim, Germany. There he met 14-year old army damsel Priscilla Ann Wagner (Priscilla Presley), whom he would eventually marry after an eight-year courtship, and by whom he had his only child, Lisa Marie Presley. Elvis' military service and the "British Invasion" of the 1960s reduced his concerts, though not his movie/recording income.
Through the 1960s, Elvis settled in Hollywood, where he starred in the majority of his thirty-three movies, mainly musicals, acting alongside some of the most well known actors in Hollywood. Critics panned most of his films, but they did very well at the box office, earning upwards of $150 million total. His last fiction film, Change of Habit (1969), deals with several social issues; romance within the clergy, an autistic child, almost unheard of in 1969, rape, and mob violence. It has recently received critical acclaim.
Elvis made a comeback in the 1970s with live concert appearances starting in early 1970 in Las Vegas with over 57 sold-out shows. He toured throughout the United States, appearing on-stage in over 500 live appearances, many of them sold out shows. His marriage ended in divorce, and the stress of constantly traveling as well as his increasing weight gain and dependence upon stimulants and depressants took their toll.
Elvis Presley died at age 42 on August 16, 1977 at his mansion in Graceland, near Memphis, shocking his fans worldwide. At the time of his death, he had sold more than 600 million singles and albums. Since his death, Graceland has become a shrine for millions of followers worldwide. Elvis impersonators and purported sightings have become stock subjects for humorists. To date, Elvis Presley is the only performer to have been inducted into three separate music 'Halls of Fame'. Throughout his career, he set records for concert attendance, television ratings and recordings sales, and remains one of the best-selling and most influential artists in the history of popular music.- Actor
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The great American escape artist and magician Houdini (immortalized by a memorable performance by Tony Curtis in the eponymous 1953 film) was born Erich Weiss on March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary, though he often gave his birthplace as Appleton, Wisconsin, where he was raised. One of five brothers and one daughter born to rabbi Samuel Weiss and his wife Cecilia, the future Houdini was four years old when his parents emigrated to the U.S., where Weiss, as "Harry Houdini", became one of the major celebrities of the first age dominated by the mass media.
His boyhood was spent in poverty and, when he was 17, he conjured up a magic act with his friend Jack Hayman, in order to escape the poverty and anonymity of manual labor which would likely have been his lot in life. Young Erich had been fascinated with magic since he was a young lad, when he was in the audience of a magic show put on by a traveling magician named Dr. Lynch. Billing themselves as the "Houdini Bros." in tribute to French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Erich Weiss became an entertainer, though it took him some seven years to catch on.
Weiss and Hayman specialized in the Crate Escape (eventually known as Metamorphosis or The Substitution Trunk), and Houdini's brother Theodore replaced Hayman when he became uninterested in the act. Eventually, Theodore -- billed as Hardeen -- was replaced by Wilhemina Rahner (known as Bess), the woman "Harry Houdini" would eventually marry. The marriage on June 22, 1894 caused a conflict with his Jewish family as Bess was a Roman Catholic. They married in secret, then again at a synagogue and in a Catholic church to please both of their families.
While developing his act, Houdini was not above the old carny trick of posing as a spirit medium, making the rounds of the town clerk's office and nearby cemeteries in order to provide "messages from beyond". In 1896, while visiting a doctor friend in Nova Scotia, he saw his first strait jacket, which gave him the idea of developing an act in which he would escape from it.
Houdini finally hit the big-time when he was 24 years old with his Challenge Act in 1898, while he was making the rounds of vaudeville. Houdini's Challenge Act consisted of him escaping from a pair of handcuffs produced by an audience member. Eventually, this evolved into escapes from strait jackets, boxes, crates, safes, and other instruments and devices (such as his Water Torture Cell), as well as from jail cells. Houdini was also adept at escaping from being "buried alive". Hand-cuffed and strait-jacketed, he could escape while being hung upside down from a crane, or while lowered from a bridge, or even make his escape from padlocked crates lowered into a river.
Houdini also became famous as a debunker of mediums and "experts" of the paranormal, but this was done in hope he could find an actual medium that could communicate with the dead so that he could communicate with his beloved mother Cecilia after she passed away. He became quite famous in the ragtime age of the first quarter of the last century, even appearing in motion pictures produced by his own company.
Harry Houdini, the greatest magician ever produced by America, died in Detroit, Michigan during a national tour. The cause of death officially was peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. His death came nine days after having been punched in the stomach during the Canadian leg of the tour by J. Gordon Whitehead, a McGill University student who was testing Houdini's famed ability to take body blows. Always the trouper, Houdini had soldiered on despite stomach pains. (Early during the tour, he had broken an ankle but did not let it stop him or the tour.) His wife Bess, to whom Houdini left his half-million dollar estate, collected a double indemnity on his life insurance policy, as the blow was considered to have shortened the great magician's life and contributed to his premature death at the age of 52.
The date of his death was October 31, 1926 -- Halloween, one of three days (October 31-November 2) of Samhain, the Celtic New Year, when the veil between the living and the dead allegedly is at its thinnest and the living can make contact with the dead. Annually on Halloween from 1927 to 1937, Bess held a séance to try to contact her departed husband. She did not succeed, though she helped keep the memory of her husband alive in the American consciousness. Even today, magicians worldwide conduct séances on Halloween in an effort to contact the late escapologist.- Michael Johnson was born on 13 September 1967 in Dallas, Texas, USA. He has been married to Kerry Doyen since 3 October 1998. They have one child.
- Sergei Bubka is a Soviet and Ukrainian former pole vaulter.
He represented the Soviet Union until 1991. Bubka was twice named Athlete of the Year by Track & Field News, and in 2012 was one of 24 athletes inducted as inaugural members of the International Association of Athletics Federations Hall of Fame.
Bubka won six consecutive IAAF World Championships, an Olympic gold medal and broke the world record for men's pole vault 35 times. He was the first pole vaulter to clear 6.0 meters and 6.10 meters.
He held the indoor world record of 6.15 meters, set on 21 February 1993 in Donetsk, USSR for almost 21 years until France's Renaud Lavillenie cleared 6.16 meters on 15 February 2014 at the same meet in the same arena. He is the outdoor world record holder at 6.14 meters, a record he has held since 31 July 1994, though since adopting rule 260.18a in 2000 the IAAF regards Lavillenie's record as the official "world record".
Bubka is Senior Vice President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), serving since 2007, and President of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, serving since 2005. He is an Honorary Member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), having been involved since 1996. - Paavo Nurmi is a Finnish middle-distance and long-distance runner.
He set 22 official world records at distances between 1500 meters and 20 kilometers, and won nine gold and three silver medals in his twelve events in the Olympic Games. At his peak, Nurmi was undefeated for 121 races at distances from 800 m upwards. Throughout his 14-year career, he remained unbeaten in cross country events and the 10,000 m.
In 1912, he was inspired by the Olympic feats of Hannes Kolehmainen and began developing a strict training program. Nurmi started to flourish during his military service, setting national records en route to his international debut at the 1920 Summer Olympics. After winning a silver medal in the 5000 m, he took gold in the 10,000 m and the cross country events. In 1923, Nurmi became the first runner to hold simultaneous world records in the mile, the 5000 m and the 10,000 m races, a feat which has never since been repeated. He set new world records for the 1500 m and the 5000 m with just an hour between the races, and took gold medals in both distances in less than two hours at the 1924 Olympics. Nurmi won all his races and returned home with five gold medals, although he was frustrated that Finnish officials had refused to enter him for the 10,000 m.
At the 1928 Summer Olympics, Nurmi recaptured the 10,000 m title but was beaten for the gold in the 5000 m and the 3000 m steeplechase. He then turned his attention to longer distances, breaking the world records for events such as the one hour run and the 25-mile marathon. Nurmi intended to end his career with a marathon gold medal, as his idol Kolehmainen had done. In a controversial case that strained Finland-Sweden relations and sparked an inter-IAAF battle, Nurmi was suspended before the 1932 Games by an IAAF council that questioned his amateur status.
Nurmi later coached Finnish runners. In 1952, he was the lighter of the Olympic Flame at the Summer Olympics in Helsinki.