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English actor Nicholas Hoult wasn’t too familiar with the era of Catherine the Great and her husband, Peter III. “I obviously knew the name Catherine the Great and I had a rough idea of who she was and what she’d represented in Russian history but I don’t think Peter III was on my radar at all,” Hoult told HFPA journalist Michele Manelis.

The (tiny) percentage of female directors in film has been a persistent Hollywood sore spot. Meanwhile, it is TV that has been making the biggest strides in equality.

Some of the most original writing of late has been found in series that posit parallel realities and alternate histories. Shows like Hunters, Plot Against America, and Watchmen use this device (the technical term is uchronic) to imagine alternate histories of the past to effect powerful social commentaries, with outlandish – sometimes supernatural - stories which nevertheless resonate powerfully with the present.

When the COVID-19 health crisis hit California hard, Sean Penn was not going to stay at home and do nothing. He knew there was a need for help from his non-profit organization, CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort), which he founded with Ann Lee in 2010.

Beginning in 1952 when the Cecil B.  deMille Award was presented to its namesake visionary director, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has awarded its most prestigious prize 66 times.

As she told us in this interview, having the opportunity to play Velma in a Scooby-Doo film was far away from her wildest dreams when she was a kid. But certainly, Golden Globe winner Gina Rodriguez has already proved that everything is possible if she really goes for it.

No premieres. No red carpets.

Argentinian superstar Ricardo Darín is one of the few international actors who didn’t want a Hollywood career. When he was asked to join the cast of the 2004 Denzel Washington film Man on Fire, he turned down the offer.

English actor Matthew Macfadyen remembers watching the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in late 1990s. Now he can be seen as Major Charles Ingram - who became well known in the United Kingdom during the trial where he was accused and convicted of cheating on the show – in the AMC series Quiz.

In “My Life And My Films” published in 1974, five years before his death in Beverly Hills at 84, Jean Renoir takes the reader through his rich existence, starting from his early childhood. As the son of the illustrious painter, he knew he had to make a name for himself in whatever field he chose.