Bios

Being a Bridesmaid has been good to Melissa McCarthy. Since playing Megan Price, the groom’s bawdy sister in Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids, Melissa has marched to the center of comedy cinema.

Bryan Cranston, the award-winning actor who gave us the memorable Walter White character in the AMC hit crime drama series Breaking Bad, has gone a long way from living on the farm with his grandparents, working with poultry and surviving the separation of his parents when he was just 11 years old. The 59-year-old actor, who was born in Canoga Park, California, admitted in an interview that he partly based his portrayal of Walter White on his own father, Joseph Louis “Joe” Cranston, a former actor and amateur boxer, who had a slumped posture “like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

Brie Larson does not know another life except the one called show business. The 26-year-old actress, who was raised in Sacramento and Los Angeles, has been in entertainment for 20 years.

Saoirse Ronan (pronounced as Sersha, “like inertia,” as Saoirse would say) is a bundle of energy, talent and charisma. The Irish award-winning actress grabbed the limelight when she was only 12 years old.

Last year 47 year-old Mark Ruffalo received two Golden Globe nominations: for Best Supporting Actor in a motion picture for his performance on Foxcatcher, and Best Actor in a mini-series or TV movie for his work on The Normal Heart. Now, one year later, Ruffalo has gotten a nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his interpretation in the film Infinitely Polar Bear.

“I studied Ashton Kutcher”. The humorous quip about how he prepared for the title role in Steve Jobs (by watching Kutcher’s earlier take on the Apple co-founder) underscores the playful nature behind one of the most hard-working and intense actors today.

As he demonstrated last year with Foxcatcher (Golden Globe nomination) and this year with The Big Short (his second nomination in a row), there is way more to Steve Carell’s acting than just comedy. In The Big Short he shows both manic energy and heart, a story about the individuals who cashed in on the 2008 housing collapse and the subprime scandal.

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing an aging Hollywood movie star in Youth, Jane Fonda explains why she chose this role. “I wanted to work with Paolo Sorrentino even before I read the script, because I had seen Il Divo and The Great Beauty, and directors like this don't come along all the time.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is having a very good year. She received a Golden Globes Award nomination for her supporting performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Western The Hateful Eight, as well as an Independent Spirit nod for her role in the animated feature Anomalisa, a first for a voice performance.

There is nobody quite like this dame. Dame Helen Mirren, that is.