Honor Roll

Dorothy Faye Dunaway was born in rural Bascom Florida on January 14, 1941. She studied theater at Boston University, majoring in Liberal Arts in 1962, joined the training program at New York’s Lincoln Center taught by Elia Kazan where she learned Method acting.

Michael Caine was born Maurice Micklewhite on March 14, 1933 in South London, his father was a fish market porter, his mother a cleaning woman; he was drafted in the British Army at 18 and fought in the Korean War. He succeeded in his ambition of becoming an actor, a rich and famous movie star, despite his Cockney accent and lower class background.

Thomas Sean Connery, born in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 25, 1930, was named Thomas after his paternal grandfather, nicknamed “Tommy” as a child, then “Big Tam” as a grown-up 6’2” athlete. Even after becoming the biggest movie star in the world with the success of the James Bond movies (1962-1971), he would remain proud of his humble beginnings on Fountainbridge Street, where he worked as a milk delivery boy on a horse drawn cart, in the mornings from age 9 and full-time from age 13, when he quit school during World War II.

Jane Fonda was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda on December 21, 1937 in New York. She grew up in Beverly Hills with her movie star father Henry Fonda, so it was perhaps inevitable that she and her younger brother Peter would become actors.

Donald Sutherland was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada on July 17, 1935. He studied at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts and acted in British films until he was cast in The Dirty Dozen (1967) by Robert Aldrich, then moved to Hollywood, where he became a symbol of the counter-culture with films like M*A*S*H (1970) by Robert Altman, Alex in Wonderland (1970) by Paul Mazurski, Kelly’s Heroes (1970) with Clint Eastwood, Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) with Gene Wilder.

Shirley MacLaine was born on April 24, 1934 in Richmond, Virginia. She had studied ballet from the age of 3 and moved to New York at 18 after graduating high school to perform in musical theatre on Broadway.

Dustin Hoffman, one of the most engaging actors of American cinema with dozens of exciting performances to his credit, didn’t believe he had a chance to make it in movies. “Not against all those handsome leading men like Warren Beatty”, as he put it.

Gene Hackman, born January 30, 1930 in San Bernardino, California, is one of Hollywood’s finest actors and he played a variety of characters in his 40-year movie career. He studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse with Dustin Hoffman, where they were voted “least likely to succeed”, then they both moved to New York in the early 1960s to work in the theater with their actor friend Robert Duvall.

Eldred Gregory Peck (born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, died on June 12, 2003) had a long and illustrious career as a Hollywood movie star; he was a tall, dark and handsome leading man, widely admired for his rectitude and his commitment to liberal causes. In Spellbound (1945) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, he played an honest man accused of murder, opposite Ingrid Bergman.

Burton Stephen Lancaster (born in New York City on November 2, 1913, died on October 20, 1994), a popular movie star, a respected dramatic actor, a successful producer of many of his own films and others like Marty (1955) and A Catered Affair (1956) starring Ernest Borgnine, was not cast in his first film, The Killers (1946), until age 32. In his youth he was a circus acrobat and developed the athletic skills that he would display in films like Jim Thorpe All-American (1951), The Crimson Pirate (1952) and Trapeze (1956) with Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida.