Saturday 24 April 2010

Btitain says "Happy Birthday" to American stars of the screen Shirley MacLaine and Al Pacino



Shirley MacLaine is 76 today and Al Pacino is 70 tomorrow.














Things you probably did know about Shirley she :

* Has starred in a lot of films

* Is well known for her beliefs in 'new age spirituality'

* Is the elder sister of the actor Warren Beatty

Things you probably didn't know :

* She was named after Shirley Temple

* Her father was variously a Professor of Psychology, Public School Administrator and real estate agent

* Her mother was a drama school teacher who was born in Canada

* As a girl she proved to be too tall for ballet dancing and turned to acting

* She made her film debut in 1955 in Hitchcock's 'The Trouble With Harry'.

* She made 'Two Mules for Sister Sara' in 1970 with Don Siegel who once said of her : " It's difficult to feel any warmth warmth to her. She's too unfeminine and has too much balls. She's very, very hard."

* She found her way into many law casebooks when she sued Twentieth Century-Fox for breach of contract.

Here she is in 'Two Mules for Sister Sara " :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCsGfoF8CjQ

Things you probably didn't know about Al Pacino :

* His Italian American parents divorced when he was 2 and his mother moved to the South Bronx, to live with her parents,who originated from Corleone, Sicily.

* At school he flunked nearly all of his classes except English and dropped out of school at the age of 17 and left home working at a string of low-paying jobs, including messenger boy, busboy, janitor, and postal clerk.

* Acted in basement plays in New York's theatrical underground.

* Joined the 'Herbert Berghof Studio' was frequently unemployed and homeless, and sometimes had to sleep on the street, in theaters or at friends' houses.

* In 1969, he made his Broadway theatre debut in Don Petersen's 'Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?' at the Belasco Theater.

* In the 1971 film 'The Panic in Needle Park', he played a heroin addict which brought him to the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola, who cast him as Michael Corleone in the 1972 Mafia film 'The Godfather'.

* In 1985 with his film career waning he returned to the stage. His greatest stage success of the decade was David Mamet's 'American Buffalo', for which Pacino was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.

* Although he has never married he has three children.

His career :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=SHhU8ZDkCgw


His 'Inspirational speech' from 'Any Given Sunday' in 1999 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO4tIrjBDkk

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