World film Star: December 2012

Friday, 7 December 2012

Sanjay Dutt

Sanjay Dutt Biography
Date of Birth
29 July 1959, India

Birth Name
Sanjay Balraj Dutt

Nickname
Sanju Baba
Baba
The Nayak of Hindi Cinema (Bollywood)
The Arnold Schwarzenegger of India

Height
6' 2" (1.88 m)

Mini Biography
Sanjay Dutt, son of Nargis and Sunil Dutt, was first featured in Rocky (1981). Although the film did well, it failed to promote him as an established actor.

Sanjay's personal life was exacerbated by drug problems, and worsened with the demise of his first wife, Richa Sharma, from cancer, and his arrest under TADA. He was also arrested for having illegal possession of several AK-57 weapons, and was imprisoned while the case continued. After his release, he appeared in three consecutive hits; Daag: The Fire (1999), Haseena Maan Jaayegi (1999) and Vaastav: The Reality (1999), all of which brought him moderate success. His performance in Vaastav: The Reality (1999) earned him the Best Actor in a Leading Role award at Filmfare Awards.

Sanjay then appeared in the movie Mission Kashmir (2000) which also earned him an award. His most recent role is that of "Ajju" in Kaante (2002), which was another award winning performance.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Moi-me

Mini Biography
He belongs to a village near district Yamuna Nagar (Haryana). The village's name is Mandhaulli. His beloved mom's (Nargis Dutt) memorial grave is still there on the bank of river Yamuna.

Is great friends with director Sanjay Gupta, actor Aditya Pancholi, actor-director Mahesh Manjrekar and actor Sunil Shetty. One can see various combinations of all these people in almost all of Sanjay Dutt's movies.

His sister is married to Kumar Gaurav, the one-hit wonder of 80s. Kumar Gaurav gave a super-duper hit in his debut - Love Story (1980) but all his subsequent films flopped. Both of them featured in a movie for the first time in the movie - Naam (1986). Sanjay was given all the credit for the movie's success and he has never looked back ever since.

Sanjay Dutt

Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Matt Damon

Matt Damon Biography
Date of Birth
8 October 1970, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Birth Name
Matthew Paige Damon

Height
5' 10" (1.78 m)

Mini Biography
Matthew Paige Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Boston Massachusetts to Kent Damon, a stockbroker, Realtor and tax preparer, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Matt has an older brother named Kyle who is now a sculptor. The family lived in Newton until his parents divorced, when Damon and his brother moved with his mother to Cambridge. It was here that Damon met his close friend and collaborator Ben Affleck, who lived in the neighborhood.

Damon attended Cambridge Ridge and Latin School and he performed in a number of theater productions during his time there. He attended Harvard University as an English major, but dropped out to pursue acting. He made small roles in Mystic Pizza (1988), School Ties (1992), and Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), before landing his breakthrough role as a drug-addicted soldier in Courage Under Fire (1996). The role required him to lose 40 pounds in a short period of time, which resulted in health problems. Fortunately, critics took note of his performance and he felt it was a worthwhile risk to show his level of dedication to his craft.

The following year, he garnered accolades for Good Will Hunting (1997), based on a screenplay he had originally written while at Harvard. Directed by Gus Van Sant, the film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and he and Affleck won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

In the following years, Damon went on to star in many high profile films, including Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), as well as the successful crime drama Ocean's Eleven (2001) and its two sequels. Perhaps Damon's most recognizable work to date is his role as an amnesiac assassin in The Bourne Trilogy. Other highly acclaimed movies include The Departed (2006), The Good Shepherd (2006), and Invictus (2009), which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Matt Damon

Preity Zinta

Preity Zinta Biography
Date of Birth
31 January 1975, Simla, India

Height
5' 4" (1.63 m)

Mini Biography
Preity Zinta shot to fame as the refreshing, cool, wet model in the Liril commercial. She also modeled for Perk and her dimpled smile won the hearts of millions. Preity never thought she would be an actress. Kapoor saw her in the Liril commercial and liked her so much that he instantly decided that the next film he would announce would have her in the lead. However, 'Tara Rum Pum' never got made and is still pending since the director got very busy with his other projects.

But another offer soon came by, Kundan Shah's Kya Kehna (2000). Though the film was the first, Preity had actually begun shooting for her first release which was Mani Ratnam's Dil Se.. (1998). The film was a hit which won Preity accolades. Later Abbas-Mustan's Soldier (1998/I) that too was a hit at the box-office confirmed she was here to stay. Though Kya Kehna (2000) was her first film, but it released in 2000 and was the surprise hit of 2000.

Her role in Dil Chahta Hai (2001) and Dil Hai Tumhaara (2002) was appreciated and liked by all and that has made her an actress to reckon with in Bollywood. Her screen presence, charm and down to earth nature has made her the favorite actress of almost all the directors and producers. With banners and films like Rakesh Roshan's Koi... Mil Gaya (2003) with 'Hrithik Roshan', Nikhil Advani's Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003) starring Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, and Jaya Bhaduri, Farhan Akhtar's Lakshya (2004) with Hrithik Roshan and Amitabh Bachchan, Atul Agnihotri's Dil Ne Jise Apna Kaha (2004) starring Salman Khan and Bhoomika Chawla, Yash Chopra's Veer-Zaara (2004) with Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji, Siddharth Anand's Salaam Namaste (2005) with Saif Ali Khan, and Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006) with Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukerji, Preity has already made her place in the hearts of the public and also in Bollywood.

Preity Zinta

Sunday, 2 December 2012

Dilip Kumar

Dilip Kumar Biography
Date of Birth
11 December 1922, Peshawar, NWFP, Pakistan

Birth Name
Yusuf Khan

Nickname
Legendary Khan
Tragedy King

Height
5' 10" (1.78 m)

Mini Biography
Dilip Kumar is considered to be one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema. Starting his career in 1944, he has starred in some of the biggest commercially successful films from the late 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. His performances have been regarded as the epitome of emoting in Indian Cinema. He was the first actor to receive a Filmfare Best Actor Award and holds the record for most number of Filmfare Awards won for that category. Though he has done all kinds of films - he balanced a wide variety of roles such as the intense Andaz (1949) with the swashbuckling Aan (1952), the dramatic Devdas (1955) with the comical Azaad (1955) and the historical romance Mughal E Azam (1960) with the social Ganga Jamuna (1961). In the 1970s roles dried up for Kumar and after 1976 he left films for a five year break. In 1981 he returned with a character role in the blockbuster film Kranti and continued his career playing central character roles in hits such as Shakti (1982), Karma (1986) and Saudagar (1991). He has retired from the Indian Film Industry in 1998.

He was born Muhammad Yusuf Khan in Qissa Khawani Bazaar in Peshawar Pakistan in a Pashtun family of twelve children. His father Ghulam Sarwar was a fruit merchant and owned large orchards in Peshawar and Devlali in Maharashtra near Mumbai. The family relocated to Mumbai in 1930s and in the early 1940s Yusuf Khan moved to Pune and started off with his canteen business and supplying dry fruits.

There he was spotted by a leading actress of those years Devika Rani who was also the wife of the founder of Bombay Talkies Himanshu Rai and helped his entry into the Bollywood film industry. She also gave him the screen name of Dilip Kumar.

His first film Jwar Bhata, was released in 1944 which went unnoticed. In 1947 he shot to prominence with the film Jugnu which was his first major hit. In 1949, he co-starred with Raj Kapoor in the romantic melodrama film Andaz, which went to become a huge success and made him a star. Throughout the 1950s he was one of the biggest stars of Bollywood along with Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand. He became known for playing tragic roles in popular films such as Deedar (1951), Amar (1954), Devdas (1955) and Madhumati (1958) which earned him the title of "Tragedy King".

Dilip Kumar

Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan Biography
Date of Birth
7 April 1954, Victoria Peak, Hong Kong

Birth Name
Kong-sang Chan

Nickname
Y'uen Lo
Sing Lung
Pao Pao

Height
5' 8½" (1.74 m)

Mini Biography
Apprenticed to the China Drama Academy (or "opera school") by his parents at the age of 6, Jackie Chan was rigorously trained in music, dance, and traditional martial arts. A visiting filmmaker offered Chan his first (tiny) role as a stunt player. Chan took the part, and soon left the Opera to pursue the world of film. Fellow Opera students Biao Yuen and Sammo Hung Kam-Bo would also have careers in film, and the three would star in several films together in the following years. Chan's talent and enthusiasm soon saw him taking larger and more important roles, graduating first to stunt coordinator, and then to director.

Following the death of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, the search was on for an actor who could inspire audiences to the same degree; every young martial artist was given a chance. Chan decided that rather than emulating Lee (and thus living forever in his shadow), he would develop his own style of filmmaking. His directorial debut The Young Master (1980) was a milestone in martial arts films, being one of the first to effectively combine comedy with action. This set the tone for many of his future films, which combined slapstick humor with high-energy martial arts action. A self-confessed fan of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, Chan performs all his own stunts, quite often at his own peril. His later films include outtakes of his on-set injuries run under the closing credits. He is understandably number one on the insurance blacklist.

Jackie Chan