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Exclusive: Carla Gugino (The Fall of the House of Usher) has signed with Gersh for representation in all areas.

Gugino was most recently seen in the Max Original drama series The Girls on the Bus, opposite Melissa Benoist, Christina Elmore, Natasha Behnam, Brandon Scott, and Scott Foley.

Last year she starred in Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher, receiving a Critics Choice Award nomination for her role as Verna in the series which is loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name. She was also featured in the 2024 Focus Features’ genre hit Lisa Frankenstein.

She’ll next be seen in The Friend, opposite Naomi Watts, which just premiered at Telluride and TIFF, and in Ilya Naishuller’s action comedy Heads of State for Amazon MGM, opposite Priyanka Chopra, John Cena, Idris Elba, and Jack Quaid.

Her film credits include Navot Papushado-directed action thriller Gunpowder Milkshake,...

In the hours following the news of Maggie Smith’s death at age 89, numerous of the two-time Oscar winner’s friends, including King Charles, Whoopi Goldberg, Viola Davis, and the actress’ Harry Potter castmates, have shared touching tributes to the performer on social media.

Her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin revealed her death in a statement to Rolling Stone Friday, saying she died in the hospital with “friends and family” at her side, who were “devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.” No cause of death was given.

Maggie Smith’s half-century-spanning career is being celebrated by her peers.

The iconic actress, best known for her roles in the “Harry Potter” films and “Downton Abbey” franchise, died on September 27. She was 89.

“It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith,” Smith’s sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin said in a statement shared with IndieWire. “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September. An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

The statement continued, “We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days. We thank you for all your kind messages and support and...

Tributes have flooded in for iconic UK actress Maggie Smith following her death on Friday in London at age of 89-years-old.

U.S. actor Rob Lowe, who appeared alongside Smith in Suddenly, Last Summer (1989), was one of the first to take to social media in her memory, recalling the actress as a formidable figure.

“Saddened to hear Dame Maggie Smith has passed. I had the unforgettable experience of working with her; sharing a two-shot was like being paired with a lion,” he said in a post on X.

“She could eat anyone alive, and often did. But funny, and great company. And suffered no fools. We will never see another. God speed, Ms. Smith!”

Related: Daniel Radcliffe Remembers ‘Harry Potter’ Costar Maggie Smith For “Fierce Intellect” And “Gloriously Sharp Tongue”

Saddened to hear Dame Maggie Smith has passed. I had the unforgettable experience of working with her; sharing a two-shot...

Maggie Smith, the legendary British actor whose career on stage and screen spanned more than 60 years, died Friday at the age of 89. Smith was a two-time Oscar winner, earning the lead actress statuette for the title role in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, and supporting actress for her portrayal of an Oscar loser in the anthology comedy California Suite. She also received Oscar noms for her roles in Othello, Travels with My Aunt, A Room with a View and Gosford Park. Her work in television earned her four Emmy awards, three for her role as Violet Crawley, The Dowager Countess of Grantham in PBS’ Downton Abbey. Her fourth Emmy came in 2003 as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series of Movie for her role as an eccentric novelist in the HBO film My House in Umbria. She was Emmy-nominated for her roles in the Great Performances PBS presentation of Suddenly Last Summer,...

Maggie Smith, the two-time Oscar and four-time Emmy winner whose work in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Downton Abbey — plus everything before and after — made her one of the most formidable British actors of all time, died Friday. She was 89.

Her sons, actors Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, told the BBC that she died “peacefully in hospital … an intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days.”

Best known in recent years for matriarchal roles in seven of the Harry Potter films and the ITV-pbs series Downton Abbey, Smith earned early acclaim with a best actress Oscar...

Will there be room for two Oscar winners from the same movie this awards season?

Pedro Almodóvar’s exciting melodrama “The Room Next Door” is riding high after winning the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and Sony Pictures Classics is preparing for an aggressive awards campaign for the film. Variety has learned exclusively that the movie’s two Oscar-winning stars, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, will be positioned for lead actress consideration in the upcoming awards season. In addition, co-star John Turturro is set to campaign for his first Oscar bid in the best supporting actor category.

The film is adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s novel “What Are You Going Through” and tells the story of two women — war correspondent Martha, played by Swinton, and author Ingrid, portrayed by Moore — who reunite after many years under emotionally charged circumstances. The nuanced performances and intimate narrative have garnered critical acclaim.

Wicked won’t be out for another two months, but fans are already curious if the stars – Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande – will be submitted for acting award nominations this awards season.

Despite some speculation that the two actresses in Jon M. Chu’s highly-anticipated movie adaptation of the Broadway musical would be going head-to-head, they will not be in the same acting category this awards season, THR reports.

Keep reading to find out more…

According to the report, a decision has been made to push Cynthia, who plays Elphaba, in the lead actress category, while Ariana, playing Glinda, in the supporting actress category.

This is notably different from the distinction made for the original Broadway production by the Tony Awards Administration Committee 20 years ago, when Idina Menzel, who created Elphaba, and Kristin Chenoweth, who originated Glinda, both competed in the category of best actress in a musical. (Idina ended up winning.

The two actresses at the center of Wicked — Jon M. Chu’s highly-anticipated movie adaptation of the smash-hit Broadway musical, which Universal will release nationwide on Nov. 22 — will not be going head-to-head in the same acting category this awards season, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

A decision has been made to push Cynthia Erivo, the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated actress who will be portraying Elphaba (who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West), in the lead actress category, and Ariana Grande, the Grammy-winning and SAG Award-nominated actress who will be playing Glinda (who becomes the Good Witch), in the supporting category.

This path differs from the one enforced upon the original Broadway production by the Tony Awards Administration Committee 20 years ago. Back then, Idina Menzel, who created Elphaba, and Kristin Chenoweth, who originated Glinda, both competed in the category of best actress in a musical; both received nominations; and Menzel ended up winning.

Norman Spencer, the British producer, production manager and screenwriter who worked alongside famed director David Lean on films including Blithe Spirit, Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, has died. He was 110.

Spencer died Aug. 16 in Wimbledon three days after his birthday, the European Supercentenarian Organisation announced.

Apart from Lean, Spencer produced Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn; Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (1971), the car chase movie that starred Barry Newman; and Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), starring Denzel Washington.

Spencer was Lean’s unit manager on the ghost comedy Blithe Spirit (1945), based on the Noël Coward play, and served as his production manager on his adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).

He produced Lean’s The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Hepburn-starring, Venice-set Summertime (1955); worked on a rewrite of the script for...

She was the most famous woman in the world. Her marriages (there were eight), affairs, jewelry and medical disasters were all exhaustively chronicled by the tabloids and paparazzi. But away from the klieg lights, a different side of Elizabeth Taylor — witty, wounded, desperate to prove herself — was shared with the tight circle of confidants who surrounded her during her tumultuous life.

And it’s one that Nanette Burstein, director of the new HBO documentary “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes,” was able to highlight after the Taylor Estate contacted her and allowed her to sort through 40 hours of unreleased audio from interviews the screen legend conducted in the 1960s with journalist Richard Meryman.

“It’s extremely rare to have a legendary movie star be so candid about their inner life,” Burstein says. “It was an opportunity to not only understand this revered person in cinema history, but also to chart the...

"The Simpsons" gets a lot of mileage out of its voice actors. Seriously, it feels like half of Springfield is voiced by Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, or Tress MacNeille. Despite the numerous cases of voice actors doubling up, each character in the cast sounds unique and immediately recognizable. Even Maggie Simpson, the perennial infant who never says a word, has her distinctive pacifier sound.

Most of Maggie's baby sounds are provided by Nancy Cartwright (whose primary "Simpsons" is playing Maggie's older brother Bart). On the rare occasions where Maggie does do more than squeal or suck on her binky, the show has brought out some big acting guns.

In season 2's "Bart vs Thanksgiving," Bart imagines his family being angry with him; Maggie declares, "It's your fault I can't talk!" That one line was provided by none other than an uncredited Carol Kane (who these days is rocking it as...

Netflix is bringing Pride to the big screen with a special curated Egyptian Theater program.

IndieWire can exclusively announce Netflix’s “Hollywood Pride: Queer Lives on the Silver Screen” event, taking place from June 25 through 27 in Los Angeles. The film series is co-programmed by critic and author Alonso Duralde, who will be in attendance to promote his book “Hollywood Pride” that influenced the title of the program.

With classics such as “All About Eve” and “Pillow Talk” coupled with “The Old Dark House” and “Suddenly, Last Summer,” the Netflix theatrical event spans nearly a century of queer representation onscreen.

Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s “Bound” also lands a theatrical premiere of its 4K restoration, with Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly playing onscreen lovers with mob ties.

The program concludes with “Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution” featuring LGBTQ stand-up legends and modern trailblazers like Margaret Cho and Wanda Sykes; the film recently...

Exclusive: CAA has signed Kip Williams, the adapter and director of the buzzy West End production of the Sydney Theatre Company’s The Picture of Dorian Gray starring newly minted Olivier Award winner Sarah Snook.

Williams is the youngest-ever Artistic Director of the Stc. The company’s Dorian Gray, featuring Succession‘s Snook in all of the roles, opened last month in London’s West End to rave reviews.

At Stc, Williams directed Playing Beatie Bow, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Three Sisters, Cloud Nine, Chimerica, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, All My Sons, Suddenly Last Summer, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, among others.

Williams has also adapted and directed productions for Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Chamber Opera, Malthouse Theatre, and Perth Festival. For this work, he received the Helpmann Award for Best Direction of a Play, the Green Room Award, and the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Director.

Buddy Adler was just two years into his brief reign as the Head of Production for 20th Century Fox in 1958 when producer Walter Wanger brought him an epic project that could potentially pull the then-struggling studio out of its box office slump. The film wound up soaring so far over budget that Fox would be forced to sell 180 acres of its Los Angeles backlot to Alcoa just to stay financially afloat.

Had Adler made "Cleopatra" on his own terms, the title role would've been a sensibly priced production toplined by one of the studio's affordable contract stars (e.g. Joan Collins or Joanne Woodward). Wanger, however, had outsized dreams. He saw the historical drama as a Hollywood epic for the ages. He believed in its potential to dominate the box office and win scores of Academy Awards. He wanted Elizabeth Taylor, arguably the most popular movie star on the planet,...

Elizabeth Taylor was the glamorous Hollywood icon who starred in dozens of movies throughout her career, collecting two Best Actress trophies at the Oscars and three additional nominations. But how many of those titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1932, Taylor began her career as a child actress, landing her first leading role when she was just 12-years-old with “National Velvet” (1944). She quickly transitioned into adult stardom, earning her first Oscar nomination as Best Actress for “Raintree County” (1957). Subsequent bids for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958) and “Suddenly, Last Summer” (1959) quickly followed.

She collected her first statuette playing a prostitute with man troubles in “Butterfield 8” (1960), a film she openly hated. Her win probably had more to do with an emergency tracheotomy she underwent right before the ceremony than the performance, but either way, Taylor was...

Todd Haynes is the latest auteur to use Cannes as a launching pad for a potential Oscar contender, debuting his delicious dramedy “May December” at the festival on Saturday.

Premiering less than one hour after Martin Scorsese’s 202-minute “Killers of the Flower Moon” conquered Cannes, the torrential downpour on Saturday night couldn’t keep many patrons away from taking in the Haynes movie. And not just because the movie reunites the director with his muse Julianne Moore, who he worked wonders with on “Safe” (1995) and “Far from Heaven” (2002), the latter which earned an Oscar nomination for Moore’s performance and one for Haynes’ script.

Add the excitement of Moore acting opposite Natalie Portman; how can this not be a winning recipe for success? With a whip-smart script from feature debut screenwriter Samy Burch (and a “story by” credit by Alex Mechanik), as well as a surprising standout turn from heartthrob Charles Melton,...

Actor John Wayne was very particular regarding the movies he starred in and the ones he admired. He came from a generation when films targeted the whole family with certain political morals rather than having separate entertainment intended for different age groups. There were two classic 1959 movies that Wayne called “too disgusting even for discussion,” largely because of their sense of morals and values.

John Wayne believed that movies should be appropriate for families John Wayne | Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

Wayne primarily starred in Western and war movies throughout his career. Audiences knew exactly the type of film they were paying for when it came to his projects before ever sitting in a theater chair. Wayne advanced what it meant to “fight dirty” in Hollywood, allowing his characters to actually fight back against the antagonists. However, these scenes still avoided violent realism, allowing them to remain...

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Katharine Hepburn was crowned four times as Best Actress by Oscar voters, thus she reigns (as of this writing) as the biggest winner of Hollywood’s top award. Officially, that makes her Oscar’s queen. This week is her birthday, so it’s a good time to give her the bow she deserves from award nuts like us. Having been born on May 12, 1907, she was a still a feisty firebrand at age 96 when she died

And all four victories were in the lead actress category – that’s remarkable. One triumph was for a performance that I pompously declare to reign (in a tight tie with Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Blvd.”) as the greatest screen turn in...

As the director and producer of both “House of Gucci” and “The Last Duel,” Ridley Scott is poised to score big when the 2022 Oscar nominations are announced three months from now. Reaping double Best Picture or Best Director bids would make the 83-year-old the first to pull off either feat since Steven Soderbergh did so in 2001. Even if he ends up being left out of both lineups, he could still make history if academy voters decide to recognize the work of his two leading ladies. If Jodie Comer (“The Last Duel”) and Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”) are both chosen to compete for Best Actress, Scott will become the fifth person to direct female leads from different films to nominations in a single year.

The first of these rare occurrences dates back to the third Oscars ceremony in 1930 when Nancy Carroll (“The Devil’s Holiday”) and Gloria Swanson (“The Trespasser...

Elizabeth Taylor, who would have turned 89 on Feb. 27, lived multiple lives. She was a movie mega-star, a tabloid mega-celebrity (which are not always the same thing), an innovator in creating herself as a brand — and a tireless and effective philanthropist and activist.

She was adored, admired, denounced, scandal-ridden and unpredictable, and the public couldn’t get enough of her.

On screen, she was at her most breathtakingly beautiful in such 1950s and ‘60s films as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Suddenly, Last Summer,” “Cleopatra” and “The Taming of the Shrew.” And in the 1966 “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” at age 34, she frumped herself up and gave a great performance, winning the second of two Oscars (after the 1960 “Butterfield 8”).

She also excelled in a wide array of films, like “Giant” (1956), “Raintree Country” (1958), “X, Y and Z” (1972), “Ash Wednesday”, and “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980), her last leading role on the big screen.

Even though the Best Actress Oscar has been given out since the first Academy Awards ceremony, there is no clear way of determining whether shorter or longer performances are more likely to win. An even mix of both have prevailed over the past 92 years, performances that have won Best Actress hold more overall lead acting records than those that have won Best Actor. Here is a look at the 10 shortest winners in the category. (And here is the equivalent list for Best Actor.)

10. Katharine Hepburn (“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”)

43 minutes, 26 seconds (40.20% of the film)

Over three decades after her first nomination resulted in a win, Hepburn finally won a second Best Actress Oscar for her role as Christina Drayton, a mother whose liberal views are challenged when her daughter announces her intention to marry a Black man. She would go on to finish her career with four wins in...

Diana Rigg, best known for her iconic turn on The Avengers, and memorable roles on Game of Thrones and Theatre of Blood, died Sept. 10, at home with her family at the age of 82, according to Variety. “It is with tremendous sadness that we announce that Dame Diana Rigg died peacefully early this morning. She was at home with her family who have asked for privacy at this difficult time,” her agent Simon Beresford said in a statement. “Dame Diana was an icon of theatre, film, and television. She was the recipient of BAFTA, Emmy, Tony and Evening Standard Awards for her work on stage and screen. Dame Diana was a much loved and admired member of her profession, a force of nature who loved her work and her fellow actors. She will be greatly missed.”

Rigg was diagnosed with cancer in March, according to her daughter Rachael Stirling, who said...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Thanks to the hot popularity of Robert Aldrich’s you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it thriller “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,” hagsploitation movies starring your favorite screen dames nearing or passing their prime were briefly all the rage in the 1960s. “Lady in a Cage,” a claustrophobic and fright-filled horror picture directed by William Grauman, was the grand (and fleeting) entrance into the hagsploitation genre for then-48-year-old Olivia de Havilland, who died just this past weekend at the age of 104. The film was excoriated upon release, when The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther deemed it as “socially harmful.” And yet all these years later, “Lady in a Cage” remains a doozy.

De Havilland wasn’t even the studio’s first choice to play Mrs.

Larry Kramer, the writer and influential gay activist who pressed the U.S. government and the medical establishment to respond to the AIDS epidemic, has died. He was 84.

Kramer died Wednesday from pneumonia, his husband David Webster told the New York Times.

Earlier in his life, Kramer was a screenwriter with credits including “Women in Love” and the 1973 musical “Lost Horizon.”

Spurred by the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, Kramer became a fierce activist and an impassioned writer, and one of the earliest and most vocal advocates for AIDS research, treatment access and institutional recognition of the gay community so hard-hit by the disease. He is best known not only as one of the founders of both Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Act Up, but also as the writer of novels and plays including his 1985 work “The Normal Heart,” his urgent, agitprop depiction of the early days of the AIDS crisis.

Katharine Hepburn would’ve celebrated her 112th birthday on May 12, 2019. With four Oscars victories in Best Actress, Hepburn holds the record for the most wins by any performer, but how many of her titles remain classics? In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 20 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1907, Hepburn got her start on the stage before setting her sights on Hollywood, winning her first Oscar for playing an aspiring Broadway star in “Morning Glory” (1933). Despite this early success, Hepburn found herself labeled “box office poison” after a series of flops throughout the decade. She returned to theater with “The Philadelphia Story,” and the 1940 film version provided her with a big screen comeback from which she never faltered.

SEEOscar Best Actress Gallery: Every Winner in Academy Award History

It took 34 years before Hepburn won her second Oscar for the interracial marriage...

Katharine Hepburn would’ve celebrated her 112th birthday on May 12, 2019. With four Oscars victories in Best Actress, Hepburn holds the record for the most wins by any performer, but how many of her titles remain classics? In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 20 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1907, Hepburn got her start on the stage before setting her sights on Hollywood, winning her first Oscar for playing an aspiring Broadway star in “Morning Glory” (1933). Despite this early success, Hepburn found herself labeled “box office poison” after a series of flops throughout the decade. She returned to theater with “The Philadelphia Story,” and the 1940 film version provided her with a big screen comeback from which she never faltered.

It took 34 years before Hepburn won her second Oscar for the interracial marriage message movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” (1967), the last...

Come get your Q on! The 12th Annual QFest St. Louis, presented by Cinema St. Louis,runs April 28-May 2, 2019, at the Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar) .The St. Louis-based Lgbtq film festival, QFest will present an eclectic slate of 28 films. The participating filmmakers represent a wide variety of voices in contemporary queer world cinema. The mission of the film festival is to use the art of contemporary gay cinema to spotlight the lives of Lgbtq people and to celebrate queer culture. The full schedule can be found Here

The 12th Annual QFest St. Louis continues Tuesday April 30th. Here’s Tuesday’s schedule:

5:00pm April 30th: The Gospel Of Eureka – This is a Free screening

(though tickets are required from box office)

Eureka Springs, Ark., is a one-of-a-kind oasis in the Ozarks where Christian piety rubs shoulders with a thriving and open queer community. Known for its natural springs, the town...

Elizabeth Taylor would’ve celebrated her 87th birthday on February 27, 2019. The glamorous Hollywood icon starred in dozens of movies throughout her career, collecting two Best Actress trophies at the Oscars and three additional nominations. But how many of those titles remain classics? In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1932, Taylor began her career as a child actress, landing her first leading role when she was just 12-years-old with “National Velvet” (1944). She quickly transitioned into adult stardom, earning her first Oscar nomination as Best Actress for “Raintree County” (1957). Subsequent bids for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958) and “Suddenly, Last Summer” (1959) quickly followed.

SEEOscar Best Actress Gallery: Every Winner in Academy Award History

She collected her first statuette playing a prostitute with man troubles in “Butterfield 8” (1960), a film she openly hated. Her win probably had...

If Glenn Close wins at the Oscars as we are predicting for her leading role in “The Wife,” she’ll become the 25th performer to pull off the Triple Crown of acting awards. She already has three Emmys and three Tonys. With this elusive Oscar, she’ll vault into a tie for first place with Maggie Smith for the most number of these awards at seven apiece.

Smith reaped her first bid for one of these prizes (an Oscar nomination) in 1966 and won the last of these three (an Emmy) in 2003 to complete the Triple Crown. That is a time span of 37 years. As Close first contended at the Tonys in 1980, it will have taken her just shy of four decades to run the Triple Crown.

See What do the SAG Awards mean when predicting the Oscars?

Close lost that first Tony bid for her featured role in the musical...

The 1980s saw several legendary dames winning Best Actress at the Oscars, including academy favorites like Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep. The entire decade was a good one for women dominating their films, like Sissy Spacek, Shirley MacLaine, Sally Field, Geraldine Page, Cher and Jodie Foster. The ’80s also set records that still stand today, with Marlee Matlin being the youngest Best Actress winner at age 21 and Jessica Tandy being the oldest winner at 80.

So which Best Actress winner from the ’80s is your favorite? Look back on each of their performances and vote in our poll below.

Sissy Spacek, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980) — The ’80s began with Spacek earning her Oscar for playing country music star Loretta Lynn in the biopic “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Spacek earned a previous nomination for “Carrie” (1976) and four subsequent nominations, for: “Missing” (1982), “The River” (1984), “Crimes of the Heart” (1986) and “In the Bedroom” (2001).

SEE...

Elizabeth Taylor, one of the last great screen legends and winner of two Academy Awards, died Wednesday morning in Los Angeles of complications from congestive heart failure; she was 79. The actress had been hospitalized for the past few weeks, celebrating her birthday on February 27th (the same day as this year's Academy Awards) while at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with friends and family. Her four children, two sons and two daughters, were by her side as she passed.

A striking brunette beauty with violet eyes who embodied both innocence and seductiveness, and was known for her flamboyant private life and numerous marriages as well as her acting career, Taylor was the epitome of Hollywood glamour, and was one of the last legendary stars who could still command headlines and standing ovations in her later years. Born to American parents in England in 1932, Taylor's family decamped to Los Angeles as World War II escalated in the late 1930s. Even as a child, her amazing good looks -- her eyes were amplified by a double set of eyelashes, a mutation she was born with -- garnered the attention of family friends in Hollywood, and she undertook a screen test at 10 years old with Universal Studios. She appeared in only one film for the studio (There's One Born Every Minute) before they dropped her; Taylor was quickly picked up by MGM, the studio that would make her a young star.

Her second film was Lassie Come Home (1943), co-starring Roddy McDowall, who would become a lifelong friend. She assayed a few other roles (including a noteworthy cameo in 1943's Jane Eyre) but campaigned for the part that would make her a bona fide child star: the young Velvet Brown, who trained a champion racehorse to win the Grand National, in National Velvet. The box office smash launched Taylor's career, and MGM immediately put her to work in a number of juvenile roles, most notably in Life With Father (1947) and as Amy in 1949's Little Women. As she blossomed into a young woman, she began to outgrow the roles she was assigned, often playing women far older than her actual age. She scored another hit alongside Spencer Tracy as the young daughter preparing for marriage in Father of the Bride (1950), but her career officially entered adulthood with George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951), as a seductive rich girl who bedazzles Montgomery Clift to the degree that he kills his pregnant girlfriend (Shelley Winters). The film was hailed as an instant classic, and Taylor's performance, still considered one of her best, launched the next part of her career.

Frustrated by MGM's insistence at putting her in period pieces (some were hits notwithstanding, including 1952's Ivanhoe), Taylor looked to expand her career, and took on the lead role in Elephant Walk (1954) when Vivian Leigh dropped out after suffering a nervous breakdown. As her career climbed in the 1950s, so did Taylor's celebrity: she married hotel heir Conrad "Nicky" Hilton Jr. in 1950, and divorced him within a year. She then married British actor Michael Wilding in 1952, with whom she had two sons, though that marriage ended in divorce in 1957, after she embarked on an affair with the man who would be her next husband, producer Michael Todd (who won an Oscar for Around the World in 80 Days). As her personal life made headlines, she appeared alongside James Dean and Rock Hudson in Giant (1956), and received her first Academy Award nomination for Raintree County in 1957. Roles in two Tennessee Williams adaptations followed -- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly Last Summer (1959), both considered two of her best performances -- earning her two more Oscar nominations, just as tragedy and notoriety would strike her life.

Todd, whom she married in 1957 and had a daughter with, died in a plane crash in 1958 in New Mexico, leaving a bereft Taylor alone at the height of her stardom. Adored by millions, she went from lovely widow to heartless home-wrecker in the tabloids after starting an affair with Eddie Fisher, Todd's best friend and at the time husband of screen darling Debbie Reynolds. The relationship was splashed across newspapers as Fisher left Reynolds and their two children (including a young Carrie Fisher) for Taylor. The two appeared together in 1960's Butterfield 8, where Taylor played prostitute Gloria Wandrous in a performance that was considered good but nowhere near her previous films, and earned her another Oscar nomination. As the Academy Awards ceremony approached, Taylor was thrust into the headlines again when a life-threatening case of pneumonia required an emergency tracheotomy, leaving her with a legendary scar on her neck. Popular opinion swung yet again as newspapers and fans feared for her life, and the illness was credited with helping her win her first Oscar for Butterfield 8.

Taylor was now the biggest female star in the world, in terms of film and popularity, and her notoriety was only about to increase. Twentieth Century Fox, making a small biopic about the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, tried to offer Taylor the part; she laughed them off, saying she would do it for $1 million, a then-unheard of sum for an actress. The studio took her seriously, and soon she was signed to a million-dollar contract (the first for an actress) and a movie that would soon balloon out of control as filming started. Initially set to film in England with Peter Finch and Rex Harrison as Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the movie encountered numerous problems and after a first shutdown was moved to Italy, with director Joseph L. Manckiewicz at the helm. Finch left and was replaced by acclaimed stage actor and rising movie star Richard Burton.

The rest was cinematic and tabloid history, as Taylor and Burton, whose electric chemistry was apparent to all on set, embarked on quite possibly the most famous Hollywood affair ever, while the filming of the epic movie took on gargantuan proportions and its budget increased exponentially. After the dust settled, Fox was saddled with a three-hour-plus film that, despite starring the two actors whose every move was hounded by photographers and reporters, was considered a bomb. The 1963 film almost sunk the studio (which only rebounded thanks to the megahit The Sound of Music two years later), while Burton and Taylor emerged from the wreckage relatively unscathed and ultimately married in 1964.

However, despite carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, the newly married couple made two marginally successful films, The V.I.P.s (1963) and The Sandpiper (1965), both glossy soap operas that made money but hardly challenged their talents. That opportunity would come with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), the adaptation of the Edward Albee play directed by first-time filmmaker Mike Nichols. As the beleaguered professor George and his shrewish wife Martha, whose mind games played havoc one fateful night with a younger faculty couple (George Segal and Sandy Dennis), the two gave perhaps their best screen performances ever, tearing into the roles -- and each other -- with a gusto never seen in their previous pairings. They both received Oscar nominations, but only Taylor won, her second and final Academy Award.

A successful adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew (1967) followed, but the couple's next films were a string of notorious bombs, including Doctor Faustus, The Comedians, and the so-bad-it's-good Boom. Though still one of Hollywood's biggest stars, Taylor's cinematic output in the 1970s became somewhat dismal, as her fraying marriage with Burton took center stage in the press, as did her weight gain after Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The couple divorced in June 1974, only to remarry briefly in October 1975; by then, Taylor was more celebrity than movie star, still appearing occasionally onscreen and in television, but to less acclaim.

Taylor married U.S. Senator John Warner at the end of 1976, and during the late 1970s and 1980s played the politician's wife, and her unsatisfying life led her to depression, drinking, overeating and ultimately a visit to the Betty Ford Center. After TV and stage appearances during the 1980s (including a reunion in 1983 with Burton for a production of Private Lives), Taylor found another, surprising role, that of social activist as longtime friend Rock Hudson died of complications from AIDS in 1985. She threw herself into fund-raising work, raising by some accounts $50 million to fight the disease, helping found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AMFAR).

Though later generations only saw Taylor on television in films like Malice in Wonderland, and the mini-series North and South, and in her final screen appearance as the mother of Wilma in the live-action movie adaptation of The Flintstones, she remained a tabloid fixture through her marriage to construction worker Larry Fortensky (her eighth and final husband), her friendship with singer Michael Jackson, and her continual charity work, which was only sidelined by hospital visits after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2004. She is survived by four children -- two sons with Michael Wilding, a daughter with Michael Todd, and another daughter adopted with Richard Burton -- and nine grandchildren.

--Mark Englehart...

It's Eye Candy Weekend. 8 Days until Oscar!

Be great. Be beautiful. Ride a horse. Get married. Get divorced. Act like a total diva. Wear something spectacularly sexy, preferrably white. Make people want more.

Befriend Michael Jackson. Watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? again. Watch National Velvet. Watch A Place in the Sun. Be highly quotable. Get married. Flaunt every piece of jewelry you own. Donate to an AIDS charity. Nurse a sick friend. Get divorced. Show everyone your wicked sense of humor. Fall in love with Montgomery Clift in glorious black and white (any of his movies will do). Ask your best friend to refer to you as "Bessie Mae" for the rest of the day. Get married. Scream "I was the slut of all time!" at the top of your lungs. Survive the loss of someone you loved no matter how hard that is to do. Pretend you've won an Oscar.

No 79: Montgomery Clift 1920-66

Like Marlon Brando, his close friend, fellow maverick and chief rival for the title of greatest American actor of his generation, the tall, lean Clift was born in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was an overbearing, right-wing banker and stockbroker of considerably fluctuating fortunes; his ambitious mother, an illegitimate child adopted at birth, was obsessed with establishing her membership of a distinguished patrician family from the south. Along with his twin sister and elder brother, Clift was privately educated.

At the age of 15, Monty, as everyone called him, made his Broadway debut and for the next decade was constantly employed there, usually playing handsome, sensitive sons, though with the possible exception of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (directed in 1942 by Elia Kazan) none of the plays he appeared in entered the classic repertoire. For years, he rejected Hollywood offers until accepting the role...

After a career spanning multiple decades and bringing us some of the finest classics ever to be filmed, Tennessee Williams choked to death on an eyedropper cap, supposedly while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. If they had found him facedown and pantsless in a hotel room with a pink-frosted wedding cake splattered in and around his anus and a preteen Thai boy sleeping off the effects of mild sedatives in the crook of William's arm, it wouldn't be a less auspicious act of humiliating the great playwright's memory than what Jodie Markell has done by unearthing this travesty of a "lost" screenplay and forcing us to watch her inept attempts at directing. I am embarrassed that no drama-geeks have donned wifebeaters and floor-length evening gowns and dragged Markell screaming into the streets to rend her to shreds. I have seen a number of ham-fisted productions of Williams' works,...

New Year's week is typically a dry time for new releases, which is likely fine by multiplex employees. After last weekend's record box office, they could use a rest. But we cinephiles are always in need of fresh options, and just because it's the week after Christmas -- a traditional peak time for moviegoing -- doesn't mean there should be a total lack of new offerings. I know I'm not the only person who grew up regularly going to the movies on New Year's Eve.

Fortunately, while there seems to be no studio fare out this week, there are a few new films coming out in limited release. And each appears to be worth checking out if they're available in your area now or later, theatrically or otherwise.

"The White Ribbon"

What it is: The latest from Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke ("Funny Games"), "The White Ribbon" is a drama set...