The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, "Life Is a Dream," on Decca Classics. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
She began her career as a singer, then became a promoter and impresario. She co-founded what started as a 1974 Duke Ellington tribute and, in 1979, became the Chicago Jazz Festival. She then created another event, which started in 1981 as the South Shore Jazz Fest and became JazzFest Heritage Weekend. - Chicago Sun-Times
After having memory issues while rehearsing a production at Chichester Festival Theatre earlier this year, the revered star is stepping away from full-scale work. She will continue giving performances of a two-person show which she’s been doing for many years and will do a short Beckett play next year. - The Times (UK)
“The actress Laura Linney, who graduated from Juilliard in 1990, was confused when Ms. Smith stared at the floor during her entire audition. ‘She wasn’t looking, she was listening,’ to Ms. Linney’s voice, the actress said.” - The New York Times
Lane, who didn’t speak Spanish when this part of her career began, "exuded a sultry Latin air as the star vocalist for the bandleader Xavier Cugat in the 1950s and ’60s, and in a successful solo career afterward.” - The New York Times
The comic monologue, titled Cartwheel, is billed as about a woman “approaching forty, juggling motherhood and finally getting around to being furious about the whole wrongful-imprisonment thing. Especially when half the world is telling her to get over it, while the other half still thinks she’s guilty.” - AP
A two-time Oscar nominee who’s widely expected to get another nomination for her performance as Circe, Morton said, “I’ve got really good agents and a manager, but at the end of the day, I’m 49. I do believe I’m a good actor, (but) there are other good actors out there.” - Variety
After emerging internationally in the late 1970s, he established himself as one of the leading specialists in the operas of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. He guest-conducted at most of the world’s major opera houses and served as music director of the Teatro Regio in Turin for three years in the 1990s. - Moto Perpetuo
In poems, short stories, novels, and two widely-praised (and occasionally censored) books of young-adult fiction, he drew on his gay identity and on life on the US-Mexico border around El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. He received the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2013 for his story collection Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club. - AP
After a life and career around Europe that might euphemistically be described as picaresque, da Ponte fled to Philadelphia and New York, ran a grocery store in rural Pennsylvania, and ended up as Columbia University’s first professor of Italian. For eight generations, his family has held onto his memory. - The New York Times
“It was theater that ultimately changed her life. Between the ages of 14 and 16 she began acting while, offstage, she kept stealing food to survive, used drugs and accumulated several arrests for violent incidents.” - El País English
“The 89-year-old Oscar-winning actor has voiced God and presidents, and he is the go-to narrator for your favorite documentarian. He still brushes aside the impact of his immediately recognizable, resonant baritone.” - The New York Times
Pastore once said, “It’s easier for me to play a tough guy than it is to play the good guy. … I grew up in a tough neighborhood. I didn’t study the classics. I’m a street actor. A lot of my training was on the set.” - The New York Times
Perhaps the bike-loving, gardening, SCUBA-diving actor is having what might be called another moment, a few years after Past Lives garnered her some attention. - The New York Times
