418 stories by "Anita Gates"
She was a three-time Oscar contender playing strikingly different characters, in once case starring alongside her daughter and fellow nominee, Laura Dern.
"Kiss my grits," her character, Flo, was known to say. But that high-profile role was just one facet of a long, busy stage and screen career.
She wrote plays, novels and an Emmy-winning Lily Tomlin special. She was a painter, a sculptor and a nightclub singer. Oh, and she also wrestled professionally.
Known for his "heartbreak blue eyes," he starred in "Billy Budd" and "The Collector," and had a memorable role in "Superman" and "Superman II."
A novelist and memoirist, she famously clashed with a brother, leading to the fall of a Kentucky publishing dynasty that her paternal grandfather established in 1918.
An overnight star as Dr. Kildare in the 1960s, he achieved new acclaim two decades later as the omnipresent leading man of mini-series.
He had an acclaimed Broadway career in musicals and comedies, but moviegoers knew him mostly as the tall, self-assured, easygoing pal to Mr. Allen's insecure heroes.
The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, which he founded in 1968, presented more than 50 of his plays, among them "My Head Was a Sledgehammer" and "Permanent Brain Damage."
She won two Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy nomination for her role on the show. She also earned a Tony Award for best actress in the play "Broadway Bound."
The duo won an Oscar for "Annie Hall." Mr. Brickman went on to write Broadway shows, including "Jersey Boys," and make movies of his own.
She was best known for starring in the 1958 screen version of "South Pacific." But her Hollywood career was brief, and she soon shifted her focus to Las Vegas and TV.
She earned an extraordinary array of awards, from Oscars to Emmys to Tonys, but could still go almost everywhere unrecognized. Then came "Downton Abbey."
Once labeled a "natural-born heavy," he shined onscreen and especially onstage, securing a Tony nomination and winning an Obie Award.
She first made her mark in the all-star 1944 movie "Hollywood Canteen" before finding acclaim on the musical stage. Movie and TV roles followed.
She received a Golden Globe in 1954 as that year's rising star and appeared in movies alongside Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman.
In a trans-Atlantic career that endured for more than 60 years, she was also known for her role in the hit 1965 Disney movie "Mary Poppins."
Beginning in the 1980s, when she played the controlling working-class mother of the oddball postal carrier Cliff Clavin on "Cheers," she sailed through a period of playing maternal figures i…
Her Tony-winning Broadway career included "Driving Miss Daisy," "On Golden Pond" and "The Heiress." On TV she had maternal roles in "Cheers" and "Sex and the City."
She wrote 70 plays, won an Obie Award and wrote and directed "Viet Rock," a musical that predated "Hair" and is considered the first U.S. stage work to address the Vietnam War.
As Carmine Ragusa on the hit sitcom, he got to show off his singing, tap-dancing and gymnastic skills " and to croon "Rags to Riches" many times.
In a career that began in 1976, she won nine Tony Awards and helped bring "Equus," "Amadeus" and the work of Edward Albee to the New York stage.
Best known as the gruff newsman he first played on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," he was also a busy character actor and a political activist.
A veteran of the stage known for playing worldly wise and world-weary characters, she was cast in mature roles as early as her late 30s.
Arthur Kopit, the avant-garde playwright who thrust off-Broadway into a new era with the absurdist satirical farce "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad" a…
A three-time Tony nominee, he first became known for avant-garde works, many of them christened with rambling titles, that sparked spirited reactions.
