Birthdays: October 12

Brian J. Smith was born on October 12, 1981, in Dallas, Texas, USA, as Brian Jacob Smith. He is an actor who is known for Stargate Universe (2009), Red Faction: Origins (2011), and Hate Crime (2005). During June 2015, he played Will Gorski, one of the lead characters on the Netflix original series Sense8 (2015), which was created by the Wachowskis.

Adam Rich was born on 12 October 1968 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Code Red (1981), Eight Is Enough (1977) and Dungeons & Dragons (1983). He died on 8 January 2023 in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Advent Bangun was born on 12 October 1952 in Kabanjahe, North Sumatra, Indonesia. He was an actor, known for Langganan (1986), Pembalasan si mata elang (1989) and Elang laut (1984). He was married to Lois Riani Amalia Sinulingga. He died on 10 February 2018 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Alexandra Smothers was born at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto. Her father was a third generation Cardinal at Stanford. She jokes that she must have been a "smart baby" to be born at such a prestigious school. Her Dad became a well-respected attorney and her mom was a waitress at their family restaurant for 50 years known as the "Rainbow Hut" on the Central Coast. She moved a lot as a child, between her biker mom and protective sister, her intellectual giant of a Dad, and ultimately the two who had a great impact on her life, her grandparents. She is grateful to them for raising her, with the help of her great aunt and uncle from Palo Alto for taking her from foster care and providing her with a boarding school education. Alexandra experienced living at every economic level and had a myriad of life experiences that give her a rich well to draw from as an actress.

Academy Award Nominated Actress Carrie Snodgress befriended Smothers in line for a ride at Magic Mountain and mentored her in her journey to becoming a working actress and a mom. She stressed the value of volunteering one's time to worthy causes. Smothers studied with Mr. Cochran, former Yale professor who taught Meryl Streep and Danny Glover. Smothers credits Oliver Stone for inspiring her to come to Los Angeles to work as an actress in films after meeting him at the Fiesta Five Movie Theater in Santa Barbara, where Alexandra gave him a tiny little slide that a photographer nearby just happened to have on him. She had just finished her first film, "The Legend of Shokar" that premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 1992. He encouraged her to come to LA. She moved from Santa Barbara where she was attending school and living on a boat to Los Angeles.

Her Dad came into her life again after a ten-year absence. He was a resident at the Betty Ford Center. His roommate was unit publicist, Thomas Gray, who took Alexandra under his wing and taught her what he new about the business of show. By 1996, she was getting hundreds of auditions and a few small roles that ended up mostly on the cutting room floor. Her film and TV credits include Will Smith's breakthrough series "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" which she was fired from for trying a different accent each take, "I was green!" she laughs, red-faced.

Her first agent was Joel Tappis. They met while she sat alone waiting for a man for whom she had decided to buy some teeth so that he could look for a job. (He didn't have any in the front)

Smothers agreed to travel to see about a picture and was brought in on Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" (in which the film pioneer cast her as a Cleopatra cocktail waitress) by Marilee Lear. She had her own trailer and was on set for a week with Tim Burton, Danny DeVito and Annette Bening. Smothers couldn't help but be inspired by them, and the cinematographer Peter Suschitzky taught her about creating meaningful moments on film.

She flew from the set in Vegas to see her Dad marry his wife Heidi at the Little Chapel in Yosemite Valley. Two months later, Alexandra's son, Isaac, was conceived to her free-spirited globetrotting new boyfriend. She moved back to the Central Coast to raise her newborn son, Isaac, and to help her sister, Tasha who was sick. She changed her name from Brandy to Alexandra. In contemplating the naming of her son, she realized the importance of a name and its meaning. " 'Brandy' means 'conqueror.' 'Alexandra' means 'helper of mankind'. Smothers wanted to devote her time to her son. Two years later, while on a good-will ambassador trip to aid an orphanage in Mexico, a producer took notice of her. Three months later, Smothers, living in a small country town of 282 people, received a phone call. She was hired to fly to Belize as an on-screen narrator to make the case for the conservation of the rainforests, providing clean drinking water to the world and building safe homes for "Target Earth" and "Eden Conservancy". When she got back, she met the disciplined and compelling director Patti Kane, who created a theatre in Paso Robles that debuted with Smothers' performance as Cherie in 'Bus Stop' in the year 2000, Classic American Theatre was born. For the next five years Smothers worked closely with artist-in-residence Jeffrey Schultz and Director Patti Kane bringing powerful leading ladies to life to packed houses and standing ovations. She played Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" which was produced by Rob Stevens who was known to the Los Angeles theatre community for producing the awards show "The Robbies."

Alexandra missed out on knowing her father as a child. She and her son spent every Christmas with him and his wife Heidi in Ahwahnee, just outside of Yosemite. While Smothers and her dad didn't enjoy the close-knit relationship she longed for, her dad told her that he was her biggest fan after seeing Smothers in "Bus Stop" as Cherie, a role brought to the screen by the late Marilyn Monroe.

The desire to share her work with a larger audience led her back to Los Angeles. Her first appearance on stage in Los Angeles was as Blanche DuBois in "Streetcar Named Desire," and at the Improv Comedy Lab as Mrs. Brown in "National Velvet. " Again, with the audience limited to those who could make it to the theatre, Smothers set out in search of a wider audience.

In 2007, Alexandra represented Lucky Jeans and Liz Claiborne as a model in Sri Lanka, and had a very emotional journey down the coast hosted by Hidiramani Corporation, the clothing manufacturer. They took her to the village built for the survivors who had lost family members in the tsunami following the magnitude 9.1 earthquake in 2004. When she got there, they held a town hall meeting to tell her of their desire for peacekeeping, language education, and technology. Smothers would still like to establish aide to the region.

After hearing Producer Ralph Winter speak about the importance of making movies and not just dreaming about it, Smothers engaged the help of a very talented cinematographer Paolo Cascio to create a short film about her sister's recent death at 37 in a head- on collision. The story was originally titled "Illa Ensis" but at the last second was changed to "Broken" It was a very personal journey that premiered at the Alex Theatre on April 4, 2009. WGA writer Jeff Wilber wrote the non-linear script.

In 2010, on their third collaboration with Smothers, Directors Roberto Fernando Canuto and Xiaoxi Xu wrote a feature script with Alexandra in mind to play one of the leads in an ensemble piece, and asked Alexandra to join them.

The first day of filming for her first feature film, Smothers learned her father was dying of Pancreatic cancer. "Desire Street" with Alejandra Walker, Ellen Clifford, Javier Lopez and Alexandra Smothers, first screened a rough cut on November 13, 2009 In Theatre 3 on the Universal Studios lot. Her father passed away on May 4, 2010 and she doesn't know if he ever saw that film. She hastily married someone she hadn't dated five days later in her grief.

In the summer of 2010 Alexandra Smothers played Margie the waitress in "Silent Crossroads" set in the 60's in rural Echo, Utah and directed by her husband. She won the "Best Performance in an Acting Role" award from 'Action on Film' Film Festival WithOutaBox Award in 2012, and was nominated for Best Actress from the Movieville Film Festival in Sarasota Florida. They created another short film shortly thereafter where she plays a spy. Their relationship ended upon its completion and separation was a rocky one. Smothers delved into volunteering to keep her life in perspective.

She worked worked briefly on the mob comedy feature "Pizza With Bullets" starring Talia Shire, Vincent Pastore, Ronnie Marmo, Tony Amendola, Tony Devon and directed by Robert Rothbard.

Alice Childress was born on 12 October 1916 in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. She was a writer and actress, known for Uptight (1968), A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich (1977) and Wedding Band (2025). She was married to Nathan Woodard and Alvin Childress. She died on 14 August 1994 in New York City, New York, USA.

Angela Rippon was born on 12 October 1944 in Redruth, Cornwall, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for Wire in the Blood (2002), Chiller (1995) and House of Cards (1990).

Antonia Rey was born on 12 October 1926 in Havana, Cuba. She was an actress, known for Hair (1979), Klute (1971) and Coogan's Bluff (1968). She was married to Andres Castro. She died on 21 February 2019 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.

Art Clokey was born on 12 October 1921 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was a director and writer, known for Gumby: The Movie (1995), Gumby Adventures (1988) and The Gumby Show (1956). He was married to Gloria Clokey and Ruth Clokey. He died on 8 January 2010 in Los Osos, California, USA.

Arthur Space was born on 12 October 1908 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for The Big Noise (1944), The Bat People (1974) and Terror at Red Wolf Inn (1972). He was married to Mary (Mollie) Campbell. He died on 13 January 1983 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Aurore Clement was born in Soissons, France. Her parents were farmers, and after the death of her father, she left for Paris where she found work with a modeling agency. She quickly made a name for herself, preferring a natural style and refusing to wear make-up. In the seventies,Louis Malle, searching for a new face and look, discovered Aurore on the cover of the French magazine Elle and cast her in the role of France, a young Jewish woman in love with a collaborator in the controversial Lacombe, Lucien (1974). She then met Chantal Akerman and soon became one of her favorite comedians (from Meetings with Anna (1978) in which she plays a lonely movie director traveling all over Europe, to Tomorrow We Move (2004) in which she portrays an intrusive and eccentric mother). In 1978 Aurore left for the Philippines to begin filming Apocalypse Now (1979), by Francis Ford Coppola, in which she was cast as the enigmatic and drug-addicted Roxanne who represented the typical 'femme fatale' for all French former colonists still dreaming of Indochina. However, the sequence, dubbed the 'Plantation', was unfortunately cut from the film and not seen again until the release of the Redux version in 2001. She met her husband, production designer Dean Tavoularis, while filming with Coppola. After several movies in Italy (Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, Elio Petri) Aurore Clement was featured in two films shown in Cannes the same year. Portraying a loose woman for Claude Chabrol (The Hatter's Ghost (1982)) she totally reinvented herself and played a mysterious woman lost in the rain for Peter Del Monte "L'invitation au Voyage"). Two years later, she was cast by Wim Wenders as Dean Stockwell's wife in Paris, Texas (1984) which won the French Cannes Festival Palme d'Or. Excelling in playing both dramatic and lunatic characters, she reconnected with the 'cinéma d'auteur', notably in Anne-Marie Miéville's Nous sommes tous encore ici (1997) in which she played the wife of Jean Luc Godard; in Laetitia Masson's distressing world (For Sale (1998) , Only You (1994), La repentie (2002)), and in Serge Gainsbourg's nefarious and ultimate film, Stan the Flasher (1990). Aurore appeared also in well received and widely distributed movies such as Tanguy (2001), Bon Voyage (2003), and Jet Set (2000) before being directed again by Claude Chabrol as a cute hairdresser (The Bridesmaid (2004)) and by Sofia Coppola as the Duchess de Chartres in Marie Antoinette (2006). She has also been cast in numerous high quality films made for television such as Une péniche nommée 'Réalité' (1985) directed by Paul Seban (1982) in which she reconnects with her farming routes; Deux amies d'enfance (1983) with Ludmila Mikaël, directed by Nina Companeez (1983); "Quidam" (1984) in which director Gérard Marx casts her against type; Le regard dans le miroir (1985) directed by Jean Chapot (1985), in which she portrays a former camp survivor next to Bruno Cremer and Michel Bouquet; Les Alsaciens: ou les deux Mathilde (1996), directed by Michel Favart, a film shown in two parts in which she plays a woman struggling and suffering throughout two world wars and "Maigret et le corps sans tête" (1991) in which she offers a stunning performance as a bar keeper in the mid-fifties rural France. She has also been recently seen in the series Zodiaque (2004) and Zodiaque (2004). In addition to her film and television careers, Aurore has been a successful stage actress having first been seen in "La Vie singulière d'Albert Nobbs" (1988), directed by Simone Benmussa in which she portrays a young woman forced to disguise herself as a man in order to make a living in Victorian England. For this premiere on stage, she won an acting prize given by the French theater critics association. Ms. Clement was also seen in Anton Chekhov's "La Mouette", Marguerite Duras' "Les Eaux et Forets" and Alexandre Dumas fils' "La Dame aux Camelias", alongside Isabelle Adjani, for which she has been nominated for the Molieres (the equivalent of the American Tony's).

Brigitte Lahaie was born on October 12, 1955 in Tourcoing, Nord, France. Her father was a banker and her mother was an accountant. Brigitte also has two brothers and a sister. Lahaie moved with her sister to Paris, France in 1975 and worked in a shoe store prior to getting her first film job through a newspaper advert. Brigitte began performing in explicit hardcore movies in 1976 just a year following the legalization of hardcore pornography in France. After establishing herself as a star attraction in adult fare, Brigitte played a small role in the horror picture The Grapes of Death (1978) for cult cinema director Jean Rollin. Lahaie went on to tackle a lead role in Fascination (1979) for Rollin. Moreover, in the early 1980's Brigitte decided to stop doing porn and made a concentrated effort to appear in more traditional mainstream films under the alias Brigitte Simonin. (She has small parts in such mainstream movies as Diva (1981) and Henry & June (1990).) In addition, Lahaie published an autobiography in 1987, recorded and released a pop single, and even did a successful one-woman stage show about her life and career before going on to become the hostess of her own daily talk radio show that largely centers on issues concerning sexuality and relationships. Brigitte was inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame as a Film Pioneer in 2014.

Carla Borelli was born on 12 October 1942 in San Francisco, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Falcon Crest (1981), Mannix (1967) and The Wild Wild West (1965). She was previously married to John Powell Demorest and Donald May.

Carlos Bernard spent his formative years in Mexico City and Chicago. He attended New Trier High School and majored in Fine Art at Illinois State University. It was after college that Carlos began his acting career - performing at such Chicago theaters as The Second City, Victory Gardens and Pegasus Players. He later made the move to San Francisco to train at the prestigious American Conservatory Theater masters program. While at A.C.T., he appeared in the classic plays Hamlet, As You Like It, The Cherry Orchard, Heartbreak House and Good.

Carlos has starred in various films and television series, including The Lincoln Lawyer, The Orville, Madame Secretary, Supergirl, Castle, CSI Miami and Dallas; however, he is probably best known for his portrayal of Tony Almeida on the Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning series 24 - for which he received two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, two Alma Award nominations and three Imagen Award nominations.

Carlos has written and directed for the stage and screen. He received an LA Weekly Theater Award nomination (Best Director) for his staging of Vaclav Havel's play The Memorandum. His first film Your Father's Daughter, which he wrote and directed, premiered at The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. He has directed episodes of FBI, Law & Order, Chicago Fire, FBI Most Wanted, Law & Order: Organized Crime, BULL, Criminal Minds, and Magnum P.I. among others.

Carlos was selected to participate in the Warner Bros. Directors' Workshop and the Sony Pictures Television Diverse Directors Program. He was one of the founding members of the Ashbury Actors Group theater company in Los Angeles.

Carlos is a life long Cubs fan.

Carolee Schneemann was born on 12 October 1939 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was a director and actress, known for Infinity Kisses: The Movie (2009), Fuses (1967) and Body Collage (1967). She was married to James Tenney and Anthony McCall. She died on 6 March 2019 in New Paltz, New York, USA.

Caroline Ellis was born on 12 October 1950 in Whetstone, London, England, UK. She is an actress, known for Sherlock Holmes (1964), Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977) and Only Fools and Horses (1981).

Pelli was born in San Miguel de Tucumán in Argentina in 1926. He went to the US to study in 1952, becoming a citizen in 1964. Before establishing his own practice he worked for the Finnish modernist Eero Saarinen on projects including the famous TWA terminal at JFK airport in New York.

In the 1980s, he expanded the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in Manhattan. Among other US projects were the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford, the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, a chapel at Xavier University in New Orleans and the BOK Center arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Among projects abroad, he designed One Canada Square at Canary Wharf in London's Docklands, which opened in 1991. The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur were completed in 1997.

Pelli's works included the cluster of towers making up the World Financial Center (now called Brookfield Place) at Battery Park City in New York, famous for the glass-roofed Winter Garden at its center, designed the United States Embassy in Tokyo, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar.

Known as the Blue Whale, an immense exhibition hall, the Crystal Palace of the west coast, Pacific Design Center, a huge, glass-clad 1976 project which assimilated into the local folklore of Los Angeles quicker than any building in recent memory, because it is so violently at odds with its flat suburban context. semi-translucent blue glass, which glitters and disappears and re-forms against the dusty blue sky.

One of Pelli's best-known projects is the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, twin 1,483ft skyscrapers that were once the tallest buildings in the world. He also designed the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco and the World Financial Center, now known as Brookfield Place, in downtown Manhattan.

Pelli was a former dean of the Yale University School of Architecture and a lecturer at the school, where he received an honorary degree. He won hundreds of architecture awards, including the 1995 gold medal of the American Institute of Architects, its highest honor.

Cody Cameron is an American voice actor, animator and storyboard artist from California who is known for his work at DreamWorks Animation and Sony Pictures Animation. He voiced Pinocchio and the Three Little Pigs in the Shrek franchise and Mr. Weenie in the Open Season franchise. He voiced Pinocchio in various Shrek video games.

Colton Ford was born on 12 October 1962 in Pasadena, California, USA. He is an actor, known for The Lair (2007).

Stylish, slender-framed, raven-haired Daliah Lavi was made for alluring, exotic types and princess roles with her mesmerizing beauty, chiseled cheek bones and long, flowing mane. The Israeli actress first became a star in Europe before making a dent in Hollywood as part of a wave of knockout foreign star imports that flooded Hollywood during the mid 1960s -- Claudia Cardinale, Julie Christie, Jeanne Moreau, Liv Ullmann, Melina Mercouri, Ursula Andress, Jacqueline Bisset, Romy Schneider, Elke Sommer, Senta Berger, Rosanna Schiaffino, Geneviève Bujold, Capucine, Shirley Eaton, Sylva Koscina, Barbara Bouchet, Susannah York, Rita Tushingham, Monica Vitti, Vanessa Redgrave and her sister Lynn Redgrave, and Catherine Deneuve and her sister Françoise Dorléac. Like most of the others, Daliah was to be viewed as a viable sex symbol contender. In her case, she found decorative, second-tier notice via tongue-in-cheek spy spoofs, crime mysteries, erotic thrillers and rugged adventures. In retrospect, she may have fallen short of the illustrious Hollywood pedestal, but she did create a fine, if brief, stir.

She was born Daliah Levenbuch in the Moshav Shavey Zion, in the British Mandate of Palestine on October 12, 1942. The daughter of Reuben and Ruth Lewinbuk (or Levenbuch), who were of German-Jewish and Polish-Jewish descent, she was sent as a child to Stockholm, Sweden in the early 1950s to train in dance. She made her first film there at age 13 in the drama Hemsöborna (1955) playing the daughter of a professor. Her start in films was interrupted when she returned to Israeli following her father's death and joined the Israeli Army.

Following this period, she returned to acting and, being fluent in many European languages, began to figure in prominently with a host of French, Italian, German and English productions, often as a co-star. Such early films include a starring role in the German/Israeli co-production Brennender Sand (1960); the classic Voltaire comedy Candide or The Optimism in the 20th Century (1960) co-starring as Cunegonde alongside Jean-Pierre Cassel in the title role; and the Martine Carol drama Un soir sur la plage (1961). She continued to build up a strong European film reputation with the war drama No Time for Ecstasy (1961) co-starring Peter van Eyck; the mystery crime The Return of Dr. Mabuse (1961) starring Gert Fröbe and post-Tarzan Lex Barker; and made her American movie debut (earning a Golden Globe "Newcomer" Award in the process) as the second femme lead in the Kirk Douglas starer Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), directed by Vincente Minnelli.

Daliah gained considerable ground enhancing and beautifying such foreign movie product as the ensemble French crime mystery Le jeu de la vérité (1961) (aka The Game of Truth); the German comedy satire Das schwarz-weiß-rote Himmelbett (1962); the title role of a sultry peasant girl accused of being a witch in the Italian/French co-production Il demonio (1963) (aka The Demon); the European western action film Old Shatterhand (1964) starring U.S. imports Lex Barker and Guy Madison; the continental costumed adventure Cyrano et d'Artagnan (1964) starring José Ferrer and Jean-Pierre Cassel as Cyrano and D'Artagnan; the German comedy thriller They're Too Much (1965) starring Curd Jürgens, and the one of the ensemble suspects in the internationally cast whodunit Ten Little Indians (1965).

The actress hit her height of international popularity with four popular English/US-based films: as "The Girl" in the epic adventure Lord Jim (1965) starring Peter O'Toole and James Mason; as Princess Natasha in the spy comedy The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966) opposite Laurence Harvey; an alluring double agent in the first Matt Helm entry The Silencers (1966) starring Dean Martin; and as a sexy enemy weapon in the phantasmagorical Bondian spoof Casino Royale (1967), starring Peter Sellers and an all-star international cast. The last-mentioned film, in particular, had American male audiences taking major notice.

Decked out in tight mini-skirts, thigh-high go-go boots and a helmet of black hair, Daliah fit in perfectly with the times, a swinging, gorgeous chick of the psychedelic 60s. She quickly lost momentum, however, cast in such overlooked films as Those Fantastic Flying Fools (1967), The High Commissioner (1968) and Some Girls Do (1969). Her final film would be in the western comedy Catlow (1971) starring Yul Brynner.

In the 1970s Daliah pursued a singing career in Germany after being discovered by record producer Jimmy Bowien. A popular draw, she had a few hit songs and covered many international songwriters and artists. She was also glimpsed again on German television in the 90s for a brief spell. Daliah died on May 3, 2017, in North Carolina. Her fourth husband of 40 years, Charles Gans, survived her, along with four children, including her son Alex Gans who follow in her footsteps in film as a film editor, producer and director.

Danielle Proulx was born on 12 October 1952 in Montréal, Québec, Canada. She is an actress, known for C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), Portion d'éternité (1988) and Amoureux fou (1991). She has been married to Raymond Cloutier since 1973. They have one child.

A twin fisted existentialist, whose post-Nietzschian sensibilities reject the lantern of the cynic in a quest for a sun that leaves no shadow. He attended Dr Challoners Grammar School where he achieved 8 'o' levels, he then elected to work on demolition sites rather than continue his education to University level. He studied performing arts in his twenties then became a professional wrestler and then secured the role of John in Snatch. Other film and TV work followed including appearances in Eastenders,the Bill and Emmerdale as well as parts in major motion pictures such as Batman begins and Elizabeth the Golden age and when work was quiet he decided to become a professional cage fighter securing wins over LA street fighting legend Kimo Leopoldo and ex UFC heavyweight champion Dan Severn. His fight and acting career however began to clash and when he was offered a role in Steven Berkoff's On The Waterfront he had to regrettably decline due to fight commitments. Instead Berkoff attended Legeno's fight at Wembley arena where he defeated Herb Dean. When Dave was cast as Fenrir Greyback in the Harry Potter series he put his fight career on hold.

David Threlfall was born on 12 October 1953 in Burnage, Manchester, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for Shameless (2004), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) and Patriot Games (1992). He has been married to Brana Bajic since 1995. They have two children.

Deborah Foreman won the prestigious "Most Promising New Star" award from Sho West in 1986, following her starring roles in the critically acclaimed Valley Girl (1983) and the award-winning My Chauffeur (1986). Subsequently, she had the lead (actually the two leads!) in April Fool's Day (1986) which continues to be a video favorite. She is a hard-working actress, equally at home with comedy and drama, who has earned the respect of colleagues and press alike. She has also been a successful model for Maybelline. Her father was a Marine Corps pilot and her mother is an executive assistant. She has one brother who is in the music industry.

Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff is a nationally recognized champion of using film as an organizing tool for social justice campaigns, and a pioneering leader in the international movement working to create safe and welcoming schools and communities. Debra's highly acclaimed documentaries addressing youth and bias issues are widely hailed by educators and advocates as among the best tools available today to help open up dialogue and activism around many of the most challenging issues affecting young people's lives and school environments.

Her films include Straightlaced-How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up, about the gender and sexuality pressures that teens and young adults face today. Her other award-winning films, produced with Helen S. Cohen, include It's Elementary-Talking About Gay Issues in School, Let's Get Real (about bias and bullying) That's a Family! (supporting youth growing up in diverse family structures) and the Academy Award-winning Deadly Deception-General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment. Her first film, Choosing Children, explored the once unheard of idea that lesbians and gay men could become parents after coming out.

In addition to dozens of film festival awards, Debra is the recipient of the Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation Fellowship for outstanding non-profit leadership, the Pathfinder Award from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and the first-ever alumnae achievement award in documentary filmmaking from Wellesley College. Debra has been a featured speaker at dozens of colleges and conferences, and was recently named a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. She is the founder of GroundSpark and co-creator of our renowned Respect For All Project. She has served the organization in a directing capacity since 1982.