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A second-generation Norwegian actor, Kristofer Hivju was born on 7 December, 1978 in Oslo. He is the son of actors Lieselotte Holmene and Erik Hivju, a prominent character actor who appeared with his son in the short film Flax, where Kristofer shared screenwriting credit with director Bård Ivar Engelsås.

Kristofer made his American Film debut in Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s 2011 prequel of John Carpenter's The Thing (2011). Next he was seen in M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth (2013) but he is most recognizable as fan favorite Tormund Giantsbane on HBO's Game of Thrones (2011).

Nicholas Hoult was born on December 7, 1989 in Wokingham, Berkshire, England, UK as Nicholas Caradoc Hoult. His parents are Glenis Hoult, a piano teacher and Roger Hoult, a pilot. He has three siblings, two sisters and one brother. His great-aunt was one of the most popular actresses of her time, Dame Anna Neagle. He attended Sylvia Young Theatre School, a school for performing arts, to start acting as a career.

His breakthrough role was as a child when he starred as Marcus Brewer in About a Boy (2002), alongside Hugh Grant. In 2005, he starred in his first American film The Weather Man (2005) as Nicolas Cage's son. At age 17, he received recognition for starring as Tony Stonem in the BAFTAs-awarded British teen-drama series Skins (2007). Later he played the role of Kenny Potter in the Oscar-nominated film A Single Man (2009) after being discovered by director Tom Ford.

Hoult was cast as Hank / Beast in the X-Men franchise and starred in the films X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019).

He also starred as "R" in the romance / horror zombie film Warm Bodies (2013), Jack in Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and British novelist J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings, in the biographical film Tolkien (2019).

Jennifer was born in Kentucky. Her mother is Catherine Mitchell and her father is Robert Carpenter.

She attended St. Raphael the Archangel and then Sacred Heart Academy. During her last two years of high school, she studied drama at the Walden Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. She then trained at the Juilliard School in New York City. In 2002, before she graduated, she made her Broadway debut in the revival of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.

Her breakthrough film role was "Emily Rose" in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). She won a MTV Movie Award for "Best Frightened Performance" and a Hollywood Life Breakthrough Award. She was also named "Breakout Performer" at the 2006 Scream Awards.

In 2006, she cast as Dexter's adoptive sister in Showtime's Dexter (2006). Here, she met her first husband, Michael C. Hall.

In 2011, she starred in the off-Broadway play, "Gruesome Playground Injuries", at Second Stage Theatre and had a guest appearance on the CBS drama, The Good Wife (2009).

In January, 2014, it was announced that Carpenter will star in a new ABC drama Sea of Fire (2014), playing "FBI Agent Leah Pierce". However, the show was not picked into series.

In August, 2014, it was announced that she will provide the voice of "Juli Kidman" in the survival horror video game, The Evil Within (2014), marking her first video game appearance. The game was released in October 2014.

One of Hollywood's finest character / "Method" actors, Eli Wallach was in demand for over 60 years (first film/TV role was 1949) on stage and screen, and has worked alongside the world's biggest stars, including Clark Gable, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, Peter O'Toole, and Al Pacino, to name but a few.

Wallach was born on 7 December 1915 in Brooklyn, NY, to Jewish parents who emigrated from Poland, and was one of the few Jewish kids in his mostly Italian neighborhood. His parents, Bertha (Schorr) and Abraham Wallach, owned a candy store, Bertha's Candy Store. He went on to graduate with a B.A. from the University of Texas in Austin, but gained his dramatic training with the Actors Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse. He made his debut on Broadway in 1945, and won a Tony Award in 1951 for portraying Alvaro Mangiacavallo in the Tennessee Williams play "The Rose Tattoo".

Wallach made a strong screen debut in 1956 in the film version of the Tennessee Williams play Baby Doll (1956), shined as "Dancer", the nattily dressed hitman, in director Don Siegel's film-noir classic The Lineup (1958), and co-starred in the heist film Seven Thieves (1960). Director John Sturges then cast Wallach as vicious Mexican bandit Calvera in The Magnificent Seven (1960), the western adaptation of the Akira Kurosawa epic Seven Samurai (1954). The Misfits (1961), in the star-spangled western opus How the West Was Won (1962), the underrated WW2 film The Victors (1963), as a kidnapper in The Moon-Spinners (1964), in the sea epic Lord Jim (1965) and in the romantic comedy How to Steal a Million (1966).

Looking for a third lead actor in the final episode of the "Dollars Trilogy", Italian director Sergio Leone cast the versatile Wallach as the lying, two-faced, money-hungry (but somehow lovable) bandit "Tuco" in the spectacular The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) (aka "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"), arguably his most memorable performance. Wallach kept busy throughout the remainder of the '60s and into the '70s with good roles in Mackenna's Gold (1969), Cinderella Liberty (1973), Crazy Joe (1974), The Deep (1977) and as Steve McQueen's bail buddy in The Hunter (1980).

The 1980s was an interesting period for Wallach, as he was regularly cast as an aging doctor, a Mafia figure or an over-the-hill hitman, such as in The Executioner's Song (1982), Our Family Honor (1985), Tough Guys (1986), Nuts (1987), The Two Jakes (1990) and as the candy-addicted "Don Altabello" in The Godfather Part III (1990). At 75+ years of age, Wallach's quality of work was still first class and into the 1990s and beyond, he has remained in demand. He lent fine support to Vendetta: Secrets of a Mafia Bride (1990), Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story (1992), Naked City: Justice with a Bullet (1998) and Keeping the Faith (2000). Most recently Wallach showed up as a fast-talking liquor store owner in Mystic River (2003) and in the comedic drama King of the Corner (2004).

In early 2005, Eli Wallach released his much anticipated autobiography, "The Good, The Bad And Me: In My Anecdotage", an enjoyable reading from one of the screen's most inventive and enduring actors.

Eli Wallach was very much a family man who remained married to his wife Anne Jackson for 66 years. When Wallach died at 98, in 2014, in Manhattan, NY, he was survived by his wife, three children, five grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

Caleb Landry Jones is an American actor and musician, known for his roles as Banshee in X-Men: First Class, Jeremy Armitage in Get Out, Red Welby in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Ty Carter in The Outpost, Jeff in Finch, and Martin Bryant in Nitram. His accolades include a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and a Aacta Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in Nitram.

Thomas Alan Waits was born in Pomona, California, to schoolteachers Alma Fern (Johnson) and Jesse Frank Waits. Described as one of the last beatniks of the contemporary music, Waits in fact has two separate careers. From 1973 (LP "Closing Time") to 1983 ("One From The Heart" soundtrack), he recorded nine LPs for Asylum Records, writing songs mainly in the manner of Tin Pan Alley, mixing them with jazz and blues. Extraordinarily, he never produced a hit, but he earned a cult following all over the world. In 1983, he signed with Island Records and released a series of albums that stunned the music world. Beginning with "Swordfishtrombones", he introduced a whole new orchestration, which included some of the instruments invented by Harry Partch. He found a new ground for his innovations, searching in sound fields that never before were searched. This second part of his career coincided with his marriage to Kathleen Brennan, a former writer for Francis Ford Coppola (Zoetrope (1999)). His LPs "Rain Dogs" (1985), "Big Time" (soundtrack) and "The Black Rider" are today what Kurt Weill's music was once. "The Black Rider" brings music written for the show directed by Bob Wilson and staged in Germany.

Marisa Abela was born on 7 December 1996 in Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK. She is an actress, known for Industry (2020), Cobra (2020) and Rogue Agent (2022).

Australian actress Emily Browning was born in 1988 in Melbourne, Australia, to Shelley and Andrew Browning. She has two younger brothers. Her start in acting came after a classmate's father, involved in the acting business, noticed her "acting all ditsy" in a school play. Emily found an agent and was soon filming on location for the Hallmark TV-movie, The Echo of Thunder (1998). She received more roles from there, including parts in The Man Who Sued God (2001), opposite Billy Connolly, and Ned Kelly (2003), opposite Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom. In that film, she had to hug Heath Ledger, and she said that all of her friends, who went to see the film, at the same time sent her a barrage of text messages about how lucky she was! Emily says she tries to avoid "cheesy" movies, and her big break came when she was on a press tour in LA for Ghost Ship (2002), that was filmed in Australia and released in America. In the same year, she won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Young Actress, and was nominated for the same award, the next year. Emily received some scripts when she was in LA and sent in a video audition for A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004). She received a call and was asked to come to LA for a proper audition, which won her the part. She spent months in LA filming, for the second time acting opposite Billy Connolly. Emily said she enjoyed the experience of making a big budget film in America, and says that although she's not sure what is coming next, she's hoping to do some more Australian work.

After an eye-catching performance in the teen coming-of-age epic The Outsiders (1983), ex-child rodeo star C. Thomas Howell was a promising young actor in the mid-1980s.

Christopher Thomas Howell was born in Los Angeles to Candice (Webb) and Chris Howell (a professional bull rider turned stuntman). He started working in the film industry at the age of seven. In 1981, he was cast as Tyler in Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Shortly thereafter, he nabbed the lead in Francis Ford Coppola's classic The Outsiders (1983). Earmarked as an up-and-coming actor, his career soon skyrocketed with roles in films including the comedy Grandview, U.S.A. (1984), alongside Jamie Lee Curtis, and the violent Cold War invasion drama Red Dawn (1984). His career was not helped by the controversial racial comedy Soul Man (1986), which was not well-received. However, he did meet and fall in love with his co-star from that movie, Rae Dawn Chong, whom he later married. He has notched up in excess of 90 feature film appearances. including starring roles in Side Out (1990), Gettysburg (1993), Baby Face Nelson (1996), Fatal Affair (1998), Asylum Days (2001) and Hoboken Hollow (2006).

He played unpredictable Officer Bill "Dewey" Dudek in the TNT drama series Southland (2009) and as the sadistic serial killer "The Reaper" on CBS's Criminal Minds (2005). More recent television appearances include The Glades (2010) (A&E) and Torchwood (2006) (Starz Channel). He appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Sony). A budding film director, he has directed a number of films, including The Big Fall (1997), Pure Danger (1996), The Land That Time Forgot (2009), and The Day the Earth Stopped (2008).

Outside his acting career, Howell was an accomplished team roper and later, as 'Tommy Howell', a singer-songwriter.

Jeff Hiller is an actor and comedian known for Somebody, Somewhere. Hiller started as a performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York and has also performed on Broadway in "Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson", in NYC's Shakespeare in the Park, and Off-Broadway in "Silence" (The musical version of "Silence of the Lambs").

Born and raised in Washington DC, Jeffrey Wright graduated from Amherst College in 1987. Although he studied Political Science while at Amherst, Wright left the school with a love for acting. Shortly after graduating he won an acting scholarship to NYU, but dropped out after only two months to pursue acting full-time. With roles in Presumed Innocent (1990), and the Broadway production of Angels in America, (in which he won a Tony award), within a relatively short time Wright was able to show off his exceptional talent and ability on both stage and screen alike. His first major on-screen performance came in 1996 in the Julian Schnabel directed film Basquiat (1996). Wright's harrowing performance as the late painter Jean Michele Basquiat was critically acclaimed. Wright later had a continuing role in the HBO dramatic series Boardwalk Empire (2010).

Jack Alexander Huston is a British actor. He appeared as Richard Harrow in the HBO television drama series Boardwalk Empire. He also had a supporting role in the 2013 film American Hustle, portrayed the eponymous Ben-Hur in the 2016 historical drama, and appeared as one of the main characters in the fourth season of the FX anthology series Fargo (2020).

Born in New York, Larry Hankin took an industrial design degree from the University of Syracuse; multifaceted artist, in addition to being an actor, he is also a screenwriter, producer, director and singer. He began his career as an illustrator in the entertainment world, and studied acting at Syracuse University. He was in the same class with Frank Langella and Carl Gottlieb. He was also a member of two comedy improvisation groups, Second City (Chicago) and The Committee (San Francisco). Hankin continues today his work in Hollywood.

Mark Duplass was born on 7 December 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Creep (2014), Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) and The One I Love (2014). He has been married to Katie Aselton since 26 August 2006. They have two children.

Ellen Burstyn was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Correine Marie (Hamel) and John Austin Gillooly. She is of Irish, French/French-Canadian, Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and Native American ancestry. She worked a number of jobs before she became an actress. At 14, she was a short-order cook at a lunch counter. After graduating from Detroit's Cass Technical High School, she went to Texas to model and then to New York as a showgirl on The Jackie Gleason Show (1952). From there, it was to Montreal as a nightclub dancer and then Broadway with her debut in "Fair Game (1957)". By 1963, she appeared on the TV series The Doctors (1963), but she gained notice for her role in Goodbye Charlie (1964). Ellen then took time off to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.

Her big break came when she was cast as the female lead in The Last Picture Show (1971). For this role, she received nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award. Next, she co-starred with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), giving a chilling performance. Then came The Exorcist (1973). She was again nominated for the Golden Globe and Academy Award. In 1974, she starred in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), for which performance she won the Oscar and BAFTA awards as Best Actress. For the Golden Globe, she was nominated but lost to Marsha Mason. The same year, she made history by winning a Tony Award for the Broadway play "Same Time, Next Year". She won praise and award nominations for her performances in the film versions of Same Time, Next Year (1978) and Resurrection (1980).

In "Resurrection", she played a woman with the power to heal. A succession of TV movies resulting in two Emmy nominations kept her going as did the series The Ellen Burstyn Show (1986). The TV movies continued through the 1990s. Also in the 1990s, she was cast in the supporting role in such movies as The Cemetery Club (1993), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), The Baby-Sitters Club (1995) and The Spitfire Grill (1996). In addition to her acting, She was the first woman president of Actor's Equity (1982-85).

Shiri jumped in front of the lens as a youngster appearing in Norman Lear Sunday Dinner and Lawrence Kasden's I Love You To Death. At 19 she had her breakout performance on the series Roswell, playing the leading role of Liz Parker. She went on to appear in ER, Six Degrees, as well as Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War, HBO's GIRLS, CW's Life Unexpected, before starring in Lifetime's critically acclaimed dramady UnReal, playing Rachel Goldberg, a producer working behind the scenes of a dating competition show, which received the Peabody Award. In 2016, Shiri was nominated for a Critics Choice Award for Best Actress for her work on the show. Shiri directed four episodes of UnReal before focusing most of her attention on directing. Shiri has directed shows such as Minx, UnPrisoned, Blackish, New Amsterdam, Young Sheldon, and many others, across all platforms.

A veteran actor for over 30 years, Patrick is best known for his portrayal of "Howard Hamlin" for six seasons on AMC's Peabody Award winning series "Better Call Saul"

Patrick has worked with everyone from Angela Lansbury to Xena recurring on shows "The Gordita Chronicles", "Special", "Carols' Second Act", "Black Monday", "Grey's Anatomy", "The Newsroom", "Big Love","Code Black", "Desperate Housewives", "Veronica Mars","Joan of Arcadia", "24" & "Providence" to name a few.

Guest star roles: "Scandal", "Castle", "Lucifer", "Agents of Shield", "Criminal Minds", "Elementary","Longmire", "NCIS", "Hot in Cleveland", "Burn Notice", "Bones", "Friends", "Will & Grace","The Mentalist", "Pushing Daisies" and all of the CSI franchise.

Fabian starred as the Exorcist in the low-budget horror film "The Last Exorcism", which grossed over $70 million worldwide and garnered him Best Actor at the Sitges International Film Festival.......other movies include "Driver X", "The Way We Speak", Eat! Brains! Love!", "Jimmy", "Bad Ass", "Send It", "Must Love Dogs", "My Eleventh", & "Underdog Kids"

On Disney & ABC Family, Patrick has been a go-to bad guy, playing evil Thantos in Disney Channel's "Twitches" & "Twitches Too" & the reindeer hunting Buck in the Christmas movies "Snow" and "Snow 2: Brain Freeze" as well as Dove Cameron's Dad in "Cloud 9".

And yes, he is fondly remembered as Professor Lasky from "Saved By The Bell:The College Years".

Stage-wise, Fabian has worked with some of the best playwrights and directors around: having toured America with John Guare's "Six Degrees of Separation" directed by Jerry Zaks; Eric Bogosian's "Humpty Dumpty" directed by Jo Bonney at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton; and Nicky Silver's "The Food Chain" directed by Robert Falls at the Westside Theatre in NYC.

He loves living in Los Angeles with his wife, 2 kids & 2 dogs and is currently looking for the next gig.

Carrie Kei Heim was born on 7 December 1973 in Tokyo, Japan. She is an actress, known for Santa Claus (1985), The Equalizer (1985) and ABC Weekend Specials (1977). She has been married to Peter K. Binas since 21 May 2005. They have one child.

Aubrey Reynolds was born in Dallas, Texas and grew up in Grapevine, Texas, where she attended Colleyville Heritage High School. She received a BFA in Acting from Brigham Young University. She made her feature film debut as the lead in the period drama 16 Stones (2014). She currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Mark knew he wanted to be an actor at age nine; he took his career and studies to Europe to fulfill his dream. Once there, he was asked by five major acting schools to join them. He chose the Drama Centre London, where he studied for five years. Mark then beat out 2,000 others for an important position in the Theatre Communications Group National Finals. This led to a year's tour of the United States in the lead role in "Richard II." This was the beginning of his U.S. career.

Though probably not to her liking, actress Priscilla Barnes is best known for her bittersweet replacement of TV goddess Suzanne Somers during the tension-riddled times of the popular ABC slapstick comedy series, Three's Company (1976) -- bittersweet in that although the lovely, stringy-framed blonde did become a TV name as a result, she had to endure the anguish of stepping into the shoes of an enormously popular star whose determination to be paid wages equal to her male co-star had her unceremoniously dumped from the show when contractual negotiations went awry. It was not the happiest of times for Priscilla yet she managed to pull the whole thing off as nurse "Terri Alden", the pretty roommate and (along with co-star Joyce DeWitt), the other female foil to John Ritter's outrageous shenanigans.

Priscilla chose to be her own person and allowed her character a bit more substance and intelligence than Somers' jiggly ding-a-ling "Chrissy Snow". If nothing else, the new girl on the block added a much-needed stability to an already emotionally wrought set and was accepted by the show's fans for a final three seasons. She and DeWitt developed a fast friendship, which lasted long after the show's demise. Interestingly, Priscilla had been previously turned down for the vapid "Cindy Snow" character (played by Jenilee Harrison) because she was perceived as "too old" for the role.

Priscilla was born in Fort Dix, New Jersey, the daughter of an Air Force commander. An average student in school, the leggy beauty with the prominent cheekbones and intriguing slash of a mouth originally planned to become a dancer and joined a preteen group called the "The Vivacious Vixens", but a severe accident while performing on the Hollywood Bowl stage (she broke her leg and fractured her jaw) ended such dreams.

During her formative years, she earned some attention as a beauty pageant contender ("Miss Hollywood", "Miss San Bernardino", "Miss California" (runner-up)) while paying her dues waitressing. A chance acquaintance with Peter Falk, who saw promise in the girl who countered her fresh-faced beauty with a self-deprecating wit, led to a bit part on one of his Columbo (1971) episodes, A Deadly State of Mind (1975), in 1976, and the start of her professional career. The parts she nabbed typically accentuated her physical assets. A former Penthouse Pet for March 1976 (using the alias "Joann Witty"), Priscilla paid her dues via a series of unmemorable projects, including the films Texas Detour (1978), Delta Fox (1979) and The Seniors (1978) plus the short-lived TV series, The American Girls (1978), in which she played a smart-styled, traveling reporter. Handed a somewhat better supporting role in the Gene Wilder sequence of the four-part film, Sunday Lovers (1980), she gathered more experience on such shows as Cannon (1971), Starsky and Hutch (1975), The Incredible Hulk (1977), The Rockford Files (1974), Kojak (1973), Taxi (1978) and The Love Boat (1977), before becoming a vital part of Three's Company (1976)'s 1981 cast.

Barnes continued with the popular show in spite of her frustrations with producers and her dread of being typecast in innocuous comedy. Since then, she has maintained in a Hollywood that doesn't cater to women of "maturing" age, especially former TV stars. On TV, she added a feisty glamour to the series Dark Justice (1991), Viper (1994), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and other The Love Boat (1977) episodes. More often, however, she has shown up in low-budget films. She has certainly taken on more than her fair share of horror projects, including Stepfather 3 (1992), and Witch Academy (1995) in which some of her characters have met grisly ends. One film highlight was her featured role, not as a Bond girl but as the bride of a CIA agent (David Hedison), who is shot to death on her wedding day, in the Timothy Dalton "007" film, Licence to Kill (1989). She also enjoyed a role as a quirky fortune teller in Mallrats (1995).

Active on the theater scene over the years with credits such as "Born Yesterday", "Vanities", "Bus Stop" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" under her belt, she recently played Hillary Clinton in the 2007 black comedy, "Hillary Agonistes", in New York.

Maintaining an active career into the millennium, independent film credits including several horror yarns including The Backlot Murders (2002), Unseen Evil 2 (2004) co-starring Lorenzo Lamas, The Devil's Rejects (2005), Trailer Park of Terror (2008), Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007) and Thr3e (2006); as well as the action film Final Payback (2001); the sci-fi drama Disaster Wars: Earthquake vs. Tsunami (2013); the eerie mystery Helen Alone (2014) and the comedy crime film Jonny's Sweet Revenge (2015). She has been married to actor Ted Monte since 2003.

Emily Berrington is an English actress who played Simone Al-Harazi in 24: Live Another Day (2014) and Niska in the Channel 4 and AMC TV series Humans (2015).

Berrington's parents were social workers who subsequently started a training business for the public sector. She has three siblings: Amy, a professor in the United States; Tom, who works for IMG in Abu Dhabi; and Katie, who writes for Vogue. Berrington attended Cheney School and later studied development geography at King's College London, writing her dissertation on "the economic collapse of Argentina and the resulting rise of cooperativism".

Berrington was involved in youth drama but pursued a career in politics, working at the House of Commons for Labour Party MP Siobhain McDonagh of the London constituency of Mitcham and Morden. She found politics "terrifying, very masculine and not particularly encouraging to young blonde women" and thought "this is a tough industry, can an acting career be any more intimidating?" In 2009 she won a place studying in acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, graduating in 2012.

While studying there she had a part in the Almeida Theatre's production of Children's Children and Michael Winterbottom's The Look of Love.

In 2013 she starred as Jane Shore in the period drama The White Queen and in 2014 she starred as Stacey in the BBC sitcom Outnumbered and as Simone Al-Harazi in the thriller series 24: Live Another Day. Her character on 24 had been planned to appear in two episodes, but that was expanded to seven. Her first major supporting film role came in the 2014 comedy film The Inbetweeners 2. In 2015 she began playing Niska in Channel 4 series Humans.

Jeff Nichols was born on 7 December 1978 in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. He is a writer and director, known for Take Shelter (2011), Mud (2012) and Midnight Special (2016).

Towering Scottish actor Clive Russell is arguably best known to audiences as the formidable Brynden 'Blackfish' Tully in HBO's epic series Game of Thrones (2011). Due to his imposing height (6' 6"), as well as being adept on horseback, he has often been cast as warriors in historical fantasies and in period drama. In this realm, Russell has portrayed both the heroic and the villainous among a fascinating gallery of fictional and factual personae: the self-sacrificing Norse combatant Helfdane in The 13th Warrior (1999); rivals of Uther Pendragon in The Mists of Avalon (2001) (Gorlois of Tintagel) and Merlin (2008) (Bayard, King of Mercia); posseman MacQueen, a victim of The Wolfman (2010); the Asgardian god Tyr in Marvel's Thor: The Dark World (2013); Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, in the miniseries After Braveheart (2015); and the invading Viking King Harold Hardrada in the docu-drama Europe's Last Warrior Kings (2017). A more recent recurring role has seen him as Wroth, commander of the Tusks (a sub-clan of the magical Fey) in the Netflix series Cursed (2020), yet again set in the kingdom of Uther Pendragon.

Though born in England, Russell was brought up in Fife, Scotland, where his family moved after his father (a bomber pilot with RAF Coastal Command) was demobbed. Already unusually tall in his mid-teens, Russell excelled in sports and had early ambitions of becoming a golf pro or representing Scotland at rugby. First encouraged to take part in amateur plays while at school, he initially trained as a primary school teacher in English, drama and physical education. After a year's experience of teaching, he seized an opportunity to join the repertory Octagon Theatre in Bolton, and, in 1964, made his theatrical debut in London's West End. It took until 1980 for his breakthrough on the stage as the superintendent in Dario Fo's 'Accidental Death of an Anarchist' (a role he reprised three years later for the screen). This led to further stage work at the Liverpool Playhouse (as Macduff, 1983), with the Royal Shakespeare Company (1984-88), the Old Vic (1989) and the Royal Court (1991-92).

Russell's first featured role on screen was as a traffic cop in the first episode of the BBC2 drama series Boys from the Blackstuff (1982). By his own recollection, he earned £150 for his performance. As an actor, Russell has become increasingly self-assured with age and his roles have grown commensurately. He has been a prolific interpreter of authority figures (aided, no doubt, by his imposing height), exemplified by his presence in The Advocates (1991), Murder Most Horrid (1991), Sherlock Holmes (2009), plus the sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) (as Captain Tanner) and Ripper Street (2012) (a particularly strong performance, as the cynical, cantankerous Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, whose conservative style of policing contrasted sharply from the more scientific methods employed by Matthew Macfadyen's DI Edmund Reid). A self-confessed aficionado of the classics, Russell has appeared in adaptations of Dickens as the good-natured blacksmith Joe Gargery in Great Expectations (1999) and as a Scottish lawyer in Oliver Twist (1999). He also portrayed a pirate captain in an episode of Zorro (1990), a kindly, honest estate manager in Middlemarch (1994),a jovial sailor in The Mayor of Casterbridge (2003) and a prison warden in the Gothic thriller The Limehouse Golem (2016).

In 1996, Russell received a Genie Award nomination for his performance as a charismatic Nova Scotia coal miner in the British-Canadian co-production Margaret's Museum (1995), his character described by critic Roger Ebert as being a "sort of a rougher-hewn Liam Neeson, strong, gentle and poetic." Other interesting film roles have been in Oscar and Lucinda (1997) (as Ralph Fiennes' father Theophilius), Lezione 21 (2008) (the scholarly musician Hoffmeister) and The Wicker Tree (2011) (Beame, the Laird's chauffeur, butler and willing henchman).

Russell has been at his most prolific on the small screen, both in drama and in comedy. Among his higher profile recurring roles are crime family patriarch Patrick 'Tucker' Finney (1994), Fitz's estranged brother Danny Fitzgerald in Cracker (1993), the deputy head of a comprehensive school faced with closure in Hope & Glory (1999), the feral, sadistic Vandemar, inhabiting Neil Gaiman's subterranean fantasy Neverwhere (1996), the gambling addicted teacher Duggie Strachan in the BBC1 sitcom Heartburn Hotel (1998) and the leader of a Scottish mountain rescue team in Rockface (2002). Adding to this line-up are an assortment of different characters in The Bill (1984) and Coronation Street (1960) (notably, Scotch Tommy and Phil Nail). In Scotland, he has been popular for his one-off role in the cult sitcom Still Game (2002), as strong man Big Innes (who had a tendency to go berserk when pried with Midori).

Russell works out of London, but resides in Fife with his wife Shelagh, a theatre designer and pilates teacher. His favorite hobbies are reading poetry and playing golf.

James Keach was born on 7 December 1947 in Queens, New York, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Vacation (1983), Walk the Line (2005) and The Long Riders (1980). He was previously married to Jane Seymour, Mimi Maynard and Holly Collins.