My list of Favorite Celebrities
There are some individuals who have turned their celebrity status into something great. They understand the importance or giving back and for that, it shows what great character they have.
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Emmy-winning talk show host Ellen Lee DeGeneres was born in Metairie, Louisiana, a New Orleans suburb. She is the daughter of Betty DeGeneres (née Elizabeth Jane Pfeffer), a speech therapist, and Elliott Everett DeGeneres, Jr., an insurance agent. Her brother is musician and producer Vance DeGeneres. Her parents divorced when she was 16 years old. Her mother remarried, and her new husband, salesman Roy Gruessendorf, moved the family to Atlanta, Texas.
After graduating from Atlanta High School in 1976, Ellen attended the University of New Orleans as a communications major, but she dropped out after one semester. She held a wide variety of jobs until she turned to stand-up comedy, making her bones at small clubs and coffeehouses before working her way up to emcee Clyde's Comedy Club by 1981. Her comedy was described as a distaff version of Bob Newhart. Beginning in the early 1980s, she toured nationally and was named the funniest person in America after winning a competition sponsored by the cable network Showtime. This led to better gigs, including her first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) in 1986.
Though DeGeneres's early forays into series television were not successful (she appeared as a supporting player in two short-lived TV situation comedies in the period 1989-92, Open House (1989) and Laurie Hill (1992)), she scored a hit headlining her own 1994 sitcom on ABC "These Friends of Mine" (renamed Ellen (1994) after its first season). She made TV history in April 1997, when her character, and DeGeneres personally, revealed that she was a lesbian. However, the show was canceled the following season due to declining ratings, after which DeGeneres returned to the stand-up circuit. In 2001, DeGeneres launched a new series, The Ellen Show (2001), on CBS, but it suffered from poor ratings and was canceled.
Redemption as a television artist came in 2003, when DeGeneres's daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show (2003), proved to be both a critical hit and a commercial success. Along with good ratings, the show has won unprecedented kudos from the industry, winning 15 Emmy Awards in its first three seasons on the air and becoming the first talk show in TV history to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show in its first three seasons.
DeGeneres has also made a name for herself as a host of awards shows. She hosted the Grammy Awards in 1996 and 1997, as well as the Primetime Emmy Awards in 2001 and 2005. In February 2007, she had the ultimate TV awards show gig, hosting the Oscars, which she hosted again in 2014.- Producer
- Actress
- Writer
Firebrand Roseanne Barr has long been one of America's funniest and most controversial comedians.
She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Helen (Davis), a cashier and bookkeeper, and Jerome Hershel "Jerry" Barr, a salesman. Her family was Jewish, and had moved to the U.S. from Russia, Lithuania, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She dropped out of high school when she was seventeen, and, after a car accident, was admitted to a mental institution, claiming she was having nightmares and memory loss. She left the institute less than a year later. At seventeen, she gave birth to her first daughter, Brandi Brown, and gave her up for adoption. She began working at a restaurant as a dishwasher and waitress. Her hilarious comments to the customers she waited on led her to doing stand-up comedy at the restaurant. She married Bill Pentland and they had three children together, Jessica, Jennifer, and Jacob Pentland.
Roseanne worked doing stand-up comedy until her August 23, 1985 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) thrust her into the limelight. In 1987, HBO offered her a show of her own, On Location: The Roseanne Barr Show (1987). It was canceled after a short time. In 1989, Roseanne starred opposite Meryl Streep and Ed Begley Jr. in She-Devil (1989). Though her first picture wasn't as successful as she might have hoped, her sitcom, Roseanne (1988), debuted in 1988 and ran for 9 seasons on ABC, co-starring John Goodman. It dealt with real-life issues in a lower middle-class working family. During its first season on ABC, it leaped to #2 in the ratings. After the sitcom's first season, Roseanne gained notoriety when she gave a screeching, crotch-grabbing performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at a baseball game.
When Roseanne divorced her first husband, Bill Pentland, after 16 years of marriage in 1990 and married Roseanne (1988) co-star Tom Arnold only four days later, her sitcom was already beginning its downward spiral. In 1991, she started to be billed as Roseanne Arnold. Around this time, she began to claim that she, as well as her siblings, had been physically and sexually abused as a child. Both her siblings and parents denied the charges, and lie detector tests used on Roseanne's parents came back negative. The court battles led to ten years of estrangement with her parents and siblings. Her marriage with Arnold lasted four years before she filed for divorce from him for physical abuse and domestic violence. It is still not known if the accusations were true. Although she insisted that he hit her, she admits that he never abused her three children from her previous marriage:
In 1996, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won, but she was not there to accept it. Luckily, Tom Arnold's exit from "Roseanne" happened towards the end of the sixth season, allowing the show to have an almost smooth ending. However, after the sixth season of Roseanne (1988), the plots started to run dry and ratings began to drop. During the season following her divorce, she insisted on being billed as simply "Roseanne." After Roseanne (1988) was canceled, she went on Broadway to play "The Wicked Witch of the West" in "The Wizard of Oz" to rave reviews.
On Valentine's Day 1995, Roseanne married former bodyguard Ben Thomas. With Thomas, she had her tubal ligation surgery reversed in order to become pregnant with her fifth child, Buck Thomas. In 1997, she slowly began being billed as "Roseanne Thomas", as in the last 11 episodes of Roseanne, as executive producer (she was still "Roseanne" in the cast credits). She guest-starred in The Nanny (1993) as Roseanne Thomas in late 1997. In 2002, she filed for divorce against Thomas for the second time (the first time, in 1998, she dropped the suit), accusing him of being disturbed and claiming that he threatened to run off with their son.
After the divorce, she began to study the Kabballah, a form of Jewish mysticism, and those around her said she became amazingly centered and stable. In the 2000s, she ended the feud with her parents and siblings and went back to being billed as Roseanne Barr. Today, Roseanne Barr Pentland Arnold Thomas spends her time with her family in her home in El Segundo, California.
Always outspoken, Roseanne began commenting on politics in earnest in the 2000s, and unsuccessfully ran for the Green Party's presidential nomination in 2012. She was subsequently chosen as the Peace and Freedom Party's candidate for President of the United States in '12, receiving 61,971 votes in the general election, and placing sixth. Her run is depicted in the documentary Roseanne for President! (2015).
Initially a left-leaning liberal, she became considerably more right-wing throughout the 2010s. Her show Roseanne returned for a tenth season in 2018, to blockbuster ratings, but was canceled after Roseanne sent a racially-offensive tweet that capped off a longer run of incendiary comments.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
Michael Joseph Jackson was born on August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana, and entertained audiences nearly his entire life. His father, Joe Jackson (no relation to Joe Jackson, also a musician), had been a guitarist, but was forced to give up his musical ambitions following his marriage to Michael's mother Katherine Jackson (née Katherine Esther Scruse). Together, they prodded their growing family's musical interests at home. By the early 1960s, the older boys Jackie, Tito and Jermaine had begun performing around the city; by 1964, Michael and Marlon had joined in.
A musical prodigy, Michael's singing and dancing talents were amazingly mature, and he soon became the dominant voice and focus of the Jackson 5. An opening act for such soul groups as the O-Jays and James Brown, it was Gladys Knight (not Diana Ross) who officially brought the group to Berry Gordy's attention, and by 1969, the boys were producing back-to-back chart-busting hits as Motown artists ("I Want You Back," "ABC," "Never Can Say Goodbye," "Got to Be There," etc.). As a product of the 1970s, the boys emerged as one of the most accomplished black pop / soul vocal groups in music history, successfully evolving from a group like The Temptations to a disco phenomenon.
Solo success for Michael was inevitable, and by the 1980s, he had become infinitely more popular than his brotherly group. Record sales consistently orbited, culminating in the biggest-selling album of all time, "Thriller" in 1982. A TV natural, he ventured rather uneasily into films, such as playing the Scarecrow in The Wiz (1978), but had much better luck with elaborate music videos.
In the 1990s, the downside as an 1980s pop phenomenon began to rear itself. Michael grew terribly child-like and introverted by his peerless celebrity. A rather timorous, androgynous figure to begin with, his physical appearance began to change drastically, and his behavior grew alarmingly bizarre, making him a consistent target for scandal-making, despite his numerous charitable acts. Two brief marriages -- one to Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie Presley -- were forged and two children produced by his second wife during that time, but the purposes behind them appeared image-oriented.
Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. His passion and artistry as a singer, dancer, writer and businessman were unparalleled, and it is these prodigious talents that will ultimately prevail over the extremely negative aspects of his troubled adult life.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Jonathan Taylor Thomas was born Jonathan Taylor Weiss on September 8, 1981 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Claudine (Gonsalves) and Stephen Weiss. He has an older brother, Joel, and has Pennsylvania Dutch (German) and Portuguese ancestry. Growing up, he liked the music group Boyz II Men, and his favorite TV shows were Roseanne (1988) and Grace Under Fire (1993), but he also liked watching CNN news, to keep up to date with current events. One thing that Jonathan does not like is meat. He has been a vegetarian since he was four years old, and he doesn't use products that are tested on animals because he believes that it is wrong to hurt them.
When Jonathan was four years old, his family moved from Bethlehem to Sacramento, California. At the age of seven, Jonathan was working as a model for print advertisements in Sacramento, and over the next few years, he appeared in TV commercials for Kelloggs cereal, Mattel toys and for many other products. By this time, Jonathan was ready for bigger roles, and in 1989, he landed the part of Greg Brady's son Kevin in the TV special The Bradys (1990). In 1990, he landed his biggest role yet, as Randy Taylor on Home Improvement (1991). Jonathan's audition went well, but what really gave him an edge over the other boys was that the casting directors thought that he looked a lot like his TV dad-to-be, Tim Allen.
In 1991, Jonathan's parents divorced. He lived with his mother and his brother. He began work in feature length movies, as the voice of young Simba in Disney's The Lion King (1994), and as Ben Archer in Man of the House (1995) opposite Chevy Chase. Among his other movies are Tom and Huck (1995), The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996), Wild America (1997), and I'll Be Home for Christmas (1998).- Producer
- Actor
- Composer
American actor Mark Wahlberg is one of a handful of respected entertainers who successfully made the transition from teen pop idol to acclaimed actor. A Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee for The Departed (2006) who went on to receive positive critical reviews for his performance in The Fighter (2010), Wahlberg also is a solid comedy actor, proven by his starring role in Ted (2012).
Mark Robert Michael Wahlberg was born June 5, 1971 in a poor working class district, Dorchester, of Boston, Massachusetts. He is the son of Alma Elaine (Donnelly), a nurse's aide and clerk, and Donald Edward Wahlberg, a delivery driver. Wahlberg is the youngest of nine children. He is of Swedish (from his paternal grandfather), French-Canadian, English, Irish and Scottish, descent. The large Wahlberg brood didn't have a lot growing up, especially after his parents divorced when he was eleven. The kids crammed into a three-bedroom apartment, none of them having very much privacy. Mark's mother has said that after the divorce, she became very self-absorbed with her own life. She has blamed herself for her son's subsequent problems and delinquency. Wahlberg dropped out of high school at age fourteen (but later got his GED) to pursue a life of petty crime and drugs. He'd spend his days scamming and stealing, working on the odd drug deal before treating himself to the substances.
The young man also had a violent streak - one which was often aimed at minorities. At age sixteen, he was convicted of assault against two Vietnamese men after he had tried to rob them. As a result of his assault conviction, he was sentenced to serve 50 days in prison at Deer Island penitentiary. Whilst there, he began working out to pass time and, when he emerged at the end of his sentence, he had gone from being a scrawny young kid to a buff young man. Wahlberg also credits jail time as being his motivation to improve his lifestyle and leave crime behind him.
Around this time, his older brother Donnie Wahlberg had become an overnight teen idol as a member of the 1980s boy band New Kids on the Block. A precursor to the boy-band craze, the group was dominating the charts and were on top of their game. Mark himself had been an original member of the band but had backed out early on - uncomfortable with the squeaky clean image of the group. Donnie used his connections in the music business to help his little brother secure a recording contract, and soon the world was introduced to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, with Wahlberg as a bad-boy rapper who danced in his boxers. Despite a lack of singing ability, promoters took to his dance moves and a physique they knew teenage girls would love.
Donnie scripted some easy songs for Mark, who collected a troupe of dancers and a DJ to become his "Funky Bunch" and "Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch" was born. His debut album, "Music for the People", was a smash hit, which was propelled along by the rapper's willingness to disrobe down to boxer-briefs on stage, not to mention several catchy tunes. Teenage girls thrilled to the rapping "bad boy". Record producer David Geffen saw in Wahlberg a cash-cow of marketing ability. After speaking to designer Calvin Klein, Marky Mark was set up as the designer's chief underwear model.
His scantily clad figure soon adorned billboards across the nation. Ironically, while the New Kids on the Block's fame was dwindling as audiences tired of their syrupy lyrics, "Marky Mark's" bad boy image was becoming even more of a commodity. He was constantly in the headlines (often of the tabloids) after multiple scandals. In 1992, he released a book dedicated to his penis. Wahlberg was constantly getting into rumored fights, most memorably with Madonna and her entourage at a Los Angeles party. While things were always intense, they were relatively harmless and made for enjoyable reading for the public. However, when the story of his arrest for assault (and the allegations of racism) broke in the press, things took on a decidedly darker note. People were not amused. Soon after, while on a British talk show along with rapper Shabba Ranks, he got into even more trouble. After Ranks made the statement that gays should be crucified, Wahlberg was accused of condoning the comments by his silence. Marky Mark was suddenly surrounded by charges of brutality, homophobia and racial hatred. His second album, "You Gotta Believe", had not been faring well and, after the charges surfaced, it plummeted from the charts.
Adding to the hoopla, Wahlberg was brought to court for allegedly assaulting a security guard. He was ordered to make amends by appearing in a series of anti-bias advertisements. Humbled and humiliated by his fall from grace in the music world, Wahlberg decided to pursue another angle, acting. He dropped the "Marky Mark" moniker and became known simply as Mark Wahlberg. His first big screen role came in Penny Marshall's Renaissance Man (1994). Despite the name change, many people snickered at the idea of the has-been rapper thinking he could make it as an actor. From the get-go, he was proving them wrong. In Renaissance Man (1994), he gave an utterly charming performance as a simple but sincere army recruit. What naysayers remained found it increasingly difficult to write Mark Wahlberg off as he delivered one fine performance after another. He blew them away in the controversial The Basketball Diaries (1995) and chilled them in Fear (1996) as every father's worst nightmare.
The major turning point in Wahlberg's career came with the role of troubled porn star Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997). Since then, Wahlberg has chosen roles that demonstrate a wide range of dramatic ability, starring in critically acclaimed dramas such as Three Kings (1999) and The Perfect Storm (2000), popcorn flicks like Planet of the Apes (2001) and Contraband (2012), and even indies such as I Heart Huckabees (2004).
Wahlberg was the executive producer of such television series as Boardwalk Empire (2010), In Treatment (2008) and the highly successful comedy Entourage (2004), which was partly based on his experiences in Hollywood.
Wahlberg and his wife Rhea Durham have four children.- Producer
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Oprah Gail Winfrey , often known simply as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century, was once the world's only black billionaire, and the greatest black philanthropist in U.S. history. By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Timothy Allen Dick was born on June 13, 1953, in Denver, Colorado, to Martha Katherine (Fox) and Gerald M. Dick. His father, a real estate salesman, was killed in a collision with a drunk driver while driving his family home from a University of Colorado football game, when Tim was eleven years old. His mother, a community service worker, remarried her high school sweetheart, an Episcopalian deacon, two years after Tim's father's death. He was raised with his many siblings and step-siblings. When Tim was young, his family moved to Birmingham, Michigan.
In high school, his favorite subject was shop, of course, and after high school, he attended Western Michigan University and graduated with a degree in Television Production in 1975. In 1978, he was arrested on drug charges and spent two years in jail. Upon his release, he had a new outlook on life and on a dare from a friend, started his comedy career at the Comedy Castle in Detroit. Later, he went on to do several cable specials, including, Comedy's Dirtiest Dozen (1988) and Tim Allen: Men Are Pigs (1990). In 1991, he became the star of his own hit television series on ABC called Home Improvement (1991). While continuing to film his television series throughout most of the 1990s, he starred in a string of blockbuster movies, including The Santa Clause (1994), Toy Story (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999) and Galaxy Quest (1999). In August 1996, he developed and unveiled his own signature line of power tools, manufactured by Ryobi. On top of all that, he has his own racing team, Tim Allen/Saleen RRRRacing. In May 1999, he ended his series Home Improvement (1991) after eight seasons and in 2001, he filmed such movies as Big Trouble (2002) and Joe Somebody (2001).- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Justin Tyler Berfield was born on the 25th of February, 1986, and resides in Los Angeles. Born and raised in California, he has been acting since he was 5 years old when he landed a part in a commercial for Folgers Coffee. He has appeared in over 22 national television commercials including an advertisement for Colgate toothpaste and was subsequently dubbed "The Commercial Kid" when he was younger. The role Justin is most known for is the character Reese in Fox's Malcolm in the Middle (2000), in which he plays Reese, the mischievous, bullying, second-oldest brother. He has also been in many other TV series. In 1994 he landed the part of Bobby Bowman in The Good Life (1994), in 1995 got the part of Ross Malloy in Warner Bros.'s Unhappily Ever After (1995), a role he played for 5 seasons, and he also co-starred in the television show The Mommies (1993). In films he has appeared in family films such as Mom, Can I Keep Her? (1998), The Kid with X-ray Eyes (1999), Invisible Mom II (1999), Wanted (1998), and most recently Max Keeble's Big Move (2001). Justin's interests include producing and directing. When he is not working, his hobbies include traveling, sports, and real estate investing.This guy has a huge heart for animals and personal cares for a large number of them.