Boardwalk Empire

Franklin Shea Whigham, Jr. , best known as Shea Whigham, is an American actor notably starring as Elias "Eli" Thompson on the HBO dramatic series Boardwalk Empire. Whigham was born in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1969 to attorney Frank and school librarian Beth, moving to Lake Mary when he was five... years old. He attended Tyler Junior College and after completing studies there, transferred to the State University of New York at Purchase, where he was part of a small acting program with only 31 students and a graduating class of eight seniors. After graduating, he co-founded New York City theatre troupe The Rorschach Group with his college roommate Kirk Acevedo; he was actor and artistic director with the troupe for three years. Whigham appeared in one 1997 episode of the television series Ghost Stories before he received a starring role in the 2000 film Tigerland, alongside Colin Farrell and future Boardwalk Empire co-star Michael Shannon. He went on to appear in the television movies Submerged, R.U.S./H. and Paradise before acting in the 2003 film All the Real Girls.
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Vincent Piazza is an American film, television and stage actor best known for his roles in the television series Boardwalk Empire and the 2007 film Rocket Science. Born and raised in Queens, New York and of German-Italian descent, Piazza was originally a club ice hockey player representing... Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania, until a recurring shoulder injury forced him to quit playing and leave the university after only a year. His ending in hockey brought him to a career in acting as he began to work with acting coach Alice Spivak and joined the TerraNOVA Collective theatre group in Lion Theatre along Theatre Row in New York City. After appearing in a number of New York Off Broadway productions, including Baby Steps, A Match Made in Manhattan and Much Ado About Nothing, he made his feature film debut in the 2006 film Stephanie Daley and went on to appear in the television movie The Dawn and an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. P Piazza has appeared in three episodes of the television series The Sopranos; the eighth, eleventh and thirteenth episodes of the show's sixth season.
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Michael Stuhlbarg is a film actor.

Anthony Laciura is an American operatic tenor, noted for his abilities as a comprimario. Born in New Orleans, he studied voice there with Charles Paddock, also the teacher of Ticho Parly. As a boy soprano, Laciura made his operatic debut in a small role in Louise, in March 1965, at the New Orleans... Opera Association, opposite the last performances in this opera of Dorothy Kirsten and Norman Treigle. As an adult, he would give many performances with that company, and would earn music degrees from Loyola University of the South and Tulane University. On the Opening Night of the 1982-83 season, the tenor debuted with the Metropolitan Opera, where he appeared well over 800 times. That first role was the Major-domo in Der Rosenkavalier, with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
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Kelly Macdonald is a Scottish actress, known for her role in the independent film Trainspotting and mainstream releases such as Nanny McPhee, Gosford Park, Intermission, No Country for Old Men and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. On television, she is known for her roles in... Boardwalk Empire, The Girl in the Café and State of Play. Macdonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Her mother was a garment industry sales executive. In August 2003, Macdonald married musician Dougie Payne. Their son was born in March 2008. Macdonald's career began while working as a barmaid. She saw a leaflet advertising an open casting session for Trainspotting and decided to audition, winning the part of Diane, the underage seductress to Ewan McGregor's Renton. Other roles include Mary O'Neary in Two Family House and an actress playing Peter Pan in Finding Neverland. She also had major roles in Robert Altman's British period piece Gosford Park, where she played an aristocrat's maid, as well as in Intermission , as Deirdre.
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Jack Alexander Huston is an English actor. Huston had a starring role in Neighborhood Watch and filmed Outlander with James Caviezel and Sophia Myles. He appeared in the third film in the Twilight series, Eclipse, where he played Royce King II. Huston also appears in HBO's Boardwalk Empire as... Richard Harrow, a severely disfigured World War I marksman turned gangster. On December 16, 2010, it was announced Huston would be made a series regular after appearing in five episodes of the first season. Huston was born in London, England, the son of Lady Margot Lavinia Cholmondeley and Walter Anthony Huston. His paternal grandfather was director John Huston and his maternal grandfather was Hugh Cholmondeley, 6th Marquess of Cholmondeley. Through his maternal grandfather, Huston is descended from David Sassoon, the Treasurer of Baghdad, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who founded the Rothschild family international banking dynasty, and Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. Huston is the nephew of actors Anjelica Huston and Danny Huston.
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Michael Kenneth Williams is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Omar Little on the HBO drama series The Wire, and of Albert "Chalky" White on HBO's Boardwalk Empire. Williams was born in Brooklyn, New York to a Afro-Bahamian mother and African American father. After getting in some... trouble as a youth, he enrolled at the National Black Theatre in New York City. He later got a job at a pharmaceutical company. Inspired by Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814, he left school and quit his job against the wishes of his family to pursue a career as a dancer. During a year in which he was intermittently homeless, Williams visited record labels and dance studios looking for work. He got a job as a background dancer on a music tour for Kym Sims' dance anthem Too Blind To See It, which led to more work appearing as a dancer in videos and on tours, such as with George Michael, Madonna, as well as some modeling work. He also choreographed Crystal Waters' 1994 single 100% Pure Love. Williams is well known for his large facial scar, which he received after a confrontation between his friends and another group in Brooklyn on his 25th birthday.
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Michael Corbett Shannon is an American stage, film, and television actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Revolutionary Road. As of 2010, he is a regular on the critically acclaimed HBO series Boardwalk Empire, portraying Nelson Van Alden. Shannon... was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and is a grandson of entomologist Raymond Corbett Shannon. His mother, Geraldine Hine, is a lawyer, and his father, Donald S. Shannon, was an accounting professor at DePaul University. He was raised by his divorced parents in both Kentucky and Chicago, Illinois. Shannon's first film role was the main character in Every Mother's Nightmare's music video "House of Pain," in which he played a troubled teenager who was running away from his abusive lifestyle. He later become a stage actor in Chicago. He helped found A Red Orchid Theatre, where he still regularly performs. He has since worked with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Northlight Theatre, and other acting companies.
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Gretchen Mol is an American actress and former model. She is known for her roles in films like Rounders, Celebrity, 3:10 to Yuma, The Thirteenth Floor, and The Notorious Bettie Page, where she played the title character. She appears as Gillian Darmody in HBO's Boardwalk Empire. Mol was born in... Deep River, Connecticut, where her mother, Janet, is an artist and teacher and her father is a school teacher at RHAM. She went to high school with Broadway actor Peter Lockyer, with whom she performed in school musicals and plays. Her brother, Jim Mol, is a director and editor in the film industry. Mol attended The American Musical and Dramatic Academy and graduated from the William Esper Studio. After summer stock in Vermont, she took a job for a while as an usher at Angelika Film Center. She was living in a Hell's Kitchen walk-up when she was noticed by a talent agent who spotted her working as a hat check girl at Michael's Restaurant in New York. Mol's acting career began in summer stock theatre in Vermont where she played a variety of roles including Godspell and 110 In The Shade.
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Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi is an American actor, writer and film director. An associate member of the renowned experimental theater company The Wooster Group, Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films including New York Stories, Mystery Train, Reservoir Dogs,... Pulp Fiction, Desperado, Con Air, Armageddon, The Grey Zone, Ghost World and Big Fish; and the HBO television series The Sopranos. He is also known for his appearances in many films by the Coen brothers: Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski and Paris, je t'aime. Since 2010, he has starred in the critically acclaimed series Boardwalk Empire, which earned him two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Golden Globe, and a nomination for an Emmy Award. He made his directorial debut in 1996, with Trees Lounge, in which he also starred. Other works include Animal Factory , Lonesome Jim and Interview .
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María de la Paz Elizabeth Sofía Adriana de la Huerta , better known by her professional name Paz de la Huerta, is an American actress and model. She is best known for her role as Lucy Danziger in the HBO cable television series Boardwalk Empire. Paz De la Huerta was raised with older... sister Rafaela de la Paz in the Lower Manhattan, New York City neighborhood of SoHo by her parents Íñigo de la Huerta y Ozores and Judith Bruce . She attended private Saint Ann's School in the New York City borough of Brooklyn with fellow student and future fashion designer Zac Posen for whom she has since modeled. She also attended the performing arts camp, Buck's Rock.
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Michael Carmen Pitt is an American actor and musician. Pitt is known in film for his role in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, and in television for his role as Jimmy Darmody in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. Pitt made his off-Broadway debut in 1999 in the play The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek... at the New York Theatre Workshop. A casting agent, whom Pitt mistook as a police officer attempting to arrest him, noticed him and recommended him for a guest role on the television series Dawson's Creek . His breakout role as the lover of a transgender rock star in Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 2001 led to supporting roles in Bully and in mainstream Hollywood fare such as Murder by Numbers and The Village, as well as the lead in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers. He next appeared in Asia Argento's The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and headlined Gus Van Sant's Last Days, playing a rock star based on Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. He performed all of the songs, which closely resembled Cobain's guitar and singing styles.
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Stephen Graham is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Tommy in the movie Snatch, Combo in This Is England as well as its television sequels, This Is England '86 and This Is England '88, Danny Ferguson in Occupation, Billy Bremner in The Damned United, notorious bank robber Baby... Face Nelson in Public Enemies , and Scrum in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. He stars as Al Capone in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. Graham was born in Kirkby, Knowsley Merseyside, to a paediatric nurse mother and a social worker father. His paternal grandfather was Jamaican and one of his grandmothers was Swedish. He has portrayed characters of a number of British regionalities, including Cockney, a Geordie, a Scouser, and a Scotsman; a 19th century New York gang member, a Chicago mobster, a Brooklyn mobster, and the short-fused British nationalist "Combo", in This is England. He also appears in the American series Boardwalk Empire, where he plays a fictionalised version of a young Al Capone.
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Dabney Wharton Coleman is an American actor, best known for his roles in 9 to 5, WarGames, You've Got Mail, Sworn to Silence, The Beverly Hillbillies and as the voice of Principal Peter Prickly in Recess and Recess: School's Out. Coleman was born in Austin, Texas, the son of Mary Wharton and... Melvin Randolph Coleman. He entered the Virginia Military Institute in 1949, then studied law at the University of Texas before turning to acting. Coleman is a character actor who has a wide range, with over 60 films to his credit. He is often typecast as a comic relief villain, the smarmy, devious foil to the main character. An early example of such features was his portrayal of an ethically absent Harrison Wilby in an Elvis Presley film, The Trouble with Girls as well as a role in a 1962 AMC Rambler commercial. Coleman's fate in these types of roles was cemented with roles such as that of Franklin Hart, Jr. in 1980's 9 to 5, a sexist boss whose murder is fantasized about by his office employees .
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