William James "Willem" Dafoe (; July 22, 1955) is an American actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including the Volpi Cup for Best Actor as well as nominations for four Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has frequently collaborated with filmmakers Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, Lars von Trier, Julian Schnabel, Wes Anderson, and Robert Eggers.

Dafoe was a founding member of experimental theater company The Wooster Group. He made his film debut in Heaven's Gate (1980), but was fired during production and was uncredited despite one of his scenes making it into the final cut of the film. He had his first leading role in the outlaw biker film The Loveless (1982) and then played supporting roles in Streets of Fire (1984) and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), before his breakthrough roles as Jesus Christ in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and as FBI Agent Alan Ward in Mississippi Burning (1988).

Dafoe received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Oliver Stone's war film Platoon (1986). Other Oscar-nominated films include Shadow of the Vampire (2000), The Florida Project (2017), and At Eternity's Gate (2018). Notable roles include in The English Patient (1996), American Psycho (2000), Finding Nemo (2003), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Antichrist (2009), John Wick (2014), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), The Lighthouse (2019), The French Dispatch (2021), Nightmare Alley (2021), The Northman (2022), and Poor Things (2023).

Dafoe gained wider attention for his role as the supervillain Norman Osborn / Green Goblin in the superhero film Spider-Man (2002), a role he reprised in its sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). He also portrayed Nuidis Vulko in the DC Extended Universe film Aquaman (2018) and Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021).

Early life and education

William James Dafoe was born on July 22, 1955, in Appleton, Wisconsin, the son of Muriel Isabel (née Sprissler; 1922–2012) and Dr. William Alfred Dafoe (1917–2014). He has five sisters and two brothers and is of English, French, German, Irish, and Scottish descent. He recalled in 2009, "My five sisters raised me because my father was a surgeon, my mother was a nurse and they worked together, so I didn't see either of them much." His brother, Donald, is a surgeon and research scientist. His surname, Dafoe, is the English version of the Swiss surname Thévou. During an interview, he said that half of his family puts the emphasis on the first syllable of the surname while the other half emphasizes the second syllable. In high school, he acquired the nickname Willem, the Dutch version of the name William. He later took the new interpretation as part of his stage name because he had become more used to it than his birth name.

After attending Appleton East High School, Dafoe studied drama at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, but left after 18 months to join the experimental theater company Theatre X in Milwaukee, before moving to New York City in 1976. He then apprenticed under Richard Schechner, the director of the avant-garde theater troupe The Performance Group, where he met and became romantically involved with director Elizabeth LeCompte. Following tensions between Schechner and other members after they started staging their own productions outside of the group, Schechner left and the remaining members (including LeCompte and her ex-boyfriend Spalding Gray) renamed themselves The Wooster Group. Dafoe soon joined the new company and is credited as one of its co-founders. He continued his work with the group into the 2000s, well after establishing himself as a Hollywood film star.

Career

1980–1985: Early roles
Dafoe made his film debut in a supporting role in Michael Cimino's 1980 epic Western film Heaven's Gate. Dafoe was only present for the first three months of an eight-month shoot. His role, that of a cockfighter who works for Jeff Bridges' character, was removed from a majority of the film during editing but was visible during a cockfight scene. Dafoe did not receive a credit for his work on the film. In 1982, Dafoe starred as the leader of an outlaw motorcycle club in the drama The Loveless, his first role as a leading man. The film was co-directed by Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery and paid homage to 1953 film The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando in a similar role.

Following a "blink-and-you-miss-it" cameo in The Hunger (1983), Dafoe again played the leader of a biker gang in Walter Hill's 1984 action film Streets of Fire. His character in the film served as the main antagonist, who captures the ex-girlfriend of a mercenary, played by Diane Lane and Michael Paré, respectively. Janet Maslin of The New York Times felt there were no great performances in the film, but praised Dafoe's "perfectly villainous" face. Dafoe starred alongside Judge Reinhold in Roadhouse 66 (1985) as a pair of yuppies who become stranded in a town on U.S. Route 66. Later in 1985, Dafoe starred with William Petersen and John Pankow in William Friedkin's thriller To Live and Die in L.A., in which Dafoe portrays a counterfeiter named Rick Masters who is being tracked by two Secret Service agents. Film critic Roger Ebert commended his "strong" performance in the film.

1986–1996: Breakthrough and acclaim

Dafoe's sole film release of 1986 was Oliver Stone's Vietnam War film Platoon, gaining him his widest exposure up to that point for playing the compassionate Sergeant Elias Grodin. He enjoyed the opportunity to play a heroic role and said the film gave him a chance to display his versatility, saying "I think all characters live in you. You just frame them, give them circumstances, and that character will happen." Principal photography for the film took place in the Philippines and required Dafoe to undergo boot camp training. Los Angeles Times writer Sheila Benson praised his performance and found it to be "particularly fine" to see Dafoe play "something other than a psychopath". At the 59th Academy Awards, Dafoe was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but the statuette was awarded to Michael Caine (for the 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters). Dafoe provided his voice to the documentary Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1987) and, in 1988, Dafoe starred in another film set during the Vietnam War, this time as Criminal Investigation Command Agent Buck McGriff in the action thriller Off Limits. His second release of 1988 was Martin Scorsese's epic drama The Last Temptation of Christ, in which Dafoe portrayed Jesus. The film was adapted from the novel of the same name and depicts his struggle with various forms of temptation throughout his life. Like the novel, the film sparked controversy for departing from the biblical portrayal of Jesus and was branded as being blasphemous. Dafoe's performance in the film was widely praised, however, with Janet Maslin opining that Dafoe brought a "gleaming intensity" to the role.

In his final release of 1988, Dafoe starred opposite Gene Hackman in the crime thriller Mississippi Burning as a pair of FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi during the civil rights movement. Variety praised Dafoe's performance, writing, "Dafoe gives a disciplined and noteworthy portrayal of Ward", although they felt it was Hackman "who steals the picture". As with The Last Temptation of Christ, the film was the subject of controversy, this time among African-American activists who criticized its fictionalization of events. Dafoe was briefly considered for the role of the super-villain the Joker in the Tim Burton-directed superhero film Batman (1989), as screenwriter Sam Hamm noticed physical similarities, but was never offered the part that eventually went to Jack Nicholson. Dafoe starred in the drama Triumph of the Spirit in 1989 as Jewish Greek boxer Salamo Arouch, an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate who was forced to fight other internees to death for the Nazi officers' entertainment. It was filmed on location at Auschwitz, the first major film to do so. While the film was negatively received, Dafoe's performance was lauded by some critics; Peter Travers of Rolling Stone felt he gave a "disciplined performance" and Janet Maslin thought he was "harrowingly good". Dafoe reunited with Platoon director Oliver Stone for a small appearance in the biographical war drama Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Dafoe played a paraplegic, wheelchair-using Vietnam veteran who befriends the film's subject Ron Kovic (played by Tom Cruise), another paraplegic veteran.

Dafoe made a cameo appearance in John Waters' musical comedy Cry-Baby (1990) as a prison guard who gives a brief lecture on values to the title character, who is played by Johnny Depp. Rita Kempley of The Washington Post found the scene to be one of the film's highlights. In the same year, Dafoe co-starred in David Lynch's crime film Wild at Heart with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. Dafoe played a criminal who engages in a robbery with Cage's character before demonstrating his dark side. He wore fake, corroded teeth and grew a pencil moustache that bore resemblance to his previous collaborator, John Waters. Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman felt the role proved Dafoe as a "master of leering, fish-faced villainy". In 1991, Dafoe starred with Danny Glover and Brad Johnson in the action film Flight of the Intruder. The film follows a pair of United States Navy pilots, played by Dafoe and Johnson, who scheme and participate in an unauthorized air strike on Hanoi. Directed by John Millius, the film received negative reviews. He was due to star opposite Joan Cusack in the comedy Arrive Alive in 1991, but the film was canceled during production. Dafoe had two lead roles in 1992. The first to be released, White Sands, saw Dafoe a play small-town sheriff who impersonates a dead man after finding his dead body and a suitcase containing $500,000 to solve the case, resulting in an FBI investigation. In his next starring role, Paul Schrader's drama Light Sleeper, Dafoe played John LeTour, a lonely, insomniac, New Yorker working as a delivery man for a drug supplier, who is played by Susan Sarandon. Roger Ebert praised Dafoe's "gifted" portrayal of LeTour and Owen Gleiberman opined that "even when the film doesn't gel, one is held by Willem Dafoe's grimly compelling performance."

Dafoe next starred in the erotic thriller Body of Evidence (1993) with Madonna. The story concerns a lawyer, played by Dafoe, who engages in a sadomasochistic sexual relationship with the woman he is representing in a murder case. The film was panned by critics and performed poorly at the box office, with some audience members laughing during the sex scenes. In his review of the film, Vincent Canby felt that Dafoe lacked sensuality in the role. Later in 1993, Dafoe appeared in a supporting role as Emit Flesti (an anagram of Time Itself) in the German fantasy film Faraway, So Close!, directed by Wim Wenders. Dafoe then co-starred in the spy thriller Clear and Present Danger (1994), an adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel of the name starring Harrison Ford as CIA operative Jack Ryan. Dafoe played John Clark, a CIA agent conducting a covert operation against a drug cartel in Colombia with Jack Ryan. Dafoe portrayed the poet T. S. Eliot in the drama Tom & Viv (also in 1994), which tells the story of Eliot and his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, who was played by Miranda Richardson. The film was met with a mixed reception from critics, although Caryn James of The New York Times felt that Dafoe's "stunningly sharp, sympathetic portrait raises the film above a script that is full of serious holes and stilted dialogue". In 1995, he played an 18th-century writer in the period drama The Night and the Moment.

In his first of three film appearances in 1996, Dafoe made a cameo appearance as an electrician in the biographical drama Basquiat. Next, he played a Canadian Intelligence Corps operative in the romantic war drama The English Patient, which starred Ralph Fiennes as desert explorer Count László Almásy. The English Patient was filmed in Tuscany, where Dafoe said he particularly enjoyed the "quiet moments in the monastery between shoots". In the period drama Victory—which was filmed in 1994 and premiered in Europe in 1996, but was not released until 1998—Dafoe played a European living on an island in the Southeast Asia who becomes the target of redemption after preventing a woman, played by Irène Jacob, from being raped.

1997–2013: Established actor

In 1997, Dafoe returned to playing a villainous role in the action thriller Speed 2: Cruise Control, expressing the necessity of appearing in both independent and blockbuster films. The film starred Sandra Bullock and Jason Patric as a couple vacationing on a luxury cruise that has been hijacked by Dafoe's character, Geiger, a hacker that has programmed the ship to crash into an oil tanker. Speed 2 was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, with Dafoe himself receiving a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Supporting Actor. For his next film, Affliction (1997), Dafoe worked with Paul Schrader for a second time, playing the brother of Nick Nolte's character and served as the film's narrator. Also in 1997, Dafoe took on a voice acting role in an episode of the animated sitcom The Simpsons titled "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", voicing the commandant of a military academy that Bart and Lisa Simpson are attending. Following a villainous supporting role in the romantic mystery drama Lulu on the Bridge, Dafoe starred alongside Christopher Walken and Asia Argento in Abel Ferrara's cyberpunk drama New Rose Hotel in 1998. It follows X (Dafoe) and Fox (Walken), a pair of corporate raiders attempting to lure a Japanese scientist from one megacorporation to another. Although the film was largely dismissed by critics, critic David Stratton found there to be "compensation" in the performances.

In 1999, Dafoe gave a supporting performance in David Cronenberg's Existenz, a science fiction thriller in which he played a gas station owner named Gas. Later in the year, Dafoe starred in the action film The Boondock Saints. He played an eccentric, gay FBI agent assigned with investigating a series of murders committed by the MacManus twins (played by Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus) who are acting as vigilantes in Boston, Massachusetts after an act of self-defense. The Boondock Saints was negatively received by film critics, largely for its extreme violence and lack of emotional depth, though some critics praised Dafoe's role in the film. The film performed poorly at the box office, but has since been branded as being a cult film.

In his first film of the 2000s, Dafoe was featured in a supporting role in American Psycho (2000) as a private investigator investigating the disappearance of a co-worker of Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale), an investment banker who leads a double life as a serial killer. He then acted in Steve Buscemi's crime drama Animal Factory, starred as Dafoe an incarcerated veteran con-man who takes a young inmate (played by Edward Furlong) under his wing and introduces to him to his gang. The film was positively received by critics and Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times wrote that "Dafoe steals the picture with his comic timing".

That same year he starred in Shadow of the Vampire, his final film of the year. He portrayed a fictionalized version of the German actor Max Schreck during the production of the 1922 horror film Nosferatu, in which Schreck starred as the vampire Count Orlok. Dafoe's co-star John Malkovich portrayed the film's director, F. W. Murnau. The film delves into fiction when, over the course of Nosferatus production, the cast and crew come to discover that Schreck is actually a vampire himself. Much of the film's critical praise went to Dafoe; Roger Ebert wrote that Dafoe "embodies the Schreck of Nosferatu so uncannily that when real scenes from the silent classic are slipped into the frame, we don't notice a difference". The Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum opined felt the film's "only redeeming quality" was Dafoe's "enjoyably over-the-top, eye-rolling performance". Dafoe received numerous awards and nominations for his performance, including his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination. Dafoe took on two leading roles in 2001, both of which were as priests. In the drama Pavilion of Women, he played an American priest living in China who falls in love with a local married woman (played by the film's screenwriter Luo Yan) while giving her son a Western education. He then starred opposite Haley Joel Osment in Edges of the Lord, playing a compassionate priest helping a young Jewish boy pose as a Catholic to protect him during Nazi Germany's occupation of Poland.

Dafoe played the supervillain the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's 2002 superhero film Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire as the titular Marvel Comics superhero. Dafoe played the Norman Osborn incarnation of the Green Goblin, the billionaire founder and owner of the corporation Oscorp, becoming the Green Goblin after testing an unstable strength enhancer on himself, turning him insane and making him extremely powerful. Osborn is a family friend of Spider-Man's secret identity Peter Parker as Osborn's son, Harry Osborn (played by James Franco), is a close friend of Parker. The role required Dafoe to wear an uncomfortable costume and mask that made it impossible to emote using his face, confining Dafoe to convey emotion through his voice and head movements. Dafoe also had to wear a prosthetic teeth for his part as Norman whereas the hallucinations of the character had Dafoe in his natural teeth. Dafoe's role in the film was generally well-received, including a New York Daily News reviewer who felt he put "the scare in archvillain" and Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian who deemed him "strong support". Conversely, critic A. O. Scott wrote that his performance was "uninspired and secondhand". IGN Richard George commented that Green Goblin's armor, particularly the helmet, was "almost comically bad... Not only is it not frightening, it prohibits expression". Steven Scaife at Vice wrote that Dafoe's Goblin "represents everything that's fun about superhero villains, as well as everything that's great about Raimi's campy films", also commending Dafoe's voice and body language, which helped overcome the bulky Green Goblin costume that he compared to that of a Power Rangers villain.

Later in 2002, Dafoe starred with Greg Kinnear in Paul Schrader's biographical film Auto Focus, Dafoe's third collaboration with Schrader. Dafoe portrayed John Henry Carpenter, an electronics expert who develops a strange friendship with the actor Bob Crane, leading Crane into a downward spiral. Dafoe provided his voice to the computer-animated Pixar film Finding Nemo in 2003. Dafoe voiced Gill, a moorish idol fish who helps Nemo, a clownfish, in his struggle to return home to the ocean. In the same year, Dafoe appeared in a small but pivotal role as a drug cartel kingpin planning a coup d'état against the President of Mexico in Robert Rodriguez's action film Once Upon a Time in Mexico. He acted in the murder mystery film The Reckoning (2003), in which he starred with Paul Bettany. The film takes place during the Middle Ages and saw Dafoe play the leader of acting troupe that recreate the events surrounding a woman accused of witchcraft and murder, who they believe is innocent. Dafoe lent his voice and likeness to the James Bond video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2004) as the villain Nikolai Diavolo.

The following year, Dafoe took on another villainous role in The Clearing, albeit with a more sympathetic approach. Dafoe co-starred as a man who kidnaps his former boss (played by Robert Redford) in exchange for a ransom. The film received mixed reviews, although Peter Travers felt that he added a note of "vulnerability to the menace he has made his stock in trade". Dafoe reprised his role as Norman Osborn in Spider-Man 2 (2004), appearing to his son Harry in an hallucination. The cameo was suggested by Dafoe, comparing it to the ghost of Hamlet's father visiting his son to ask him to avenge his death. Dafoe was next seen in the comedy-drama The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), his first of three films with director Wes Anderson. He played the "hilariously doltish" German first mate of a research vessel owned by the eponymous lead character, who is played by Bill Murray.

Dafoe then had a small role as a tabloid magazine editor in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004), a biographical film about Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Also in 2004, Dafoe narrated the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate, chronicling the production of Heaven's Gate and co-starred as a neuropharmacologist in the direct-to-video thriller Control (2004) alongside Ray Liotta and Michelle Rodriguez. Dafoe co-starred in XXX: State of the Union (2005), an action film sequel starring Ice Cube in which Dafoe played a US Secretary of Defense attempting a coup d'état against the President of the United States. It was largely panned by critics, although Dafoe stated he did not regret appearing in the film.

With the avant-garde drama Manderlay in 2005, Dafoe began another actor-director collaboration, this time with Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. Dafoe co-starred in the film as the father of Bryce Dallas Howard's character, a woman who discovers a plantation still thriving as if slavery had never been abolished. Along with his wife Giada Colagrande, Dafoe co-wrote and starred in Before It Had a Name (2005), which Colagrande directed. Dafoe played the caretaker of a house that is inherited by the lover of its deceased owner, engaging in a sexual relationship with her. The film was excoriated by a Variety reviewer as a "wannabe haunted house tale laced with silly sex scenes" and an "embarrassment". His fourth and final film appearance of 2005 was the crime thriller Ripley Under Ground, in which he played a museum curator. Dafoe had a supporting role in Spike Lee's 2006 crime thriller Inside Man, playing a veteran captain of the NYPD Emergency Services Unit helping with a hostage negotiation during a bank heist on Wall Street. Dafoe co-starred as the White House Chief of Staff in American Dreamz, a comedy satirizing both popular entertainment and American politics. His character was described as a "diminutive version of Dick Cheney, with wire-rimmed glasses and a fringe of white hair" by The Times writer Caryn James. He starred with Juliette Binoche in a short film directed by Nobuhiro Suwa as part of the 2006 anthology film Paris, je t'aime.

In 2007, Dafoe played a pretentious film director in the British comedy film Mr. Bean's Holiday, starring Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. The Hollywood Reporter thought that Dafoe appeared to think he was "in a pantomime", while a New York Times reviewer felt he was "amusing" in the role. Dafoe starred as the owner of a strip club in Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales (2007); Manohla Dargis praised his "twitchy, sympathetic performance" in the film. In the same year, Dafoe voiced the main villain, an evil wizard, in the English dub of the Japanese animated fantasy film Tales from Earthsea, had a supporting role as a US Senator in the drama The Walker, his fourth collaboration with Paul Schrader, and took on the lead role in the psychological thriller Anamorph, in which Dafoe played a detective who notices the case he is investigating bears similarities to a previous case of his. He also reprised his role again as Norman Osborn in Spider-Man 3 (2007) in a brief cameo. Dafoe starred with Ryan Reynolds, Julia Roberts, and Emily Watson in the drama Fireflies in the Garden, which premiered at Berlinale in 2008 but was not released theatrically until 2011. Dafoe played a cold, domineering English professor who has a strained relationship with his family. The film received mostly negative reviews, although the performances were generally praised. Roger Ebert thought that Dafoe was "fearsome" in the role, while Manohla Dargis felt he and Roberts were "awkwardly matched" as a married couple. Dafoe co-starred as SS Nazi officer in Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected (2008), which starred Jeff Goldblum as a concentration camp internee. In his final release of 2008, Dafoe starred in the Greek drama The Dust of Time as an American film director of Greek descent making a film his mother's (played by Irène Jacob) life. The critic Peter Brunette felt the cast's performances, especially Dafoe's, were unconvincing.

Dafoe appeared in seven films in 2009, the first of which was in Lars von Trier's experimental film Antichrist. Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg played a couple whose relationship becomes increasingly sexually violent and sadomasochistic after retreating to a cabin in the woods following the death of their child. The film received a polarized response from critics and audiences, receiving both applause and boos at the Cannes Film Festival and was called the "most shocking movie" to be shown at the festival because of its graphic sex scenes. Roger Ebert commended Dafoe's and Gainsbourg's performances as being "heroic and fearless". During an interview with L Magazine, it was revealed Dafoe had a stand in for scenes where his character's penis was on screen as his own was too big. Dafoe next had a small role in the French thriller Farewell as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and co-starred opposite Michael Shannon in Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, in which he played a detective attempting to figure out why a troubled man killed his own mother. Dafoe played a former vampire who has a cure that can save the human species in the science fiction horror film Daybreakers, which starred Ethan Hawke as a vampire hematologist. Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote that Dafoe "triumphs over some awful dialogue by giving the role his nutsy-greatsy weirdness". Dafoe had a voice role in Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox starring George Clooney as the titular Roald Dahl character. Fresh Air critic David Edelstein felt Dafoe was one of the film's highlights as a "hep-cat, knife-wielding rat security guard". Dafoe reprised his role from The Boondock Saints in The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, making a brief cameo appearance. His final appearance of the year was in Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, another film centring around vampires in which Dafoe played the foppish vampire Gavner Purl. Between October and December 2009, Dafoe appeared in Richard Foreman's surrealist play Idiot Savant at The Public Theater.

Dafoe appeared in two films that premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2010, making a brief appearance in Julian Schnabel's political thriller Miral, which some reviewers found to be distracting. and starred in his wife Giada Colagrande's film A Woman. Also in 2010, Dafoe began voicing Clarence, the Birds Eye polar bear mascot in the company's television commercials in the United Kingdom, and narrated Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World, a Ric Burns documentary about the history of the whaling industry in the United States.

Dafoe's first of two leading roles in 2011 was in Abel Ferrara's apocalyptic drama 4:44 Last Day on Earth, his third film with Ferrara. He played an actor spending his last hours on Earth before the end of the world with his much-younger lover (played by Shanyn Leigh). The film garnered a poor reaction critics, with a reviewer for Paste stating "there's only so much depth [Dafoe] can bring to such a shallow character". Dafoe then starred in the Australian drama The Hunter, playing a professional hunter who travels to Tasmania to hunt down the world's only remaining thylacine. Critic Stephen Holden wrote in his review of the film, "Even in the "toughest, most macho roles... [Dafoe] retains a tinge of Christ-like sweetness and vulnerability". In 2011, Dafoe began narrating a series of television commercials for the Greek yogurt company Fage and starred in a Jim Beam commercial titled "Bold Choices". Dafoe starred alongside Marina Abramović and Gretchen Mol in the play The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, where he played six different roles including Abramović's father Vojin, Abramović's brother Velimir and Abramović's partner Ulay, and which premiered at The Lowry in 2011.

Dafoe played Martian chieftain Tars Tarkas in the Disney film John Carter (2012), using motion capture to portray the multi-limbed character. The film was a box office failure and ranks among the biggest box-office bombs of all time. Later in 2012, Dafoe co-starred in the low-budget crime thriller Tomorrow You're Gone with Stephen Dorff and Michelle Monaghan. In 2013, Dafoe played a police officer in the supernatural thriller Odd Thomas, starring Anton Yelchin as the titular character that possesses supernatural powers to see the dead. Using motion-capture acting technology, Dafoe co-starred alongside Elliot Page in David Cage's video game Beyond: Two Souls (2013) as a paranormal activity researcher who acts as the surrogate-father-figure to a girl who possesses supernatural powers. The game polarized reviewers, although Dafoe and Page's performance were widely praised. In Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace (2013), starring Christian Bale, Dafoe played the supporting role of a bookmaker running an illegal gambling operation. Dafoe next appeared in Lars von Trier's two-part erotic art film Nymphomaniac, his third and final film release of 2013. In the film, Dafoe played a perverse businessman who hires Charlotte Gainsbourg's character to work as a debt collector using sex and sadomasochism. Also in 2013, Dafoe played the devil in a Mercedes-Benz Super Bowl commercial and starred in three short student films as part of a competition sponsored by Jameson Irish Whiskey.

2014–present: Independent films
In 2014, Dafoe portrayed a wealthy private banker with connections to the Russia mafia opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman in Anton Corbijn's espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man. Dafoe worked with Wes Anderson for a third time with the comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel (also 2014), featuring as the henchman of Adrien Brody's character alongside an ensemble cast led by Ralph Fiennes. Dafoe next starred alongside Matt Dillon as a detective in the crime thriller Bad Country, which critic Justin Chang dismissed as being "blandly constructed".

In May 2014, Dafoe served as member of the main competition jury at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. He was next featured in a supporting role as a mean-spirited, alcoholic author who is visited by a pair of cancer patients, who are played by Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, in the romantic drama The Fault in Our Stars. Dafoe once again collaborated with Ferrara on the drama Pasolini, in which he played Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini during his last days before his murder in 1975. Film critic Peter Bradshaw noted the physical similarities between Dafoe and Pasolini, although felt Dafoe had too little screen time in the film. His final film of 2014 was the action thriller John Wick starring Keanu Reeves, in which Dafoe appeared as the mentor to the titular character, a former hitman who is forced out of retirement to seek vengeance for the killing of his puppy. Dafoe stated he found the use of gun fu combat created an interesting mix of action, stating "you have the grace of martial arts, but then the bang of the gun". His performance in the film was generally well received by critics, including Peter Travers who felt he provided "ample compensation". Dafoe made his second guest appearance on The Simpsons in November 2014, voicing a new school teacher who bullies Bart Simpson profusely. Dafoe starred in the late Brazilian director's Héctor Babenco's final film My Hindu Friend (2015) as a film director close to death who befriends a Hindu 8-year-old boy while hospitalized.

The black comedy Dog Eat Dog (2016), Dafoe's sixth film with Paul Schrader, starred Dafoe and Nicolas Cage as a pair of ex-convicts hired to kidnap a baby. In the same year, Dafoe reprised his voice role as Gill, a Moorish idol fish, from Finding Nemo in its sequel Finding Dory. He next played the boss of Gerard Butler's character in the drama A Family Man and starred in Loris Gréaud's arthouse science fiction film Sculpt, which was only screened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for one person at a time. His final film of the year was the monster film The Great Wall, a Chinese-American co-production directed by Zhang Yimou starring Matt Damon as a European mercenary in China defending the Great Wall of China from a horde of monsters, in which Dafoe played a former adventurer working as a teacher in China. Also in 2016, Dafoe appeared in another Super Bowl commercial, this time for Snickers, recreating Marilyn Monroe's iconic white dress scene from the film The Seven Year Itch.

In 2017, Dafoe co-starred in Sean Baker's drama The Florida Project as the manager of a motel in Kissimmee, Florida who houses a toxic mother and her six-year-old daughter. The film and his performance received enormous critical acclaim, with The Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday writing that "Dafoe delivers his finest performance in recent memory, bringing to levelheaded, unsanctimonious life a character who offers a glimmer of hope and caring within a world markedly short on both". Dafoe earned his third Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination, as well as nominations at the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, and BAFTA Awards. In 2017, Dafoe also played and voiced the character of Ryuk, a demonic death god from Japanese mythology, in Netflix's Death Note, and adaptation of the Japanese supernatural-thriller manga of the same name. He then narrated Australian documentarian Jennifer Peedom's documentary Mountain. Also that year, he co-starred as Gerhard Hardman in a film adaptation of Agatha Christie's detective novel Murder on the Orient Express, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh; and played Atlantean scientist Nuidis Vulko in a deleted role in Zack Snyder's Justice League. He later played Nuidis Vulko in a leading role in James Wan's 2018 film Aquaman. The same year, Dafoe played Vincent van Gogh in the biographical drama At Eternity's Gate, for which he received the Volpi Cup for Best Actor and an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination. His performance drew raves from film critics. Peter Keough of Boston Globe said Dafoe "may be the best actor around for expressing an inner life in extremis."

In 2019, he had a supporting role in Edward Norton's period crime drama Motherless Brooklyn where he played powerful developer Moses Randolph's "beaten and broken" brother. In the same year, he played a lighthouse keeper on a storm-swept island in Robert Eggers' psychological horror The Lighthouse opposite Robert Pattinson. It had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film and Dafoe's performance received high praise. Owen Gleiberman of Variety said "Both actors are sensational (and they work together like one), but in terms of sheer showboating power it's Dafoe's movie." Dafoe portrayed sled dog breeder, trainer, and musher Leonhard Seppala in Togo. Dafoe acted in Wes Anderson's ensemble period comedy The French Dispatch and Guillermo del Toro's neo-noir thriller Nightmare Alley, which were both released in 2021, and Robert Eggers's historical epic The Northman, released in 2022. All projects pushed their release dates due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dafoe voiced the Australian ABC-television documentary River in 2021, which was written to highlight the precaricity of rivers worldwide. In 2020, The New York Times ranked him No. 18 in its list of the 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century.

Dafoe reprised his role as Green Goblin from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). To avoid having his role in the film prematurely revealed, Dafoe wore a cloak on-set to conceal his appearance from being outed publicly. The star of the film, Tom Holland, said that he got scared after bumping into Dafoe by accident one day on set and only then found out about his role in the film. Also, like Alfred Molina (who reprised his role as Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus in the film), Dafoe was digitally de-aged for the character's 2002 self.  Upon release of No Way Home, Dafoe's reprisal was met with universal acclaim. The Lantern Brett Price wrote that Dafoe was "on another level" in No Way Home and not having his mask made him even more intimidating than he was in the 2002 film. Peter Travers of Good Morning America and Jade King at The Gamer praised Dafoe and Molina, with King asserting that the two "stole the show as Green Goblin and Doc Ock" and described the depictions as brilliant. Amelia Emberwing of IGN praised the performances of Dafoe, Molina, and Foxx in No Way Home, while Vulture Bilge Ebiri said Dafoe "once again gets to have some modest fun with his character's divided self".

On January 18, 2022, it was announced that Dafoe would host Saturday Night Live on January 29, 2022, with musical guest singer Katy Perry. The psychological horror film Inside had its world premiere at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, and was released in the United States in March by Focus Features. That same year he reunited with Wes Anderson playing Saltzburg Keitel in Asteroid City (2023). He starred opposite Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things (2023) which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.

He portrayed Walter Reade based on Hunter S. Thompson acting opposite Camila Morrone in Patricia Arquette's directorial film debut Gonzo Girl based on the Cheryl Della Pietra novel of the same name. The film is set to debut at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Also in 2023 he starred in the Italian period drama Finally Dawn with Lily James. In October 2023 it was announced that Dafoe would provide the English language voice for Elder Pelican for Hayao Miyazaki's animated film The Boy and the Heron.

Upcoming projects

Dafoe also acted in the upcoming the British romantic thriller Pet Shop Days. He was cast as Maxim the overly protective father in the A24 fantasy adventure film The Legend of Ochi with Helena Zengel, Emily Watson, and Finn Wolfhard. He is also set to reunite with Yorgos Lanthimos in And starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemmons, and Margaret Qualley. He also cast as in Robert Eggers' gothic horror film Nosferatu playing Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. On May 12, 2023, Dafoe was announced to be cast in Beetlejuice 2 as an unknown role.

Acting credits

Awards and nominations

Dafoe has received numerous accolades including nominations for four Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, four Critics' Choice Movie Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has received four Independent Spirit Award nominations winning twice for Best Supporting Male for his roles in Shadow of the Vampire (2000), and The Florida Project (2017).

Over his career he has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:
 59th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, nomination, Platoon (1986)
 73rd Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, nomination, Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
 90th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, nomination, The Florida Project (2017)
 91st Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Personal life

In 1977, Dafoe began a relationship with director Elizabeth LeCompte. Their son, Jack, was born in 1982. They separated in 2004 and were never married, with Dafoe later explaining that "marriage represented ownership" to her.

In March 2004, Dafoe met Italian actress Giada Colagrande in Rome at the premiere of one of her films. They were married on March 25, 2005. Dafoe recalled in 2010, "We were having lunch and I said, 'Do you want to get married tomorrow?'" They did so the following afternoon at a small ceremony with two friends as witnesses. They have since worked together on her films Before It Had a Name and A Woman. They split their time between Rome, Los Angeles, and New York City. Dafoe acquired Italian citizenship through the marriage.

Dafoe is a pescetarian, citing his belief that "animal farms are one of the main causes of the destruction of the planet". He practices ashtanga vinyasa yoga every day.

On May 22, 2022, Dafoe was invited back to his alma mater the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee by Chancellor Mark Mone to serve as the keynote speaker for the university's commencement ceremony and to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.

References

External links

 Willem Dafoe Biography
 The Onion A.V. Club interview

1955 births
Living people
20th-century American male actors
21st-century American male actors
American expatriates in Italy
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male video game actors
American male voice actors
American people of Canadian descent
American people of English descent
American people of French descent
American people of French-Canadian descent
American people of German descent
American people of Irish descent
American people of Scottish descent
Appleton East High School alumni
Audiobook narrators
Best Actor Bodil Award winners
Honorary Golden Bear recipients
Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male winners
Internet memes
Male actors from Wisconsin
People from Appleton, Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee alumni
Volpi Cup for Best Actor winners
Naturalised citizens of Italy

Willem Dafoe


The Kameradschaftsbund (KB) was a Völkisch organization, founded in 1920s Czechoslovakia. It was a meeting ground of Sudeten German intellectuals, preparing them to take up leadership roles in a possible future independent Sudetenland.

Walther Heinrich and Heinz Rutha were founders of the movement, and drew heavily on the theories of Othmar Spann. At the end of the 1920s, the movement also became politically active, including the infiltration of the Turnverband by Konrad Henlein, one of the earliest KB members. Many Kameradschaftsbund members later obtained top positions in the Sudetendeutsche Partei (SdP), under Karl Hermann Frank and Walter Brand. After Rutha was charged with homosexual activity in 1937 (he later committed suicide), the KB gradually lost its influence on the SdP; Heinrich was sent to a concentration camp in 1938, and the SdP itself had to openly embrace German National Socialism.

References
 Haag, John. 'Knights of the Spirit': The Kameradschaftsbund. in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jul., 1973), pp. 133–153.

Organizations based in Czechoslovakia
1920s establishments in Czechoslovakia
Organizations established in the 1920s

Kameradschaftsbund (Czechoslovakia)


The Trustworthy Software Foundation (TSFdn) is a UK not-for-profit organisation, with stated aim of improving software.

History
TSFdn evolved from a number of previous activities:
A study by the Cabinet Office, Central Sponsor for Information Assurance (CSIA) in 2004-5 which identified a pervasive lack of secure software development practices as a matter for concern
A Department of Trade and Industry (DTI – predecessor of BIS) Global Watch Report in 2006 which noted a relative lack of secure software development practices in the UK
The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) Cyber Security Knowledge Transfer Network (CSKTN) Special Interest Group (SIG) on Secure Software Development (SSD, 2007–8)
The TSB / Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Science and Innovation Network (SIN) Multinational Workshop "Challenges to building in … information security, privacy and assurance", held in Paris in March 2009
The Secure Software Development Partnership (SSDP) Study Period, funded jointly by the UK government' TSB and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) organisations, which ran in 2009-2010
The Trustworthy Software Initiative (TSI—originally Software Security, Dependability and Resilience Initiative—SSDRI), a UK public good activity sponsored by CPNI between 2011 and 2016

Objectives
TSFdn primarily aims to provide a living backbone for signposting to diverse but often obscure sources of Good Practice, with a secondary objective to address other aspects of the 2009 Trustworthy Software Roadmap.

Trustworthiness

TSI considers that there are five facets of trustworthiness:

 Safety - The ability of the system to operate without harmful states
 Reliability - The ability of the system to deliver services as specified
 Availability - The ability of the system to deliver services when requested
 Resilience - The ability of the system to transform, renew, and recover in timely response to events
 Security - The ability of the system to remain protected against accidental or deliberate attacks

This definition of trustworthiness is an extension of a widely used definition of dependability, adding as a 5th Facet of Resilience based on the UK Government approach.

Governance and Operation
TSFdn operates as a not-for-profit Company Limited by Guarantee, jointly owned by the subscriber organisations – UK professional bodies.

It is based at the Cyber Security Centre of the University of Warwick, and is formally linked to a cross section of stakeholders through the Advisory Committee on Trustworthy Software (ACTS).

The Technical Lead remains Ian Bryant, the Technical Director of the predecessor TSI, and the Chair of the ACTS is Sir Edmund Burton KBE, who was the President of the predecessor TSI.

Activities
 Updating its Trustworthy Software Framework (TSFr), originally published as British Standards (BS) Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 754, into a British Standard (through BSI Project Committee ICT/00-/09, Chaired by Ian Bryant)
 Continuing to engage with partners for promulgation of Software Trustworthiness across Education, in particular through the IAP, BCS and the IET

References

Computer security in the United Kingdom
Information technology management
Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom
Organisations based in the London Borough of Ealing
Software engineering organizations

Trustworthy Software Foundation


Hyperolius pardalis is a species of frog in the family Hyperoliidae.
It is found in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and possibly Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, rivers, swamps, freshwater marshes, intermittent freshwater marshes, rural gardens, heavily degraded former forest, and ponds.

References

pardalis
Amphibians described in 1948
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot

Hyperolius pardalis


An impostor or imposter is a person who pretends to be somebody else.

Impostor(s), Imposter(s), The Impostor(s), or The Imposter(s) may also refer to:

Computing
 Impostor (computer graphics) or sprite, an image or animation integrated into a larger scene
 Impostors, a fictional alien race and the antagonists of the 2018 social deduction game Among Us

Film
 , a film by George Abbott and Dell Henderson
 Impostor (1921 film), a German silent film
 The Impostor (1921 film), a film by Robert N. Bradbury
 The Impostor (1926 film), a film starring Evelyn Brent
 The Impostor (1927 film), a German silent film
 The Impostor (1944 film), a film by Julien Duvivier
 The Imposter (1975 American film), a TV film starring Meredith Baxter
 The Imposter (1975 Hong Kong film), a film produced by Shaw Brothers
 The Imposter, a 1984 TV film featuring Ken Olandt
 El Impostor (film), a 1997 American film produced by Oscar Kramer
 The Impostors, a 1998 film by Stanley Tucci
 Impostor (2001 film), a science fiction film
 The Imposter (2008 film), a Christian film by Dan Millican
 The Imposter (2012 film), a documentary about the 1997 case of Frédéric Bourdin

Literature
 Impostor (short story), a 1953 science fiction story by Philip K. Dick
 The Imposter (novel), a 1927 novel by the French writer Georges Bernanos
 "The Imposter" (short story), a 1997 story by Nathanael West
 The Impostor, a 1977 novel by Helen McCloy
 The Impostors (play), a 1789 play by Richard Cumberland
 , a 2014 novel by Javier Cercas
 L'impostore, an 18th-century play by Carlo Goldoni
 If I Were for Real (play), a 1979 Chinese play, also translated as The Impostor
 Tartuffe (full title: Tartuffe, or the Impostor), a 1664 comedic play by Molière

Music
 Imposter (album), a 2021 album by Dave Gahan and Soulsavers
 The Imposter (album), a 2005 album by Kevin Max
 The Impostor (Banjo Concerto), a 2011 concerto by Béla Fleck
 "Imposter", a 1981 song by The Moondogs
 "Imposter", a song by Oingo Boingo from the 1981 album Only a Lad
 "Impostor", a song by The Doubleclicks from the 2013 album Lasers and Feelings
 The Imposters, a backing band for Elvis Costello

Television
 Impostor (TV series), a 2010 Philippine TV series starring Maja Salvador and Melai Cantiveros
 The Imposter, a syndication title for the DuMont TV series Colonel Humphrey Flack (1953–54)
 Imposters (TV series), a 2017 American television series on Bravo
 "The Impostors" (Thunderbirds), an episode of Thunderbirds
 The Imposters, a hidden-camera television pilot co-starring comedian Mal Sharpe
 L'Imposteur ("The Imposter"), a 2016 Québec television series starring Marc-André Grondin
 Impostora (The Impostor), a 2008 Philippine television series starring Sunshine Dizon and Iza Calzado
 "Imposters" (Star Trek: Picard), an episode of the third season of Star Trek: Picard

See also

 Impostor syndrome, when a person is unable to internalize accomplishments
 Masih ad-Dajjal ("The Impostor Messiah"), an evil figure in Islamic eschatology
 The Imposture, a 1640 play by James Shirley

Impostor (disambiguation)


Short term memory is the ability to keep information in mind for a short amount of time. Remembering a phone number long enough to find a piece of paper is an example. The brain keeps information in its short term memory for a small period of time. The amount of time the mind is able to do this is usually some seconds.
The opposite of short-term memory is long-term memory, which is where things are stored in the brain for a long time. These items may be recalled later, or there may be difficulty recalling them.

Memory
Memory is what goes on in the brain in storing and retrieving past experiences. These processes do what we call remembering. Memory is the foundation of  intelligence and the ability to learn.

Information about a needle being sharp and hurtful when touched by bare hands is processed to make a response of survival and self-preservation. This leads to us (and other animals) to change what we do when we met needles a second time. Memory, which starts out as short-term memory allows for learning, and helps intelligent behavior.

Basis of memory
Donald Hebb (19041985) was the first to come up with a way to tell the difference between short-term and long-term memory. When the brain receives an input, like something that is seen or heard, a sensory memory keeps a copy of what is seen or heard, but this memory lasts for only about a few seconds. Anything that is kept in the brain longer depends on our selective attention. Things that we "notice" are kept in short-term memory for up to a few minutes. This memory is thought to be dependent on electrical activity in the brain and is easily destroyed by interruption or interference.  Short-term memory includes iconic memory as well, which holds visual images; acoustic memory, to hold sounds; and working memory, which is an active process to keep a memory until it is put to use.

Memories which are stored for longer than this are called long-term memory. Hebb had a theory of long-term memory as  a change in the strength of connections between the neurons. Long-term memory is relatively permanent storage and the process involves the creation of new proteins.

Whether or not the information is stored in long-term memory depends on its importance. Usually for animals memories that are made during times of stress and discomfort are important for adaptive values. In the future they help avoid anything that will bring them stress.

Duration
Short-term memory has a limited duration, and the contents decay over time. The decay idea is usually paired by the idea of repeating the memory over and over. In order to overcome the limitation of short-term memory, and retain information for a longer amount of time, it has to be repeated either by saying it out loud of by saying it mentally repeatedly.  By doing this the information will re-enter the short-term process and be kept for a further period.

Capacity
Forgetting greatly limits the information that can be kept over a short period of time. The capacity of short-term memory is finite, but there is no clear unit of measurement for what that is. Memory span is the term used to describe this, where there is only a certain amount of information that can be memorized over a short period until it is lost.

Factors affecting STM
The capacity of short-term memory leads to the question of the capacity of short-term memory as a whole. At present there is no way of telling whether a piece of information will be stored as short-term memory or not. In an experiment done to determine the capacity of short-term memory individuals had to memory a list of items and recall it, and it was suggested that the span of their short-term memory was reached when they could no longer remember the list in order.

There are many conditions that can affect short-term memory. They range from simple distractions to serious disorders. The loss of memory is natural and is expected with ageing. By the age of 55 it is found experimentally that the loss of memory starts to occur which usually occurs more often with long-term memory loss. Age very much affects the short-term memory as well.

There are many other things which affect memory loss beside advanced age. There are disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, aphasia, schizophrenia, advanced age, and posttraumatic stress disorder. These are all linked to the loss of memory.

References

Memory
Brain

Short-term memory


A disc mill is a type of crusher that can be used to grind, cut, shear, shred, fiberize, pulverize, granulate, crack, rub, curl, fluff, twist, hull, blend, or refine.  It works in a similar manner to the ancient Buhrstone mill in that the feedstock is fed between opposing discs or plates. The discs may be grooved, serrated, or spiked.

Applications

Typical applications for a single-disc mill are all three stages of the wet milling of field corn, manufacture of peanut butter, processing nut shells, ammonium nitrate, urea, producing chemical slurries and recycled paper slurries, and grinding chromium metal.

Double-disc mills are typically used for alloy powders, aluminum chips, bark, barley, borax, brake lining scrap, brass chips, sodium hydroxide, chemical salts, coconut shells, copper powder, cork, cottonseed hulls, pharmaceuticals, feathers, hops, leather, oilseed cakes, phosphates, rice, rosin, sawdust, and seeds.

Disc mills are relatively expensive to run and maintain and they consume much more power than other shredding machines, and are not used where ball mills or hammermills produce the desired results at a lower cost.

Mechanism
Substances are crushed between the edge of a thick, spinning disk and something else. Some mills cover the edge of the disk in blades to chop up incoming matter rather than crush it.

Industrial equipment
Grinding mills

Disc mill


Seleucus II Callinicus was the second son of Antiochus II and the fourth king of the Seleucid Empire.

Rise to Power
After Antiochus II died his second wife Berenice declared her son Antiochus king at Antioch while his first wife Laodice declared her son Seleucus king in Ephesus. Since Antiochus was too young to be able to rule, Seleucus and Laodice had Berenice killed so that Seleucus no longer had any challenger for his throne. Ptolemy III Euergetes was angry about this so he invaded Syria and started a war.

Third Syrian War

Seleucus appointed his brother Antiochus Hierax as viceroy of the Seleucid Empire so that he could have Antiochus Hierax rule Syria for him while he left to fight Ptolemy. Ptolemy won most of the battles but Seleucus won enough of them that in 241 B.C.E. they agreed to a treaty which said that Ptolemy ruled all the lands he conquered but that Seleucus would stay ruler of the Seleucid Empire.

Antiochus Hierax

While Seleucus was off fighting the war, his brother Antiochus Hierax tried to become the new king in Asia Minor. So Seleucus started a war with Hierax to take it back. The war went on for two years and ended in a stalemate.

Parthia
After this, Parthia left the Seleucid Empire and Seleucus went to war to get it back but lost.

Rebellion of Stratonice
After Hierax died, Seleucus's aunt Stratonice asked him to marry her. He said no so she led a rebellion against him. Seleucus crushed the revolt and had her executed.

Death

In 225 B.C.E, Seleucus fell off his horse and died. His son Alexander became king and changed his name to Seleucus III Ceraunus.

Seleucid kings

Seleucus II Callinicus


The Black Hundred (), also known as the black-hundredists (; chernosotentsy), were a reactionary, monarchist and ultra-nationalist movement in Russia in the early 20th century. It was a staunch supporter of the House of Romanov and opposed any retreat from the autocracy of the reigning monarch.  The name arose from the medieval concept of "black", or common (non-noble) people, organized into militias.

The Black Hundreds were also noted for extremism and incitement to pogroms, nationalistic Russocentric doctrines, and different xenophobic beliefs, including anti-Ukrainian sentiment and anti-semitism.

The ideology of the movement is based on a slogan formulated by Count Sergey Uvarov "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality".

Pre-formation
"Svjashchjennaja druzhina" (Священнaя дружинa, or The Holy Brigade) and "Russkoye sobraniye" (Русское собрание, or Russian Assembly) in St. Petersburg are considered to be predecessors of the Black Hundreds. Starting in 1900, the two organizations united representatives of conservative intellectuals, government officials, Russian Orthodox clergy and landowners. A number of black-hundredist organizations formed during and after the Russian Revolution of 1905, such as:
 "Soyuz russkogo naroda" (Союз русского народа, or Union of the Russian People) in St. Petersburg,
 "Soyuz russkikh lyudey" (Союз русских людей, or Union of the Russians) in Moscow,
 "Russkaya monarkhicheskaya partiya" (Русская монархическая партия, or Russian Monarchist Party) in Moscow and elsewhere,
 "Obshchestvo aktivnoy bor'by s revolyutsiyey" (Общество активной борьбы с революцией, or Society of Active Struggle Against Revolution) in Moscow,
 "Belyy dvuglavyy oryol" (Белый двуглавый орёл, or White Two-headed Eagle) in Odesa, Ukraine,
and others.

Predecessors
Members of the Black Hundreds organizations came from different social strata—such as landowners, clergymen, the high and petty bourgeoisie, merchants, artisans, workers and the so-called "declassed elements". The Postoyanny Sovyet Ob'yedinnyonnykh dvoryanskikh obshchshestv Rossii (United Gentry Council) guided the activities of the black-hundredists; the tsarist regime provided moral and financial support to the movement. The Black Hundreds were founded on a devotion to Tsar, church and motherland, expressed previously by the motto of Tsar Nicholas I: "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality" (Pravoslaviye, Samoderzhaviye i Narodnost'''). The black-hundredists conducted oral propaganda: in churches by holding special services and during meetings, lectures and demonstrations. Such propaganda provoked antisemitic sentiments and monarchic "exaltation" and incited pogroms and terrorist acts, performed by the Black Hundreds' paramilitary groups, sometimes known as "Yellow Shirts".

Popularity and power
The Black Hundred movement published newspapers, such as Znamya (The Banner) or Russkoye znamya (Russian Banner), Pochayevsky Listok (The Pochayev Page), Zemshchina, Kolokol (Bell), Groza (Thunderstorm), Veche (Popular Assembly) and others. Many rightist newspapers, such as Moskovskiye vedomosti (Moscow News), Grazhdanin (Citizen) and Kievlyanin (Kievan), published their materials as well. Among the prominent leaders of the Black Hundred movement were Alexander Dubrovin, Vladimir Purishkevich, Nikolai Markov, A. I. Trishatny, Pavel Krushevan, Pavel Bulatsel, Ivan Vostorgov, M. K. Shakhovskoy, Saint John of Kronstadt, Hieromonk Iliodor, Bishop Hermogen, and others.

Incitement to violence

When two Duma delegates,  (Poltava province) and Mikhail Herzenstein (b. 1859, d. 1906 in Terijoki), both from the Constitutional Democratic Party, were assassinated by members of the Black Hundreds, their press organ Russkoe Znamya declared openly that "Real Russians assassinated Herzenstein and Iollos with knowledge of officials", and expressed regret that "only two Jews perished in the crusade against revolutionaries." The black hundred were known to have used violence and torture on anyone they believed was a threat to the Tsar.

Members of the Black Hundreds carried out raids (with unofficial government approval) against various revolutionary groups and pogroms, including inciting pogroms against Jews.

The historian of the Black Hundred movement Sergei Stepanov, writes that after the 1905 Russian Revolution, fighting squads of the Union of the Russian People and other extremist right-wing organizations became the weapons of the Black Hundred terror.

 Fight against the Black Hundreds
Radical socialist parties organized revolutionary terror in retaliation to the Black Hundred activities. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP wrote in 1905:

The fight against the Black Hundreds is an excellent type of military action, which will train the soldiers of the revolutionary army, give them their baptism of fire, and at the same time be of tremendous benefit to the revolution. Revolutionary army groups must at once find out who organises the Black Hundreds and where and how they are organised, and then, without confining themselves to propaganda (which is useful but inadequate) they must act with armed force, beat up and kill the members of the Black-Hundred gangs, blow up their headquarters, etc., etc.On behalf of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP, an armed attack was carried out on the Tver tea house, where the workers of the Nevsky Shipbuilding Plant, who were members of the Union of the Russian People, gathered. First, two bombs were thrown by the Bolshevik militants, and then those who ran out of the teahouse were shot with revolvers. The Bolsheviks killed two and wounded fifteen people.

Revolutionary organizations carried out many other terrorist acts, mainly against the chairmen of local departments of the Union of the Russian People. So, according to the police department, only in March 1908 in one Chernihiv province in the city of Bakhmach, a bomb was thrown at the house of the chairman of the local union of the RNC, in the city of Nizhyn the house of the chairman of the union was set on fire. The whole family died, in the village of Domyany the department's chairman was killed, two chairmen of departments were killed in Nizhyn.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries also killed such prominent Black Hundreds as Nikolai Bogdanovich and Gavril Luzhenovsky.

Black Hundred and the Ukrainian question
The Black Hundreds classified Ukrainians as Russians, and attracted the support of many "Moscowphiles" who considered themselves Russian and rejected Ukrainian nationalism and identity. The Black Hundred movement actively campaigned against what it considered to be Ukrainian separatism, as well as against promoting Ukrainian culture and language in general, and against the works of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, in particular. In Odesa, the Black Hundreds shut down the local branch of the Ukrainian Prosvita society. This organization was dedicated to spreading literacy in the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian cultural awareness.

All-Russian congresses
The black-hundredists organized four all-Russian congresses to unite their forces. In October 1906, they elected the so-called glavnaya uprava (a kind of board of directors) of the new all-Russian black-hundredist organization "Ob'yedinyonniy russkiy narod" (Объединённый русский народ, or Russian People United). After 1907, however, this organization disintegrated, and the whole Black Hundreds movement became weaker as the membership rate steadily declined. During the February Revolution 1917, the remaining black-hundredist organizations were officially abolished.

After emigrating abroad, many black-hundredists were among the main critics of the White movement. They blamed the movement for not only failing to stress monarchism as its key ideological foundation but also supposedly being run under the influence of classical liberals and Freemasons. Boris Brasol (1885–1963), a former member of the Black Hundreds, was among those who later emigrated to the United States. There he befriended industrialist Henry Ford, who gave Brasol a job on The Dearborn Independent newspaper. Brasol also helped in the production of anti-Jewish propaganda such as The International Jew.

Modern version

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the nationalist and monarchist movements were reborn in Russian society. In 1992, Alexander Shtilmark (former member of Pamyat) decided to found a modern Black Hundred movement.

The movement maintains contacts with other Russian nationalist organizations (like the Russian Imperial Movement and the Union of Orthodox Banner-Bearers) and also participated in the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War on the side of pro-Russian separatists.

In popular culture
 In Jack London's 1908 novel The Iron Heel, which predicts the rise of a hypothetical fascist regime in the US, the regime's anti-labour hired thugs use the name of the Black Hundreds.
 In Bernard Malamud's 1966 novel The Fixer, which portrays Yakov Bok as a Jewish man who survived the pogrom and moved to Kyiv, Yakov changes his last name to sound more Russian and soon becomes hired by a member of the Black Hundred.
 In Edward Rutherfurd's 1991 novel Russka, a young Bobrov (one of the fictional families portrayed in the novel) is beaten in the street by a gang of young Black Hundreds for being Jewish-looking and being the son of a social democrat.
 In Roots: The Next Generations, a Jewish friend of the series' black protagonists jokes that the Ku Klux Klansmen who burn down his shop are mere pikers next to the "Czar's Black One Hundred".
 In Anatoli Rybakov's 1988 novel Children of the Arbat, in part II, chapter 13, set in Moscow in the mid-1930s, the Sharoks' old neighbourhood Okhotny Row is described as having many storekeepers who had been Black Hundreds. In part III, chapter 5, Khanlar Safaraliyev, an oil worker, is killed by thugs who belong to a gang of Black Hundreds; Stalin makes a speech at his graveside.

See also
 Chetniks

References

Further reading
 Norman Cohn. Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1966)
 Laqueur, Walter. Black Hundred: The Rise Of The Russian Extreme Right (1993)
 Donald C. Rawson. Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905'' (1995)

External links
 Black Hundreds Live Again, news article on the celebrations of the Black Hundreds' 100th anniversary in Russia

Organizations of the Russian Revolution
Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire
Antisemitism in Russia
Far-right political parties in Russia
Eastern Orthodoxy and far-right politics
Eastern Orthodox political parties
Political parties in the Russian Empire
Russian nationalist organizations
Anti-Ukrainian sentiment
Defunct nationalist parties in Russia
Monarchist parties in Russia
Antisemitism in Ukraine
Xenophobia
Anti-communist organizations in Russia
Organizations of the 1905 Russian Revolution
Defunct far-right parties
Defunct conservative parties
Conservative parties in Russia
Political parties established in 1905
1905 establishments in the Russian Empire
Political parties disestablished in 1917
1917 disestablishments in Russia

Black Hundreds


Xie (Chinese: , Xiè) was the tenth king of the semi-legendary Xia dynasty. The son of Mang, Xie ascended the throne in the "Xinwei" () year. He possibly ruled 25 years.

According to the Bamboo Annals, in the 12th year of Xie's reign, the prince of Yin (殷), Zihai (子亥), while a guest in Youyi (有易), was "guilty of licentious conduct" and killed by the leader of the place, Mianchen (綿臣), who also sent away his retinue. Four years later, Zihai's successor, Wei (微), allied with the forces of the baron of Ho (河伯), and invaded Youyi, killing Mianchen.

In the 21st year of his reign, Xie "conferred regular dignities" on the chiefs of the surrounding barbarians.

He was succeeded by his sons Bu Jiang and Jiong.

See also
 Family tree of ancient Chinese emperors

Notes

Xia dynasty kings

Xie of Xia


Emily Gorcenski (born 1982) is an American data scientist and activist who now resides in Germany. Gorcenski was a counter-protester at the Unite the Right rally in 2017, and subsequently created the site 'First Vigil' to track the trial information of white nationalists.

Early life and education
Emily Gorcenski grew up in Columbia, Connecticut. She attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she studied aeronautical and mechanical engineering before graduating with a degree in mathematics.  Gorcenski is a transgender woman.

Activism

Unite the Right
In August 2017, Gorcenski was a counter-protester at the Unite the Right rally in her city of residence of Charlottesville, Virginia. At the August 11 "torch" rally, she was sprayed in the face with pepper spray by white supremacist Christopher Cantwell, who pleaded guilty to charges of assault and was barred from Virginia for 5 years, and was also attacked by Atomwaffen Division member Vasillios Pistolis.

In the wake of her assault at the rally, Gorcenski and one other counter-protester pressed charges against Cantwell, who in turn filed a federal lawsuit against them. In response, Gorcenski and her co-defendant counter-sued Cantwell. In the lawsuit, Gorcenski was repeatedly misgendered by both Cantwell and his attorney, Elmer Woodard. Woodard's motions to have the court refer to Gorcenski by her pre-transition name (and for the court to use male pronouns) were both denied. Both lawsuits were settled in 2018 with a mutual release of claims.

Due to her public opposition to the rally, Gorcenski was harassed online and doxed. She told The Intercept that she had been victim to transphobic harassment from before the rally in Charlottesville. Gorcenski was swatted in October 2017 after the rally's organizer Jason Kessler reportedly doxed her. Kessler was subsequently arrested, though charges were dismissed when new evidence showed Kessler did not control the account that posted Gorcenski's address. In 2018, due to safety concerns, Gorcenski left Charlottesville for Berlin, Germany, where she now resides.

Digital activism
Gorcenski's experiences at Unite the Right led her to use her skills as a data scientist to help identify and dox  white nationalists and members of the alt-right engaged in criminal activity. Gorcenski created the website 'First Vigil' to track the trial information of white nationalists and associated individuals. The site uses court documents and other public records. Gorcenski was named one of the fifty most influential feminists in 2018 by Bitch magazine for her work in creating First Vigil. In 2016, Gorcenski criticized the ethics of a study by an independent researcher who released the private information on approximately 70,000 users of the dating website OkCupid. The study in question was widely panned for being unethical, racist, and a breach of user privacy. Gorcenski covered the issue in a discussion with Sarah Jeong at Mozfest in 2017. Gorcenski sometimes speaks about the ethics of emerging technology, such as consumer internet of things devices. In 2016, Gorcenski explored software quality controls for electronic voting machines, expressing concern for the apparent lack of mandatory standards.

During the George Floyd protests in 2020, Gorcenski launched whentheycamedown, a people's history project to document the removal of statues of historical figures aligned with white supremacy and colonialism.

Writing
Gorcenski is a sporadic political opinion writer. After president Donald Trump controversially stated that there were "very fine people on both sides" at the Charlottesville rally, Gorcenski wrote an op-ed for The Guardian where she argued that his speech demonstrated his unwillingness to criticize neo-Nazis, which emboldened white supremacy. Her criticism extends at times to the Democratic Party, where she takes issue with what she perceives as the exploitation of the terror attack at Unite the Right for political gains. As a transgender rights activist, she has written about healthcare concerns for transgender Americans.

References

External links

 First Vigil
 whentheycamedown

1982 births
Activists from Virginia
Data scientists
Date of birth missing (living people)
LGBT people from Virginia
American LGBT scientists
Living people
People from Charlottesville, Virginia
People from Tolland County, Connecticut
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni
Transgender women writers
American transgender writers
Transgender scientists
LGBT people from Connecticut
Women data scientists
21st-century American women scientists
Scientists from Connecticut
American emigrants to Germany

Emily Gorcenski


Azoth is a fictitious universal remedy or potent solvent sought after in the realm of alchemy, akin to alkahest—a distinct alchemical substance. The quest for Azoth was the crux of numerous alchemical endeavors, symbolized by the Caduceus. Initially coined to denote an esoteric formula pursued by alchemists, akin to the Philosopher's Stone, the term Azoth later evolved into a poetic expression for the element mercury. The etymology of 'Azoth' traces to Medieval Latin as a modification of 'azoc,' ultimately derived from the Arabic al-zā'būq (الزئبق), meaning 'the mercury.'

The scientific community does not recognize the existence of this substance. The myth of Azoth may stem from misinterpreted observations of solvents like mercury, capable of dissolving gold. Additionally, the myth might have been fueled by the occult inclinations nurtured by alchemists, who rooted and steered their chemical explorations in superstitions and dogmas.

Basis
Azoth was believed to be the essential agent of transformation in alchemy. It is the name given by ancient alchemists to mercury, which they believed to be the animating spirit hidden in all matter that makes transmutation possible. The word occurs in the writings of many early alchemists, such as Zosimos, Olympiodorus, and Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber).

In texts
In the Kabbalah, Azoth is related to the Ein Soph or 'the Endless One'. In his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall explained this connection:

The universe is surrounded by the sphere of light or stars. Beyond that sphere is Schamayim (שמים), the Hebrew word for 'heaven', who is the Divine Fiery Water, the first outflow of the Word of God, the flaming river pouring from the presence of the eternal mind. Schamayim, who is this fiery Androgyne, divides. His Fire becomes Solar fire and his Water becomes Lunar water in our universe. Schamayim is the Universal Mercury or Azoth—the measureless spirit of life. That original spiritual fiery water comes through Edem ("vapor" in Hebrew) and pours itself into the four main rivers of the four Elements. This comprises the River of Living Water—the Azoth—or fiery mercurial essence, that flows out from the throne of God and Lamb. In this Edem (vaporous essence or mist) is the first or spiritual Earth, the incomprehensible and intangible dust out of which God formed Adam Kadmon, the spiritual body of man, which must become fully revealed through time.

In his book Transcendental Magic, Eliphas Levi wrote:

The Azoth or Universal Medicine is, for the soul, supreme reason and absolute justice; for the mind, it is mathematical and practical truth; for the body it is the quintessence, which is a combination of gold and light. In the superior or spiritual world, it is the First Matter of the Great Work, the source of the enthusiasm and activity of the alchemist. In the intermediate or mental world, it is intelligence and industry. In the inferior or material world, it is physical labor. Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt, which, volatilized and fixed alternately, compose the Azoth of the sages. Sulfur corresponds to the elementary form of Fire, Mercury to Air and Water, Salt to Earth.

Life and the universe

Believed to be a universal solvent, a universal cure, and an elixir of life (elixir vitae), the Azoth is said to embody all medicines, as well as the first principles of all other substances. In late-16th-century Paracelsianism, Paracelsus (d. 1541) was said to have achieved the Azoth, and in the Rosicrucian portrait of 1567 the pommel of his sword bears the inscription Azoth.
The first part of the pseudo-Paracelsian Archidoxis magica (first printed in 1591) bears the title Liber Azoth, containing various magic sigils and recipes intended to protect against illnesses and injuries.

The Azoth is believed to be the animating energy (spiritus animatus) of the body, and the inspiration and enthusiasm that moves the mind. The Azoth is believed to be the mysterious evolutionary force responsible for the drive towards physical and spiritual perfection. Thus, the concept of the Azoth is analogous to the light of nature or mind of God.

Because the Azoth is believed to contain the complete information of the entire universe, it is also used as another term for the Philosopher's Stone. One of the clues for the theoretical preparation of the Stone is Ignis et Azoth tibi sufficiunt ("Fire and Azoth are sufficient"). There are numerous esoteric drawings depicting the Azoth and how it is used in the work of alchemy. Examples include the Azoth of the Philosophers by Basil Valentine and the Hieroglyphic Monad of Dr. John Dee.

The term was considered by the occultist Aleister Crowley to represent a unity of beginning and end by connecting the first and last letters of ancient alphabets: A/𐤀 (Aleph, the first character in the Phoenician alphabet), Z (Zeta, the final character in the Latin alphabet), O/Ω (Omega, the final character in the Greek alphabet) and Th/ת (Tav, pronounced "Tau", the final character in the Hebrew alphabet). In this way, the permeation and totality of the beginning and end symbolize the supreme wholeness and the universal synthesis of opposites as a 'cancellation' (i.e. solvent) or 'cohesion' (i.e. medicine). Therefore, it is believed to be similar to the philosophical "absolute" of Hegel's dialectic. Crowley further referenced Azoth in his works as "the fluid", referring to it as the universal solvent or universal medicine of the medieval alchemical philosophers, as a unifier or unification of a certain extreme instance beholden to a contradict, irreconcilable nature if otherwise sought as part of the philosophical ideal of Azoth.

See also
Anima mundi
Panacea (medicine)
Prima materia
Viriditas

References

External links

 Interpretation of Azoth of the Philosophers (by Dennis William Hauck)
 What is the Azoth? and The Azoth Ritual at Azothalchemy.org

Alchemical substances
Mythological medicines and drugs

Azoth


Oxford () is a ceety, an the coonty toun o Oxfordshire, in Sooth East Ingland. The ceety, made prominent bi its medieval university, haes a population o juist unner 165,000, wi 151,000 livin athin the district boondary. The rivers Cherwell an Thames run through Oxford an meet sooth o the ceety centre.  For a distance o some 10 mile (16 km) alang the river, in the vicinity o Oxford, the Thames is kent as The Isis.

Buildings in Oxford demonstrate an example o ivery Breetish architectural period since the arrival o the Saxons, includin the iconic, mid-18t century Radcliffe Camera. Oxford is kent as the "ceety o dreamin spires", a term coined bi poet Matthew Arnold in reference tae the harmonious architecture o Oxford's university buildings. The University o Oxford is the auldest university in the Inglis-speakin warld.

References

Ceeties in Sooth East Ingland
Coonty touns in Ingland
Oxford
Local authorities adjoinin the River Thames
Local govrenment in Oxfordshire
Populatit places established in the 8t century
Oxford
Varsity touns in the Unitit Kinrick
Non-metropolitan districts o Oxfordshire
Local govrenment districts o Sooth East Ingland

Oxford


Jacques François Coquille () named Dugommier (; 1 August 1738, Trois-Rivières, Guadeloupe – 18 November 1794, at the Battle of the Black Mountain) was a French general.

Biography

Early life
Jacques François Dugommier was born on 1 August 1738 in Trois-Rivières, Guadeloupe.

Early career
He entered service in 1759 in the unsuccessful defense of Guadeloupe and fought in Martinique in the Seven Years' War. He took the name Dugommier in 1785. He joined the Revolutionaries.

Commander in the Italian Army
In September 1793, he drove the troops of the Habsburg monarchy and the Kingdom of Sardinia from Nice. He defeated Joseph De Vins' Austrians at city of Gilette. While a Deputy of the French Convention, Dugommier succeeded General Jean François Carteaux as commander of the army besieging Toulon. Recognizing that the attack plan of a young artillery major named Napoleon Bonaparte was the correct one, Dugommier carried it out. In December 1793, he brought the Siege of Toulon to a successful conclusion. On that occasion, Napoleon reported that "General Dugommier fought with true republican courage."

Campaign in the Pyrenees
In January 1794, he was named head of the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees. His assignment was to retake the territory of Roussillon from the Spanish army of Antonio Ricardos Carrillo. He reorganized the army, weakened as it was by the hard combat of the preceding year spent incessantly and fruitlessly storming the Spanish positions. The Spanish became paralyzed by a leadership crisis following the successive deaths of two Commanders-in-Chief to disease, making Dugommier's task easier.

On 28 April, he was victorious at the battle of the Battle of Tech, followed by a success at the Battle of Albere on 30 April. After the decisive victory at the Battle of Boulou (or Montesquieu) on 1 May. After this defeat, Luis Firmin de Carvajal, Conde de la Union withdrew. Port-Vendres was evacuated by La Union (who had under his command 400 French noblemen of the Légion Panetier) in May. Collioure fell after a four-week siege on the 26 May. He repelled a Spanish assault on 13 August in the Battle of Sant Llorenç de la Muga. He retook the Fort de Bellegarde on 17 September 1794 (the siege had lasted since 7 May). On 22 September, an audacious attack gave him the redoubt and camp of Costouge, putting the enemy to flight and capturing most of his equipment.

He fell to Spanish shells on 18 November in the Battle of the Black Mountain, in the course of which the physician Larrey distinguished himself with 700 amputations in four days of battle. After this battle, Figueras was taken by Dominique-Catherine Pérignon, marquis de Grenade on 28 November. He was buried in Perpignan, where he rests in a pyramidal monument. Napoleon kept his souvenir, bestowing 100,000 Francs to his son for the memory of the battle of Toulon.

Legacy
His name is inscribed in the Panthéon.
The Boulevard Dugommier in Marseille is named in his honour.
A station of the Paris Metro is named for him.

References

1738 births
1794 deaths
People from Trois-Rivières, Guadeloupe
French military personnel of the Seven Years' War
French Republican military leaders killed in the French Revolutionary Wars
French Republican military leaders of the French Revolutionary Wars
French military personnel of the French Revolutionary Wars
Military leaders of the French Revolutionary Wars
Military leaders of the French Revolutionary Wars killed in battle
Guadeloupean people of French descent
Guadeloupean soldiers
Names inscribed under the Arc de Triomphe

Jacques François Dugommier


The coat o airms o the Turkis Republic o Northren Cyprus are styled closely on the airms o the Republic o Cyprus, except that the '1960' wis removed frae the shield unnerneath the dove an the addition, a depiction o the Turkis starn an crescent emblem is placed ower the shield wi the year '1983' addit. The year is in reference tae the Declaration o Unthirldom o the Turkis Republic o Northren Cyprus.

In late 2007, a slicht chynge tae the layoot o the airms wis made. The dove is in a different poseetion/attitude.

Turkis Cypriot cultur
Northren Cyprus
Govrenment o Northren Cyprus

Coat o airms o Northren Cyprus


Peter Cregeen (born 28 January 1940 in London, England) is a British television director, producer and executive. He was the original director of ITV's successful police drama, The Bill, and made a substantial contribution to the series thereafter. He also served as Head of Series for BBC television drama between 1989 and 1993, which included cancelling Doctor Who after its 26th season and several years of poor viewing figures.

Career
Cregeen began directing for television in the 1960s and producing in the 1970s. During the 1960s, 70s, and 80s he worked on numerous popular television series, including: The Troubleshooters (1965); King of the River (1966); Out of the Unknown (1969; 1971); The Onedin Line (1971; 1976); The Sandbaggers (1978); Colditz (1972; 1974) and Wings (1977–1978).

Cregeen has worked on various police dramas, including: The Gentle Touch (1980); The Expert (1969); Softly Softly (1969–1972); Z-Cars (1965); Juliet Bravo (1983), and the pilot to ITV's successful long-running drama, The Bill, which was originally named Woodentop (1983). As original director, Cregeen was responsible for  The Bill'''s "distinctive and atmospheric feel", which he created by adopting a "fly-on-the-wall documentary style" with a single handheld camera. The response to Woodentop was so positive that within a month Thames Television had commissioned a 12 part series, which was renamed The Bill. Cregeen remained with The Bill, directing and producing between 1984 and 1987, and rose to executive producer between 1988 and 1989. Cregeen worked on The Bill during "its most popular period" when it switched in 1988 from a series to a year-round, twice-weekly half-hour format. He left the series and ITV in 1989 to become Head of Series at the BBC, later poaching fellow producer of The Bill, Michael Ferguson, to become executive producer of the BBC's flagship soap opera, EastEnders.

As Head of Series at the BBC, Cregeen was responsible for the Corporation's one-off and returning drama series. During his tenure, Cregeen made the controversial decision to cancel the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who following the end of its 26th season in 1989. At the time, Cregeen told fans to expect a longer than usual wait for series 27, though he promised it would return.  However Doctor Who did not return as an ongoing series on the BBC until 2005, without Cregeen's involvement, 16 years later. In 2007, Cregeen and various other BBC staff gave the reasons for the cancellation of Doctor Who on a documentary entitled "End Game", which is featured on 26th series DVD Survival. Reasons given included a general feeling at the BBC that the series needed a "rest", plummeting ratings—partly a result of being broadcast in direct competition to ITV's highest rated programme, Coronation Street—and a general disdain for science fiction among BBC staff at the time. In 2013, during an interview to mark the 50th anniversary of the series, Doctor Who executive producer Steven Moffat described the decision to abandon Doctor Who in 1989 as a decision of "outright stupidity and unforgivable blindness."

Cregeen continued to produce various programmes for the BBC, having previously been the executive producer for BBC TV's Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less in 1990—a two-part miniseries based on Jeffrey Archer's best-selling book—and he also produced for A Question of Guilt in 1993. In 1993 a Doctor Who feature length film to mark the series' 30th anniversary was planned, with Cregeen taking on the role as producer; however production of the film, The Dark Dimension, was terminated by the BBC for "financial and logistical reasons."

Cregeen remained "Head of Series" at the BBC until May 1993, when he was replaced by Michael Wearing. He has worked on numerous projects for ITV and the BBC since, and was responsible for commissioning Carlton Television's successful drama Peak Practice in 1993. Cregeen has also been involved in theatre, working alongside multimillionairess, Janet Holmes à Court, to encourage TV writers to contribute to her stage productions.

He resumed producing and directing of The Bill throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and produced The Choir, a five-part adaptation of the novel by Joanna Trollope, for the BBC (1994–1995). From 1999 to 2000 he produced for ITV's Midsomer Murders, and in 2001 he was appointed series executive producer of ITV's new soap opera Night and Day, which revolved around the lives of six very different families. He commented "We're making a soap that's modern, romantic and aspirational – a programme from a different perspective and in some ways a more realistic perspective. It's modern, sexy and fun with a very dark undercurrent." The soap was relatively unsuccessful, and was axed in 2003. Cregeen's latest directorial TV credit was for a 2003 episode of the popular BBC medical drama, Casualty''.

References

External links

Living people
1940 births
British television directors
British television producers
ITV people
Television people from London

Peter Cregeen


Renee Props (born February 15, 1962 in Cordell, Oklahoma) is an American actress. She is best known for the role of Ellie Snyder on the CBS daytime soap opera As the World Turns which she played for four years. She is also known to Seinfeld fans as Lois in the episode "The Race" from the 6th season, and for the role of "Nicki" in the film Get Shorty with Danny DeVito and John Travolta.

Her early break came with a starring role in the "Maigret en Arizona" episode of the French television series Les Enquêtes du Commissaire Maigret, and a couple of years later with John Hughes placing her in his 1985 film Weird Science.

Props has guest-starred on the TV shows Law & Order, Silver Spoons, Knight Rider, Hill Street Blues, The Facts of Life and others. She was a regular on one of the first series Showtime created, Hard Knocks, which also starred Bill Maher.

References

External links

Living people
1962 births
American film actresses
American television actresses
21st-century American women

Renee Props


Medea (, Mēdeia) is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides. It is based on the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC.

It is about Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her role in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes revenge on Jason by murdering Jason's new wife as well as her own children, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.

The play holds the American Theatre Wing's Tony Award record for most wins for the same female lead character, with Judith Anderson winning in 1948, Zoe Caldwell in 1982, and Diana Rigg in 1994.

References

5th-century BC plays
Theatre of ancient Greece

Medea (play)


He Snoops to Conquer is a 1944 British comedy film directed by Marcel Varnel starring George Formby, Robertson Hare, Elizabeth Allan and Claude Bailey. Its plot involves an odd job man who becomes mixed up in corruption in politics and town planning. Its title is a paronomasia of the theatre comedy She Stoops to Conquer.

Plot
The film is set in immediate post-war Britain. After being ordered to do a piece on town planning two newspapermen randomly pick on the small, industrial town of Tangleton. After arriving at the town hall the only man they can find working is the odd job man, George Gribble, who gives them a guided tour of the town. However, they run a negative angle on the story highlighting the fact that the wealthy leader of the council, Mr Oxbold, lives in a giant house by himself while Gribble is one of fourteen staying in a tiny slum house. When they read the article, the town's leaders order Gribble to do a public opinion investigation around the town. Instead of doing a cross section as ordered, he interviews the entire town's population. The results he produces shock the town's complacent leaders, who discover the people are deeply unhappy with the status quo and wants radical changes in living conditions and other services. This is a blow to the council leader and his colleagues who all have financial interests in keeping the town as it is. Oxbold is a slum landlord who fears a Whitehall scheme to demolish much of the existing town and rebuild it with council houses. To avert this, Oxbold and his colleagues decide to send off to London only those limited number of forms which praise the current situation. Gribble is ordered to burn the rest but, not wishing to waste paper, he puts them out for salvage instead.

Gribble had agreed to conduct the polling in return for being paid £27.10s (decimal equivalent: £27.50), which he needed to give to a loan shark. However, facing upcoming municipal elections with a clearly unpopular the town's leader decides to invite the inventor Sir Timothy Strawbridge to stand for the council to boost its popularity. Strawbridge is a wealthy, reclusive, eccentric who enjoys popularity in the town because of his extensive Philanthropy. Strawbridge was the only man who did not respond to the polling because Gribble could not get past the door by the butler. Gribble is told he cannot have his money until he completes his survey and is sent off to find out of Strawbridge has sound opinions, but again fails to get into the house. He then enjoys a chance meeting with Strawbridge in the street, when after a mishap, they find themselves careering through the town on the road sweeper. Gribble accidentally presses a button that releases all the unfavourable polling forms through the street. To avoid the police on their tail they go and shelter in Strawbridge's house, where Gribble meets Strawbridge's daughter Jane who he is immediately smitten by.

Despite finally persuading Strawbridge to fill out his form Gribble is sacked by his bosses when they discover that it was he who originally showed the newspapermen round the town. His problems mount when he is beset by an angry mob of townspeople who have found the abandoned forms on the street and blame Gribble for the cover up. He is also pursued by a bailiff for the money he owes. However, Jane comes up with the idea of Gribble running for the council on a pro-town planning platform. With the support of the newspaper, he soon builds up a head of steam and looks likely to be elected. Oxbold and his colleagues plan to top this by getting their hands on the forms to destroy the evidence of their dishonesty. After Gribbles' furniture is possessed by the bailiffs including the vase where he had stored the forms, he takes part in a desperate race against the clock in order to recover them and produce them at a major town planning conference. Gribble fails to recover them but is saved by Strawbridge who had recorded them electronically. The film ends with the crooked councillors exposed and Gribble being hailed by the people.

Cast
 George Formby as George Gribble
 Robertson Hare as Sir Timothy Strawbridge
 Elizabeth Allan as Jane Strawbridge
 Claude Bailey as Councillor Oxbold
 James Harcourt as Councillor Hopkins
 Aubrey Mallalieu as Councillor Stubbins
 Gordon McLeod as Angus McGluee
 Vincent Holman as Butler
 Katie Johnson as Ma, George's Landlady

Reception and analysis
TV Guide concluded the film is a "not very good outing for Formby".
Halliwell's Film Guide called it a "spotty star comedy with insufficient zest for its great length."
In Masculinities in British Cinema, Andrew Spicer wrote that George Formby "personified a cheery, comic 'little man', who, despite his bumbling stupidity, has gumption and the will-to-win; in Let George Do It! he even punches Hitler on the nose. But although Formby provided what Mass-Observation thought was vital for public morale in the 'dark days' of the war, comic relief, his popularity declined rapidly at the end of the war. Neither He Snoops to Conquer (1944) or George in Civvy Street (1946), which attempted to align Formby with social change and reconstruction was successful".

References

External links

1944 films
1944 comedy films
British comedy films
1940s English-language films
Films directed by Marcel Varnel
Films produced by Marcel Varnel
British black-and-white films
1940s British films

He Snoops to Conquer