Dame Helen Mirren  (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is a British actor. She is the recipient of numerous accolades and is the only performer to have achieved both the American and the British Triple Crowns of Acting. Mirren has received an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for portraying the same character in The Audience, three British Academy Television Awards for her performance as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Children's and Family Emmy Award.

Mirren's stage performance as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra at the National Youth Theatre in 1965 provided her an opportunity to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, before making her West End stage debut in 1975. She subsequently went on to achieve success in film and television, appearing in films such as The Madness of King George (1994), Gosford Park (2001), and The Last Station (2009), receiving Academy Award nominations for each of those performances. For her role on Prime Suspect, which ran from 1991 to 2006, she won three consecutive British Academy Television Awards for Best Actress (1992, 1993 and 1994)—a record of consecutive wins shared with Dame Julie Walters—and two Primetime Emmy Awards. She played Queen Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), and Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen (2006); she is the only actor to have portrayed both of the regnant Elizabeths on screen.

After her breakthrough role in The Long Good Friday (1980), Mirren appeared in a variety of other films including Cal (1984), for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, 2010 (1984), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), Calendar Girls (2003), The Tempest (2010), The Debt (2010), Hitchcock (2012), The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), Woman in Gold (2015), Eye in the Sky (2015), Trumbo (2015), and The Leisure Seeker (2017). She has also appeared in several action films such as Red (2010) and its sequel Red 2 (2013), as well as in the Fast & Furious film franchise The Fate of the Furious (2017), Hobbs & Shaw (2019), and F9 (2021).

In the Queen's 2003 Birthday Honours, Mirren was appointed a Dame (DBE) for services to drama, with investiture taking place at Buckingham Palace.
She has received numerous honours including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013, the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2014, and Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2022.

Early life and ancestry

Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff on 26 July 1945 at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in the Hammersmith district of London, to an English mother and Russian father. Her mother, Kathleen "Kitty" Alexandrina Eva Matilda (née Rogers; 1908–1996), was a working-class woman from West Ham, the thirteenth of fourteen children born to a butcher whose own father was the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren's father, Vasily Petrovich Mironoff (1913–1980), was a member of an exiled family of the Russian nobility; he was taken to England when he was two by his father, Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov. Pyotr Mironov, who owned a family estate near Gzhatsk (now Gagarin), was part of the Russian aristocracy. His mother, Mirren's great-grandmother, was Countess Lydia Andreevna Kamenskaya, an aristocrat and a descendant of Count Mikhail Fedotovich Kamensky, a prominent Russian general in the Napoleonic Wars. Pyotr Mironov served as a colonel in the Imperial Russian Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He became a diplomat and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain when he and his family were stranded by the Russian Revolution in 1917. He settled in England and became a London cab driver to support his family.

Vasily Mironoff also played the viola with the London Philharmonic Orchestra before World War II. He was an ambulance driver during the war, and served in the East End of London during the Blitz. He and Kathleen Rogers married in Hammersmith in 1938, and at some point before 1951 he anglicised his first name to Basil. Shortly after Helen's birth, her father left the orchestra and returned to driving a cab to support the family. He later worked as a driving-test examiner, then became a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. In 1951, he changed the family name to Mirren by deed poll. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist". She was the second of three children; she has an older sister Katherine ("Kate"; born 1942) and had a younger brother Peter Basil (1947–2002). Her paternal cousin was Tania Mallet, a model and Bond girl. Mirren was brought up in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.

Mirren attended Hamlet Court primary school in Westcliff-on-Sea, where she had the lead role in a school production of Hansel and Gretel, and St Bernard's High School for Girls in Southend-on-Sea, where she also acted in school productions. She subsequently attended a teaching college, the New College of Speech and Drama in London, "housed within Anna Pavlova's old home, Ivy House" on North End Road in Golders Green. At the age of eighteen, she passed the audition for the National Youth Theatre (NYT); and at twenty, she played Cleopatra in the NYT production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Old Vic, a role which she says "launched my career" and led to her signing with agent Al Parker.

Theatre career

Early years
As a result of her work for the National Youth Theatre, Mirren was invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). While with the RSC, she played Castiza in Trevor Nunn's 1966 staging of The Revenger's Tragedy, Diana in All's Well That Ends Well (1967), Cressida in Troilus and Cressida (1968), Rosalind in As You Like It (1968), Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1970), Tatiana in Gorky's Enemies at the Aldwych (1971), and the title role in Miss Julie at The Other Place (1971). She also appeared in four productions, directed by Braham Murray for Century Theatre at the University Theatre in Manchester, between 1965 and 1967.

In 1970, the director and producer John Goldschmidt made a documentary film, Doing Her Own Thing, about Mirren during her time with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Made for ATV, it was shown on the ITV network in the UK. In 1972 and 1973, Mirren worked with Peter Brook's International Centre for Theatre Research and joined the group's tour in North Africa and the US, during which they created The Conference of the Birds. She then rejoined the RSC, playing Lady Macbeth at Stratford in 1974 and at the Aldwych Theatre in 1975.

Sally Beauman reported, in her 1982 history of the RSC, that Mirren—while appearing in Nunn's Macbeth (1974), and in a letter to The Guardian newspaper—had sharply criticised both the National Theatre and the RSC for their lavish production expenditure, declaring it "unnecessary and destructive to the art of the Theatre", and adding, "The realms of truth, emotion and imagination reached for in acting a great play have become more and more remote, often totally unreachable across an abyss of costume and technicalities..." This started a big debate, and led to a question in parliament. There were no discernible repercussions for this rebuke of the RSC.

West End and RSC
At the West End's Royal Court Theatre in September 1975, she played the role of a rock star named Maggie in Teeth 'n' Smiles, a musical play by David Hare; she reprised the role the following year in a revival of the play at Wyndham's Theatre in May 1976.

Beginning in November 1975, Mirren played in West End repertory with the Lyric Theatre Company as Nina in The Seagull and Ella in Ben Travers's new farce The Bed Before Yesterday ("Mirren is stirringly voluptuous as the Harlowesque good-time girl": Michael Billington, The Guardian). At the RSC in Stratford in 1977, and at the Aldwych the following year, she played a steely Queen Margaret in Terry Hands' production of the three parts of Henry VI, while 1979 saw her 'bursting with grace', and winning acclaim for her performance as Isabella in Peter Gill's production of Measure for Measure at Riverside Studios.

In 1981, she returned to the Royal Court for the London premiere of Brian Friel's Faith Healer. That same year she also won acclaim for her performance in the title role of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, a production of Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre which was later transferred to The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London. Reviewing her portrayal for The Sunday Telegraph, Francis King wrote: "Miss Mirren never leaves it in doubt that even in her absences, this ardent, beautiful woman is the most important character of the story." In her performance as Moll Cutpurse in The Roaring Girl—at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in January 1983, and at the Barbican Theatre in April 1983—she was described as having "swaggered through the action with radiant singularity of purpose, filling in areas of light and shade that even Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker omitted." – Michael Coveney, Financial Times, April 1983.

At the beginning of 1989, Mirren co-starred with Bob Peck at the Young Vic in the London premiere of the Arthur Miller double-bill, Two Way Mirror, performances which prompted Miller to remark: "What is so good about English actors is that they are not afraid of the open expression of large emotions. British actors like to speak. In London, there's a much more open-hearted kind of exchange between stage and audience" (interview by Sheridan Morley: The Times 11 January 1989). In Elegy for a Lady she played the svelte proprietress of a classy boutique, while as the blonde hooker in Some Kind of Love Story she was "clad in a Freudian slip and shifting easily from waif-like vulnerability to sexual aggression, giving the role a breathy Monroesque quality".

On 15 February 2013, at the West End's Gielgud Theatre she began a turn as Elizabeth II in the World Premiere of Peter Morgan's The Audience. The show was directed by Stephen Daldry. In April she was named best actress at the Olivier Awards for her role.

Broadway debut
A further stage breakthrough came in 1994, in an Yvonne Arnaud Theatre production bound for the West End, when Bill Bryden cast her as Natalya Petrovna in Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country. Her co-stars were John Hurt as her aimless lover Rakitin and Joseph Fiennes in only his second professional stage appearance as the cocksure young tutor Belyaev.

Prior to 2015, Mirren had twice been nominated for Broadway's Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play: in 1995 for her Broadway debut in A Month in the Country and then again in 2002 for The Dance of Death, co-starring with Sir Ian McKellen, their fraught rehearsal period coinciding with the terrorist attacks on New York on 11 September 2001.

On 7 June 2015' Mirren won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play' for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience (a performance which also won her the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress). Her Tony Award win made her one of the few actors to achieve the US "Triple Crown of Acting", joining the ranks of acclaimed performers including Ingrid Bergman' Dame Maggie Smith, and Al Pacino.

National Theatre
In 1998, Mirren played Cleopatra to Alan Rickman's Antony in Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre. The production received poor reviews; The Guardian called it "plodding spectacle rarely informed by powerful passion", while The Daily Telegraph said "the crucial sexual chemistry on which any great production ultimately depends is fatally absent". In 2000 Nicholas Hytner, who had worked with Mirren on the film version of The Madness of King George, cast her as Lady Torrance in his revival of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Michael Billington, reviewing for The Guardian, described her performance as "an exemplary study of an immigrant woman who has acquired a patina of resilient toughness but who slowly acknowledges her sensuality."

At the National Theatre in November 2003 she again won praise playing Christine Mannon ("defiantly cool, camp and skittish", Evening Standard; "glows with mature sexual allure", Daily Telegraph) in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra directed by Howard Davies. "This production was one of the best experiences of my professional life, The play was four and a half hours long, and I have never known that kind of response from an audience ... It was the serendipity of a beautifully cast play, with great design and direction, It will be hard to be in anything better." She played the title role in Jean Racine's Phèdre at the National in 2009, in a production directed by Nicholas Hytner. The production was also staged at the Epidaurus amphitheatre on 11 and 12 July 2009.

Film career
Mirren has appeared in a large number of films throughout her career. Some of her earlier film appearances include roles in Herostratus (1967, Dir. Don Levy), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968), Age of Consent (1969), O Lucky Man! (1973), Caligula (1979), The Long Good Friday (1980)—co-starring with Bob Hoskins in what was her breakthrough film role, Excalibur (1981), 2010 (1984), White Nights (1985), The Mosquito Coast (1986), Pascali's Island (1988) and When the Whales Came (1989). She appeared in The Madness of King George (1994), Some Mother's Son (1996), Painted Lady (1997) and The Prince of Egypt (1998). In Peter Greenaway's colorful The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Mirren plays the wife opposite Michael Gambon. In Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), she plays sadistic history teacher Mrs Eve Tingle.

In 2007, she claimed that the director Michael Winner had treated her "like a piece of meat" at a casting call in 1964. Asked about the incident, Winner told The Guardian: "I don't remember asking her to turn around but if I did I wasn't being serious. I was only doing what the [casting] agent asked me – and for this I get reviled! Helen's a lovely person, she's a great actor and I'm a huge fan, but her memory of that moment is a little flawed."

Mirren continued her successful film career when she starred in Gosford Park (2001) with Maggie Smith and Calendar Girls (2003) with Julie Walters. Other more recent appearances include The Clearing (2004), Pride (2004), Raising Helen (2004), and Shadowboxer (2005). Mirren also provided the voice for the supercomputer "Deep Thought" in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). During her career, she has portrayed three British queens in different films and television series: Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006), and Charlotte in The Madness of King George (1994). She is the only actor to have portrayed both Queens Elizabeth on the screen.

Mirren's title role of The Queen earned her numerous acting awards including a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award, among many others. During her acceptance speech at the Academy Award ceremony, she praised and thanked Elizabeth II and stated that she had maintained her dignity and weathered many storms during her reign. Mirren later appeared in supporting roles in the films National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Inkheart, State of Play, and The Last Station, for which she was nominated for an Oscar.

2000–2009

Mirren's first film of the 2000s was Joel Hershman's Greenfingers (2000), a comedy based on the true story about the prisoners of HMP Leyhill, a minimum-security prison, who won gardening awards. Mirren portrayed a devoted plantswoman in the film, who coaches a team of prison gardeners, led by Clive Owen, to victory at a prestigious flower show. The project received lukewarm reviews, which suggested that it added "nothing new to this already saturated genre" of British feel-good films.

The same year, she began work on the mystery film The Pledge, Sean Penn's third directorial effort, in which she played a child psychologist. A critical success, the ensemble film tanked at the box office. Also that year, she filmed the American-Icelandic satirical drama No Such Thing opposite Sarah Polley. Directed by Hal Hartley, Mirren portrayed a soulless television producer in the film, who strives for sensationalistic stories. It was largely panned by critics.

Her biggest critical and commercial success, released in 2001, became Robert Altman's all-star ensemble mystery film Gosford Park. A homage to writer Agatha Christie's whodunit style, the story follows a party of wealthy Britons and an American, and their servants, who gather for a shooting weekend at an English country house, resulting in an unexpected murder. It received multiple awards and nominations, including a second Academy Award nomination and first Screen Actors Guild Award win for Mirren's portrayal of the sternly devoted head servant Mrs. Wilson. Mirren's last film that year was Fred Schepisi's dramedy film Last Orders opposite Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins.

In 2003, Mirren starred in Nigel Cole's comedy Calendar Girls, inspired by the true story of a group of Yorkshire women who produced a nude calendar to raise money for Leukaemia Research under the auspices of the Women's Institutes. Mirren initially was reluctant to join the project, dismissing it as another middling British picture, but rethought her decision upon learning of the casting of co-star Julie Walters. The film was generally well received by critics, and grossed $96 million worldwide. In addition, the picture earned Satellite, Golden Globe, and European Film Award nominations for Mirren. Her other film that year was the Showtime television film The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone opposite Olivier Martinez, and Anne Bancroft, based on the 1950 novel of the same title by Tennessee Williams.

2010–2014
In 2010, Mirren appeared in five films. In Love Ranch, directed by her husband Taylor Hackford, she portrayed Sally Conforte, one half of a married couple who opened the first legal brothel in the US, the Mustang Ranch in Storey County, Nevada. Mirren starred in the principal role of Prospera, the duchess of Milan, in Julie Taymor's The Tempest. This was based on the play of the same name by Shakespeare; Taymor changed the original character's gender to cast Mirren as her lead. While the actor garnered strong reviews for her portrayal, the film itself was largely panned by critics.

Mirren played a gutsy tea-shop owner who tries to save one of her young employees from marrying a teenage killer in Rowan Joffé's Brighton Rock, a crime film loosely based on Graham Greene's 1938 novel. The film noir premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2010, where it received mixed reviews. Mirren's biggest critical and commercial success of the year was Robert Schwentke's ensemble action comedy Red, based on Warren Ellis's graphic novel, in which she portrayed Victoria, an ex-MI6 assassin. Mirren was initially hesitant to sign on due to film's graphic violence, but changed her mind upon learning of Bruce Willis's involvement. Released to positive reviews, it grossed $186.5 million worldwide. Also in 2010, the actor lent her voice to Zack Snyder's computer-animated fantasy film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, voicing antagonist Nyra, a leader of a group of owls. The film grossed $140.1 million on an $80 million budget.

Mirren's next film was the comedy film Arthur, a remake of the 1981 film of the same name, starring Russell Brand in the lead role. Arthur received generally negative reviews from critics, who declared it an "irritating, unnecessary remake". In preparation for her role as a retired Israeli Mossad agent in the film The Debt, Mirren reportedly immersed herself in studies of Hebrew language, Jewish history, and Holocaust writing, including the life of Simon Wiesenthal, while in Israel in 2009 for the filming of some of the movie's scenes. The film is a remake of a 2007 Israeli film of the same name.

In 2012, Mirren played Alfred Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville in the 2012 biopic Hitchcock, directed by Sacha Gervasi and based on Stephen Rebello's non-fiction book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. The film centres on the pair's relationship during the making of Psycho, a controversial horror film that became one of the most acclaimed and influential works in the filmmaker's career. It became a moderate arthouse success and garnered a lukewarm critical response from critics, who felt that it suffered from "tonal inconsistency and a lack of truly insightful retrospection." Mirren was universally praised, however, with Roger Ebert noting that the film depended most on her portrayal, which he found to be "warm and effective". Her other film that year was The Door, a claustrophobic drama film directed by István Szabó, based on the Hungarian novel of the same name. Set at the height of communist rule in 1960s Hungary, the story of the adaptation centres on the abrasive influence that a mysterious housekeeper wields over her employer and successful novelist, played Martina Gedeck. Mirren found the role "difficult to play" and cited doing it as "one of the hardest things [she has] ever done".

The following year, Mirren replaced Bette Midler in David Mamet's biographical television film Phil Spector about the American musician. The HBO film focuses on the relationship between Spector and his defence attorney Linda Kenney Baden, played by Mirren, during the first of his two murder trials for the death in 2003 of Lana Clarkson in his California mansion. Spector received largely mixed to positive reviews from critics, particularly for Mirren and co-star Al Pacino's performances, and was nominated for eleven Primetime Emmy Awards, also winning Mirren a Screen Actors Guild Award at the 20th awards ceremony. The film drew criticism both from Clarkson's family and friends, who charged that the suicide defence was given more merit than it deserved, and from Spector's wife, who argued that Spector was portrayed as a "foul-mouthed megalomaniac" and a "minotaur". Also in 2013, Mirren voiced the character of Dean Abigail Hardscrabble in Pixar's computer-animated comedy film Monsters University, which grossed $743 million against its estimated budget of $200 million, and reprised her role in the sequel film Red 2. The action comedy received a mixed reviews from film critics, who called it a "lackadaisical sequel", but became another commercial success, making over $140 million worldwide.

Mirren's only film of 2014 was the comedy-drama The Hundred-Foot Journey opposite the Indian actor Om Puri. Directed by Lasse Hallström and produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, the film is based on Richard C. Morais's 2010 novel with the same name and tells the story of a feud between two adjacent restaurants in a French town. Mirren garnered largely positive reviews for her performance of a snobby restaurateur, a role which she accepted as she was keen to play a French character, reflecting her "pathetic attempt at being a French actress." The film earned her another Golden Globe nomination and became a modest commercial success, grossing $88.9 million worldwide.

2015–present

In 2015, Mirren reunited with her former assistant Simon Curtis on Woman in Gold, co-starring Ryan Reynolds. The film was based on the true story of Jewish refugee Maria Altmann who, together with her young lawyer Randy Schoenberg, fought the Austrian government to be reunited with Gustav Klimt's painting of her aunt, the famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. The film received mixed reviews from critics, although Mirren and Reynold's performances were widely praised. A commercial success, Woman in Gold became one of the highest-grossing specialty films of the year. The same year, Mirren appeared in Gavin Hood's thriller Eye in the Sky (2015), in which she played as a military intelligence officer who leads a secret drone mission to capture a terrorist group living in Nairobi, Kenya. Mirren's last film that year was Jay Roach's biographical drama Trumbo, co-starring Bryan Cranston and Diane Lane. The actor played Hedda Hopper, the famous actor and gossip columnist, in the film, which received generally positive reviews from critics and garnered her a 14th Golden Globe nomination.

Mirren's only film of 2016 was Collateral Beauty, directed by David Frankel. Co-Starring Will Smith, Keira Knightley, and Kate Winslet, the ensemble drama follows a man who copes with his daughter's death by writing letters to time, death, and love. The film earned largely negative reviews from critics, who called it "well-meaning but fundamentally flawed." In 2017, Mirren narrated Cries from Syria, a documentary film about the Syrian Civil War, directed by Evgeny Afineevsky. Also that year, she made an uncredited cameo appearance in F. Gary Gray's The Fate of the Furious, the eighth instalment in the Fast & Furious franchise, playing Magdalene, the mother of Owen and Deckard Shaw. Mirren had a larger role in director Paolo Virzì's English-language debut The Leisure Seeker, based on the 2009 novel of the same name. On set, she was reunited with Donald Sutherland with whom she had not worked again since Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990), portraying a terminally ill couple who escape from their retirement home and take one last cross-country adventure in a vintage van. At the 75th awards ceremony, Mirren received her 15th Golden Globe nomination.

In 2018, Mirren portrayed heiress Sarah Winchester in the supernatural horror film Winchester, directed by The Spierig Brothers. In the same year, she starred as Mother Ginger in Disney's adaptation of The Nutcracker, titled The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston. In 2019, she appeared in the ensemble film Berlin, I Love You, the French crime thriller film Anna, directed and written by Luc Besson, and co-starred in the Fast and the Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw. In March 2021, she was cast as the villain Hespera in the superhero film Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

Mirren portrayed Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, in a 2023 biopic entitled Golda. Reviewing the film in Variety, Owen Gleiberman wrote that "Mirren makes her terse, decisive, and ferociously alive." She also appeared in the 2022 music video for Kendrick Lamar's "Count Me Out" as a therapist.

Television career

Prime Suspect
Mirren is known for her role as detective Jane Tennison in the widely viewed Prime Suspect, a multiple award-winning television drama series that was noted for its high quality and popularity. Her portrayal of Tennison won her three consecutive British Academy Television Awards for Best Actress between 1992 and 1994 (making her one of four actors to have received three consecutive BAFTA TV Awards for a role, alongside Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters and Michael Gambon). Primarily due to Prime Suspect, in 2006 Mirren came 29th on ITV's poll of TV's 50 Greatest Stars voted by the British public.

Other roles
Mirren's other television performances include Cousin Bette (1971); As You Like It (1979); Blue Remembered Hills (1979); The Twilight Zone episode "Dead Woman's Shoes" (1985); The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999), where her performance won her an Emmy; Door to Door (2002); and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003). In 1976, she appeared with Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates and Malcolm McDowell in a production of Harold Pinter's The Collection as part of the Laurence Olivier Presents series. She also played Queen Elizabeth I in 2005, in the television serial Elizabeth I, for Channel 4 and HBO, for which she received an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Mirren won another Emmy Award on 16 September 2007 for her role in Prime Suspect: The Final Act on PBS in the same category as in 2006. Mirren hosted Saturday Night Live on 9 April 2011. In 2022, she portrayed Cara Dutton in the Yellowstone spinoff 1923, which also featured Harrison Ford and Timothy Dalton.

Personal life

Mirren lived with Northern Irish actor Liam Neeson during the early 1980s; they met while working on Excalibur (1981). When interviewed by James Lipton for Inside the Actors Studio, Neeson said Mirren was instrumental in his getting an agent.

Mirren began dating American director Taylor Hackford in 1986. They were married on 31 December 1997 at the Ardersier Parish Church near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. They met on the set of White Nights (1985). It is her first marriage and his third. (He has two children from his previous marriages.) She has no children, and has stated that she has "no maternal instinct whatsoever".

Mirren's autobiography, In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures, was published in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in September 2007. Reviewing for The Stage, John Thaxter wrote: "Sumptuously illustrated, at first sight it looks like another of those photo albums of the stars. But between the pictures there are almost 200 pages of densely printed text, an unusually frank story of her private and professional life, mainly in the theatre, the words clearly Mirren's own, delivered with forthright candour."

In 1990, Mirren said in an interview that she was an atheist. In the August 2011 issue of Esquire, she said, "I am quite spiritual. I believed in fairies when I was a child. I still do sort of believe in the fairies. And the leprechauns. But I don't believe in God."

In a 2008 interview with GQ, Mirren revealed she was date raped as a student, and had often taken cocaine at parties in her twenties and until the 1980s. She stopped using it after reading that Klaus Barbie made a living from cocaine dealing.

On 11 May 2010, Mirren attended the unveiling of her waxwork at Madame Tussauds in London. In 2012, she was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admired. In 2010, she was named Sexiest Woman Alive by Esquire, and in a 2011 photo shoot for the magazine, she stripped down and covered up with the Union Jack.

In 2013, Mirren was announced as one of several new models for Marks & Spencer's "Womanism" campaign. Subtitled "Britain's leading ladies", the campaign featured Mirren alongside British women from various fields, including pop singer Ellie Goulding, double Olympic gold medal-winning boxer Nicola Adams, and writer Monica Ali. In March 2013, The Guardian listed Mirren as one of the 50 Best-Dressed Over 50.

She told the Radio Times, "I'm a naturist at heart. I love being on beaches where everyone is naked. Ugly people, beautiful people, old people, whatever. It's so unisexual and so liberating." In 2004, she was named Naturist of the Year by British Naturism. She said: "Many thanks to British Naturism for this great honour. I do believe in naturism and am my happiest on a nude beach with people of all ages and races!"

In 2006, Mirren stated that she was never a member of any political party. Mirren became a U.S. citizen in 2017 and voted in her first U.S. election in 2020. She supported Patricia Ackerman in her campaign against Mark Amodei in .

In April 2021, she took part in the music video "La Vacinada" (meaning the vaccinated woman in broken Spanish language) of Italian comedian and singer Checco Zalone.
In the song and video, Zalone jokes about the fact that, in times of Covid-19 pandemic, it is safer to have an affair with someone who has already been vaccinated against the virus, and as the elderly get vaccinated first, an older partner (played by Mirren in the video) is now the best choice.

Acting credits

Awards and honours

Among her major competitive awards, Mirren has won one Academy Award, four BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, five Emmy Awards, and one Tony Award. Her numerous honorary awards include the BAFTA Fellowship from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Gala Tribute presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

In the Queen's 2003 Birthday Honours, Mirren was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to drama, with investiture taking place at Buckingham Palace in December. In January 2009, Mirren was named on The Times' list of the top 10 British actresses of all time. The list included Julie Andrews, Helena Bonham Carter, Judi Dench and Audrey Hepburn.

Bibliography

See also
 List of British actors
 List of British Academy Award nominees and winners
 List of actors with Academy Award nominations
 List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories

References

Further reading
  A survey of the actor's early career.

External links

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Helen Mirren


Locharbriggs is a veelage in the historical coonty o Dumfriesshire in Dumfries an Gallowa, Scotland. It is locatit near the Lochar Watter, 2.7 mile nor'nor'east o the toun o Dumfries. It wis ane o several veelages that stuid on the edge o Lochar Moss that wis lairgely reclaimt in the 19t century. Accordin til the 2011 Census, the Locharbriggs quarter (that includes neebourin Heathhall) was 6,031.

Locharbriggs is kent for the quarrelin o kenspeckle reid saundstane that his been uised for biggins in touns and ceetys includin Dumfries, Glesga, an Edinburgh. The stane his an aw been exportit forder afield, includin for the biggin o the steps o the Statue o Leeberty in New York Ceety in the Unitit States. Anely ae quarrel noo remeens acteeve.

The veelage's amenities include bus services, three local shaps, a public hoose (the Lochar Inn), a social club, a Chinese cairy-oot, a fish an chip shap, hairdressers, a community center. a leebrary, and a primary schuil.

References

Veelages in Dumfries an Gallowa
Dumfries an Gallowa
Places o Scotland

Locharbriggs


The distinction between typical and maximum performance is one way to classify job performance in industrial/organizational psychology. Typical performance is how an employee performs on a regular basis, while maximum performance is how one performs when exerting as much effort as possible.

Workers usually exhibit maximum performance when they are being observed. Therefore, some conditions that tend to foster maximum performance include work samples (often given to a potential employee during an interview), manager evaluations, and job knowledge tests.  The results from these situations are the ones that are most accessible to supervisors; however, they are usually not reflected in an employee's typical, or day-to-day, performance.  This dichotomy makes it harder for managers to have an accurate picture of how an employee will typically act on the job.  Therefore, an example of the importance of this distinction can be seen when a manager hires an employee based on high performance during an interview; the manager is essentially hiring the employee based on viewing their maximum performance, which may not be representative of their typical performance. Additionally, this distinction has led some organizations to take measures to get their employees to perform at their maximum level more often.

Characteristics
Psychological tests are broadly divided by the British Psychological Society into the following two types.
Test of typical performance. In this case, an individual's performance is assessed according to a given situation. Answers are not right or wrong, but identify choices, preferences and strengths of feeling.
Test of maximum performance: These assess the individual's ability to perform effectively under standard conditions. Performance on these tests, which includes ability and aptitude tests, can be judged as right or wrong. Ability tests come in many different forms and may test a general intellectual functioning or a specific ability.

Both typical and maximum performances are characterized by different conditions.  Managers and organizations should be aware of these so that they are able to identify whether an employee is performing at a typical or maximum level.

Sackett, Zedeck, and Fogli, the researchers who first studied the typical/maximum distinction in 1988, proposed that several conditions must be present for maximum performance to occur:
a. the individual must be aware that they are being observed;
b. the individual must be instructed to maximize their effort; and
c. the measure of performance must occur over a short period of time so that the individual can remain focused on the appropriate goal.

Alternatively, typical performance would occur in situations where the individual is not aware of evaluation, is not consciously attempting their best performance, and is monitored over a long period of time.

More recently, Sackett elaborated on the definition of maximum performance, saying that one can view it as the level of performance an employee can "produce on demand" if exerting maximum effort for a short period of time.  This means that maximum performance cannot be due purely to luck or chance.  As an example, he says that when concentrating, he could make 7 of 10 free throws. But, if he has a hot streak and makes 10 baskets in a row, this wouldn't be maximum performance because it was probably just due to luck.

Original findings
The original research on typical and maximum performance studied supermarket employees scanning items at a cash register. Typical performance was determined by the average number of items scanned and the number of voids per shift.  Maximum performance was calculated according to the speed and accuracy of several timed observation periods.  The researchers found that those two measures were not statistically related, suggesting that typical and maximum performance are actually distinct categorizations.

Confirming research
Continued support has been found for the typical vs. maximum performance distinction since the initial supermarket study.  In one study looking at antecedents of the two types of performance, statistical analyses revealed that typical and maximum performance are conceptually different variables.   In addition, other studies have revealed that typical and maximum performances do not share the same antecedents, which suggests that these are two separate forms of performance.

Components
Job performance is viewed as an employee's results, determined by their combined intelligence and motivation.  Since motivation is dependent on an individual's choices, one can control the direction, level, and persistence they put into a task.  Intelligence, however, is stable and not under personal control.

Motivation and intelligence
All tasks require some form of ability and motivation; however, Sackett and colleagues hypothesized that the difference between typical and maximum performance is determined by a combination of these two factors.  They expected that maximum performance is primarily determined by the intelligence of an individual.  Since maximum performance occurs when the individual is highly motivated to perform well, the impact of intelligence is higher under these conditions.  Everyone under this condition would be exerting the maximum amount, so the difference between individuals lies in their ability.  In typical performance, both intelligence and motivation are thought to influence the quality of an employee's job performance.  However, motivation is believed to be the more influential factor in this situation.

Research has investigated the strength of these original theories driving typical and maximum performance. A recent study confirmed Sackett and colleagues' ideas, finding that maximum performance was related to the employee's knowledge of the job (e.g., intelligence), while typical performance was related to persistence, self-efficacy, and other measures of motivation.

Antecedents
Because maximum performance can be misleading, it is important for managers to be able to recognize the antecedents of both maximum and typical performances. This can further allow them to recognize when they are most likely to observe either type of performance.

Intelligence
Since all individuals in a maximum performance situation are expected to have similarly high levels of motivation, the differences in their performance should be primarily based on the differing ability of each person.  Following these thoughts, researchers have hypothesized that intelligence would be predictive of maximum performance.  A few studies have supported this thought, finding that intelligence is more highly related with maximum performance than it is typical performance.

Personality
Researchers have hypothesized that typical performance would be predicted by personality factors, since much of the variability in this type of performance is controlled by an individual and their exertion of effort.  Specifically, neuroticism and conscientiousness have been believed to be the personality factors that contribute to motivation, since neuroticism is related to self-esteem and confidence, and conscientiousness is related to perseverance and desire to achieve.  This idea has received mixed results in the research.  A study by Ployhart and colleagues found that the personality factors of neuroticism and extroversion significantly predicted typical performance, and extroversion and openness significantly predicted maximum performance. This research appears to indicate that personality is predictive of both types of performance.   A separate study, however, found slightly different results, concluding that overall personality is more predictive of typical performance, while intelligence is still the best predictor of maximum performance.

Honesty
Many organizations give tests to potential employees during the interview process to determine their job knowledge, overall intelligence, or honesty, and use these to predict how the employee will perform if hired.  Research has touched on how maximum performance can be predicted by these tests.  For example, one tool is the integrity test, which is a test that attempts to assess whether potential employees will engage in deviant behavior on the job.  Examples of such behavior can range from gossiping about a co-worker to stealing money from the organization.  Researchers have linked integrity testing to maximum performance because they hypothesize that integrity levels will determine differences in how individuals perform their job, differences which can affect maximum performance in particular.  Results obtained by Ones & Viswesvaran supported the use of integrity testing in predicting maximum performance, but also mentioned that job knowledge tests predicted maximum performance as well.  Integrity tests are related to the personality factor of conscientiousness, which, as mentioned previously, has not been shown to be related to maximum performance.

Race
Research has also investigated racial differences in typical and maximum performance.  Traditionally, studies have found that minority groups, specifically African Americans, score lower than Whites on intelligence tests,  but that personality tests are less biased when predicting performance.  As mentioned previously, typical performance has been linked to personality, and maximum performance has been linked to intelligence.  Therefore, researchers expected African Americans to exhibit lower levels of maximum performance than Whites, with both ethnic groups showing similar levels of typical performance.  However, a study by DuBois and colleagues found just the opposite. Whites outperformed African Americans when they observed typical performance; whereas, the difference was much less pronounced when they examined maximum performance.  While this should not impact selection of employees, managers should be aware of the trend when observing performance.

Purpose of distinction
Distinguishing between typical and maximum performance can have both theoretical implications for researchers and practical purposes for organizations.

Academic implications
Conceptually, the different types of performance could have different predictors, which will affect research in this domain. For example, many studies have found differences in performance ratings depending on whether the rater is a supervisor or a peer. The typical/maximum distinction could explain this difference if, for instance, supervisors observe more maximum performance while peers observe more typical performance.

Practical implications
On the practical side, the typical/maximum distinction can be important when organizations hire new employees. For instance, even though many companies intend to evaluate what an individual's typical performance would be when making a hiring decision, often organizations use measures that should be associated with maximum performance. These common evaluations include assessment centers, intelligence tests, and situational interviews.

Very little research has attempted to look at how various selection tools can predict an employee's behavior with regard to typical and maximum performance; however, one recent study did focus on behavior description interviews and situational interviews. Behavior description interviews ask applicants to describe past behavior related to specific aspects of the job, while situational interviews have applicants respond to hypothetical job-related dilemmas. Klehe and Latham found that both the behavior description interview and the situational interview predicted typical performance, and the situational interview also predicted maximum performance.  While many researchers have expressed concerns about using these tools to predict typical performance, this study suggests that they may actually be quite useful.

Another practical implication of this distinction is the effect it has on employee compensation. Managers may value typical and maximum performance differently, resulting in different rewards. Research suggests that both typical and maximum predict compensation levels, but organizations should ensure that this is the practice they wish to employ.

Unanswered questions
While there have been advances in typical vs. maximum performance theory since Sackett and colleagues' seminal paper, studies on this topic have been limited and many questions are still unanswered.  In focusing on the antecedents of both performance types, conflicting research has prohibited researchers from drawing concrete conclusions as to how to forecast employees' potential performances.  Specifically, there has not been consistent support for either personality as an antecedent of typical performance or intelligence as an antecedent of maximum performance.  In addition, very few other antecedents have been suggested as relating to either type of performance.

Another unanswered question is the time period that may elapse when studying maximum and typical performance.  As mentioned, a requirement of maximum performance is that it must be observed over a "short period of time," whereas typical performance is observed over an extended period of time.  However, Sackett and other researchers have left the exact duration requirements vague. Future research could examine where the cutoff point between typical and maximum performance lies.

Summary
The distinction between typical and maximum performance has been evident for the past 20 years. Research shows that employees perform at a higher level when they are being temporarily observed compared to other times. The level of typical performance one will usually exhibit, and the level of maximum performance one can achieve, both seem to have particular antecedents. These may include intelligence, personality, honesty, and race. However, further research is needed to confirm and expand upon these findings.

References

Human resource management
Industrial and organizational psychology

Typical versus maximum performance


Robert D. Thompson (born April 1953) is the founder and president of Family Harvest International, a worldwide network of Christian congregations.  He is the founder of Family Harvest Church in Tinley Park, Illinois, a racially diverse church with over 4,000 members.

Early life
Thompson grew up in Oak Lawn, Illinois where he was raised a Roman Catholic and worked for United Parcel Service for the majority of his early adulthood. He moved to Homer Township, Illinois, where he sought "practical answers to life's problems and a real personal relationship with Jesus Christ", and began considering other denominations. He stated that he had a transformative experience on October 28, 1975, where he was "unplugged and reengineered and then plugged in again to Christ" and became a Baptist for several years.

Thompson was given an honorary doctoral degree from Life Christian University, an unaccredited institution and diploma mill, based  in Tampa, Florida.

Church leadership
As an ordained minister, Thompson founded Midwest Christian Center in 1983, which later grew into a large worship center. He remained the pastor of the center through the late 1990s. He also pastored the House of Glory church in the 1980s, in Orland Park, Illinois, and held regular Bible study groups. It was during these study groups in 1999 where the name "Family Harvest" was conceived.

Thompson is the founder  of the nondenominational Family Harvest Church in Tinley Park, Illinois, a member of the Family Harvest International network. Family Harvest Church, which can hold over 3,000 congregants in one service, has been called a megachurch, noted for its theater chairs, projection screens, polished singing performances, stage lighting, amplified sound, and TV and web shows. In 2004, the church had nearly $10 million in assets.

Church activities
In 1986, in an effort to promote that Halloween is "historically evil" and harmful to children, Thompson's church scheduled a "Hallelujah Party" in its place on October 31. The church has made it an annual tradition ever since.

Family Harvest Church's ministers preached regularly about the risk of a "Y2K apocalypse" during 1998, relating it to Thompson's published interpretation of the Bible. On January 2, 2000, with Y2K essentially a nonevent, pastor Rev. Doug Boettcher's message was about not letting go of one's preparations, urging members of the Family Harvest Church to be prepared "for any kind of natural disaster" and to help their neighbors in such a situation; but many locals had already returned generators and space heaters the day before.

In 2005, Family Harvest Church opposed Tinley Park's decision to zone an off-track betting facility, as destructive of local ideals.

For Christmas 2005, Thompson arranged the donation of over 100,000 articles of clothing, toys, and other goods to Miracle Centre Cathedral, a Ugandan cathedral run by senior pastor Robert Kayanja that is claimed to be the biggest auditorium in East Africa. The items were distributed to displaced persons' camps and orphanages in northern Uganda.

In 2009, Thompson founded "City Harvest", a Family Harvest Church ministry in northwest suburban Chicago.

In early 2011, the Robb Thompson Ministries hosted the "Dancing for the Stars" dinner-dance fundraising event in Orland Hills, Illinois. The proceeds of the event were to go to underprivileged children around the world and to funding Family Harvest's global missions. Over 400 attended the event which helped raise $25,000. With these funds, two medical and dental trips are being organized in 2011, to the Petén Jungle in Guatemala and later to Haiti, where children, orphans and adults will be offered free medical and dental checkups and treatment. The ministries also announced that a portion of the funds will be donated to help Japan after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

International College of Excellence
Robb Thompson is Founder of the International College of Excellence, a Christian university dedicated to teaching and training of new pastors "to maximize their personal potential and equipping tomorrow's leaders". He serves as the institution's president. The college is headquartered in Tinley Park, Illinois, a suburb south of Chicago.

Bibliography

References

External links
RobbThompson.com
FHC Website:

American Christian clergy
Living people
1953 births
People from Oak Lawn, Illinois
People from Tinley Park, Illinois
People from Will County, Illinois

Robb Thompson


A vacuum insulated evaporator (VIE) is a form of pressure vessel that allows the bulk storage of cryogenic liquids including oxygen, nitrogen and argon for industrial processes and medical applications.

The purpose of the vacuum insulation is to prevent heat transfer between the inner shell, which holds the liquid, and surrounding atmosphere. Without functioning insulation, the stored liquid will rapidly warm and undergo a phase transition to gas, increasing significantly in volume and potentially causing a catastrophic failure to the vessel due to an increase in pressure. To combat such an event, VIEs are installed with a pressure safety valve.

To remain a liquid, the vessel contents must be kept at or below its critical temperature. The critical temperature of oxygen is −118 °C; above this temperature, applying more pressure will not result in a liquid, but rather a supercritical fluid.

References

Pressure vessels
Medical equipment

Vacuum insulated evaporator


Swampoodle Grounds aka Capitol Park (II) was the home of the Washington Nationals baseball team of the National League from 1886 to 1889. The name refers to the one-time Swampoodle neighborhood of Washington.

The ballfield was located on a block bounded by North Capitol Street NE and tracks (west); F Street NE (south); Delaware Avenue NE (east); and G Street NE (north); a few blocks north of the Capitol building. Spectators faced toward the south and could see the Capitol dome. They could also see the McDowell and Sons Feed Mill, visible behind right field in the picture, and which was across F Street to the south.

The club moved a few blocks north, from Capitol Park (I) to the Swampoodle location, upon joining the National League. Local papers reported that the new grounds had more space and a more favorable lease. The papers often referred to the new grounds as Capitol Park, even as the previous Capitol Park was still in use, under the same name, for various types of entertainment. When referencing the previous park, the reports would general specify its location, to minimize possible confusion.

Portions of the site were eventually annexed as the site of the Union Station and of the Main Post Office, which is now the National Postal Museum.

Swampoodle Grounds held 6,000. The Washington Statesmen folded after the end of the 1889 season.

External links
Swampoodle Grounds at Project Ballpark
History of the McDowell plant

Baseball venues in Washington, D.C.
Defunct baseball venues in the United States
Defunct sports venues in Washington, D.C.
Demolished buildings and structures in Washington, D.C.
Demolished sports venues in the United States
History of Washington, D.C.
Sports venues completed in 1886
1886 establishments in Washington, D.C.

Swampoodle Grounds


The hypersonic effect is a phenomenon reported in a controversial scientific study by Tsutomu Oohashi et al., which claims that, although humans cannot consciously hear ultrasound (sounds at frequencies above approximately 20 kHz), the presence or absence of those frequencies has a measurable effect on their physiological and psychological reactions.

Numerous other studies have contradicted the portion of the results relating to the subjective reaction to high-frequency audio, finding that people who have "good ears"   listening to Super Audio CDs and high resolution DVD-Audio recordings on high fidelity systems capable of reproducing sounds up to 30 kHz cannot tell the difference between high resolution audio and the normal CD sampling rate of 44.1 kHz.

Favoring evidence
In research published in 2000 in the Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers described a series of objective and subjective experiments in which subjects were played music, sometimes containing high-frequency components (HFCs) above 25 kHz and sometimes not. The subjects could not consciously tell the difference, but when played music with the HFCs they showed differences measured in two ways:

 EEG monitoring of their brain activity showed statistically significant enhancement in alpha-wave activity
 The subjects preferred the music with the HFCs

No effect was detected on listeners in the study when only the ultrasonic (frequencies higher than 24 kHz) portion of the test material was played for test subjects; the demonstrated effect was only present when comparing full-bandwidth to bandwidth-limited material.

It is a common understanding in psychoacoustics that the ear cannot respond to sounds at such high frequency via an air-conduction pathway, so one question that this research raised was: does the hypersonic effect occur via the "ordinary" route of sound travelling through the air passage in the ear, or in some other way? A peer-reviewed study in 2006 seemed to confirm the second of these options, by testing the different effect of HFCs when presented via loudspeakers or via headphones — the hypersonic effect did not occur when the HFCs were presented via headphones.

The 2006 study also investigated the comfortable listening level (CLL) of music with and without HFCs, an alternative way of measuring subject response to the sound. The CLL for the music with HFCs was higher than that for the music without HFCs - this provides a quantitative way to demonstrate general listener preference for the music with HFCs.

Contrary evidence
There are contradictions in Oohashi's results.
 No effect was detected on listeners in the Oohashi study when only the ultrasonic (frequencies higher than 24 kHz) portion of the test material was played for test subjects. The demonstrated effect was only present when comparing full-bandwidth to bandwidth-limited material.
 Bandwidth-limited material was more highly regarded by test subjects when full-bandwidth material was played immediately prior.

Researches from NHK laboratory have attempted carefully but unsuccessfully to reproduce Oohashi's results.

480 man-hours of listening tests conducted at the London AES convention in 1980 by Laurie Finchman of KEF concluded that subjects could not distinguish a 20 kHz band limited version of a test signal from the original played back on equipment capable of reproducing sound up to 40 kHz.

System non-linearities (present to varying degrees in all audio reproduction electronics, loudspeakers, etc.) are known to produce lower-frequency intermodulation products when the system is stimulated with high frequency signals. It is suggested that this mechanism could produce signals in the audible range that allow listeners to distinguish the signals.  Artifacts like this are a common problem with PC-based hearing self-tests, for instance.

In September 2007, two members of the Boston Audio Society and the Audio Engineering Society published their study in which about half of the 554 double-blind ABX test listening trials made by 60 respondents showed the correct identification of high-resolution or CD-standard sampling rate. The results were no better than flipping a coin, producing 274 correct identifications (49.5% success), and it would have required at least 301 correct identifications given 554 trials (a modest 54.3% success rate) to exceed a 95% statistical confidence of audible difference, which will happen about once in twenty such tests by chance alone.

Counter-contrary evidence
Criticism of Oohashi's studies has been directed primarily at the conclusions regarding listener's preferences the test material; there has been little criticism aimed at the physiological aspect of the studies.

Studies cited as contrary evidence did not address the physiological brain response to high-frequency audio, only the subject's conscious response to it. Further investigation of the observed physiological response appears to show that the ear alone does not produce the extra brain waves,  but when the body is exposed to high-frequency sound it gives some brain stimulus.

See also
 Hypersonic flight
 Hypersonic speed
 Sound from ultrasound (known commercially as HyperSonic Sound)
 Ultrasonic hearing

References

Acoustics
Hearing
Ultrasound

Hypersonic effect


Mark James Keough (born September 30, 1953) is a businessman and a Christian pastor, radio host, and educator from The Woodlands, Texas, who has been serving as the Montgomery County County Judge since January 2019. He previously served as a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives for District 15 in suburban Montgomery County north of Houston. On May 31, 2017, Keough announced that he would not be running for re-election in 2018 to the Texas House but would instead contest the office of County Judge. On November 6, 2018, Keough defeated Democrat Jay Stittleburg by a three-to-one margin.

Background

Keough received a bachelor's degree from Cedarville University, a private institution in Cedarville, Ohio. He obtained master's degrees from Dallas Theological Seminary and Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana. He also attended the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more than two decades, Keough was engaged in automobile sales, including fourteen years as the general sales manager of Northside Lexus in north Harris County. He left the automobile business to establish Mark Keough Ministries, which includes the Pathfinders Fellowship of The Woodlands. In addition to his continuing work as a pastor of The Woodlands Bible Church and radio host, he has been the headmaster of a private Christian school.

Political life

Texas House district 15
On March 4, 2014, Keough won the Republican nomination to replace one-term Representative Steve Toth. Keough polled 57% of the vote against his intraparty opponent, Bruce Tough, who was the chairman of The Woodlands township board of directors, who received 43%. Keough was then unopposed in the heavily Republican district in the November 4, 2014, general election.

Keough is a vocal opponent of separation of church and state, a concept that he does not find in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

In 2015, Keough introduced legislation to establish statewide victim-offender mediation for punishments with the goal of reducing recidivism in prisons. A member of the National Rifle Association, Keough opposed gun-free zones in schools and churches. He would allow licensed gun owners to carry weapons in such zones. Keough worked to repeal of margins taxes on small businesses. He worked to upgrade the penalties for the possession of child pornography from a third-degree to a second-degree felony. He proposed the abolition of  sanctuary cities, those in which municipalities forbid the use of any local funds to enforce national immigration laws.

Keough was unopposed in both the 2016 Republican primary and the 2016 general election, winning another two year term to the Texas legislature.

Montgomery County Judge
Keough announced on May 31, 2017, he would not seek re-election to the Texas House but instead run against incumbent Montgomery County Judge Craig Doyal.  Doyal and others in Montgomery County were indicted on June 24, 2016, on the charge of conspiring to circumvent the Texas Open Meetings Act.  Doyal has also been accused of misusing county funds to support his re-election and recording campaign videos in county offices in violation of state law.  Doyal also has multiple accusations of nepotism, conflicts of interest, and mismanagement pending against him. On March 6, 2018, Keough defeated Doyal in the Republican primary, 57% to 42%. Keough defeated Democrat Jay Stittleburg in the general election held on November 6, 2018, 75% to 25%.

Keough was sworn in as County Judge on January 2, 2019 and in the first court meeting after he took office he reduced his own salary by 12% as he promised to do during his election campaign.

Personal life
Keough and his wife, the former Kimberly "Kim" Sparks, have four children.

Keough was charged with a DWI on September 10, 2020. He was driving with zolpidem (also known as Ambien) and amphetamine in his blood. Ambien is a sleep aid. Keough hit a private individual's car and then hit a police vehicle. Passengers in both vehicles that he hit were injured. The passenger injured stated that he had to receive special treatment for spinal injuries. The deputy constable's spine was injured permanently and he had to resign from service. Both cars Keough hit were totaled. Keough's driver's license was ordered suspended for 90 days, he was required to pay a $2,000 fine, and court fees.

Note

Election results
2018 general election for Montgomery County, Texas County Judge

2018 Republican primary election for Montgomery County, Texas County Judge

2014 general election for Texas 15th district state representative

References

External links
 Campaign website
 State legislative page
 Mark Keough at the Texas Tribune

|-

1953 births
Living people
Republican Party members of the Texas House of Representatives
County judges in Texas
People from The Woodlands, Texas
Businesspeople from Texas
American Christian clergy
Protestant religious leaders
American radio personalities
Cedarville University alumni
Dallas Theological Seminary alumni
Grace Theological Seminary alumni
21st-century American politicians

Mark Keough


Brainbow is a process by which individual neurons in the brain can be distinguished from neighboring neurons using fluorescent proteins. By randomly expressing different ratios of red, green, and blue derivatives of green fluorescent protein in individual neurons, it is possible to flag each neuron with a distinctive color. This process has been a major contribution to the field of neural connectomics.

The technique was originally developed in 2007 by a team led by Jeff W. Lichtman and Joshua R. Sanes, both at Harvard University. The original technique has recently been adapted for use with other model research organisms including the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), zebrafish (Danio rerio), and Arabidopsis thaliana.

While earlier labeling techniques allowed for the mapping of only a few neurons, this new method allows more than 100 differently mapped neurons to be simultaneously and differentially illuminated in this manner. This leads to its characteristic multicolored appearance on imaging, earning its name and winning awards in science photography competitions.

History and development

Brainbow was initially developed by Jeff W. Lichtman and Joshua R. Sanes at Washington University in St. Louis, though they have moved to Harvard University since then. The team constructed Brainbow using a two-step process: first, a specific genetic construct was generated that could be recombined in multiple arrangements to produce one of either three or four colors based on the particular fluorescent proteins (XFPs) being implemented.  Next, multiple copies of the same transgenic construct were inserted into the genome of the target species, resulting in the random expression of different XFP ratios and subsequently causing different cells to exhibit a variety of colorful hues.

Brainbow was originally created as an improvement over more traditional neuroimaging techniques, such as Golgi staining and dye injection, both of which presented severe limitations to researchers in their ability to visualize the intricate architecture of neural circuitry in the brain.  While older techniques were only able to stain cells with a constricted range of colors, often utilizing bi- and tri-color transgenic mice to unveil limited information in regards to neuronal structures, Brainbow is much more flexible in that it has the capacity to fluorescently label individual neurons with up to approximately 100 different hues so that scientists can identify and even differentiate between dendritic and axonal processes.  By revealing such detailed information about neuronal connectivity and patterns, sometimes even in vivo, scientists are often able to infer information regarding neuronal interactions and their subsequent impact upon behavior and function.  Thus, Brainbow filled the void left by previous neuroimaging methods.

With the recent advent of Brainbow in neuroscience, researchers are now able to construct specific maps of neural circuits and better investigate how these relate to various mental activities and their connected behaviors (i.e. Brainbow reveals information about the interconnections between neurons and their subsequent interactions that affect overall brain functionality).  As a further extrapolation of this method, Brainbow can therefore also be used to study both neurological and psychological disorders by analyzing differences in neural maps.

Methods

Brainbow techniques rely on the Cre-Lox recombination, in which the protein Cre recombinase drives inversion or excision of DNA between loxP sites.  The original Brainbow method includes both Brainbow-1 and Brainbow-2, which utilize different forms of cre/lox recombination. Brainbow-3, a modified version of Brainbow-1, was developed in 2013. For all Brainbow subtypes, the expression of a given XFP is a stochastic, or random, event.

Brainbow-1 uses DNA constructs with different fluorescent protein genes (XFPs) separated by mutant and canonical forms of loxP.  This creates a set of mutually exclusive excision possibilities, since cre-mediated recombination occurs only between identical loxP sites. After recombination occurs, the fluorescent protein that is left directly after the promoter is uniquely expressed.  Thus, a construct with four XFPs separated by three different loxP sites, three excision events, and the original construct can produce four different fluorescent proteins.

Brainbow-2 uses Cre excision and inversion to allow multiple expression possibilities in a given construct. In one DNA segment with two oppositely oriented XFPs, Cre will induce a random inversion event that leaves one fluorescent protein in the proper orientation for expression.  If two of these invertible sequences are aligned, three different inversion events are possible.  When excision events are also considered, one of four fluorescent proteins will be expressed for a given combination of Cre excisions and inversions.

Brainbow-3 retains the Brainbow-1 loxP format, but replaces the RFP, YFP, and CFP genes with mOrange2, EGFP, and mKate2. mO2, EGFP, and mK2 were chosen both because their fluorescent excitation and emission spectra overlap minimally, and because they share minimal sequence homology, allowing for the design of selective antibodies that can be used to detect them in immunohistochemical protocols. Brainbow-3 also addresses the issue of uneven filling of neurons with XFPs by using farnesylated derivatives of the XFPs, which are more evenly trafficked to neuronal membranes.

Brainbow is implemented in vivo by crossing two transgenic organism strains: one that expresses the Cre protein and another that has been transfected with several versions of a loxP/XFP construct.  Using multiple copies of the transgene allows the XFPs to combine in a way that can give one of approximately 100 different colors. Thus, each neuron is labeled with a different hue based on its given combinatorial and stochastic expression of fluorescent proteins.

In order to elucidate differential XFP expression patterns into a visible form, brain slices are imaged with confocal microscopy.  When exposed to a photon with its particular excitation wavelength, each fluorophore emits a signal that is collected into a red, green, or blue channel, and the resultant light combination is analyzed with data analysis software. Superimposition of differentially colored neurons allows visual disentanglement of complicated neural circuits.

Brainbow has predominantly been tested in mice to date; however, the basic technique described above has also been modified for use in more recent studies since the advent of the original method introduced in 2007.

Mice

The mouse brain has 75,000,000 neurons and is more similar to a human brain than drosophila and other commonly used organisms to model this technique, such as C. elegans. Mice were the first organisms in which the Brainbow method of neuroimaging was successfully employed. Livet et al. (2007) developed two versions of Brainbow mice using Brainbow-1 and Brainbow-2, which are described above. In using these methods to create a complete map and track the axons of a mouse muscle, it is necessary to collect tens of thousands of images and compile them into stacks to create a complete schematic. It is then possible to trace each motor axon and its synaptic contacts to construct a complete connectome of the muscle.

More examples of neurons examined using the Brainbow technique in transgenic mice are located in the motor nerve innervating ear muscles,  axon tracts in the brainstem, and the hippocampal dentate gyrus.

Drosophila
The complexity of the Drosophila brain, consisting of about 100,000 neurons, makes it an excellent candidate for implementing neurophysiology and neuroscience techniques like Brainbow. In fact, Stefanie Hampel et al. (2011) combined Brainbow in conjunction with genetic targeting tools to identify individual neurons within the Drosophila brain and various neuronal lineages. One of the genetic targeting tools was a GAL4/UAS binary expression system that controls the expression of UAS-Brainbow and targets the expression to small groups of neurons. Utilizing 'Flip Out' methods increased the cellular resolution of the reporter construct. The expression of fluorescent proteins, as with the original Brainbow, depended on Cre recombination corresponding with matched lox sites.  Hampel et al. (2011) also developed their own variation of Brainbow (dBrainbow), based on antibody labeling of epitopes rather than endogenous fluorescence. Two copies of their construct yield six bright, separable colors. This, along with simplifications in color assignment, enabled them to observe the trajectories of each neuron over long distances. Specifically, they traced motor neurons from the antennal lobe to neuromuscular junctions, allowing them to identify the specific muscle targets of individual neurons.

Ultimately, this technique provides the ability to efficaciously map the neuronal circuitry in Drosophila so that researchers are able to uncover more information about the brain structure of this invertebrate and how it relates to its ensuing behavior.

Limitations
As with any neuroimaging technique, Brainbow has a number of limitations that stem from the methods required to perform it. For example, the process of breeding at least two strains of transgenic animals from embryonic stem cells is both time consuming and complex. Even if two transgenic species are successfully created, not all of their offspring will show the recombination. Thus, this requires extensive planning prior to performing an experiment.

In addition, due to the random nature in the expression of the fluorescent proteins, scientists are unable to precisely control the labeling of neural circuitry, which may result in the poor identification of specific neurons.

The use of brainbow in mammalian populations is also hampered by the incredible diversity of neurons of the central nervous system. The sheer density of neurons coupled with the presence of long tracts of axons make viewing larger regions of the CNS with high resolution difficult.  Brainbow is most useful when examining single cell resolution against the background of a complex multicellular environment. However, due to the resolution limits of optical microscopy, conclusive identification of synaptic connections between neurons is not easily accomplished. This issue is somewhat avoided by the use of synaptic markers to supplement the use of optical microscopy in viewing synaptic connections.

See also

GFP
Fluorescence
Cre-Lox Recombination

References

External links
 Podcast on NPR's Science Friday
 "Brainbow" A cool use of GFP

Cell imaging
Fluorescent proteins
Neuroimaging

Brainbow


Nikita Koloff (born Nelson Scott Simpson on March 9, 1959) is an American retired professional wrestler. He is best known for his appearances with Jim Crockett Promotions and its successor, World Championship Wrestling between 1984 and 1992, where he was billed from Russia (and, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania). During his career, Koloff held championships including the NWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championship, NWA World Tag Team Championship, NWA United States Championship, NWA World Television Championship, and UWF World Television Championship. He was inducted into the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2006 and the National Wrestling Alliance Hall of Fame of 2008.

Early life
Koloff was born on March 9, 1959, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, one of four children born to Paige and Olive Simpson. When he was two years old, his father left the family, leaving his mother as a single parent. When Koloff was 10, his family relocated to the suburb of Robbinsdale. While in junior high school, Koloff began weightlifting. He attended Robbinsdale High School where he played for the Robbinsdale Robins football team as a defensive lineman and on offense was an all-conference wide receiver. His fellow students included other future professional wrestlers Barry Darsow, Brady Boone, Curt Hennig, John Nord, Rick Rude, and Tom Zenk.

Koloff graduated from high school in 1977. He enrolled in Golden Valley Lutheran College where he played college football alongside fellow future wrestler Joe "Animal" Laurinaitis. He suffered an injury playing football but rehabbed to play for Minnesota State University Moorhead where he suffered another injury.

Professional wrestling career

Jim Crockett Promotions (1984–1989)

"The Russian Nightmare" (1984–1986)
In 1984, Simpson was going to try out for the USFL when Road Warrior Animal, a professional wrestler from the Minnesota area, called him to ask him to become a professional wrestler. Simpson decided to go with wrestling and was told to shave his head bald and to show up. Jim Crockett, Jr., the promoter of the NWA's Jim Crockett Promotions, renamed him "Nikita Koloff", the Russian Nightmare, and teamed him with "uncle" Ivan Koloff and Don Kernodle, a turncoat American. Koloff was briefly trained by Eddie Sharkey. He debuted on June 5, 1984, and won his first match in 13 seconds, with the only edict from Crockett being that should Koloff trip on the ropes, he would be fired on the spot.

Koloff wrestled briefly in Puerto Rico for World Wrestling Council (WWC) and engaged in some bouts with Hercules Ayala. He returned with Ivan Koloff in 1986 and faced Invader I and Invader III at a big house show at Juan Ramon Loubriel Stadium in Bayamon.

While he learned more about the sport on the road with Ivan and Kernodle, Koloff was booked in very short matches until his skills developed. During television promos, Nikita stood behind Ivan and Kernodle with his arms folded while they took interviews. As his wrestling ability and speaking skills grew, the length of his matches and interviews grew as well. His improvement negated the need for Kernodle to continue teaming with Ivan and, shortly thereafter, the Russians turned on the American turncoat. Koloff went to great lengths to keep the "Evil Russian" gimmick as realistic as possible. He learned Russian and refused to come out of character, even when away from the ring.

With Kernodle out of the picture, Uncle Ivan Koloff introduced a new comrade named Krusher Khruschev (fellow Robbinsdale High School classmate Barry Darsow). In December 1984, Jim Crockett rewarded the Russians with the NWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championship. Three months later, on March 18, 1985, Koloff and Ivan defeated Dusty Rhodes and Manny Fernandez to win the NWA World tag team title. Ivan invoked the Freebird rule which dictated that any two of the three could defend the titles. Ivan and Krusher lost the titles to The Rock 'n' Roll Express (Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson) on July 9.

Prior to committing themselves with Jim Crocket Promotions, The Koloffs feuded with then AWA World tag team champions the Road Warriors in both the AWA and the NWA in a brutal series during 1985. One of their encounters was voted Match of the Year runner-up by the readers of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. The feud was often fought in steel cage Russia chain matches, with lights-out stipulations. The Russian 'chain match', using thicker chains than normal chain matches, was considered a Nikita Koloff specialty.

Continuing to improve, Koloff became a big enough heel to get a match against NWA World Champion Ric Flair at The Great American Bash 1985 on July 6. Koloff lost to Flair and was even attacked by a fan during the match, but he established himself as a superstar in the wrestling business. According to Koloff, it was his favourite match of his career.

The Koloffs went on to regain the NWA World Tag Team title from the Rock 'N Roll Express three months later, on October 13, but lost it to the same opponents on November 28 at StarrCade 1985 in a steel cage match.

In 1985 and 1986, Koloff wrestled several matches for Capitol Sports Promotions in Puerto Rico as part of a talent exchange, facing Hercules Ayala on several occasions. During one bout, Koloff sustained a cut to the arm when an audience member threw a spark plug at him.

In spring of 1986, Koloff started one of the biggest, most anticipated feuds in the history of Jim Crockett Promotions when he attacked NWA United States Heavyweight Champion Magnum T. A. Following an incident where Magnum hit on-screen NWA President Bob Geigel for demanding an apology after T.A. started a brawl with Nikita during a contract signing (which started when the Koloffs berated Magnum's mother, who was present), T.A. was stripped of his title. The two were then booked in a best-of-seven series, which took place during The Great American Bash 1986 tour. The winner of the series would be declared champion. Koloff and T.A. wrestled all summer, ending up tied after six matches with one no contest. The final match took place on August 17 and featured run-ins by Kruschev and Ivan and several false-finishes. Nikita defeated T.A. to win the title.

The following month, Koloff defeated Wahoo McDaniel to unify his US Title with Wahoo's NWA National Heavyweight Championship on September 28. He was readying to embark on a feud with Ron Garvin that would last through the upcoming Starrcade 1986. The idea of head booker Dusty Rhodes was for Koloff to reignite his feud with Magnum T. A. the following year. The plan called for T.A. to defeat Ric Flair for the NWA World Championship at StarrCade 86; after a short program of rematches with Flair, T. A. would begin a long program with Koloff that ran through The Great American Bash Tour of 1987. As of the beginning of October, Rhodes had not decided whether to give Koloff the title at some point during the feud.

Feud with The Four Horsemen (1986–1987)
In October 1986, Magnum T. A. was involved in a career-ending car accident. Dusty Rhodes saw an alternate opportunity. The Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev had been growing in popularity throughout the country with his political reform of Glasnost and Perestroika. The era of evil Russian heels was coming to an end. Rhodes decided to strike while the iron was hot, booking Koloff to become a face and his greatest ally against The Four Horsemen. The historic moment took place on October 24 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Rhodes needed a partner to take on Ole Anderson and J. J. Dillon in a cage match. The fans in Charlotte erupted when Koloff entered the cage to help Rhodes. Koloff stated that even though he and Magnum T. A. had a bitter rivalry, T.A. had earned his respect, and that Nikita would work to earn the respect of the American people.  This evening established Koloff as one of the top faces in the NWA.

Immediately after his face turn, Koloff resumed his quest for Ric Flair's NWA World Title and came very close to winning it on several occasions. Flair's Four Horsemen comrades bailed him out almost every time. The two fought to a double disqualification at StarrCade '86 on November 26. After StarrCade, Koloff was firmly established as one of the NWA's most popular stars. On 1987, Krusher, who left the NWA for the World Wrestling Federation, asked Koloff to join him. However, Koloff declined the offer because he felt loyalty to the promotion and he didn't want to start a new gimmick.

Throughout the early months of 1987, Koloff continued to defend the United States title against members of the Four Horsemen and Paul Jones' Army, which now included "Uncle" Ivan. In March, as part of his ongoing feud with Ivan and Dick Murdoch, Koloff's neck was "injured" by a Murdoch brainbuster on the concrete floor (of course this was a work). On April 11, Koloff and Dusty Rhodes won the second-annual Jim Crockett, Sr. Memorial Cup Tag Team Tournament, defeating the Four Horsemen team of Tully Blanchard and Lex Luger in the finals.

As the 1987 Great American Bash tour got under way, the feud between Koloff, Rhodes, The Road Warriors, and Paul Ellering versus The Four Horsemen and J. J. Dillon was booked as the centerpiece. The tour began and ended with two revolutionary matches created by Rhodes, known as WarGames: The Match Beyond. The team of The Super Powers and The Legion of Doom emerged victorious in both contests.

Also during The War Games, Flair and Blanchard reaggravated Koloff's neck injury by delivering two spike piledrivers. The worked injury set up the pretext for dropping the US Title to Lex Luger. On July 11, 1987, Koloff faced Luger in a steel cage match and was defeated after being hit with a chair. This ended Koloff's reign of nearly 11 months, which still stands today as the fifth longest U.S. title reign in the more than 33-year history of the title. Dusty Rhodes booked Koloff to rebound quickly, winning the NWA World Television Championship from Tully Blanchard on August 27.

Various feuds (1987–1989)
In the fall of 1987, Jim Crockett Promotions acquired Bill Watts' Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF). Dusty Rhodes decided which members of the UWF roster to retain and how best to use the infusion of new talent that he now had access to on an exclusive basis, beginning with a cross-promotional program between NWA Television Champion Koloff and UWF Television Champion, Terry Taylor. The feud began when Taylor, alongside his fellow members of Hot Stuff International, Inc. - Eddie Gilbert and Rick Steiner- attacked Koloff and stole his championship belt. Koloff and Taylor were booked to face each other in a unification bout at StarrCade '87, but Koloff vowed to get his TV belt back before the match. During a TBS World Championship Wrestling (WCW) broadcast leading up to what would be Jim Crockett's first foray into pay-per-view, Taylor and Gilbert jumped Koloff again, beating him unconscious, and draping his version of the TV title across his limp body. On November 26, Koloff and Taylor battled in what would be the only NWA/UWF unification bout at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago. In front of his first pay-per-view audience, Nikita became the undisputed Television Champion by defeating Taylor on November 26. He still has the UWF belt as a trophy from that night.

Koloff lost the NWA TV Title to Mike Rotunda of The Varsity Club on January 30, 1988. During this period, Koloff had altered his appearance somewhat, dropping some muscle mass (Koloff used anabolic steroids during the early part of his career but stopped when he saw where they were leading - he lost his muscle mass due to taking time off to take care of his wife, Mandy) and growing his hair out into a crewcut. He was given the singles main event when he wrestled NWA World Champion Ric Flair at the final Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup Tag Team Tournament. Koloff defeated Flair by disqualification so the title was retained by Flair. He then lost to Barry Windham in the finals of the tournament for the vacant NWA United States Championship, before beginning a feud with Al Perez and teaming with Sting to feud with the Four Horsemen. During the year, he legally changed his name to 'Nikita S. Koloff'.

In the fall of 1988, Koloff was quickly losing interest in professional wrestling due to personal reasons. His wife Mandy was suffering from Hodgkin's disease and died in the summer of 1989. After Ivan himself turned face when manager Paul Jones went against him, Koloff helped Ivan briefly against Jones' henchmen, the masked Russian Assassins, and then he took a sabbatical on November 27. A booked showdown at StarrCade '88 in December was to pit Ivan and Koloff against the Russian Assassins. Koloff's departure resulted in the Junkyard Dog substituting for him as Ivan's partner. The Russian Assassins were victorious.

Eventually, Koloff eased back into the business part-time. He returned to WCW/NWA as a special guest referee at WrestleWar '89 in  match for the NWA World Tag Team Championship between The Road Warriors and Mike Rotunda and "Dr. Death" Steve Williams. Rotunda & Williams were disqualified for attacking Koloff, and later stripped of the titles.

Despite some people's beliefs, Nikita was never offered any sort of contract with WWF. He met Vince McMahon only twice: first time while working out in a gym in Las Vegas, Nevada (they shook hands and said "hello") and again at Road Warrior Hawk's funeral.

AWA and Various promotions (1989–1990)
In late 1989, Koloff began wrestling with Verne Gagne's AWA (as a part of a talent share with the NWA) in his native Minnesota. The promotion was in its twilight and given Nikita's stature, Gagne positioned Nikita to challenge then AWA World Heavyweight Champion Larry Zbyszko almost immediately. Koloff continued wrestling in the NWA and the AWA for the remainder of the year and the first half of 1990, headlining numerous television broadcasts and Twin Wars '90, the last major event with the AWA under Gagne. Koloff also wrestled briefly in Herb Abrams' Universal Wrestling Federation, in no way affiliated with the original UWF of Bill Watts, where he reignited a feud with 'Uncle' Ivan.

World Championship Wrestling (1991-1992)
Koloff returned to WCW on February 24, 1991, at WrestleWar. He attacked Lex Luger, claiming he had "stolen" the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship from him in 1987 and that he wanted it back. At SuperBrawl I on May 19, 1991, Koloff accidentally hit Sting with a chain while interfering in a tag team match between Sting and Lex Luger and The Steiner Brothers. Koloff and Sting went on to face on another in a Russian Chain match at The Great American Bash on July 14 which was won by Koloff. The feud came to an abortive end in August 1991 when Koloff left WCW to focus on running his gym, "Nikita's Fortress of Fitness," in Concord, North Carolina.

Koloff returned to WCW in February 1992, saving Sting from an attack by The Dangerous Alliance. He explained on WCW's syndicated shows that he had seen the error of attacking Sting. At WrestleWar on May 17, 1992, Koloff teamed with Sting, Ricky Steamboat, Barry Windham, and Dustin Rhodes to face The Dangerous Alliance in a WarGames match. Koloff went on to feud with Rick Rude over Rude's WCW United States Heavyweight Championship. In late-1992, he began feuding with Big Van Vader, with the two men facing one other at Halloween Havoc on October 25. During the bout, Koloff sustained a herniated disc in his neck, leading him to retire from professional wrestling. Koloff worked some house shows against Rick Rude and Vader until his last match losing to Vader on November 8.

Retirement (1992–present)
Koloff became a born-again Christian in 1993. He now runs a ministry. He also runs his own small wrestling promotion, the Universal Wrestling Alliance UWA as an outreach of his ministry.

He made a few appearances for NWA:TNA in 2003 as a masked man called "Mr. Wrestling IV" who attacked Dusty Rhodes. He finally unmasked but ended up helping Rhodes against the Sports Entertainment Xtreme stable.

On July 15, 2006, Koloff received the Frank Gotch Award from the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame at the International Wrestling Institute and Museum in Waterloo, Iowa, for contributing to the positive public image of wrestling.

Professional wrestling persona
Koloff was originally billed as being a Russian. He was billed as the nephew of fellow faux-Russian Ivan Koloff, from whom he took his ring name. He was nicknamed "The Russian Nightmare", a play on Dusty Rhodes' nickname, "The American Dream". he was also known as "The Russian Road Warrior" due to his power and ferocity, which was compared to The Road Warriors. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Koloff was billed from Lithuania. To enhance the verisimilitude of his character, Koloff learned to speak Russian.

Koloff had an "evil" appearance with a black singlet, shaved head, and goatee. His character has been described as "wrestling's equivalent of the Drago character in Rocky IV...big, strong, scary and Russian. His finishing move was the "Russian Sickle", a clothesline.

Other media
Koloff has written three books. He has acted in a small number of films and television episodes, as well as appearing on an episode of America's Funniest People in which his daughter won the $10,000 grand prize. His character appeared in the 2004 videogame Showdown: Legends of Wrestling as well as the 2021 game Retromania Wrestling.

Bibliography
Breaking the Chains (2002)
Wrestling with Success: Developing a Championship Mentality (2004) - with Jeffrey Gitomer
Nikita: A Tale of the Ring and Redemption (2011) - with Scott Teal

Filmography

Personal life
Nikita married his first wife, Mandy Smithson, on September 20, 1988. She died from Hodgkin's disease on June 14, 1989. At her funeral he met Mandy's longtime friend and his future wife, Victoria. They married on August 17, 1990. The couple had two daughters together, Kendra, who was born in June 1992, and Kolby, who was born in May 1996, while Victoria had two daughters (Teryn and Tawni) from her previous relationship. Nikita and Victoria were divorced on April 23, 2007.

Koloff legally changed his name to Nikita Koloff in 1988.

Nikita is a member of a religious group called Fellowship of the Sword and serves as an East Coast representative.

Championships and accomplishments
George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame
 Class of 2006
Jim Crockett Promotions
NWA World Television Championship (1 time)
NWA National Heavyweight Championship (1 time)1
NWA United States Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
NWA World Tag Team Championship (Mid-Atlantic version) (2 times) – with Ivan Koloff
NWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championship (4 times) – with Ivan Koloff and Don Kernodle (1), Ivan Koloff and Krusher Khruschev (2), and Ivan Koloff and Baron von Raschke (1)
UWF World Television Championship (1 time)2
Jim Crockett, Sr. Memorial Cup Tag Team Tournament (1987) with Dusty Rhodes
National Wrestling Alliance
NWA Hall of Fame (Class of 2008)
Pro Wrestling Illustrated
PWI Feud of the Year (1987) with Dusty Rhodes and The Road Warriors vs. The Four Horsemen
PWI Most Inspirational Wrestler of the Year (1987)
1 Koloff defeated Wahoo McDaniel to unify the title with the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship. The title was also won after Georgia Championship Wrestling was purchased by Jim Crockett Promotions.
2 Koloff defeated Terry Taylor to unify the title with the NWA World Television Championship. The title was also won after Bill Watts' Universal Wrestling Federation promotion was purchased by Jim Crockett Promotions.

References

External links

1959 births
20th-century professional wrestlers
American Christian religious leaders
American male film actors
American male professional wrestlers
Faux Russian professional wrestlers
Golden Valley Lutheran Royals football players
Living people
Minnesota State–Moorhead Dragons football players
Minnesota State University Moorhead alumni
NWA National Heavyweight Champions
NWA/WCW World Television Champions
NWA/WCW/WWE United States Heavyweight Champions
Players of American football from Minnesota
Professional wrestlers from Minneapolis
WCW World Tag Team Champions

Nikita Koloff


Capistrano Francisco Heim (21 January 1934 – 24 September 2020) was an American-born Brazilian Roman Catholic bishop. Heim was born in Catskill, New York. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1965. He was bishop of the Roman Catholic Territorial Prelature of Itaituba, Brazil from 1988 until 2010.

Heim died in New York City on 24 September 2020, aged 86.

References

1934 births
2020 deaths
Brazilian Roman Catholic bishops
People from New York City

Capistrano Francisco Heim