Portal:Scientology/Selected biography
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[edit] Selected biographies list
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/1
Katherine Noelle "Katie" Holmes (born December 18, 1978) is an American actress who first achieved fame for her role as Joey Potter on The WB television teen drama Dawson's Creek from 1998 to 2003. Holmes' part on the show, only her second professional role, made her a star. Her movie roles have ranged from art house films such as The Ice Storm to thrillers such as Abandon to blockbusters such as Batman Begins but she has said many of her films were "bombs." Holmes met actor Chris Klein in 2000, they were engaged in late 2003, and ended their relationship in 2005. In early 2005 Holmes began a highly publicized relationship with actor Tom Cruise, sixteen years her senior. In June, two months after they first met, she became engaged to Cruise. Their relationship made Holmes the subject of international media attention, much of it negative, including speculation the relationship was a publicity stunt to promote the couple's films. Many reports commented negatively about the interest of Holmes, raised Roman Catholic, in Cruise's religion, Scientology. The couple announced Holmes was pregnant in October 2005; on April 18, 2006, she gave birth to Suri Cruise. On November 18, 2006, she and Cruise were married in Italy.
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/2
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (born June 12, 1941) is a multiple Grammy Award winning American jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer. Corea started his professional career in the '60s playing with trumpeter Blue Mitchell and Latin greats such as Herbie Mann, Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria. One of the earliest recordings of his playing is with Blue Mitchell's quintet on The Thing To Do. Corea is arguably best known for his work during the 1970s in the genre of jazz fusion, although his contributions to straight-ahead jazz have been tremendous. He participated in the birth of the electric fusion movement as a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, and in the 1970s formed Return to Forever. He continued to pursue other collaborations and explore various musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Among jazz pianists, Corea is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential since Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner (along with modern contemporaries Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett). His piano performance showed a similarity to Hancock; yet he maintained a distinctly individual voice. He is also known for promoting Scientology, and mentions L. Ron Hubbard as a continual source of inspiration in all of his later albums.
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/3
Beck Hansen (born Bek David Campbell, July 8, 1970) is a Grammy Award-winning American musician, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, known by his simple stage name of Beck. With his pop collage of musical styles, oblique, ironic lyrics, and post-modern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being amongst the most idiosyncratic artists of 1990s alternative rock. Beck rose to underground popularity with his earliest works, which combined social criticism (as in "MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack" and "Deep Fried Love") with musical and lyrical experimentalism. He first came to wider public attention with his breakthrough single "Loser", a hit in 1994, which some described as a novelty song. However, Beck was not easily categorized into a single genre. Some likened his absurd, free-flowing lyrical style and the lo-fi folk songs of his early career to Bob Dylan, and his later eclecticism sparked comparisons to Prince. His 1996 album Odelay was awarded Album of the Year by Rolling Stone, and nominated for a Grammy.
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/4
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962), more commonly known as Tom Cruise, is an American actor and film producer. He is tied with Tom Hanks as the only actors to have seven consecutive US$100 million plus blockbusters on his résumé, and Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's most powerful celebrity in 2006. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won three Golden Globe Awards. His first leading role was 1983's Risky Business. After that, he starred in many top films and became a Hollywood celebrity. Cruise is also known for his criticism of psychiatry, and for his support of Scientology, which has attracted controversy and media interest. On August 22, 2006, Paramount Pictures announced it was ending its 14-year relationship with Tom Cruise. Sumner Redstone cited the economic damage to Tom Cruise's value as an actor and producer from his controversial public behavior and views. Cruise and his longtime business associate Paula Wagner announced on November 2, 2006 that Cruise/Wagner Productions would take control of the studio United Artists. Cruise produces and stars in films for United Artists, while Wagner serves as UA's chief executive.
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/5
Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. (May 5, 1925–November 18, 1978) was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a U.S. Representative from the 11th Congressional District of California from 1973 until he was murdered in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre in 1978. After the Watts Riots of 1965, then-Assemblyman Ryan took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the area. In 1970, he experienced life as an inmate in Folsom Prison, while presiding as chairman on the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform. During his time in Congress, Ryan traveled to Newfoundland to investigate the inhumane killing of seals. Ryan was also famous for vocal criticism of the lack of Congressional oversight of the CIA, and authored the Hughes-Ryan Amendment; the Amendment was dropped after his death. He was also an early critic of L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientology movement and of the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. Ryan was the first and only Congressman to be killed in the line of duty, and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, in 1983.
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/6
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986), better known as L. Ron Hubbard, was an American author in numerous pulp fiction genres as well as a prolific writer of non-fiction works, creator of Dianetics, and founder of the Church of Scientology. Hubbard was a highly controversial public figure during his lifetime. Many details of his life remain disputed, with official and unofficial biographies depicting Hubbard in radically different ways. Official Scientology biographies present him in hagiographic terms as "larger than life, attracted to people, liked by people, dynamic, charismatic and immensely capable in two dozen fields." In contrast, unofficial biographies (some of which are by former Scientologists) paint a much less flattering picture which often contradicts official Church accounts. One of Hubbard's unofficial biographers, Russell Miller, describes him as "one of the most successful and colourful confidence tricksters of the twentieth century" and comments that "every biography of Hubbard published by the church is interwoven with lies, half-truths and ludicrous embellishments." Particular areas of Hubbard's life described differently by the Church of Scientology and unofficial biographies include his career in the military, his motivation for forming Scientology as an "applied religious philosophy," and his role in various Scientology-related controversies.
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/7
Isaac Lee Hayes (born August 20, 1942, in Covington, Tennessee) is an American Grammy Award and Academy Award winning soul and funk singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, arranger, and actor. Hayes was one of the main creative forces behind Southern soul music label Stax Records, for which he served as both an in-house songwriter/producer and later as its premier recording artist. In addition to his work in popular music, Hayes has also written scores for several motion pictures as well. His best known film score, for the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft, earned Hayes an Academy Award for Best Original Song (the first Academy Award received by an African-American in a non-acting category) and two Grammy Awards. Hayes received a third Grammy for his 1971 album Black Moses. In 1992, Hayes was crowned an honorary king of Ghana's Ada district thanks to his humanitarian deeds. From 1997 to 2006, he provided the voice for "Chef", a singing ladies' man and elementary school cook, on the animated sitcom South Park. There are conflicting statements from Hayes' publicists and others as to why he left the show, and this controversy is satirized in the South Park episode, "The Return of Chef".
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/8
Lisa McPherson (February 10, 1959–December 5, 1995) was a Scientologist who died of a pulmonary embolism while under the care of the Flag Service Organization (FSO), a branch of the Church of Scientology. After a minor car accident, paramedics took McPherson to a hospital for evaluation after she appeared mentally unstable. With the assistance of fellow Scientologists, McPherson refused psychiatric observation or admission at the hospital and checked herself out after a short evaluation. After fifteen days under attendance by Scientologists at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, the Scientologists drove her to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. Following her death the Church of Scientology was indicted on two felony charges "abuse and/or neglect of a disabled adult and practicing medicine without a license." The heated controversy included regular pickets outside Scientology offices on or around the anniversary of her death. Charges against the Church of Scientology brought by the State of Florida were dropped after the state's medical examiner changed the cause of death from "undetermined" to an "accident" on June 13, 2000. A civil suit brought by her family against the Church was settled on May 28, 2004.
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/9
Nancy Campbell Cartwright (born October 25, 1957 in Dayton, Ohio) is an American voice actress. She is best known for providing the voices of Bart Simpson, Nelson Muntz and Ralph Wiggum on the animated television show The Simpsons. A graduate of Kettering Fairmont High School, Cartwright attended Ohio University before transferring to UCLA where she earned a degree in theatre. She was a student of Daws Butler (voice of Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss and many others), and in her autobiography cites Butler as being both her mentor and her friend. Nancy has over two decades experience at the mic. In addition to her work on The Simpsons, she has lent her voice to characters on various other animated series, including Kim Possible, The Replacements, Richie Rich, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, My Little Pony, The Critic, God, The Devil and Bob, Mike, Lu & Og, Pound Puppies, The Snorks, Galaxy High as well as Chuck Jones' final work, Timberwolf. Cartwright received an Emmy Award and an Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Voice-Over Performance as Bart Simpson, and Nelson Muntz.
Portal:Scientology/Selected biography/10
Kirsten Louise Alley (born January 12, 1951) is an American Emmy Award winning actress best known for her role in the TV show Cheers, where she played Rebecca Howe from 1987-1993, winning an Emmy as the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for 1991. A year later, she won a Golden Globe for her performance in Cheers as well. She won an Emmy in 1994 for her role in the TV-drama David's Mother. Other critically acclaimed roles Alley is known for include: playing Diane Barrows in It Takes Two and a single mother in Look Who's Talking, Look Who's Talking Too, and Look Who's Talking Now (all co-starring John Travolta). Alley has won two People's Choice Awards in the years 1991 and 1998. Alley joined Scientology in 1979, and has served as the national spokesperson for Narconon. She has continued her Scientology training and has attained the level of Operating Thetan 6. In May 2000, she purchased the former home of fellow Scientologist Lisa Marie Presley, a 5,200-sq-ft. waterfront mansion in Clearwater, Florida, for $1.5 million. Alley was married to actor Parker Stevenson (Richard Stevenson Parker, Jr.) from December 22, 1983, until 1997.
[edit] Nominations
Feel free to add Featured or Good quality articles about Scientology to the above list. Other Scientology-related articles may be nominated here.
