Rachael Harris
Actress and comedienne Rachael Harris has been featured in a variety of films and television shows since making her small screen debut in the early 1990s. After graduating with a theatre degree from Otterbein College in 1989, Harris moved to Los Angeles, where she performed and taught with the improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings. She soon went on to a career in front of the camera, becoming a television fixture in shows including SeaQuest: DSV; Star Trek: Voyager; Sister, Sister; Friends; The Daily Show; Curb Your Enthusiasm; The West Wing; Reno 911!; Monk; The New Adventures of Old Christine; The Sarah Silverman Program; Fat Actress; Desperate Housewives; Cougar Town and Modern Family. The actress’s most memorable film credits include playing the notoriously nasty girlfriend of Ed Helms’ character in The Hangover; and mom Susan Heffley in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. She was also featured in several films by writer and director Christopher Guest, including Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration. In 2011, Harris appears as Linda in the film Natural Selection for which she received the breakthrough performance award at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival.
Jack Fisk
Jack Fisk is an Academy Award nominated production designer with over forty years of experience in the film industry. Most recently, Fisk designed the upcoming Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project, having previously teamed up with Anderson on There Will Be Blood, for which Fisk received an Academy Award nomination, as well as an Art Directors Guild Award and a BAFTA Award nomination. Fisk also designed the upcoming Untitled Terrence Malick Project, which marks his sixth collaboration with Malick after previously working together on The Tree Of Life, The New World, The Thin Red Line, Days Of Heaven and Badlands. Additionally, this year Fisk designed Francis Lawrence’s Water For Elephants. Childhood friends, Fisk frequently collaborates with David Lynch and designed Lynch’s The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive. Fisk played the ‘Man in the Planet’ in Lynch’s first feature, Eraserhead, and made his feature directorial debut in 1981 on Raggedy Man, starring Sissy Spacek. Other film credits include The Invasion, Heart Beat, Movie Movie, Carrie and Phantom Of The Paradise. Fisk studied Fine Arts at Cooper Union and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before moving to Los Angeles in 1970. In California Jack began working on films produced by Roger and Gene Corman, constantly reinventing new ways to craft diverse worlds and gaining a reputation as a very hands-on designer.
Larry Flynt
Publishing mogul Larry Flynt, best known for founding the adult magazine Hustler, has become one of America’s most unlikely legal heroes. The publisher’s story is chronicled in the film The People v. Larry Flynt, which returns to the Virginia Film Festival this year after premiering here 15 year ago. Born in Kentucky in 1942, the entrepreneur moved to Dayton, Ohio in 1965 after serving in the U.S. Navy. After becoming a successful bar owner, Flynt immediately courted controversy for opening a club that featured nude servers. The Hustler Club quickly spread to other locations and also served as the springboard for the magazine Hustler. Flynt’s publication spiked in popularity and notoriety, becoming the center of a number court cases involving obscenity and libel. The most famous of these cases was Jerry Falwell v Hustler Magazine in 1983, in which Reverend Jerry Falwell sued Flynt’s magazine for publishing an advertisement that negatively parodied Falwell. The case eventually made its’ way to the Supreme Court, where the Court ruled in favor of Flynt. Since then, Flynt has been active in politics and even ran for the governor of California in 2003. He continues to serve as chairman of Larry Flynt Publicaitons, the parent company of his magazine, despite suffering from partial paralysis following an assassination attempt by a gunman in 1978.
Bill T. Jones
One of the dance world’s greatest treasures, dancer, choreographer and artistic director Bill T. Jones has received numerous accolades throughout his diverse career. Born in the south and raised in New York City, Jones began studying ballet and modern dance at Binghamton University. In 1982, he and his late partner Arnie Zane formed their own company, through which they developed more than 100 pieces. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Jones also choreographed for a variety of companies and dancers, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Axis Dance Company, and ballet companies in Boston, Lyon and Berlin. He’s also collaborated with artists outside of the dance world, including author Toni Morrison, jazz musician Max Roach, playwright Derek Walcott, journalist Bill Moyers and filmmaker David Grubin, who documented Jones’ collaboration with artist Gretchen Bender. Jones was a 2010 Kennedy Center Honoree, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award, three Choreographic Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award and two Tony Awards. He has been inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame. In recent years, Jones has maintained a presence at the University of Virginia, where he was Artist in Residence in 2008 and 2011.
Ben Mankiewicz
When Ben Mankiewicz made his debut as the weekend daytime host of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in 2003, he became only the second host hired in the network’s history. Mankiewicz was born and raised in Washington, D.C. A graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he began his television career as a producer at WJLA, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., before starting his on-air work as a news reporter and anchor at WCSC, the CBS affiliate in Charleston, SC. Mankiewicz moved south to Miami in 1998 to become a reporter for Barry Diller’s innovative start-up station, WAMI-TV. In January 1999, he became host and co-writer for The Times, the station’s edgy, irreverent daily news magazine that went on to become a critical success. Mankiewicz then moved to Los Angeles, nearly 75 years after his grandfather, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, arrived and wired his friend Ben Hecht back in New York, “Millions are to be grabbed out here, and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.” As a film critic, Mankiewicz co-hosted the nationally syndicated television series At the Movies, currently co-hosts the on-line film review show What the Flick?!, and writes film reviews for The Huffington Post. Mankiewicz also had what he calls “remarkably undistinguished” guest roles on such television shows as Big Love, Party Down, The Practice and The District.
Sissy Spacek
One of the industry’s most respected actresses for almost four decades, Sissy Spacek’s many honors include an Academy Award, five additional Oscar nominations, three Golden Globe Awards and numerous critics awards. She first gained the attention of critics and audiences with her performance in Terrence Malick’s 1973 drama Badlands, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. In 1976, Spacek earned her first Academy Award nomination and won a National Society of Film Critics Award for her chilling performance in Brian De Palma’s Carrie. The following year, she won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for her work in Robert Altman’s Three Women. In 1980, Spacek starred as Loretta Lynn in the biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter, winning both Oscar and Golden Globe Awards for her performance. Spacek received another Golden Globe nomination the next year for her work in Raggedy Man, directed by her husband, Jack Fisk. Spacek’s film credits also include Missing, The River, Crimes of the Heart, In the Bedroom, Affliction, JFK, The Long Walk Home, North Country, Nine Lives, Hot Rod, Lake City, Four Christmases, Get Low and most recently The Help. Her many television credits include an Emmy-nominated performance for her guest role on HBO’s Big Love. She is also writing her memoir Barefoot Stories.
Oliver Stone
Three-time Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone has been courting controversy and success in Hollywood for over 30 years. The prolific director, writer and producer is known for his fearless filmmaking approach and ability to illuminate profound personal struggles. The Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient for his service in Vietnam trained an unflinching eye on the stark reality of war in his breakout directorial triumph Platoon, the first of a Vietnam trilogy, which earned him first Best Director Oscar in 1986. Three years later, he captured his second directing statue for Born on the Fourth of July, his powerful retelling of a wounded Vietnam vet’s rocky return to the home front. He later dramatized the other side of the war through the eyes of an innocent “enemy” Vietnamese child in Heaven and Earth (1993). Stone has garnered not only awards, but near constant headlines throughout a colorful career that includes Wall Street (1987), JFK (1991), The Doors (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), Any Given Sunday (1999), World Trade Center (2006) and W (2008). His next film, Savages, the tale of a pair of marijuana manufacturers who run up against a powerful Mexican cartel, is due out in 2012 with a cast that includes John Travolta, Blake Lively, Salma Hayek and Benicio del Toro.
Mia Wasikowska
Australian native Mia Wasikowska is one of the industry’s fastest rising stars. Now 22 years old, Wasikowska began her career journey at the age of nine when she began studying ballet, an art form that would consume her life until she left it at the age of 14. Her dance ambitions behind her, Wasikowska took to acting after finding inspiration in the works in Australian and European filmmakers. Though she had no prior acting experience, the former dancer contacted numerous talent agencies on her own and eventually gained representation following persistent contact. She soon began to land roles i Australian television shows and movies. Wasikowska gained international acclaim in 2008 for appearing as the suicidal Sophie in the acclaimed HBO series In Treatment. Just two years later, the actress would gain even more attention in the title role in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which earned her the Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Breakthrough actress. She was honored with the same award for her role in the critically acclaimed The Kids are Alright. In 2011, coming off the heels of starring in the film adaption of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jayne Eyre, Wasikowska appears alongside Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs.
