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1-8 of 8
- Born, and raised for a time, in Pelion, South Carolina, African-American actor Paul Benjamin was the youngest of twelve children of a Baptist preacher, the Reverend Fair Benjamin, and his wife Rosa. Paul lost his mother while still a baby and his father as a child. He moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where he was taken in by one of his older brothers, David, and his wife and family. Suppressing his teenage desires of becoming an actor due to social pressures, he attended C.A. Johnson High and, upon graduation, enrolled at Benedict College for about a year before deciding to move to New York City and pursue his dream.
Studying at the Herbert Berghof Studio, he finally made his professional stage debut in the late 1960s at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater. His theater career quickly picked up steam with such classical and contemporary plays as "Hamlet" (1967), "Cities in Bezique (1969), "The Owl Answers" (1969), "No Place to Be Somebody" (1969), "The Year Boston Won the Pennant" (1969), "Camino Royal" 1970, "Operation Sidewinder" (1970), Boesman and Lena (1970), "The Black Terror" (1971), "Assassination 1865" (1971), "The Cherry Orchard" (1973) and "The Old Glory" (1976).
Benjamin made his film debut inauspiciously as a bartender in Midnight Cowboy (1969), which highlighted New York's seamier side. Following small roles in The Anderson Tapes (1971) and Born to Win (1971), he earned a top featured role and strong notices playing a robber-turned-killer in Across 110th Street (1972) co-starring Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto, which again took place on the gritty New York streets. He then gave incisive, strong-armed portrayals as part of a gang in The Deadly Trackers (1973) and as a lieutenant alongside Tony Lo Bianco and Hal Linden in the above-average TV-movie Mr. Inside/Mr. Outside (1973). His film and TV career, which peaked in the 1970s, included the "blaxploitation" scene -- he appeared with Mary Alice as the parents of the titular character in The Education of Sonny Carson (1974) and as a senator in the Pam Grier vehicle Friday Foster (1975).
Throughout the decades he worked with prestigious actors in prestigious projects yet never attained the public attention he merited. Neverthless he added solid authenticity to the musical bio Leadbelly (1976); Clint Eastwood's Escape from Alcatraz (1979); the Richard Pryor comedy-drama Some Kind of Hero (1982); Barbra Streisand's courtroom vehicle Nuts (1987); Spike Lee's lacerating, one-two punch on urban black life in Do the Right Thing (1989); the Temptations-like story of The Five Heartbeats (1991); and the excellent, fact-based drama in Rosewood (1997) with racism at its core. On the mini-movie circuit he appeared in good company as LeVar Burton's father in the baseball story One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story (1978), and was a noticeable factor in Gideon's Trumpet (1980) starring Henry Fonda; Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979); the hard-hitting The Atlanta Child Murders (1985) and, perhaps most notably, the chain-gang story The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains (1987) in which he portrayed Big Sam.
His career slowed down broaching the millennium with sporadic appearances in such films as The Fence (1994), Rosewood (1997), Stanley's Gig (2000), The Station Agent (2003), Back to You in the Days (2005), The Talk Man (2011) and Occupy, Texas (2016). He also guested on such popular series as "Angel," "ER," "Law & Order" and "The Shield."
Paul the actor added to his success as an award-winning playwright as well and, in his 70s, continued to write as well as perform. His play "Carrier", in which he appeared with Roscoe Lee Browne and Paula Kelly, received special citations for its writing and performances. He died in Los Angeles at age 81 on June 28, 2019. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Charles Levin was born on 12 March 1949 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for The Golden Child (1986), Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979). He was married to Katherine De Hetre and Mollie Weinblatt. He died on 28 June 2019 in Selma, Oregon, USA.- Lisa Martinek studied acting at the Hamburg University for Music and Theatre from 1993 to 1997. During that time she also performed at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and acted in several TV and film productions. From 1997 to 2001 she was a member of the Schauspielhaus Leipzig, engagements with Schauspiel Frankfurt and Deutsches Theater Berlin followed. For her role as bike courier Lena in the movie Trial by Fire (Härtetest) she was nominated for the Deutscher Filmpreis, the highest German movie award, in 1998. She was also nominated for the Deutscher Fernsehpreis (German Television Award) in the category Best Lead for her work in the made-for-TV movie Jagd auf den Flammenmann. She starred alongside Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz in the 2007 made-for-TV remake of Helmut Käutner's Die Zürcher Verlobung and played the role of Juliane, which, in the original 50 years prior, had been played by Lilo Pulver. From 2006 to 2011 she starred as inspector Clara Hertz alongside Charlotte Schwab in the ZDF crime series Das Duo. Lisa Martinek lives with her husband Giulio Ricciarelli and their children in Berlin and Munich.
- Ned Stuckey-French was born on 22 February 1950 in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. He died on 28 June 2019 in Tallahassee, Florida, USA.
- Babu Narayanan was a director, known for To Noora with Love (2014). Babu died on 28 June 2019 in Thrissur, Kerala, India.
- Script and Continuity Department
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Annamária Radnai was born in 1964 in Budapest, Hungary. She was a writer, known for Emelet (2006), Halj már meg! (2016) and Márió, a varázsló (2008). She died on 28 June 2019.- Jasmine Dee was born on 30 August 1918 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. She was an actress, known for Walking on Air (1946), Celia (1949) and The Lady Craved Excitement (1950). She died on 28 June 2019 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, UK.
- Animation Department
Valentín Eliseu was born on 7 November 1956 in Bucuresti, Romania. Valentín is known for Gisaku (2005), A Fish Tale (2000) and The Princess and the Pea (2002). Valentín died on 28 June 2019 in Bucuresti, Romania.