William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter. He was regarded as second only to John Ford as a “master craftsman of cinema.”

Notable works included Ben-Hur, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Mrs. Miniver, all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture. He earned his first Oscar nomination for directing Dodsworth in 1936, starring Walter Huston and Mary Astor, “sparking a 20-year run of almost unbroken greatness.”

Film historian Ian Freer calls Wyler a “bona fide perfectionist,” whose penchant for retakes and an attempt to hone every last nuance, “became the stuff of legend.” His ability to direct a string of classic literary adaptations into huge box-office and critical successes made him one of “Hollywood’s most bankable moviemakers” during the 1930s and 1940s.

Other popular films include Funny Girl, How to Steal a Million, The Big Country, Roman Holiday, The Heiress, The Letter, The Westerner, Wuthering Heights, Jezebel, Dodsworth, A House Divided, and Hell’s Heroes .

Winona Laura Horowitz, better known under her professional name Winona Ryder, is an American actress. She made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder’s first significant role came in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice as a goth teenager, which won her critical and commercial recognition. After making various appearances in film and television, Ryder continued her career with the cult film Heathers, a controversial satire of teenage suicide and high school life, which drew Ryder further critical and commercial attention.

After playing diverse roles in numerous well-received films, Ryder won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination in the same category for her role in The Age of Innocence in 1993, as well as another Academy Award nomination for Little Women the following year for Best Actress. In 2000, Ryder received a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.

Ryder’s personal life has been widely reported by the media. Her relationship with actor Johnny Depp in the early 1990s was highly publicized and received much scrutiny by the media and tabloid press. A much talked about 2001 shoplifting incident led to a four-year hiatus from acting. She has also revealed her personal struggle with anxiety and depression, briefly checking into a clinic. In 2006, Ryder returned to the screen, and some media outlets called her performance “a remarkable comeback” to acting.

Born Winona Laura Horowitz in Olmsted County, Minnesota, she was named after the nearby city of Winona. She was given her middle name, Laura, because of her parents’ friendship with Aldous Huxley’s wife, Laura Huxley. Her mother, Cynthia Palmer, is an author, as well as a video producer and editor. Her father, Michael Horowitz, is an author, editor, publisher and antiquarian bookseller. Ryder has described herself as Jewish. Her grandparents were immigrants from Russia and Romania; her father’s family was originally named “Tomchin”, but was wrongly assigned the surname “Horowitz” by U.S. immigration officials at Ellis Island. Ryder’s mother is a Buddhist and her father is an atheist. Ryder has one full sibling, a younger brother, Uri, an older half-brother, Jubal, and an older half-sister, Sunyata. Ryder’s family friends included her godfather, LSD guru Timothy Leary, beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick.

William Peterson was honored with the 2,379th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Leron Gubler, President and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, presided over the ceremony. Guests included Marg Helgenberger, William Friedkin, David Berman, George Eads, Jorga Fox, Paul Guilfoyle, Robert David Hall, Eric Szmanda, Liz Vassey, and John Wellner.

6667 Hollywood Boulevard on February 3, 2009.

BIOGRAPHY

William Petersen was born in Evanston, Illinois, and first discovered acting while on a football scholarship at Idaho State University. He later studied acting in Spain.

Petersen, who has a distinguished background in film, theater and television, came to the attention of audiences worldwide when he took the role of Gil Grissom, the lead investigator on “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” in 2000. Petersen received a Golden Globe Award nomination in 2003 for his role and while he departed from the series this past January 2009, he remains an executive producer.

His television credits include “Long Gone,” “The Rat Pack,” the Golden Globe Award winning mini-series “The Kennedys of Massachusetts” and “The Beast.”

His feature film credits include “To Live and Die in L.A.,” “Manhunter,” “Cousins,” “Young Guns II,” “Fear,” “The Contender” and the films “Hard Promises” and “Keep the Change,” both of which he also produced.

In 1979, he founded the Remains Theater Ensemble in Chicago with a group of fellow actors. In 1983, Petersen starred as Jack Henry Abbott in “In the Belly of the Beast” which he performed at the Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Chicago, at the Edinburgh Festival and at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

In 1996 Petersen made his Broadway debut in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana.” He has appeared in a number of regional stage productions, including most recently “A Dublin Carol” at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “The Time of Your Life,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Fool for Love” and “Speed-the-Plow.” In the summer of 2009, Peterson stared in “Blackbird” on stage at the Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago.

William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954, and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974. One of the top stars of the 1950s, he was named one of the “Top 10 stars of the year” six times and appeared on the American Film Institute’s AFI’s 100 Years?100 Stars list as #25.

Holden, eldest of three sons, was born as William Franklin Beedle, Jr. in O’Fallon, Illinois, the son of Congregationalist parents Mary Blanche, a schoolteacher, and William Franklin Beedle, Sr., an industrial chemist. The family, which moved to South Pasadena, California when he was three, was of English descent; Holden’s paternal great-grandmother, Rebecca Westfield, was born in England in 1817, while some of his mother’s ancestors emigrated in the 17th century to Millenback, Lancaster County, Virginia in the U.S. from England.

After graduating from South Pasadena High School, Holden attended Pasadena Junior College, where he became involved in local radio plays. Contrary to legend and theatre publicity, he did not study at the Pasadena Playhouse, nor was he discovered in a play there. Rather, he was spotted by a talent scout from Paramount Pictures in 1937 while playing the part of an 80-year-old man, Marie Curie’s father-in-law, in a play at the Playbox, a separate and private theatre owned by Pasadena Playhouse director Gilmor Brown. His first film role was in Prison Farm the following year.

His first starring role was in Golden Boy, in which he played a violinist turned boxer. That was followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of Our Town.