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Bernard Hill, the actor known for playing King Théoden in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and Captain Edward Smith in “Titanic,” has died. He was 79.

Hill died early on Sunday morning, his agent Lou Colson confirmed to Variety. He was with his fiancée Alison and his son Gabriel. No cause of death was given.

Hill first came to prominence as Yosser Hughes in Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 miniseries “Boys From the Blackstuff”; his character was known for his “gizza job” catchphrase. That same year, he portrayed Sergeant Putnam in the Richard Attenborough-directed film “Gandhi.” Hill appeared in multiple British television series during the ’70s and ’80s, including “I, Claudius,” “Crown Court,” “Rooms,” “Fox” and “Jackanory.”

In 1997, Hill played Captain Smith in James Cameron’s “Titanic,” which won 11 Oscars. He then joined Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” franchise as King Théoden, appearing in 2002’s “The Two Towers” and...

One of the many, many, many problems with the Academy Awards is that with only five nominees in each category — and even with 10 nominees for Best Picture — there's always at least one worthy artist or movie that doesn't get recognized.

In the industry we call these "snubs," and it's a somewhat loaded term that suggests the Oscar voters are deciding, intentionally, not to honor certain filmmakers and their films. While that's certainly a possibility, and there's no denying that the Academy members are human beings full of conscious and unconscious biases, it's also true that in a year full of great artistry in a variety of cinematic fields, at least one person who did amazing work was destined to get left off the ballot, and it's always a real downer for the artist and their fans.

But what if being left off the ballot wasn't the end of their story?...

After celebrating the Hollywood Bowl’s 100th anniversary last summer, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association is back with big plans for its 101st year. The group announced the Bowl’s summer 2023 schedule on Tuesday, which will kick off on June 10 with Janet Jackson, who will be joined by Ludacris and musicians of the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles.

The annual July 4th Fireworks Spectacular will feature The Beach Boys performing with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and a special 90th birthday tribute for Quincy Jones will be held on July 28 and 29, with performances by a roster of special guests.

Former One Direction member Louis Tomlinson, Air Supply and Michael Bolton (on a double bill), Jill Scott, Gladys Knight, Herbie Hancock, Charlie Wilson, Kool & The Gang and the Village People (on a double bill), Sparks and They Might Be Giants (on a double bill), Culture Club and Maxwell will also be among this summer’s performers.

We’ve long been obsessed with disaster. On his new show The End Is Nye, beloved TV scientist and America’s father figure Bill Nye points to the storms of The Tempest, but even Shakespeare caught the catastrophe bug earlier than that. Twelfth Night opens with a shipwreck. In her menacing extreme weather speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titania speaks of tremendous floods, rotting crops, and disappearing seasons. Now, we have 24-hour news channels that thrive on disaster porn.

Nye appeals to our attraction to calamity, even as he balks at it. “Think about it, people,” he declares on his debut Peacock series about the varied forms – from solar flares to careening comets – Armageddon might take. His eyes are wide, and his voice wobbles with opprobrium. “We’re like some kind of weird death cult.”

Honestly, it kind of hurts when “Bill Nye the Science Guy” reprimands you. What happened to the warm,...

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There’s no denying that William Shakespeare is one of the most well-known and widely respected literary figures in history: a fountainhead for so much of storytelling to follow. His works from the late 1500s are still relevant today, and several of his plays have been adapted into films. The latest of which, “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” will arrive in theaters on Christmas Day, and on Apple TV+ on January 14, 2022.

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand star in the spare, Dreyer-esque black-and-white film directed by Joel Coen. If you’re not familiar with the story, Macbeth is met by three witches who reveal great fortunes for his future. Once these fortunes begin to come true,...

Liz McCann, a groundbreaking Broadway producer who, as one of the first and most successful women to achieve a prominent leadership role in the theater industry – a term she hated, preferring “theater community” — died Thursday of cancer at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. She was 90.

Her death was announced by her longtime associate and friend Kristen Luciani.

Elizabeth Ireland McCann — known throughout the Broadway community simply as Liz — started her career in theater as a production assistant and manager with Proscenium Productions at the Cherry Lane Theatre in the 1950s. In 1955, the company would be the first Off Broadway theater to win a Special Tony Award for its seminal productions of The Way of the World and Thieves’ Carnival.

Following a series of short-term theater jobs, McCann, who had acted in plays during her student years at Manhattanville College, completed a law degree at Fordham University. She later earned a...

Susan Sarandon and Anna Friel have been cast in the upcoming Fox country music drama series “Monarch,” Variety has learned.

In the series, the Romans are headed by the insanely talented, but tough as nails Queen of Country Music Dottie Cantrell Roman (Sarandon). Along with her beloved husband, Albie, Dottie has created a country music dynasty. But even though the Roman name is synonymous with authenticity, the very foundation of their success is a lie. And when their reign as country royalty is put in jeopardy, heir to the crown Nicolette “Nicky” Roman (Friel) will stop at nothing to protect her family’s legacy, while ensuring her own quest for stardom.

“Monarch” will debut midseason for Fox on Jan. 30 immediately after the NFC Championship game, with the show’s second episode airing on Feb. 1.

Sarandon is an Academy Award winner, taking home the statuette for best actress in 1996 for “Dead Man Walking.

In the film and television industry, the idea of an “unknown” is extremely relative. Just because an actor isn’t one of the Hollywood Chrises doesn’t mean a media-literate viewer hasn’t seen them before. That being said, there is a difference between Chris Evans and an actor from a Doctor Who guest spot, and Netflix’s latest series—Shadow and Bone, an adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books—is mostly banking on the latter. While Ben Barnes, who you will probably recognize as Logan from Westworld or Prince Caspian from The Chronicles of Narnia series, will be playing the mysterious and enigmatic General Kirigan in Shadow & Bone, most of the young cast have only a few mainstream credits to their names—and, frankly, I think it’s really working for the fantasy adaptation.

“This is a story about young people who have been overlooked and who’ve...

The actors talk about applause, auditions, how they fell in love with the theatre – and the extraordinary high of delivering the perfect line

David Oyelowo and Alfred Molina have been friends since they appeared together on screen in As You Like It directed by Kenneth Branagh in 2006. Molina now has a role in Oyelowo’s directorial debut, The Water Man, for Netflix. They swap stories about their stints with the Royal Shakespeare Company, explain what they have missed during theatres’ closure and, to start, remember when they first fell in love with the stage.

David Oyelowo: As a kid on a council estate, Shakespeare felt like something for other people. Then I saw Robert Lepage’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the National Theatre when I was a teenager. Timothy Spall was Bottom, a Cirque du Soleil contortionist was Puck. We were in the nosebleed seats but I understood everything about the play.

Tagline: "Your Worst Fears Have Come Home for the Holidays." Christmas Presence aka Why Hide? will release this November. To show on DVD for the first time in the U.S., Christmas Presence is a holiday horror film. In the story, a group of friends gather to celebrate the holiday season, when one guest goes missing and then another and then...James Edward Cook ("Disclaimer") is the director on this feature, with Karen Taylor co-writing the script. As well, Charlotte Atkinson (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and Elsie Bennett (Control) centrally star. The film's early release details are here. The DVD release will be available in an unrated format. At eighty-seven minutes, this release will not offer much, if anything, for bonus features. Finally, this title was produced as a Shudder original and has been available in some territories, since 2018. Christmas Presence will show on DVD this November 3rd. Rlj Entertainment will host the U.

Need to catch up? Read our previous Riverdale recap here.

The Ides of March have arrived on Riverdale — and if you know your Shakespeare, you know that date means very bad things for one character.

More from TVLineRiverdale Recap: Chess, Lies and Videotape (Plus, Meet Katy Keene!)Riverdale Recap: Pop Quiz, HotshotLegacies Recap: Who Didn't Survive Kai's Assault on the Salvatore School?

Jughead is officially kicked out of Quill & Skull after Betty’s break-in, Mr. DuPont informs him, and that’s not all: His Baxter Brothers contract will be terminated unless he submits an entirely new book by Friday, aka the Ides of March.

Ever since breaking away from its roots as a series of popcorn flicks about illegal street racing, Universal Pictures’ Fast Saga has been stacking its roster with increasingly big-name actors. In a recent interview with MTV International while promoting the franchise’s latest installment, F9, perennial wheelman Vin Diesel indicated that the marquee actor he dreams of adding to the Saga‘s credits for the next outing, Fast & Furious 10, is Academy Award winner Dame Judi Dench.

The choice may seem an unexpected one, but Diesel did work with Dench on his 2004 project The Chronicles of Riddick, in which she played the air elemental Aereon. Beyond their professional connection, Dench also possesses a solid pedigree in spy-fi cinema, having played M across seven James Bond films beginning with Pierce Brosnan’s 1995 GoldenEye and culminating with Daniel Craig’s 2012 Skyfall, in which the then-78-year-old Commander of the Order of...

Olivia de Havilland picture U.S. labor history-making 'Gone with the Wind' star and two-time Best Actress winner Olivia de Havilland turns 99 (This Olivia de Havilland article is currently being revised and expanded.) Two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland, the only surviving major Gone with the Wind cast member and oldest surviving Oscar winner, is turning 99 years old today, July 1.[1] Also known for her widely publicized feud with sister Joan Fontaine and for her eight movies with Errol Flynn, de Havilland should be remembered as well for having made Hollywood labor history. This particular history has nothing to do with de Havilland's films, her two Oscars, Gone with the Wind, Joan Fontaine, or Errol Flynn. Instead, history was made as a result of a legal fight: after winning a lawsuit against Warner Bros. in the mid-'40s, Olivia de Havilland put an end to treacherous...

By winning the Best Cinematography Oscar for a second year in a row, "Birdman" director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki has joined a truly elite club whose ranks haven't been breached in nearly two decades. Only four other cinematographers have won the prize in two consecutive years. The last time it happened was in 1994 and 1995, when John Toll won for Edward Zwick's "Legends of the Fall" and Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" respectively. Before that you have to go all the way back to the late '40s, when Winton Hoch won in 1948 (Victor Fleming's "Joan of Arc" with Ingrid Bergman) and 1949 (John Ford's western "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"). Both victories came in the color category, as the Academy awarded prizes separately for black-and-white and color photography from 1939 to 1956. Leon Shamroy also won back-to-back color cinematography Oscars, for Henry King's 1944 Woodrow Wilson biopic "Wilson" and John M. Stahl...

Los Angeles (AP) — Mickey Rooney, the pint-size, precocious actor and all-around talent whose more than 80-year career spanned silent comedies, Shakespeare, Judy Garland musicals, Andy Hardy stardom, television and the Broadway theater, died Sunday at age 93. Los Angeles Police Commander Andrew Smith said that Rooney was with his family when he died at his North Hollywood home. Smith said police took a death report but indicated that there was nothing suspicious and it was not a police case. He said he had no additional details on the circumstances of his passing. Rooney started his career in his parents' vaudeville act while still a toddler, and broke into movies before age 10. He was still racking up film and TV credits more than 80 years later — a tenure likely unmatched in the history of show business. "I always say, 'Don't retire — inspire,'" he told The Associated Press in March 2008. "There's a lot to be done.

Mickey Rooney passed away today at the age of 93. His health had been failing for quite awhile.Mickey Rooney's parents were a comedian and a chorus girl who played on vaudeville, and he made his first appearance on the stage with them aged only seventeen months. He was a scrappy kid in the silent-era Mickey McGuire shorts (1927-1933), then played "lead character as a boy" roles - such as in The World Changes (1933) and Manhattan Melodrama (1934) - and Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). A star turn as a good-natured, trouble-prone teen in A Family Affair (1937) led to a long series of folksy Andy Hardy pictures that represented MGM head Louis B. Mayer's ideal of the United States. This was followed by energetic musical teamings with fellow MGM property Judy Garland in Babes in Arms (1939) and Babes on Broadway (1941). He won an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor...

Anthony McCartney, AP Entertainment Writer

Los Angeles (AP) - Mickey Rooney, the pint-size, precocious actor and all-around talent whose more than 80-year career spanned silent comedies, Shakespeare, Judy Garland musicals, Andy Hardy stardom, television and the Broadway theater, died Sunday at age 93.

Los Angeles Police Commander Andrew Smith said that Rooney was with his family when he died at his North Hollywood home.

Smith said police took a death report but indicated that there was nothing suspicious and he had no additional details on the circumstances of his passing. The Los Angeles County Coroner's office said it was not their case because Rooney died a natural death.

There were no further immediate details on the cause of death, but Rooney did attend an Oscar party last month.

Rooney started his career in his parents' vaudeville act while still a toddler, and broke into movies before age 10. He was still racking...

We love to do top tens on Tuesdays and more of them will be coming your way soon. Today's top ten is not strictly ascending, some of these moments I loved and some I decidedly did not but they're ten things that I'm thinking about today and that I imagine will always come up when I think of the 84th Oscars.

Top Ten Takeaways

Things to remember, for better and for worse, from the 84th Oscars

10 Direction is Everything With Dance

When I first heard they were doing a Cirque Du Soleil number at the Oscars, I groaned. Not that I don't enjoy the odd acrobatic but why at the Oscars? If you want it to be a variety show, stop being so inexcusably high and mighty about the Original Song category (that music branch and those rules. sigh) and start nominating 5 songs each year like in every other category.

Olivia de Havilland No matter how widely publicized Charlie Sheen's $100 million lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Two and a Half Men co-creator Chuck Lorre after Sheen was fired from the television show, it doesn't seem at all probable that the Platoon and Wall Street star will make history like Olivia de Havilland did back in the mid-1940s. Even if his case ever makes it to court. De Havilland, who had entered Warners as a leading lady in 1935 in films such as the sumptuous A Midsummer Night's Dream, the programmer Alibi Ike, and her highly successful first pairing with Errol Flynn, Captain Blood, had by the early '40s become a two-time Oscar nominee and one of the studio's most important contract players. In 1943, the actress and her Gang Tyre lawyers filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. — a radically different entity in those days — because the studio kept extending...

Freshly premiered from Singapore director Tzang Merwyn Tong is V1K1, a sort of techo riff on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Fairies have but one rule, and that is never to be discovered. Viki, a techno fairy, must be careful to avoid being outwitted by an intelligent human scientist, holding her brother hostage in his laboratory. Produced on a microbudget with a largely student based cast and crew V1K1 has just had its first screenings in Singapore and will next roll out on the international festival circuit. Tzang, for his part, hopes to be shooting his debut feature before the end of the year....

I don't know why this surprises me, but hey! They made blooper reels in the '30s! This contains a lot less cursing and convulsive giggling than contemporary gag reels do, but I don't know if that's a difference in the actors or in the editing of said reels. I think my favorite is around 7:03 with Victor Jory flubbing his lines in A Midsummer Night's Dream. What's your favorite vintage flub, PopWatchers? [via]...

Two-time Academy Award-winning movie legend Olivia De Havilland is to return to Hollywood from her home in France to be honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences next summer. The Gone With The Wind star will be the subject of a feature film tribute in Beverly Hills, California in the weeks leading up to her 90th birthday. Film fans attending the event will be treated to clips of her most-admired performances and a discussion with colleagues from throughout her career. De Havilland made her film debut as Hermia in Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1935, and went on to star with Errol Flynn in Captain Blood and another seven films. She was nominated for five Oscars, and won two Best Actress awards for To Each His Own and The Heiress.