Welcome to Better Know a Guest, your weekly guide to the wonderful and diverse array of personalities appearing on ‘The Colbert Report’ and ‘The Daily Show’ each week.
Hello, Colbert News Hub! Happy winter, apparently. I’ve seen a little bit of snow this week, and am writing this while drinking a gingerbread latte in a very christmas-y Starbucks.
This last week before Thanksgiving promises to be a good one, with Jon Stewart visiting the Colbert Report as a guest for the first time. We also have a smattering of positive news stories in among the awfulness of ISIS killing more hostages and norovirus coming back to cruise ships. My favorite was the Rosetta mission – neither the Daily Show nor the Colbert Report have taken the chance yet to cover the fact that the European Space Agency has managed to land a spaceship on a comet traveling at 40,000 miles per hour. That’s pretty cool, and I hope to see it worked in somehow. An easier target is the fact that today Vladimir Putin became the first to leave Australia’s G20 summit, because he was sleepy. The summit involved much condemnation of his actions in Ukraine, and strengthening of language to combat climate change. It’s unlikely that sleep was really the reason Putin left, but he said that it was and that’s hilarious.
Stephen’s guests this week are a senator, an actress and filmmaker, a novelist, and Jon Stewart! Jon’s guests are a filmmaker and three actors. Let us know in the comments which stories and guests you’re looking forward to!
Monday, November 17 (2014)
Bernie Sanders (US Senator)
Bernie Sanders is a US Senator from Vermont and a member of the Independent party. He has served in Congress for 24 years (16 as a Representative, 8 as a Senator), which makes him the longest-serving Independent congressman ever. His political views are extremely liberal; he has described himself as a socialist and his top issues are closing the income gap, addressing global warming, universal healthcare, advocating for veterans, and supporting family farms. He is the chair of the Veterans’ Affairs committee, an interest that was spurred during his time listening to hearings on veterans’ Gulf War illnesses as part of the House Oversight and government Reform Committee. The committee is focusing on providing treatment for PTSD and helping lower unemployment among veterans. Sanders has said that he got into politics because of his upbringing in a lower-middle-class family in Brooklyn, and he is considering a 2016 presidential run.
Born: September 8, 1941 (Brooklyn, NY)
Education: James Madison High School | Brooklyn College | University of Chicago
Books: Outsider in the House | The Speech
Awards: Arthur T. Marix Congressional Leadership Award, Military Officers Association of America | Legion’s Patriot Award
Previous ‘Colbert Report’ appearance(s): Interviews – April 21, 2008 | January 3, 2012
Previous ‘Daily Show’ appearance(s): Interview – April 28, 2011
Follow: @SenSanders | Facebook
Tuesday, November 18 (2014)
Eva Longoria (Executive Producer, “Food Chains“)
Eva Longoria is an actress and filmmaker, and the executive producer of a new documentary “Food Chains”. After a 2-year stint on soap opera The Young and the Restless, Longoria landed her first major acting role in the enormously successful drama Desperate Housewives, playing a formal model turned housewives who solves (and gets involved in) murders with her suburban friends. Longoria is also known as a philanthropist, supporting causes like healthcare, helping disabled children, advocating for farmers and migrant workers, campaigning for immigration reform, and supporting rights for Latinos. The Eva Longoria Foundation coordinates her efforts in supporting Latino causes. Longoria produced a documentary about child migrant workers called The Harvest in 2010. She is also a chef (she published a cookbook in 2011) and opened restaurant/nightclub locations in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Her new movie Food Chains is about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a labor organization that has gotten huge supermarket chains such as Whole Foods and Walmart to agree not to buy tomatoes from farms that violate workers’ rights, at an additional price of one cent per tomato.
Born: March 15, 1975 (Corpus Christi, Texas, United States)
Education: Texas A&M University | California State University
Filmography: Snitch’d | The Young and the Restless | Senorita Justice | The Dead Will Tell | Dragnet | Carlita’s Secret | Desperate Housewives | Harsh Times | The Sentinel | The Heartbreak Kid | Over Her Dead Body | Lower Learning | Without Men | Arthur Christmas | For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada | Foodfight! | The Baytown Outlaws | A Dark Truth | Mother Up! | In a World… | Crazy Kind of Love | Frontera | Visions | Any Day | The Harvest | Ready for Love | Devious Maids | Food Chains
Awards: ALMA awards | Bambi Award | People’s Choice Award | SAG Awards | Teen Choice Award | Philanthropist of the YEar | Latina Visionary and Community Empowerment Award | Cesar Chavez Legacy Award
Follow: @EvaLongoria | Facebook | Instagram
Wednesday, November 19 (2014)
Toni Morrison (Novelist, Editor and Professor)
Toni Morrison is a novelist, best known for her book “Beloved”, in which a former slave believes that she must kill her children or else they too would be destined to become slaves. “Beloved” was not her first work; she’d already written several novels exploring the African American experience. “Beloved” won a pulitzer prize in 1988, and in the late 90s was turned into a movie starring Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey. She then took a job teaching at Princeton and continued to steadily publish fiction. She has written childrens books, a play, songs, and operas. She is also the author of several nonfiction books about race, gender, and censorship. Her most recent novel, “Home”, was published in 2012 and is about a veteran suffering from PTSD.
Born: February 18, 1931 (Lorain, Ohio, Unites States)
Education: Howard University | Cornell University Books: The Bluest Eye | Sula | Song of Solomon | Tar Baby | Beloved | Jazz | Paradise | Love | A Mercy | Home | The Big Box | The Book of Mean People | Peeny Butter Fudge | Recitati | Dreaming Emmett | Desdemona | Margaret Garner | The Black Book | Playing in the Dark | Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power | Birth of a Nation’hood | Remember | What Moves at the Margin
Awards: Pulitzer Prize | Nobel Prize | Presidential Medal of Freedom | American Book Award | Anisfield-Wolf Book Award | Helmerich Award | Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize | National Book Critics Circle Award | Coretta Scott King Award | NAACP Image Award
Thursday, November 20 (2014)
Jon Stewart (Writer / Director: “Rosewater“)
Jon Stewart needs no introduction. He is the host of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and an executive producer of “The Colbert Report”, and has been mocking our politics and our news outlets behind the desk of “The Daily Show” since 1999. Before coming to the “Daily Show”, Jon played soccer and failed Organic Chemistry in college. He had several jobs after college before landing in New York to perform stand up comedy in the middle of the night at places such as the Comedy Cellar, which he did for six years before gaining recognition for an appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman” in 1993. He then became the host of MTV’s first-ever talk show “The Jon Stewart Show”, which aired for two years. He then worked intermittently as a guest host on “The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder” before landing the “Daily Show” hosting gig when Craig Kilborn took over “The Late Late Show”. Jon made the “Daily Show” what it is today, a popular, consistent, hilarious news satire that has spawned shows such as our “Colbert Report”, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”, and the upcoming “Minority Report with Larry Wilmore”. Outside of the “Daily Show”, Jon has acted in several movies and wrote a book of funny essays called “Naked Pictures of Famous People”. Last summer he went to Jordan to direct Rosewater, a film he wrote based on journalist Maziar Bahari’s memoir about being imprisoned in Iran for being a suspected American spy (a piece that he did with Jason Jones for the “Daily Show” was used as evidence against him). Rosewater premiered last week, and is playing in theaters now.
Born: November 28, 1962 (New York, New York, United States)
Education: Lawrence High School | William and Mary College
Filmography: Mixed Nuts | Wishful Thinking | Half Baked | The Faculty | Playing by Heart | Big Daddy | The Office Party | Committed | Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back | Death to Smoochy | The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina | Doogal | Wordplay | Short Attention Span Theater | The Jon Stewart Show | Jon Stewart: Unleavened | Since You’ve Been Gone | The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | The Colbert Report | Important Things with Demetri Martin | Rosewater Awards: Emmy Awards | PGA Awards | Television Critics Association Awards | WGA Award
Previous ‘Colbert Report’ appearance(s): Guest Appearances – August 8, 2006 | September 28, 2006 | November 7, 2006 | February 4, 2008 | September 22, 2009 | March 3, 2011 | January 12, 2012 | January 30, 2012 | November 12, 2012 | September 24, 2013
And now, let’s check in with our good friend Jon Stewart over at The Daily Show!
Monday, November 17 (2014)
Laura Poitras (Director, “Citizenfour“)
Laura Poitras is an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and the director of “Citizenfour”, a documentary about Edward Snowden. She has been releasing documentaries since 2003, on topics such as gentrification, the War on Terror, and government surveillance. Poitras also has an online investigative journalism magazine called The Intercept that she started with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. In 2010 she became a subject of government surveillance after releasing “The Oath” (about Osama Bin Laden and 9/11), and she was one of the people Edward Snowden contacted in order to release the surveillance story. She met him in Hong Kong, and those meetings are the subject of “Citizenfour”. The film was released on October 24th and is playing at independent movie theaters across the country.
Born: January 16, 1962 (Boston, Massachusetts, United States)
Education: Sudbury Valley School | San Francisco Art Institute | The New School
Filmography: Flag Wars | The Oath | The Law in These Parts | O’Say Can You See | The Engineer | P.O.V. | Evaporating Borders | 1971 | Citizenfour
Awards: Peabody Award | SXSW Best Documentary | Sundance Excellence in Cinematography Award | MacArthur Genius Grant | Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award | Pulitzer Prize | Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize
Follow: Website
Tuesday, November 18 (2014)
Benedict Cumberbatch (Actor “The Imitation Game“)
Benedict Cumberbatch is a British actor best known for his current role in BBC’s “Sherlock” and for his role as Khan in “Star Trek Into Darkness”. Cumberbatch grew up in the UK and attended boarding schools from the age of 8, where he acted in plays. He studied acting at the University of Manchester and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He then went into theater, and has acted in plays in the UK continually since 2001. His first major television role was as Stephen Hawking in “Hawking” in 2004. In 2010 he began playing Sherlock in the popular BBC show, and the fourth season of the show is expected in 2016. He has recently begun a successful film career as well, with notable roles as “Star Trek” villain Khan and “The Hobbit’s” Smaug and the Necromancer. He now plays Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game”, who helped win the Second World War after creating the “bombe,” a cryptanalysis machine that broke the Enigma cipher used by German army and navy forces.
Born: July 19, 1976 (Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom)
Education: Brambletye School | Harrow School | University of Manchester | London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
Filmography: Fields of Gold | Hills like White Elephants | To Kill a King | Hawking | To the Ends of the Earth | Starter for 10 | Amazing Grace | Inseparable | Atonement | The Other Boleyn Girl | The Last Enemy | Burlesque Fairytales | Creation | Small Island | Four Lions | Van Gogh: Painted with Words | Third Star | The Whistleblower | Curiosity | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | War Horse | Wreckers | Parade’s End | Girlfriend in a Coma | The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey | Electric Cinema: How to Behave | Star Trek Into Darkness | 12 Years a Slave | The Fifth Estate | August: Osage County | Little Favour | The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug | Penguins of Madagascar | Sherlock | The Imitation Game
Awards: Olivier Awards | Evening Standard Award | Critics’ Circle Theater Award | Emmy Award | Broadcasting Press Guild Award | Critics Choice Television Award | Hollywood Film Award | National Television Award | Online Film & Television Association Award | Satellite Award
Wednesday, November 19 (2014)
Jessica Chastain (Actress: “Interstellar”)
Jessica Chastain is an actress who has appeared in many recent films including “The Help”, “Zero Dark Thirty”, and “Mama”. She graduated from the prestigious Juilliard drama school and moved to LA, landing several small television roles before making her film debut in “Jolene” (based on the Dolly Parton song) in 2008. Since then she has enjoyed enormous success in Hollywood, and also appeared on Broadway in “The Heiress” in late 2012. Chastain recently played Eleanor Rigby in “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby”, which tells the story of a New York couple’s breakup from each of their perspectives. She is now starring in the Christopher Nolan space thriller “Interstellar”, about the search for a new habitable planet.
Born: March 24, 1977 (Sacramento, California, United States)
Education: Sacramento City College | Juilliard school
Filmography: Dark Shadows | Blackbeard | Jolene | Stolen Lives | The Debt | Take Shelter | Coriolanus | The Tree of Life | The Help | Wilde Salome | Texas Killing Fields | Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted | Lawless | The Color of Time | Zero Dark Thirty | Mama | Salome | The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby | Interstellar
Awards: Golden Globe | Alliance of Women Film Journalist Awards | National Board of Review Awards | National Society of Film Critics Award | Online Film & Television Association Award | Online Film Critics Society Award | Screen Actors Guild Award
Previous ‘Daily Show’ appearance(s): Interview- January 16, 2013
Follow: @Jes_Chastain | Facebook | Instagram
Thursday, November 20 (2014)
Eddie Redmayne (Actor: “The Theory of Everything”)
Eddie Redmayne is an actor and singer, best known for his performances in musical theater. He began performing in 2002 in Shakespeare’s 12th Night, and has been working in theater steadily since then. He came to Broadway in 2010 to perform “Red”, a play about a muralist. He then landed a starring role in “My Week with Marilyn”, and gained notoriety in 2012 for co-starring as Marius in the movie version of “Les Miserables”. Redmayne now plays Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”, a film which focuses not only on Hawking’s achievements but also on his personal life and relationship with his wife Jane. It is based on Jane’s memoir, “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.”
Born: January 6, 1982 (London, UK)
Education: Jackie Palmer Stage School | Eton | Trinity College, Cambridge
Filmography: Like Minds | The Good Shepherd | Savage Grace | Elizabeth: The Golden Age | The Yellow Handkerchief | The Other Boleyn Girl | Tess of the D’Urbervilles | Powder Blue | Glorious 39 | Black Death | The PIllars of the Earth | Hick | My Week with Marilyn | The Miraculous Year | Birdsong | Les Miserables | The Theory of Everything
Awards: Tony Award | Online Film and Television Association Award | Satellite Award | Laurence Olivier Award
Better Know A Guest, November 17 – 20, 2014
Hello, Colbert News Hub! Happy winter, apparently. I’ve seen a little bit of snow this week, and am writing this while drinking a gingerbread latte in a very christmas-y Starbucks.
This last week before Thanksgiving promises to be a good one, with Jon Stewart visiting the Colbert Report as a guest for the first time. We also have a smattering of positive news stories in among the awfulness of ISIS killing more hostages and norovirus coming back to cruise ships. My favorite was the Rosetta mission – neither the Daily Show nor the Colbert Report have taken the chance yet to cover the fact that the European Space Agency has managed to land a spaceship on a comet traveling at 40,000 miles per hour. That’s pretty cool, and I hope to see it worked in somehow. An easier target is the fact that today Vladimir Putin became the first to leave Australia’s G20 summit, because he was sleepy. The summit involved much condemnation of his actions in Ukraine, and strengthening of language to combat climate change. It’s unlikely that sleep was really the reason Putin left, but he said that it was and that’s hilarious.
Stephen’s guests this week are a senator, an actress and filmmaker, a novelist, and Jon Stewart! Jon’s guests are a filmmaker and three actors. Let us know in the comments which stories and guests you’re looking forward to!
Monday, November 17 (2014)
Bernie Sanders (US Senator)
Bernie Sanders is a US Senator from Vermont and a member of the Independent party. He has served in Congress for 24 years (16 as a Representative, 8 as a Senator), which makes him the longest-serving Independent congressman ever. His political views are extremely liberal; he has described himself as a socialist and his top issues are closing the income gap, addressing global warming, universal healthcare, advocating for veterans, and supporting family farms. He is the chair of the Veterans’ Affairs committee, an interest that was spurred during his time listening to hearings on veterans’ Gulf War illnesses as part of the House Oversight and government Reform Committee. The committee is focusing on providing treatment for PTSD and helping lower unemployment among veterans. Sanders has said that he got into politics because of his upbringing in a lower-middle-class family in Brooklyn, and he is considering a 2016 presidential run.
Born: September 8, 1941 (Brooklyn, NY)
Education: James Madison High School | Brooklyn College | University of Chicago
Books: Outsider in the House | The Speech
Awards: Arthur T. Marix Congressional Leadership Award, Military Officers Association of America | Legion’s Patriot Award
Previous ‘Colbert Report’ appearance(s): Interviews – April 21, 2008 | January 3, 2012
Previous ‘Daily Show’ appearance(s): Interview – April 28, 2011
Follow: @SenSanders | Facebook
Tuesday, November 18 (2014)
Eva Longoria (Executive Producer, “Food Chains“)
Eva Longoria is an actress and filmmaker, and the executive producer of a new documentary “Food Chains”. After a 2-year stint on soap opera The Young and the Restless, Longoria landed her first major acting role in the enormously successful drama Desperate Housewives, playing a formal model turned housewives who solves (and gets involved in) murders with her suburban friends. Longoria is also known as a philanthropist, supporting causes like healthcare, helping disabled children, advocating for farmers and migrant workers, campaigning for immigration reform, and supporting rights for Latinos. The Eva Longoria Foundation coordinates her efforts in supporting Latino causes. Longoria produced a documentary about child migrant workers called The Harvest in 2010. She is also a chef (she published a cookbook in 2011) and opened restaurant/nightclub locations in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Her new movie Food Chains is about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a labor organization that has gotten huge supermarket chains such as Whole Foods and Walmart to agree not to buy tomatoes from farms that violate workers’ rights, at an additional price of one cent per tomato.
Born: March 15, 1975 (Corpus Christi, Texas, United States)
Education: Texas A&M University | California State University
Filmography: Snitch’d | The Young and the Restless | Senorita Justice | The Dead Will Tell | Dragnet | Carlita’s Secret | Desperate Housewives | Harsh Times | The Sentinel | The Heartbreak Kid | Over Her Dead Body | Lower Learning | Without Men | Arthur Christmas | For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada | Foodfight! | The Baytown Outlaws | A Dark Truth | Mother Up! | In a World… | Crazy Kind of Love | Frontera | Visions | Any Day | The Harvest | Ready for Love | Devious Maids | Food Chains
Awards: ALMA awards | Bambi Award | People’s Choice Award | SAG Awards | Teen Choice Award | Philanthropist of the YEar | Latina Visionary and Community Empowerment Award | Cesar Chavez Legacy Award
Follow: @EvaLongoria | Facebook | Instagram
Wednesday, November 19 (2014)
Toni Morrison (Novelist, Editor and Professor)
Toni Morrison is a novelist, best known for her book “Beloved”, in which a former slave believes that she must kill her children or else they too would be destined to become slaves. “Beloved” was not her first work; she’d already written several novels exploring the African American experience. “Beloved” won a pulitzer prize in 1988, and in the late 90s was turned into a movie starring Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey. She then took a job teaching at Princeton and continued to steadily publish fiction. She has written childrens books, a play, songs, and operas. She is also the author of several nonfiction books about race, gender, and censorship. Her most recent novel, “Home”, was published in 2012 and is about a veteran suffering from PTSD.
Born: February 18, 1931 (Lorain, Ohio, Unites States)
Education: Howard University | Cornell University Books: The Bluest Eye | Sula | Song of Solomon | Tar Baby | Beloved | Jazz | Paradise | Love | A Mercy | Home | The Big Box | The Book of Mean People | Peeny Butter Fudge | Recitati | Dreaming Emmett | Desdemona | Margaret Garner | The Black Book | Playing in the Dark | Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power | Birth of a Nation’hood | Remember | What Moves at the Margin
Awards: Pulitzer Prize | Nobel Prize | Presidential Medal of Freedom | American Book Award | Anisfield-Wolf Book Award | Helmerich Award | Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize | National Book Critics Circle Award | Coretta Scott King Award | NAACP Image Award
Thursday, November 20 (2014)
Jon Stewart (Writer / Director: “Rosewater“)
Jon Stewart needs no introduction. He is the host of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and an executive producer of “The Colbert Report”, and has been mocking our politics and our news outlets behind the desk of “The Daily Show” since 1999. Before coming to the “Daily Show”, Jon played soccer and failed Organic Chemistry in college. He had several jobs after college before landing in New York to perform stand up comedy in the middle of the night at places such as the Comedy Cellar, which he did for six years before gaining recognition for an appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman” in 1993. He then became the host of MTV’s first-ever talk show “The Jon Stewart Show”, which aired for two years. He then worked intermittently as a guest host on “The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder” before landing the “Daily Show” hosting gig when Craig Kilborn took over “The Late Late Show”. Jon made the “Daily Show” what it is today, a popular, consistent, hilarious news satire that has spawned shows such as our “Colbert Report”, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”, and the upcoming “Minority Report with Larry Wilmore”. Outside of the “Daily Show”, Jon has acted in several movies and wrote a book of funny essays called “Naked Pictures of Famous People”. Last summer he went to Jordan to direct Rosewater, a film he wrote based on journalist Maziar Bahari’s memoir about being imprisoned in Iran for being a suspected American spy (a piece that he did with Jason Jones for the “Daily Show” was used as evidence against him). Rosewater premiered last week, and is playing in theaters now.
Born: November 28, 1962 (New York, New York, United States)
Education: Lawrence High School | William and Mary College
Filmography: Mixed Nuts | Wishful Thinking | Half Baked | The Faculty | Playing by Heart | Big Daddy | The Office Party | Committed | Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back | Death to Smoochy | The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina | Doogal | Wordplay | Short Attention Span Theater | The Jon Stewart Show | Jon Stewart: Unleavened | Since You’ve Been Gone | The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | The Colbert Report | Important Things with Demetri Martin | Rosewater Awards: Emmy Awards | PGA Awards | Television Critics Association Awards | WGA Award
Previous ‘Colbert Report’ appearance(s): Guest Appearances – August 8, 2006 | September 28, 2006 | November 7, 2006 | February 4, 2008 | September 22, 2009 | March 3, 2011 | January 12, 2012 | January 30, 2012 | November 12, 2012 | September 24, 2013
And now, let’s check in with our good friend Jon Stewart over at The Daily Show!
Monday, November 17 (2014)
Laura Poitras (Director, “Citizenfour“)
Laura Poitras is an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and the director of “Citizenfour”, a documentary about Edward Snowden. She has been releasing documentaries since 2003, on topics such as gentrification, the War on Terror, and government surveillance. Poitras also has an online investigative journalism magazine called The Intercept that she started with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. In 2010 she became a subject of government surveillance after releasing “The Oath” (about Osama Bin Laden and 9/11), and she was one of the people Edward Snowden contacted in order to release the surveillance story. She met him in Hong Kong, and those meetings are the subject of “Citizenfour”. The film was released on October 24th and is playing at independent movie theaters across the country.
Born: January 16, 1962 (Boston, Massachusetts, United States)
Education: Sudbury Valley School | San Francisco Art Institute | The New School
Filmography: Flag Wars | The Oath | The Law in These Parts | O’Say Can You See | The Engineer | P.O.V. | Evaporating Borders | 1971 | Citizenfour
Awards: Peabody Award | SXSW Best Documentary | Sundance Excellence in Cinematography Award | MacArthur Genius Grant | Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award | Pulitzer Prize | Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize
Follow: Website
Tuesday, November 18 (2014)
Benedict Cumberbatch (Actor “The Imitation Game“)
Benedict Cumberbatch is a British actor best known for his current role in BBC’s “Sherlock” and for his role as Khan in “Star Trek Into Darkness”. Cumberbatch grew up in the UK and attended boarding schools from the age of 8, where he acted in plays. He studied acting at the University of Manchester and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He then went into theater, and has acted in plays in the UK continually since 2001. His first major television role was as Stephen Hawking in “Hawking” in 2004. In 2010 he began playing Sherlock in the popular BBC show, and the fourth season of the show is expected in 2016. He has recently begun a successful film career as well, with notable roles as “Star Trek” villain Khan and “The Hobbit’s” Smaug and the Necromancer. He now plays Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game”, who helped win the Second World War after creating the “bombe,” a cryptanalysis machine that broke the Enigma cipher used by German army and navy forces.
Born: July 19, 1976 (Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom)
Education: Brambletye School | Harrow School | University of Manchester | London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
Filmography: Fields of Gold | Hills like White Elephants | To Kill a King | Hawking | To the Ends of the Earth | Starter for 10 | Amazing Grace | Inseparable | Atonement | The Other Boleyn Girl | The Last Enemy | Burlesque Fairytales | Creation | Small Island | Four Lions | Van Gogh: Painted with Words | Third Star | The Whistleblower | Curiosity | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | War Horse | Wreckers | Parade’s End | Girlfriend in a Coma | The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey | Electric Cinema: How to Behave | Star Trek Into Darkness | 12 Years a Slave | The Fifth Estate | August: Osage County | Little Favour | The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug | Penguins of Madagascar | Sherlock | The Imitation Game
Awards: Olivier Awards | Evening Standard Award | Critics’ Circle Theater Award | Emmy Award | Broadcasting Press Guild Award | Critics Choice Television Award | Hollywood Film Award | National Television Award | Online Film & Television Association Award | Satellite Award
Wednesday, November 19 (2014)
Jessica Chastain (Actress: “Interstellar”)
Jessica Chastain is an actress who has appeared in many recent films including “The Help”, “Zero Dark Thirty”, and “Mama”. She graduated from the prestigious Juilliard drama school and moved to LA, landing several small television roles before making her film debut in “Jolene” (based on the Dolly Parton song) in 2008. Since then she has enjoyed enormous success in Hollywood, and also appeared on Broadway in “The Heiress” in late 2012. Chastain recently played Eleanor Rigby in “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby”, which tells the story of a New York couple’s breakup from each of their perspectives. She is now starring in the Christopher Nolan space thriller “Interstellar”, about the search for a new habitable planet.
Born: March 24, 1977 (Sacramento, California, United States)
Education: Sacramento City College | Juilliard school
Filmography: Dark Shadows | Blackbeard | Jolene | Stolen Lives | The Debt | Take Shelter | Coriolanus | The Tree of Life | The Help | Wilde Salome | Texas Killing Fields | Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted | Lawless | The Color of Time | Zero Dark Thirty | Mama | Salome | The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby | Interstellar
Awards: Golden Globe | Alliance of Women Film Journalist Awards | National Board of Review Awards | National Society of Film Critics Award | Online Film & Television Association Award | Online Film Critics Society Award | Screen Actors Guild Award
Previous ‘Daily Show’ appearance(s): Interview- January 16, 2013
Follow: @Jes_Chastain | Facebook | Instagram
Thursday, November 20 (2014)
Eddie Redmayne (Actor: “The Theory of Everything”)
Eddie Redmayne is an actor and singer, best known for his performances in musical theater. He began performing in 2002 in Shakespeare’s 12th Night, and has been working in theater steadily since then. He came to Broadway in 2010 to perform “Red”, a play about a muralist. He then landed a starring role in “My Week with Marilyn”, and gained notoriety in 2012 for co-starring as Marius in the movie version of “Les Miserables”. Redmayne now plays Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”, a film which focuses not only on Hawking’s achievements but also on his personal life and relationship with his wife Jane. It is based on Jane’s memoir, “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.”
Born: January 6, 1982 (London, UK)
Education: Jackie Palmer Stage School | Eton | Trinity College, Cambridge
Filmography: Like Minds | The Good Shepherd | Savage Grace | Elizabeth: The Golden Age | The Yellow Handkerchief | The Other Boleyn Girl | Tess of the D’Urbervilles | Powder Blue | Glorious 39 | Black Death | The PIllars of the Earth | Hick | My Week with Marilyn | The Miraculous Year | Birdsong | Les Miserables | The Theory of Everything
Awards: Tony Award | Online Film and Television Association Award | Satellite Award | Laurence Olivier Award