Intellect Plus
Art
1,236 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 8 of 21.
- Van Nuys built Camaros for decades before becoming a shopping centre siteFor almost 45 years a General Motors plant in Van Nuys turned out 6.3 million cars, from Impalas to Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds. Smog-reduction rules and a shrinking market clos…
- Woody Harrelson once drew a chess game with Garry Kasparov, with some grandmaster helpIn Prague in 1999 an American actor sat down at the board against the reigning world chess champion and walked away with a draw. Woody Harrelson had company: several grandmasters …
- The high school that turned Timothée Chalamet down, until one teacher overruled itLaGuardia, New York's famous performing arts school, rejected Timothée Chalamet after his interview. A drama teacher who had watched his audition refused to accept that, gave him …
- Tina Fey became the first woman to run the Saturday Night Live writers' roomIn 1999 Lorne Michaels asked a young Chicago improviser to take over as head writer of Saturday Night Live. Tina Fey became the first woman in that job, then stepped in front of t…
- Before Top Gun, Tom Cruise nearly trained to become a Franciscan priestTom Cruise went to fifteen schools in fourteen years, spent a year at a Cincinnati seminary hoping to become a Franciscan, and was cut from his high school football team for drink…
- Tom Hiddleston auditioned to play Thor and was cast as Loki insteadTom Hiddleston bulked up by twenty pounds of muscle in six weeks to try out for Thor, because a tall, blond, classically trained actor seemed to fit the mould. Director Kenneth Br…
- The world's oldest Sunday paper started life as a government-subsidised mouthpieceThe Observer's founder launched it in December 1791 expecting riches and quickly ran up debts of nearly 1,600 pounds. When the government declined to buy the title, it paid a subs…
- The famous Dostoevsky line about Gogol's Overcoat was never Dostoevsky'sA French critic, Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé, is the source of the remark that Russian realists all emerged from beneath Gogol's Overcoat, though it is routinely credited to Dostoevs…
- Sofia Coppola was mocked as an actress, then won an Oscar for writingIn 1990 Sofia Coppola collected two Golden Raspberry awards for playing Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III, a part she took only when Winona Ryder dropped out. Thirteen years…
- Stanley Tucci's breakthrough as a filmmaker was a movie about risottoBefore he fronted a food show, Stanley Tucci co-wrote and co-directed Big Night, a 1996 film about two Italian brothers trying to save their restaurant. His mother wrote a cookboo…
- The Office began as a student film Stephen Merchant made on a BBC courseRicky Gervais hired Stephen Merchant as his radio assistant in 1997 because his CV happened to be the first one handed over. A year later Merchant, on a BBC production course, cas…
- Stockard Channing was 33 when she played the teenager Rizzo in GreaseGrease cast Stockard Channing as the tough high-schooler Betty Rizzo in 1977, when she was 33 and a summa cum laude Radcliffe graduate. The role made her famous, yet her Hollywood…
- Sunil Dutt's first big role is called Bollywood's first anti-heroIn Mother India, the highest-grossing film of 1957, a newcomer named Sunil Dutt played Birju, the rebellious son of the heroine played by Nargis. Critics have since called the cha…
- Tamil star Suriya once hid his famous father while working in a garment factoryBefore acting, Saravanan Sivakumar spent eight months in a garment export factory without telling his boss that his father was the film star Sivakumar. He even turned down a lead …
- Susan Sarandon got her first film role at an audition meant for her husbandIn 1969 Susan Sarandon went along with her then-husband Chris to a casting call for the film Joe. He did not get a part; she landed a major one as a runaway teenager. Five Oscar n…
- Stravinsky was Diaghilev's fourth choice for The Firebird, and it made him famousThe Ballets Russes first wanted Nikolai Tcherepnin to score its new Russian fairy-tale ballet, then approached others before turning to a young student of Rimsky-Korsakov. Igor St…
- Sarah Paulson's big break came two decades into her careerSarah Paulson worked steadily from 1994 through a run of cancelled shows and cool reviews. Then Ryan Murphy put her in American Horror Story, where she played nine seasons of wild…
- The stoner surfer Spicoli grew into a three-time Oscar winnerSean Penn's Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High helped make "dude" part of everyday speech. The same actor went on to collect Best Actor Oscars for Mystic River and Milk,…
- Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne turned her back on endless Audrey copiesA cherry stem tied in her mouth made Sherilyn Fenn a cult figure on Twin Peaks. Offered a spin-off and a stream of copycat parts, she refused them, skipped the prequel film to sho…
- Opie from Mayberry grew up to win Best Director and Best PictureAt five, Ron Howard was on set pretending a toy turtle had died. He played Opie Taylor for eight seasons, then Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, and walked away from acting in 1980…
- Rooney Mara descends from the founders of two rival NFL teamsOne great-grandfather started the New York Giants; the other started the Pittsburgh Steelers. Rooney Mara went another way entirely, into acting, and nearly quit after a miserable…
- Every major Australian drama school turned down Rose ByrneNepean, WAAPA and NIDA all rejected her, so Rose Byrne took an arts degree instead. By 21 she had won the acting prize at Venice. Tired of heavy drama, she later begged her agents…
- Ryan O'Neal took $25,000 for Love Story instead of five times thatA Jerry Lewis comedy offered Ryan O'Neal five times the money, but he chose Love Story for $25,000. It made him a star and an Oscar nominee. He resented never getting a share of i…
- The Flying Nun star who became a two-time Best Actress winnerSally Field hated playing The Flying Nun and spent years typecast as the girl next door. Lessons with Lee Strasberg led to Sybil, then Norma Rae and a first Oscar. At 79 she set a…
- Sandra Bullock spent her childhood singing in a Nuremberg opera choirBefore Speed made her famous, Sandra Bullock spent twelve years in Germany and Austria, speaking German and trailing her opera-singer mother on tour. Back in New York she tended b…
- Robert Duvall, the admiral's son who could only actHis father, a Navy rear admiral, expected him at the Naval Academy. Robert Duvall later admitted he was hopeless at everything except acting. He spent years in summer stock on Lon…
- Robert Redford turned down The Graduate to escape his golden-boy imageWorried that audiences saw him as just another handsome blond, Robert Redford refused roles in The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Instead he waited for Butch Cassidy…
- Juilliard told Robin Williams it had nothing left to teach himRobin Williams was one of only two students John Houseman picked for Juilliard's advanced programme in 1973; the other was Christopher Reeve. His dialect teacher was baffled by ho…
- Reese Witherspoon went from open-call hopeful to Forbes' highest-paid actressReese Witherspoon walked into a 1991 open casting call hoping for a bit part and left with the lead in The Man in the Moon. Three decades later she held an Oscar, an Emmy, her own…
- Richard Burton borrowed his famous surname from the schoolteacher who remade himBefore his baritone filled theatres and cinemas, Richard Burton was Richard Jenkins, a miner's son growing up in Port Talbot. His schoolmaster Philip Burton drilled his voice outd…
- Richard Dreyfuss won Best Actor at 30, then nearly lost everythingAt 30 years and 125 days, Richard Dreyfuss became the youngest man ever to win the Best Actor Oscar, taking the record from Marlon Brando. He is still the shortest winner in that …
- Richard Gere wrote Pretty Woman's piano theme but never earned an Oscar nominationRichard Gere composed and played the piano theme in Pretty Woman, learned tap for three months to film half a day of dancing in Chicago, and studied karate for An Officer and a Ge…
- Hollywood's Love Goddess started life as Margarita Cansino, a Spanish dancer's daughterRita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansino, granddaughter of the man who popularised the bolero. Studios dyed her hair, renamed her twice and cast her as every kind of exotic…
- Robert Downey Jr. debuted at five playing a sick puppyRobert Downey Jr. first appeared on screen aged five as an ailing puppy in his father's absurdist film Pound. Decades, several arrests and one superhero later, his leading roles h…
- Paula Abdul went from Laker Girl to teaching the Jacksons to dancePicked from roughly 700 hopefuls to cheer for the Los Angeles Lakers, Paula Abdul was running the squad's choreography within a year. Members of the Jacksons spotted her at a game…
- In pleurisy, fluid flooding the chest can actually ease the painThe lungs normally slide inside two thin, smooth membranes. In pleurisy those layers become inflamed and grate against each other with every breath, producing a stabbing pain and …
- Ralph Fiennes played Voldemort, and his nephew played the boy VoldemortRalph Fiennes is best known for chilling roles, from a Nazi commandant to Lord Voldemort. Yet one of his most loved parts is a flirtatious hotel concierge, built partly from memor…
- The revolutionary Red Army was largely led by the Tsar's former officersThe Bolsheviks founded the Red Army in January 1918 as a force of class-conscious workers. Within months Leon Trotsky had scrapped elected officers and hired thousands of former i…
- After Hollywood gave up on him, Shyamalan paid for The Visit himselfBy 2014 most studios would not touch an M. Night Shyamalan picture. So he funded a small horror-comedy out of his own pocket, shot it quietly, and sold it to Universal. The Visit …
- Before the famous voice, Morgan Freeman repaired radar for the Air ForceMorgan Freeman turned down a drama scholarship in 1955 to fix tracking radar in the US Air Force. He then spent decades dancing, doing stage work and suffering through a children'…
- Naomi Watts spent a decade being told she wasn't enoughNaomi Watts moved to Hollywood in the early 1990s, lost her medical insurance, struggled to pay rent and once auditioned five times for Meet the Parents only to hear she lacked se…
- Nicole Kidman's Hawaiian name was inspired by a baby elephantNicole Kidman was born in Honolulu to Australian students and given the Hawaiian name Hōkūlani, heavenly star, after a young elephant born at the city zoo around then. The shy chi…
- Paul Thomas Anderson quit film school after just two daysFor his first NYU assignment, Paul Thomas Anderson handed in a page of David Mamet's screenplay for Hoffa as his own. It came back marked C+. He walked out after two days, finance…
- An Emmy-winning actor who also holds a professional wrestling titlePaul Walter Hauser won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for playing a serial killer, voices Embarrassment in Inside Out 2, raps under the name Signet Ringer, and in April 2025 won a wre…
- The mysterious Observer from Fringe is also a two-time Tony winner and rock guitaristTelevision viewers know Michael Cerveris as September, the enigmatic stranger who kept appearing in Fringe, even turning up at real football games as part of a marketing stunt. On…
- The J in Michael J. Fox was borrowed from another actorWhen Michael Fox registered with the Screen Actors Guild, a veteran actor already owned the name. He rejected his real middle initial, A, and added a J in tribute to Michael J. Po…
- Michael Keaton picked his surname by flicking through a phone bookBorn Michael Douglas, he needed a new name because a famous actor and a talk-show host already had it. So he opened a phone book at K and stopped at Keaton. The renamed comic went…
- Monty Python exists largely because John Cleese wanted to work with Michael PalinThe BBC offered Cleese and Graham Chapman a two-man show, but Cleese balked and phoned Palin instead. Palin, already developing a series with Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Terry Gill…
- Before Dawson's Creek, Michelle Williams won a futures trading championship with 1,000 percent returnsAt seventeen, while scraping by on low-budget roles in Los Angeles, Michelle Williams entered a trading contest her father had taught her to play. She returned 1,000 percent, beco…
- Sean Baker wrote Anora for Mikey Madison without ever auditioning herA former competitive horse rider who switched to acting at fourteen, Mikey Madison caught Sean Baker's eye as a Manson follower and in the fifth Scream. He wrote his next lead aro…
- Miss Piggy started as an unnamed chorus pig and outsold KermitIn 1975 she was a nameless, beady-eyed blonde pig in a Muppet pilot sketch. Within a few years the writers realised a lovesick pig could carry far more than a running joke, and Mi…
- Matthew McConaughey talked his way into his first big role at a hotel barA film student from Texas walked up to a casting director over drinks, and a tiny part meant for a local extra grew into Wooderson in Dazed and Confused. Two decades later the sam…
- One director, five films: how Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan built each otherMichael B. Jordan was a former child model from Newark with a small but unforgettable part in The Wire. Then a young director cast him as Oscar Grant. Their partnership ran throug…
- Mary Kom hid her boxing from her father until a newspaper photo gave her awayA farmer's daughter from rural Manipur kept her new sport secret, because her father, once a wrestler himself, feared boxing would ruin her face and her marriage prospects. Then s…
- Matt Damon's Oscar-winning screenplay began as a Harvard class assignmentFor an English class at Harvard, Matt Damon wrote an essay shaped like a film treatment. He roped in his childhood friend Ben Affleck to act out scenes in front of the class. Year…
- Before stardom, Leonardo DiCaprio sat through a hundred auditions and refused a new nameHis first agent wanted him to become Lenny Williams, a name thought friendlier to American audiences. The boy said no, then went a year and a half without work despite about a hun…
- Lucky Luciano ran organised crime like a corporation, board meetings includedThe old Sicilian bosses in New York refused to deal with anyone outside their own villages. Charles Luciano thought that was bad business. He would partner with Jewish and Irish g…
- The fastest gun in comics once won a health award for quitting cigarettesFor decades Lucky Luke rolled cigarettes between shootouts. Then, in a 1983 story, his Belgian creator swapped the smoke for a stalk of straw. Five years later the World Health Or…
- Mallika Sherawat took her mother's name and chased Hollywood from BollywoodBorn Reema Lamba in a Haryana village, she renamed herself Mallika, meaning empress, and took her mother's maiden name, Sherawat. Bold roles made her a Bollywood sex symbol, a Can…
- Margot Fonteyn was close to retiring when Rudolf Nureyev became her partnerIn 1961 Britain's leading ballerina was thinking about stepping down. Then a young Soviet star defected in Paris, and she agreed, somewhat reluctantly given the 19 years between t…