Six degrees
Hong Kong's Athena Chu Yan (below) will find out tomorrow whether she will become the first Chinese actress to win an Emmy. The 40-year-old was nominated for best actress in an international production for her role as a spirited wheelchair-bound woman in the RTHK drama A World Without Walls. Chu's rivals for the award are Brazilian actress Adriana Esteves, Sweden's Noomi Rapace and Britain's Julie Walters ...
The unpretentious star, best known these days as Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter films, is a rarity in the celeb world for having married only once, to an Automobile Association patrolman she met in a London pub. They have one child - conceived while she was making a film with Phil Collins, a reason she gave for rushing to the toilet to be sick every time they did a romantic scene. In the film, she plays the long-suffering wife to Collins' Buster Edwards ...
The small-time London crook was a member of the gang that pulled off the Great Train Robbery in 1963. They escaped with GBP2.6 million after holding up a train in southeast England. Edwards is believed to be the robber who hit train driver Jack Mills over the head with a cosh, an assault that tarnished the daredevil robbery. After fleeing to Mexico, Edwards returned to Britain in 1966 to give himself up and was jailed for nine years. After that - and before his suicide in 1994 - he set up a flower stall outside Waterloo station ...
London's busiest train station was built in 1848 and was named after the Battle of Waterloo, fought on a field in Belgium on June 18, 1815, and considered one of Britain's greatest military victories. Allied forces combined with Prussian soldiers to defeat the rampaging imperial French army, dealing a final defeat to its commander, the legendary European conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte ...
Little needs to be said about the French warrior, of course, so it's surprising that so few films have been made about him and the battles fought across Europe. Probably the best big-screen portrayal was the 1970 film Waterloo, which - since it was made long before the days of CGI - relied on 15,000 Soviet soldiers and 2,000 cavalrymen as extras. Napoleon was played with swagger and poise by Rod Steiger ...
The revered Hollywood actor was part of an all-star cast that voiced characters in Lincoln, a 1992 documentary about the American president. Steiger portrayed a general, as did Richard Dreyfuss, who is better known for playing the lead in 1977 romantic comedy The Goodbye Girl. That film was turned into a Cantonese stage play - which enjoyed its second run this month, at the Ngau Chi Wan Civic Centre - and its leading lady was Emmy hopeful Athena Chu Yan.
