Zhang Yimou has been in the news amid claims the film director (right), one of China’s finest, broke the mainland’s strict family planning laws. By fathering seven children in two marriages and relationships with two other women, he now faces fines of more than US$26 million. Zhang’s work includes Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern and Hero. He also oversaw the production of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and, in 1998, directed an acclaimed version of the opera Turandot, written by Giacomo Puccini …
Known as “America’s Sweetheart” and “The girl with the curls”, Pickford, born in 1892, was a Hollywood heavyweight: a co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she was also an astute businesswoman, becoming the first actress to negotiate for and receive a percentage of a film’s earnings. She divorced her first husband, actor Owen Moore, on March 2, 1920 and later that month married film star Douglas Fairbanks …