Six degrees

Byron Mann (pictured), the Hong Kong-born actor who played the villainous Silver Lion in last year’s kung fu flick The Man with the Iron Fists, could be turning 46 today, or on August 13, depending on which bits of the internet you believe. The law graduate, who can be seen from March in the show Arrow on local television, had the dubious privilege of starring with Halle Berry in the 2004 film Catwoman, a movie often derided as one of the worst ever made. Also scrapping his way through Iron Fists was Oscar winner Russell Crowe …

Born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, the playwright fled to Singapore with his Jewish family on March 15, 1939, the day of the Nazi invasion. The Strausslers were then sent to Australia and eventually evacuated to Darjeeling in India, leaving behind his father, a doctor and British Army volunteer, to help in Singapore’s defence against the Japanese occupation. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that Stoppard learned that all four of his grandparents left behind in Czechoslovakia had perished in concentration camps. Stoppard’s 1982 play The Real Thing features the line: “I was taken once to Covent Garden to hear a woman called Callas” …