title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In May 2018, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Israel Defense Forces' use of deadly force against Palestinians participating in the 2018 Gaza border protests, calling it a "massacre" in a tweet. In a July 2018 interview, she said she was "a proponent of a two-state solution" and called Israel's presence in the West Bank an "occupation of Palestine". After being asked to elaborate, she responded she was not "the expert on geopolitics on this issue". Her use of the term "occupation" drew backlash from a number of pro-Israel groups and commentators. Others defended her remarks, citing the United Nations' designation of the territory in the West Bank as occupied. In July 2019, Ocasio-Cortez voted against a House resolution introduced by Representative Brad Schneider condemning the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel. The resolution passed 398–17.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez warned that Israel's planned annexation of Palestinian territories in the occupied West Bank "would lay the groundwork for Israel becoming an apartheid state". She wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that she would work to "pursue legislation that conditions the $3.8billion in U.S. military funding to Israel to ensure that U.S. taxpayers are not supporting annexation in any way". AIPAC condemned the letter, saying it threatened the U.S.-Israel relationship.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In May 2021, Ocasio-Cortez issued a statement condemning Israel's evictions of Palestinian families from their homes in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. She criticized President Biden for saying Israel "has a right to defend itself", arguing that "blanket statements like these [with] little context or acknowledgement of what precipitated this cycle of violence—namely, the expulsions of Palestinians and attacks on Al Aqsa—dehumanize Palestinians [and] imply the US will look the other way at human rights violations."


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: On September 23, 2021, Ocasio-Cortez abruptly changed her vote from "no" to "present" on a bill providing $1 billion for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, citing the "hateful targeting" she had received surrounding the bill. She apologized for her vote after receiving criticism on social media from some supporters of Israel and of Palestine, but maintained her opposition to the bill due to Israel's "persistent human rights abuses against the Palestinian people".


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: After the contentious confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Ocasio-Cortez urged Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to expand the court if he won and their party achieved a Senate majority. In April 2021, she supported a bill to increase the Court's size. She again called for expansion in September 2021 after the Court voted not to grant an emergency stay of the Texas Heartbeat Bill.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In March 2022, Ocasio-Cortez called on Justice Clarence Thomas to resign over his wife's texts urging President Trump's chief of staff to overturn the 2020 presidential election, raising a possible impeachment effort if he did not. After the Supreme Court overturned "Roe v. Wade" in June 2022, Ocasio-Cortez called for the impeachment of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. She alleged that the two had lied under oath about their views on "Roe" during their confirmation hearings.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In June 2022, after the Supreme Court made several consequential rulings and granted "certiorari" to "Moore v. Harper", which has a potential impact on future elections, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that the U.S. was "witnessing a judicial coup in progress". The next month, she claimed the Court had "gone rogue" and that impeachment, expansion, introduction of ethics rules and recusal requirements should be considered. She added that Thomas should certainly be impeached. Two days later she led House progressives calling on the Democratic leadership in Congress to strip the Court of its jurisdiction "in the areas of abortion, marriage equality, non-procreative intimacy, and contraception". They pointed to Thomas's concurring opinion in "Dobbs", which suggested revisiting cases that established a constitutional right to contraception, same-sex marriage and gay sex.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In 2019, Ocasio-Cortez supported pay raises for Congress. She wrote, "It's not a fun or politically popular position to take. But consistency is important. ALL workers should get cost of living increases. That's why minimum wage should be pegged to inflation, too." Members of Congress make $174,000 annually; the Speaker makes $223,500 and House leaders make $193,400. Republican Kevin McCarthy joined her in supporting the pay raise, saying he didn't want Congress to be a place where only the wealthy can afford to serve. Colleagues such as Joe Cunningham opposed the measure, saying, "We didn't come up here to give ourselves a raise".


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: On June 28, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez told CNN she would support the impeachment of President Trump, citing Trump's alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause and saying that "we have to hold everyone accountable and that no person is above that law."


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez has called for "solidarity with Puerto Rico". She has advocated for granting Puerto Ricans further civil rights, regardless of Puerto Rico's legal classification. She advocates for voting rights and disaster relief. Ocasio-Cortez was critical of FEMA's response to Hurricane Maria and the federal government's unwillingness to address Puerto Rico's political status. She believes the federal government should increase investment in Puerto Rico. In August 2020, Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velázquez introduced the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2020, which was referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: On March 18, 2021, Ocasio-Cortez, Velázquez and Senator Bob Menendez introduced a new version, the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2021, with over 70 co-sponsors in the House and seven co-sponsors in the Senate, including one Republican.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez supports transitioning to a single-payer healthcare system and considers medical care a human right. She says that a single government health insurer should cover every American, reducing overall costs. Her campaign website says, "Almost every other developed nation in the world has universal healthcare. It's time the United States catch up to the rest of the world in ensuring all people have real healthcare coverage that doesn't break the bank." Many 2020 Democratic presidential candidates adopted the Medicare-for-all proposal.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In June 2019 and in July 2021, Ocasio-Cortez proposed legislation that would remove restrictions placed on researching the medical use of psilocybin.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez supports codifying the right to abortion, and is a member of the House pro-choice caucus. On July 19, 2022, after the Supreme Court overruled "Roe v. Wade" in "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization", she and 17 other members of Congress were arrested in an act of civil disobedience for refusing to clear a street during a protest for reproductive rights outside the Supreme Court Building.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez campaigned in favor of establishing tuition-free public colleges and trade schools. She has said she is still paying off student loans herself and wants to cancel all student debt.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez has expressed support for defunding and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on multiple occasions. In February 2018 she called it "a product of the Bush-era Patriot Act suite of legislation" and "an enforcement agency that takes on more of a paramilitary tone every single day". That June, she said she would "stop short of fully disbanding the agency", and would rather "create a pathway to citizenship for more immigrants through decriminalization". She later clarified that this does not mean ceasing all deportations. Two days before the primary election, Ocasio-Cortez attended a protest at an ICE child-detention center in Tornillo, Texas. She was the only Democrat to vote against H.R. 648, a bill to fund and reopen the government, because it funded ICE.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In January 2021, Ocasio-Cortez expressed support for the Roadmap to Freedom resolution to guide future immigration policy championed by Representative Pramila Jayapal. The resolution aims to safeguard vulnerable migrants while reducing criminal prosecutions of migrants.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In June 2019, Ocasio-Cortez compared the detention centers for undocumented immigrants under the Trump administration at the Mexico–United States border to "concentration camps". She cited "expert analysis", linking to an "Esquire" article quoting Andrea Pitzer, author of "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps", who had made a similar claim. Some academics supported Ocasio-Cortez's use of the term for the forced detention of immigrants; other figures strongly criticized it, saying it showed disrespect for Holocaust victims. In response to criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez said they had conflated concentration camps ("the mass detention of civilians without trial") with death camps. She refused to apologize for using the term: "If that makes you uncomfortable, fight the camps, not the nomenclature."


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In July 2019, Ocasio-Cortez visited migrant detention centers and other facilities in Texas as part of a congressional delegation to witness the border crisis firsthand. She described the conditions as "horrifying". She said that women in one cell said they had not had access to showers for two weeks and were told to drink water from the toilet when their sink broke, and that one woman said that her daughters had been taken from her two weeks earlier and she did not know where they were.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In February 2021, when the Biden administration reopened a Carrizo Springs, Texas, center to house unaccompanied migrant children, Ocasio-Cortez responded that such actions "never will be okay—no matter the administration or party". For short-term measures to address the situation, she called for mandatory licensing for such centers and urged reconsideration of how the centers are "contracted out".


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez is a proponent of LGBTQ rights and LGBTQ equality. She has said she supports the LGBTQ community and thanked its members for their role in her campaign. She publicized and later appeared on a video game live stream to help raise money for Mermaids, a UK-based charity for trans children. At the January 2019 New York City Women's March in Manhattan, Ocasio-Cortez gave a detailed speech in support of measures needed to ensure LGBTQ equality in the workplace and elsewhere. She has also made a point of recognizing transgender rights, specifically saying, "It's a no-brainer... trans rights are civil rights are human rights."


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: At the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on February 27, 2020, Ocasio-Cortez argued for LGBTQ equality in the context of her religious background. Referencing a Catholic hospital that refused a hysterectomy for a transgender man, she argued, "[t]here is nothing holy about rejecting medical care of people, no matter who they are, on the grounds of what their identity is. There is nothing holy about turning someone away from a hospital."


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez supports the "defund the police" movement. Asked to give her interpretation of the movement, she said, "It looks like a suburb", and "affluent white communities already live in a world where they choose to fund youth, health, housing etc more than they fund police. When a teenager or preteen does something harmful in a suburb (I say teen bc this is often where lifelong carceral cycles begin for Black and Brown communities), White communities bend over backwards to find alternatives to incarceration for their loved ones to 'protect their future,' like community service or rehab or restorative measures. Why don't we treat Black and Brown people the same way? Why doesn't the criminal system care about Black teens' futures the way they care for White teens' futures? Why doesn't the news use Black people's graduation or family photos in stories the way they do when they cover White people (eg Brock Turner) who commit harmful crimes?"


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In January 2020, Ocasio-Cortez announced the formation of a PAC called Courage to Change, which announced its first endorsements of progressive Democrats on February 21, 2020. Some progressive commentators subsequently criticized Ocasio-Cortez for having only endorsed two Democratic primary challengers by March 3. A notable omission was Cori Bush, who had received an endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez two years prior.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: The MIT Lincoln Laboratory named the asteroid 23238 Ocasio-Cortez after her when she was a senior in high school in recognition of her second-place finish in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Ocasio-Cortez was named the 2017 National Hispanic Institute Person of the Year by Ernesto Nieto. In 2019, Ocasio-Cortez received the Adelle Foley Award. She was named as one of the 2019 BBC 100 Women.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: After the death of Ocasio-Cortez's father in 2008, her mother and grandmother moved to Florida due to financial hardship. She still has family in Puerto Rico, where her grandfather was living in a nursing home before he died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Ocasio-Cortez said that "to be Puerto Rican is to be the descendant of... African Moors [and] slaves, Taino Indians, Spanish colonizers, Jewish refugees, and likely others. We are all of these things and something else all at once—we are "Boricua"."


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: Ocasio-Cortez is a Catholic. She discussed her faith and its impact on her life and her campaign for criminal justice reform in an article she wrote for "America", the magazine of the Jesuit order in the United States. At a December 2018 Hanukkah celebration in New York, she said she has some Sephardic Jewish ancestry.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: During the 2018 election campaign, Ocasio-Cortez resided in Parkchester, Bronx, with her partner, web developer Riley Roberts. They got engaged in April 2022 in Puerto Rico.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: OpenSecrets, analyzing financial disclosure forms, ranked Ocasio-Cortez one of the least wealthy members of the 116th Congress, with a maximum net worth of $30,000.


title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

text: In May 2021, Ocasio-Cortez said that she has been in psychotherapy to cope with the "extraordinarily traumatizing" 2021 United States Capitol attack. She said she "did not know if [she] was going to make it to the end of that day alive".


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Saoirse Una Ronan ( , ; born 12 April 1994) is an American-born Irish actress. Primarily known for her work in period dramas since adolescence, she has received various accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for four Academy Awards and five British Academy Film Awards.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan made her acting debut in 2003 on the Irish medical drama series "The Clinic" and her film debut in "I Could Never Be Your Woman" (2007). She had her breakthrough role as a precocious teenager in Joe Wright's "Atonement" (2007), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her career progressed with starring roles as a murdered girl seeking closure in "The Lovely Bones" (2009) and a teenage assassin in "Hanna" (2011), and the supporting role of a baker in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014). Ronan received critical acclaim and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing a homesick Irish immigrant in 1950s New York in "Brooklyn" (2015), the eponymous high school senior in Greta Gerwig's "Lady Bird" (2017), and Jo March in Gerwig's "Little Women" (2019). She also won a Golden Globe Award for "Lady Bird".


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: On stage, Ronan portrayed Abigail Williams in the 2016 Broadway revival of "The Crucible" and Lady Macbeth in the 2021 West End revival of "The Tragedy of Macbeth". In 2016, she was featured by "Forbes" in two of their 30 Under 30 lists, and in 2020, "The New York Times" ranked her tenth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Saoirse Una Ronan was born on 12 April 1994 in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, to Irish parents Monica (née Brennan) and Paul Ronan, both from Dublin. Her father worked in construction and in bars before training as an actor in New York, and her mother worked as a nanny and had acted as a child. Her parents were initially undocumented immigrants who had left Ireland due to the recession of the 1980s, and struggled economically during their time in New York. The family moved back to Dublin when Ronan was three years old. She was raised in Ardattin, County Carlow, where she attended Ardattin National School. Her parents later had her tutored privately at home. In her early teens, she was living again in Dublin with her parents, who settled in the seaside village of Howth. She was raised Catholic, but says she questioned her faith as a child.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan made her screen debut on Irish national broadcaster RTÉ, in the 2003 prime time medical drama "The Clinic" and appeared in the mini-serial "Proof". During the same time, Ronan auditioned for the part of Luna Lovegood in the fantasy film "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (2007), a role she lost out to fellow Irish actress Evanna Lynch. Ronan's first film was Amy Heckerling's romantic comedy "I Could Never Be Your Woman", which was filmed in 2005. It was theatrically released in a few international markets in 2007 and given a direct-to-video release in the US in 2008, after it struggled to attract financing and several deals disintegrated during its post-production. In the film, Ronan portrayed the daughter of Michelle Pfeiffer's character and Paul Rudd co-starred as Pfeiffer's love interest. Joe Leydon of "Variety" labelled the film "desperately unfunny" but considered the interplay between Ronan and Pfeiffer's characters to be among the film's highlights.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: At the age of 12, Ronan attended a casting call for Joe Wright's 2007 film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel "Atonement". She auditioned for and won the part of Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old aspiring novelist, who affects several lives by accusing her sister's lover of a crime he did not commit. She acted alongside Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. Budgeted at US$30 million, the film earned over US$129 million worldwide. Ty Burr of "The Boston Globe" called her "remarkable [and] eccentric", and Christopher Orr of "The Atlantic" wrote that she is "a marvel, elegantly capturing the narcissism and self-doubt that adhere to precocity". Ronan was nominated for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the seventh youngest nominee in that category.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan played the daughter of an impoverished psychic (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the supernatural thriller "Death Defying Acts" (2007) and starred as Lina Mayfleet, a heroic teenager who must save the inhabitants of an underground city named Ember in the fantasy film "City of Ember" (2008). Both films received a mixed critical reception and failed at the box office. In a review for the latter, the critic Stephen Holden took note of how Ronan's talents were wasted in it.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: In 2009, Ronan starred alongside Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci in Peter Jackson's supernatural drama "The Lovely Bones", an adaptation of the book of the same name by Alice Sebold. Ronan played 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who, after being raped and murdered, watches from the after-life as her family struggles to move on with their lives while she comes to terms with her quest for vengeance. Ronan and her family were originally hesitant for Ronan to accept the role due to its subject matter, but agreed after Jackson assured them that the film would not feature gratuitous scenes of rape and murder. Several sequences in the film relied on extensive special effects and much of Ronan's scenes were filmed in front of a blue screen. Reviewers were critical of the film's story and message, but Richard Corliss of "Time" believed that Ronan had successfully invested the gruesome tale with "immense gravity and grace". He later considered it to be the third best performance of the year. Sukhdev Sandhu of "The Daily Telegraph" considered Ronan to be the sole positive aspect of the production, writing that she "is simultaneously playful and solemn, youthful yet old beyond her years". The film was a box office disappointment. It earned Ronan a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role nomination.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: In Peter Weir's war drama "The Way Back" (2010), Ronan played the supporting part of Irena, a Polish orphan during World War II, who joins escaped Siberian convicts in a trek to India. It co-starred Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell and Ed Harris, and was filmed on location in Bulgaria, India and Morocco. The following year, Ronan reunited with Joe Wright to play the title character in the action film "Hanna", about a 15-year-old girl raised in the Arctic wilderness to be an assassin. The film co-starred Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett as Hanna's father and a villainous CIA agent, respectively. Ronan performed her own stunts and in preparation, she spent several months training in martial arts, stick fighting and knife fighting. Ronan's performance and the film's action sequences were praised by critics. In his review for "Rolling Stone", Peter Travers termed the film "a surreal fable of blood and regret" and labelled Ronan an "acting sorceress". "Hanna" was a moderate commercial success. She voiced the lead role in the dubbed English version of Studio Ghibli's anime film "Arrietty". At the age of 16, Ronan was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: In 2011, Ronan took part in a promotion for the Irish Film Institute's Archive Preservation Fund, in which she was digitally edited into popular Irish films of the past, as well as documentary footage. Ronan and Alexis Bledel played the titular assassins in Geoffrey S. Fletcher's action film "Violet & Daisy" (2011). Eric Goldman of IGN compared the film unfavourably to the work of Quentin Tarantino and commented that Ronan's abilities had surpassed the material. Peter Jackson approached Ronan to play an elf in "The Hobbit" film series, but she withdrew from the project due to scheduling conflicts. She was instead drawn to Neil Jordan's horror film "Byzantium" (2012), as the "dark, gothic and twisted" project provided her an opportunity to play a more complex and mature character. The film starred Gemma Arterton and her as mother-and-daughter vampires. Writing for "Radio Times", the critic Alan Jones found the film to be an "evocative fairy tale that uses vampires as a prism to comment on humanity" and considered both Arterton and Ronan to be "radiant" in it.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: In a 2013 film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's novel "The Host", Ronan played the dual role of Melanie Stryder, a human rebel, and Wanderer, a parasitic alien. Critics disliked the film; Manohla Dargis termed it "a brazen combination of unoriginal science-fiction themes [and] young-adult pandering", but took note of an "otherworldly aspect to [Ronan's] screen presence, partly due to her stillness and her own translucent eyes, which can suggest grave intensity or utter detachment". In Kevin Macdonald's drama "How I Live Now", an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Meg Rosoff, Ronan played an American teenager sent to a remote farm in the United Kingdom during the outbreak of a fictional World War III. Olly Richards of "Empire" found Ronan to be in "typically watchable form" in it, but the film earned little at the box office. In her final film release of the year, Ronan voiced a barmaid named Talia in the critically panned animated film "Justin and the Knights of Valour".


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan had two film releases in 2014 with widely diverse critical receptionsthe acclaimed comedy film "The Grand Budapest Hotel" from the director Wes Anderson and Ryan Gosling's panned directorial debut "Lost River". In the former, an ensemble film headed by Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori, Ronan played the supporting part of the love interest to Revolori's character. It was the first project that she filmed without her parents accompanying her on set. The film earned over $174 million on a $25 million budget and was ranked by the BBC as one of the greatest films of the century. In the surrealistic fantasy film "Lost River", Ronan played a mysterious young girl named Rat who owns a pet rat; Geoffrey Macnab of "The Independent" termed the film a "wildly self-indulgent affair" but praised Ronan's "tough but vulnerable" portrayal.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: After starring in "Stockholm, Pennsylvania" (2015), a psychological thriller about Stockholm syndrome, Ronan played the lead role of Eilis Lacey, a young homesick Irishwoman in 1950s New York City, in the drama "Brooklyn". Directed by John Crowley, the film is based on the novel of the same name by Colm Tóibín. Ronan believed that several aspects of her character's development and journey mirrored her own. The film and Ronan's performance were acclaimed; Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" considered it to be a "heartfelt and absorbing film" and wrote that Ronan's "calm poise anchors almost every scene and every shot". Kenneth Turan of "Los Angeles Times" took note of the "overwhelming empathy she creates with the subtlest means, the remarkable way she's able to create achingly personal, intensely emotional sequences while seeming not to be doing very much at all." Ronan received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: In 2016, Ronan moved to New York City to begin rehearsals for her debut appearance on Broadway, in a revival of Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible". She took the role of Abigail Williams, a manipulative maid responsible for the death of 150 people accused of witchcraft. Based on the Salem witch trials, the play was directed by Ivo van Hove and ran for 125 performances. In preparation, she read Stacy Schiff's book "The Witches: Salem, 1692", and collaborated closely with van Hove to empathise with her villainous character. Instead of relying on previous portrayals of Williams, Ronan played her as "more victim than victimizer". Writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", David Rooney considered Ronan to be "icy and commanding" and Linda Winer of "Newsday" commented that she had played the part "with the duplicity of a malevolent surfer-girl".


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan next voiced Marguerite Gachet in the biographical animated drama "Loving Vincent" (2017), and starred alongside Billy Howle as troubled newlyweds on their honeymoon in a film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel "On Chesil Beach". In a mixed review of the latter film, Kate Erbland of IndieWire thought Ronan was underutilised in it and that her performance had been overshadowed by that of Howle. She starred in Greta Gerwig's coming-of-age film "Lady Bird", in which she played the titular role of Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson, a high school senior who shares a tumultuous relationship with her mother (played by Laurie Metcalf). It ranks among the best-reviewed films of all time on the review-aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Deeming Ronan's performance one of the best of the year, A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" wrote, "Ronan navigates each swerve in "Lady Bird"s story with an uncanny combination of self-confidence and discovery. She is as spontaneous and unpredictable as an actual 17-year-old ... which suggests an altogether stupefying level of craft." She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical; and received Academy Award, BAFTA and SAG nominations for Best Actress.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: In 2017, Ronan hosted an episode of the NBC sketch comedy "Saturday Night Live", in which one of her sketches was criticised for its stereotypical portrayal of Irish people, and featured in the music video for Ed Sheeran's song "Galway Girl". The following year, she starred in an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play "The Seagull", in which she played Nina, an aspiring actress. In a mixed review of the film, Michael O'Sullivan of "The Washington Post" praised Ronan's performance, writing that she "makes for an incandescent Nina, especially in her loopy final-act speech". She starred as Mary Stuart in the period drama "Mary Queen of Scots", co-starring Margot Robbie as Elizabeth I of England. To maintain the distance between their characters, Ronan and Robbie did not interact with one another until filming their climactic encounter. Critic Todd McCarthy praised both actresses' performances and credited Ronan for "carr[ying] the film with fiercely individualistic spirit".


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: After becoming aware of a forthcoming film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women", written and directed by Greta Gerwig, Ronan campaigned to play the lead role of Jo March, an aspiring author in the American Civil War era. In preparation, she read "Marmee & Louisa", a biography about Alcott and her mother; the cast rehearsed the script for two weeks, and filming took place on location in Concord, Massachusetts. "Little Women" was released in 2019 to critical acclaim. Richard Lawson of "Vanity Fair" took note of how well Ronan had portrayed her character "in all her conflicted loyalty, the struggle between her familial contentment and her yearning for something more." The film grossed over $218 million to emerge as her highest-grossing release. Once again, she received Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. This made Ronanat 25 years and six months of agethe second youngest person to accrue four Oscar nominations, behind Jennifer Lawrence.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: In 2020, Ronan portrayed the geologist Charlotte Murchison opposite Kate Winslet's Mary Anning in Francis Lee's "Ammonite", a drama about a romantic relationship between the two women in the 1840s. The two actresses collaborated closely on the project, and they choreographed their own sex scenes. Steve Pond of "TheWrap" considered it to be "the most mature performance of [Ronan's] remarkable career". In 2021, Ronan had a small part in Wes Anderson's ensemble film "The French Dispatch", about American journalists in France. In the same year, she made her West End theatre debut at London's Almeida Theatre, performing as Lady Macbeth in a revival of "The Tragedy of Macbeth", opposite James McArdle. Ronan was intimidated by the experience of performing Shakespeare for the first time in her career, and drew inspiration from Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's marriage for portraying the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Alexandra Pollard of "The Independent" took note of Ronan's "rare skill to make Shakespeare’s beautiful but weighty words easy to understand". Ronan starred alongside Sam Rockwell as cops solving a murder in 1950s London in the comedy mystery film "See How They Run" (2022).


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan will next star in a film adaptation of the novel "Foe" by Iain Reid, directed by Garth Davis, and in "The Outrun", an adaptation of Amy Liptrot's memoir of the same name, directed by Nora Fingscheidt. She will also star in Steve McQueen's World War II historical film "Blitz", which will be released on Apple TV+.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan holds dual Irish and American citizenship and has said, "I don't know where I am from. I'm just Irish." She also identifies as a New Yorker. She is close with her parents, and lived with them until age 19. She has credited her mother, who accompanied her on film sets as a teenager, for protecting her from uncomfortable situations. In 2018 Ronan purchased a home in Greystones, County Wicklow; she sold the home in late 2019. In late 2020 she purchased a house in West Cork. Since 2018 she has been in a relationship with Scottish actor Jack Lowden, her co-star in "Mary Queen of Scots", and divides her time between Dublin, London, and northern England.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: She does not use social media, finding it "too stressful". She had previously joined Twitter in late 2009 due to being a fan of English comedian Stephen Fry, whose heavy usage of the site has been well documented, but soon deleted her account. She said in a February 2018 interview, "I get why musicians do it, and journalists or people in the public eye. But acting is a different thing, 'cause you're not yourself when you're working. I'm not me in anything that anyone sees me in ... and self-promotion has always made me feel really uncomfortable."


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan is an ambassador for the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. She is associated with Home Sweet Home, an anti-homelessness campaign, and supported the organisation's action to illegally take over an office building in Dublin to house 31 homeless families in 2016. That same year, she was featured in a music video for Hozier's song "Cherry Wine", which brought attention to domestic violence. She has supported LGBT rights in Ireland by voting in favour of gay marriage on the 2015 Irish constitutional referendums.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Erica Wagner of "Harper's Bazaar" has described Ronan's off-screen persona as "lively, funny, warm", while Vanessa Thorpe of "The Guardian" found her "unpretentious". While reviewing "Lady Bird" in 2017, "The New York Times" critic A.O. Scott ranked Ronan as "one of the most formidable actors in movies today". In 2020, the newspaper ranked her tenth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century. In the same year, she was placed sixth on "The Irish Times" list of Ireland's greatest film actors of all time.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: In 2016, Ronan was featured by "Forbes" in two of their 30 Under 30 lists and in "Time"s Next Generation Leaders list. In 2018, she was featured in "Maxim"s Hot 100 list and was named among the best American actors under 30 by IndieWire. She was ranked one of the best-dressed women in 2018 by the fashion website Net-a-Porter. Also that year, Calvin Klein appointed her and Lupita Nyong'o as the faces of Raf Simons's "Women", his first fragrance for the company. To support sustainable fashion, she wore a dress to the 2020 Oscars that was made from the surplus fabric of the dress she wore to the BAFTAs.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: Ronan has been recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: At age 21, she became the eighth-youngest Best Actress nominee. At 25 years and six months of age, Ronan is the second youngest person to accrue four Academy Award nominations, behind only American actress Jennifer Lawrence.


title: Saoirse Ronan

text: She has received five British Academy Film Award nominations, and four Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. She has also received four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for "Lady Bird" (2017).


title: Kristen Bell

text: Kristen Anne Bell (born July 18, 1980) is an American actress. Beginning her acting career by starring in stage productions while attending the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, she made her Broadway stage debut as Becky Thatcher in the comedy musical "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and appeared in a Broadway revival of "The Crucible" the following year. She later appeared in the action thriller film "Spartan" (2004) and received praise for her performance in the television drama film "Gracie's Choice" (2004).


title: Kristen Bell

text: Her first major role was the title character in the teen noir drama television series "Veronica Mars" (2004–2007), receiving critical acclaim and a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television for her performance. She reprised the eponymous role in the 2014 film and the 2019 revival. During her time on "Veronica Mars", Bell starred as Mary Lane in the musical film "" (2005), a reprise of the role she had played in the New York musical of the same name.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell starred as Elle Bishop in the superhero drama series "Heroes" from 2007 to 2008. She voiced the titular narrator in the teen drama series "Gossip Girl", reprising the role in the 2021 sequel. Bell also starred as Jeannie van der Hooven, the female lead on the Showtime comedy series "House of Lies". She starred in the lead role of Eleanor Shellstrop on the critically acclaimed NBC comedy series "The Good Place", receiving a Golden Globe Award nomination for her role. In addition, Bell portrayed the lead role in streaming series "The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window".


title: Kristen Bell

text: In film, she had her major breakout film role as the title character in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (2008). She has since appeared in a number of comedy films, including "Couples Retreat" (2009), "When in Rome" (2010), "You Again" (2010), "The Boss" (2016), "Bad Moms" (2016), and "A Bad Moms Christmas" (2017). Bell garnered further recognition for voicing Princess Anna in the Disney animated films "Frozen" (2013), "Ralph Breaks the Internet" (2018), and "Frozen II" (2019).


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell was born on July 18, 1980, in Huntington Woods, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, where she was raised. Her mother, Lorelei ("née" Frygier), is a registered nurse, and her father, Tom Bell, works as a television news director in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her parents divorced when she was two years old. Bell has two stepsisters from her father's second marriage, and three stepsisters and a stepbrother from her mother's second marriage. Her mother is of Polish descent, and her father has German, Scottish and Irish ancestry.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell stated that she did not like her first name at the age of four. Bell's mother convinced her to go by her middle name, Anne, instead; she used the name Annie until high school.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Just before her first year of high school, Bell's parents decided to remove her from the public school system. She attended Shrine Catholic High School in nearby Royal Oak, where she took part in the drama and music club. Before attending Shrine, she attended Burton Elementary School and Norup Middle School (now known as Norup International School), a part of the Berkley School District. During her time at the school, she won the starring role in the school's 1997 production of "The Wizard of Oz", as Dorothy Gale, and also appeared in productions of "Fiddler on the Roof" (1995), "Lady, Be Good" (1996), and "Li'l Abner" (1998). In 1998, the year she graduated, Bell was named the yearbook's "Best Looking Girl" by senior class vote.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Shortly after her high school graduation, Bell moved to New York City to attend New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, studying musical theater. In 2002, during her senior year, Bell left a few credits shy of graduating to take a role in the Broadway musical version of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer".


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 1992, Bell went to her first audition and won a dual role as a banana and a tree in a suburban Detroit theater's production of "Raggedy Ann and Andy". Her mother had established her with an agent before Bell was 13, which allowed her to appear in newspaper advertisements for several Detroit retailers and television commercials. She also began private acting lessons. In 1998, she appeared with an uncredited role in the locally filmed movie "Polish Wedding".


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2001, Bell left New York University to play a role as Becky Thatcher in the short-lived Broadway musical of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". That same year, she made her credited film debut in "Pootie Tang". Her one line in the film was cut, and her appearance exists only as a scene shown during the credit sequence. Additionally, she auditioned for the television series "Smallville" for the role of Chloe Sullivan, which was eventually won by Allison Mack.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2002, she appeared in the Broadway revival of "The Crucible" with Liam Neeson, Angela Bettis and Laura Linney. Bell then moved to Los Angeles in 2002 because of her friendship with writers Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, and appeared in a handful of television shows as a special guest, finding trouble gaining a recurring role in a television series. Bell said she "tested like eight times and booked nothing and every show [she] tested for got picked up", including auditions for "Skin" and a Norm Macdonald series.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2003, Bell appeared in FX's "The Shield," season 2, episode 1, which aired on January 7, 2003. She also co-starred in the film "The King and Queen of Moonlight Bay," playing the role of Alison, a 17-year old girl who travels to Arizona to reconnect with the father that abandoned her family when Alison was only 5 years old.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2004, Bell earned acclaim for her starring role in the Lifetime television film "Gracie's Choice", which received one of the network's highest ratings. She made her debut in a theatrically released film with David Mamet's action thriller "Spartan", as Laura Newton, the kidnapped daughter of the U.S. president, acting alongside Val Kilmer. Bell also guest-starred on the HBO period drama series "Deadwood", in a two-episode story arc ("Bullock Returns to the Camp" and "Suffer the Little Children").


title: Kristen Bell

text: At 24, she won the role of the title character in the UPN noir drama series "Veronica Mars", which was launched in the fall of 2004. Created by Rob Thomas, the series starred Bell as the seventeen-year-old anti-establishment high school student and private detective. Bell drew on the parallels between the character of Veronica and her own life, since Bell's parents had divorced and her best friend had also died. The series earned acclaim from critics. Bell's performance earned her the Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television and a nomination for the TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, among numerous others. Some critics asserted that her performance was overlooked, and deserved consideration for a Primetime Emmy Award.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Aside from working on "Veronica Mars", Bell starred in "", reprising the role she played in the short-lived 2001 Off-Broadway musical. The musical was a spoof of the 1936 exploitation film of the same name. "Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical" debuted on the Showtime network on April 16, 2005. Also in April, Bell starred as Gracie in "Fifty Pills", an entry for the Tribeca Film Festival. She appeared in a short independent film called "The Receipt" and the horror film "Roman", which was directed by her "Crucible" co-star Angela Bettis. Released on August 11, 2006, "Pulse" starred Bell as the lead Mattie. A remake of the Japanese horror film "Kairo", the film grossed US$27.9 million worldwide but garnered negative response from critics. Frank Scheck of "The Hollywood Reporter" commented, "despite the starring presence of Kristen Bell, [the] young actress has far less interesting material to work with here than she does as [the character] 'Veronica Mars.'"


title: Kristen Bell

text: "Veronica Mars" continued on UPN for a second season; for the third season, the show was renewed and appeared on the newly created The CW. On January 19, 2007, CW Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff announced that while she was pleased with the gradual improvement of "Veronica Mars" ratings, the series would be put on hiatus after February sweeps to air a new reality series, "". On May 17, 2007, Ostroff announced the cancelation of the series. A two-hour series finale aired in the United States on May 22, 2007, and on June 11, 2007, Thomas officially announced in an email to "TV Guide" Michael Ausiello that "Veronica Mars" had been canceled by the CW. A "Veronica Mars" feature film and comic book series continuation had been discussed, and for a short time there was talk of another collaboration between Bell and creator Thomas that would be unrelated to the "Veronica Mars" series.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Following the cancelation of "Veronica Mars", Bell voiced interest in appearing on "Heroes" because she was a fan. On July 29, 2007, during a train ride back to Los Angeles from the San Diego Comic-Con with "Heroes" actors Zachary Quinto and Masi Oka, and writers from the series, the writers had mentioned that if she "ever want[ed] to come on "Heroes", give us [writers] a call," to which Bell said she would "love to". Meanwhile, there were discussions about a role on "Lost", but Bell turned down the role of Charlotte Staples Lewis. Bell portrayed Elle Bishop on "Heroes", a "mysterious young lady" with an "awesome power". She did not have to audition for the role of Elle, who made her first appearance in an October 2007 episode, and appeared in twelve episodes during the run of the series. The casting of Bell, "Heroes" creator Tim Kring explained, "was not easy to pull off", but because of the large ensemble cast of the series and multiple story arcs, "we found a way to jump into a small window in [Bell's] schedule." Bell lent her voice to the CW series "Gossip Girl": she voiced the title character in every episode of the series, appearing in person only for a surprise cameo in the final episode, portraying herself.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Shortly after the cancelation of "Veronica Mars" in early 2007, Bell filmed on location in Hawaii for a starring role as the title character in the Judd Apatow comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". She regarded the improvisational comedy in the film as "a lovely experience". The film, written by and also starring Jason Segel, was released theatrically on April 18, 2008, and greatly increased Bell's profile. Bell lent her voice and likeness to the video game "Assassin's Creed", which was released in November 2007 for consoles and April 2008 for the PC. Bell reprised her role of Lucy in "Assassin's Creed II", released in November 2009, and again in "", released in November 2010. In the spring of 2006, she finished filming the "Star Wars"-themed comedy "Fanboys". Director Kyle Newman received additional funding to shoot new scenes, but the busy schedules of the actors only allowed for filming in September 2007. As a result, the release was delayed until January 14, 2008. Bell also starred in the 2009 comedies "Serious Moonlight", alongside Meg Ryan, and "Couples Retreat", which chronicles four couples who partake in therapy sessions at a tropical island resort. Jason Bateman played her husband. She also provided the voice for Cora in "Astro Boy". On March 31, 2008, Bell began shooting the Mark Steven Johnson-written Disney film "When in Rome" on location in Rome and New York; the film was released in 2010. Bell reprised her role as Sarah Marshall for a cameo appearance in the film "Get Him to the Greek", a spin-off sequel from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", released June 4, 2010.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell co-starred alongside singers Christina Aguilera and Cher in the backstage musical film "Burlesque", which was released in November 2010. She also had a cameo appearance alongside Anna Paquin in the slasher horror film "Scream 4", which was released on April 15, 2011.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2012, Bell starred in the family drama film "Big Miracle". She has also appeared in the music video for "Madder Red" by Brooklyn experimental rock band Yeasayer. Bell portrayed Mary Magdalene in "The Truth & Life Dramatized Audio New Testament Bible", a 22-hour, celebrity-voiced, dramatized audio adaptation of the New Testament that uses the RSV-CE translation.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell starred as Jeannie van der Hooven, the female lead on the Showtime comedy series "House of Lies", which premiered on January 8, 2012. The series ended on June 12, 2016. Bell appeared in a supporting role in the science-fiction comedy "Safety Not Guaranteed" (2012). She starred in the drama film "The Lifeguard", written and directed by Liz W. Garcia, which began filming in July 2012 and was released in August 2013. She also voiced Anna in "Frozen", which was released on November 22, 2013. In 2013, for multiple episodes, Bell played Ingrid de Forest, an Eagleton City Councilwoman, on "Parks and Recreation".


title: Kristen Bell

text: On March 13, 2013, it was confirmed that a "Veronica Mars" film would finally be coming to fruition. Bell and series creator Rob Thomas launched a fundraising campaign to produce the film through Kickstarter and attained the $2 million goal in less than ten hours. The main cast members of the series all reprised their roles in the feature film. Production of the film took place during summer 2013, and it was released theatrically and on video-on-demand on March 14, 2014.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In September 2014, Bell starred with her husband, Dax Shepard, in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Tab S. It was so popular (with over 20 million YouTube views) that they did another for the holiday season. The ad agency McKinney was behind both. In 2016, Bell voiced the sloth Priscilla in the animated comedy film "Zootopia", and starred as Claire in the comedy film "The Boss". Bell starred as Kiki in the 2016 comedy film "Bad Moms", a role she reprised in the 2017 sequel, "A Bad Moms Christmas". In 2016, Bell began starring as Eleanor Shellstrop in the NBC comedy series "The Good Place". For her performance, she received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy, the TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy, and the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, among numerous others.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Also in 2017, she appeared in the biographical comedy-drama "The Disaster Artist", the action comedy "CHiPs" and the comedy "How to Be a Latin Lover". In November 2017, she played a housewife (with Dax Shepard as her husband) preparing for a Christmas party in Sia's music video for "Santa's Coming for Us".


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2018, she began hosting the web series "Momsplaining with Kristen Bell", with episodes airing on the Ellen DeGeneres video platform Ellentube. In the series, Bell gives new and expecting mothers tips about motherhood. The title of the series is a pun on the commonly used term "mansplaining". Bell later had the leading role in the Netflix comedy-drama film "Like Father". She also voiced the character of Jade Wilson in the animated comedy film "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies" and reprised her voice role as Princess Anna in the animated comedy sequel film "Ralph Breaks the Internet".


title: Kristen Bell

text: On September 20, 2018, Hulu confirmed that Bell would reprise her role of Veronica Mars in an 8-episode fourth season of the drama series "Veronica Mars", which would premiere in July 2019. In 2019, she again reprised her role of Princess Anna in the video game, "Kingdom Hearts III" and the sequel, "Frozen II" which was released on November 22, 2019. Bell served as host and executive producer on the Disney+ docuseries "Encore!", which premiered in November 2019. She made her directorial debut with the eighth episode of the fourth season of "The Good Place". The series concluded after its fourth season, airing its final episode in January 2020. At the 25th Critics' Choice Awards, Bell received the #SeeHer Award, which recognizes women who "push boundaries on changing stereotypes and acknowledge the importance of authentic portrayals of women across the entertainment landscape".


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2020, Bell published the children's book "The World Needs More Purple People", which she co-wrote with Benjamin Hart. Also in 2020, Bell voiced Molly Tillerman in the Apple TV+ animated musical comedy series "Central Park", which reunited her with "Frozen" co-star Josh Gad and "Bad Moms" co-star Kathryn Hahn. "Central Park" received a two-season order from Apple and the series premiered on May 29, 2020. In June 2020, it was announced that Bell, who is white, would no longer voice the biracial character of Molly. The role would be re-cast with a black or mixed race actress, with Bell voicing a new role.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2021, Bell produces and voices a lead character in the Amazon Prime Video animated musical pre-school series "Do, Re, & Mi". She also returned to narrate as the titular character of the HBO Max teen drama series "Gossip Girl", a soft reboot and sequel to the 2007–2012 series of the same. Bell also starred alongside Kirby Howell-Baptiste as a pair of housewives who created a multi-million dollar coupon scam in the comedy film "Queenpins". The film was released to Paramount+ on September 10, 2021.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Her miniseries, "The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window" was released on Netflix on January 28, 2022.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2006 and again in 2013, Bell was selected "World's Sexiest Vegetarian" on PETA's yearly poll. She was placed No. 68 on "Maxim"'s 2005 "Hot 100" list, No. 11 in "Maxim"s 2006 "Hot 100" list, and No. 46 in "Maxim"s 2007 "Hot 100" list in which she was stated to have "single-handedly saved The CW from becoming the worst network ever". In 2006, "Maxim" also placed Bell at the top of the "Fall TV's Criminally Sexy Investigators" List. In 2008, she was featured at No. 59 on AskMen's Top 99 Women of 2008 List. Reflecting on her admitted popularity with "geeks", Bell was voted the fourth-sexiest woman on TV by the staff at "Wizard" magazine.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell stated she never thought of herself as womanly because "I always play and look and act 10 years younger than I am." However, she said, "Something magical happened when I turned 25—I looked in the mirror and was like, 'You might not get carded for an R-rated movie anymore.' Like I didn't have a little stick figure anymore." Bell has said that many of her characters are tomboys because she was "not homely enough to play the nerdy girl and not nearly pretty enough to play the pretty girl".


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell has been associated with the idea that "nerdy is the new cool", and she explained, "what was previously perceived as nerdy is now viewed as original. What I like about nerdiness, geekiness, is it doesn't really matter what you're into—it just means you're not a follower." She has also said, "I love nerds. Comic-Con junkies are the tastemakers of tomorrow. Isn't that funny? The tables have turned." Vanessa Juarez of "Entertainment Weekly" commented that Bell's roles on "Veronica Mars", "Heroes" and as a "Star Wars" fanatic in "Fanboys" have "solidif[ied] her placement at the center of the geek universe," while Rodney Rothman stated, "I guess she's cornered the market on losers." Bell's work is often compared to Sarah Michelle Gellar's portrayal of the title character on the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Frank Scheck of "The Hollywood Reporter" stated that Bell was "arguably the television successor [to Gellar's portrayal of Buffy] when it comes to fighting bad guys." Bell is sometimes confused with Lauren Conrad from "The Hills". "Yeah, sometimes fans yell, 'Hey, Lauren' to me, but usually from a distance," said Bell.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Despite "new celebrity" status, Bell claimed that she was not concerned because "no one ever recognizes me anyway". She has said that her friend Hayden Panettiere is more famous than she is and attracts more attention; as Bell explained, "I hang out with Hayden quite a bit—they never take pictures of me. I just step to the side, and I push myself in front of her when she wants to get out of it, or put her in the car."


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell was a recurring guest on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson", appearing in interviews as well as sketches. On "The Late Late Show", she shows a humorous hostility towards Craig Ferguson's robot skeleton sidekick Geoff Peterson, claiming that she had wanted to be Ferguson's sidekick on his show and taking it upon herself to cut Peterson down every chance she gets. Both Bell and Peterson appeared with Ferguson during the five "Late Late Show" episodes filmed in France.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2014, Bell posed nude for the May issue of "Allure" magazine – alongside Jenna Dewan, Minnie Driver, and Nia Long.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In April 2019, Bell was featured on the cover of "Entrepreneur" magazine's April–May issue. In the article, she discussed her snack bar company, This Saves Lives, which donates its sales to help feed malnourished children around the globe. In November 2019, Bell and Idina Menzel, who play sisters in Disney's "Frozen" franchise, received neighboring stars—Bell's was the 2681st and Menzel's was the 2682nd—on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2007, Bell ended a five-year relationship with former fiancé Kevin Mann. She later told "Complex" magazine that dating "makes me want to vomit. And not out of grossness—OK, a little bit out of grossness, but just nerves... I've always been a serial monogamist."


title: Kristen Bell

text: In late 2007, Bell began dating actor Dax Shepard, who is also from Metro Detroit. The couple announced their engagement in January 2010. They decided to delay marriage until the state of California passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage. They co-starred in the 2010 film "When in Rome", the 2012 film "Hit and Run", and the 2017 film "CHiPs". After section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on June 26, 2013, Bell asked Shepard to marry her through Twitter, which he accepted. They were married at the Beverly Hills County Clerk's Office on October 16, 2013. They have two daughters born in 2013 and 2014.


title: Kristen Bell

text: At age 11, Bell became a vegetarian. In an interview with PETA, Bell stated, "I have always been an animal lover. I had a hard time disassociating the animals I cuddled with—dogs and cats, for example—from the animals on my plate, and I never really cared for the taste of meat. I always loved my Brussels sprouts!". By 2012 Bell had become vegan with Shepard after watching the documentary "Forks Over Knives". During her first pregnancy, she returned to eating dairy products and eggs, however.


title: Kristen Bell

text: During her time in Michigan, Bell fostered animals from the Michigan Humane Society, and she now supports the San Diego-based Helen Woodward Animal Center. Bell often attends fundraisers for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other non-profit organizations dedicated to protecting animals. She has had several dogs, including a Welsh Corgi-Chow Chow mix named Lola, a Welsh Corgi-Chihuahua mix named Shakey and a black Labrador Retriever named Sadie, who was 11 years old when she was rescued from Hurricane Katrina and adopted by Bell in 2005.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell has stated she is non-religious and identifies as a humanist. She and her husband Dax Shepard are pro-vaccination. She practices the Transcendental Meditation program, stating: "I really enjoy powering down for 20 minutes because it's like shutting off light switches in my brain".


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell showed support for the Writers Guild of America in the writers' strike, appearing in the picket lines in December 2007, stating, "the writers are just looking for some fairness".


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell and other "Veronica Mars" cast members, including Ryan Hansen, are involved with the charity Invisible Children, Inc. The goal of the organization is to create awareness of the plight of Northern Ugandans who are caught in the midst of a civil war between the government and Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army.


title: Kristen Bell

text: Bell supported and campaigned for Barack Obama during the 2008 United States presidential election. Along with Rashida Jones, she visited college campuses in Missouri to discuss the candidates and encourage voter registration.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2013, Kristen Bell, along with actors Ryan Devlin, Todd Grinnell, and Ravi Patel, founded the granola bar company This Bar Saves Lives to help fight malnutrition. The business donates food aid in the form of nutrition packets to children in Haiti, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Since its launch, the company has donated more than 10 million packets as of February 2019.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2014, Bell launched a Prizeo campaign offering fans a chance to win a date with her in return for donating to Invisible Children, Inc. In 2018, Bell participated in a television advertisement for bone marrow donations, specifically the Gift of Life Marrow Registry. Her actions resulted in several matches that are documented on the Gift of Life website. Bell won a 2020 Webby Special Achievement Award.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In May 2016, Bell stated that she has received treatment for depression and anxiety. She said, "It's important for me to be candid about this so people in a similar situation can realize that they are not worthless and that they do have something to offer."


title: Kristen Bell

text: In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel in August 2018, Bell discussed why she wears scuba gloves while swimming. She stated that she fears the sensation of touching things with water-immersed, wrinkled fingers, otherwise known as "pruney fingers". The gloves have allowed her to swim with her children without fearing touching them.


title: Kristen Bell

text: In 2019, Bell and her husband founded the company Hello Bello that markets plant-based baby care products said to be environmentally friendly and affordable. As of 2021, Hello Bello's estimated annual revenue was $26.1 million a year with 104 employees.


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: Aaron Perry Taylor-Johnson (né Johnson; born 13 June 1990) is an English actor. He is best known for his portrayal of the title character in "Kick-Ass" (2010) and its 2013 sequel, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) character Pietro Maximoff in a cameo appearance in "" (2014) before having a more prominent role in "" (2015). Taylor-Johnson began performing at age six and has appeared in such films as "Shanghai Knights" (2003), "The Illusionist" (2006), "The Thief Lord" (2006), "Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging" (2008) and "Bullet Train" (2022) .


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: He had his breakthrough performance in the John Lennon biopic "Nowhere Boy" (2009). Taylor-Johnson went on to portray Ben in the Oliver Stone-directed crime thriller "Savages" (2012), Russian aristocrat Count Vronsky in Joe Wright's adaptation of "Anna Karenina" (2012), and Lt. Brody in Gareth Edwards' monster movie "Godzilla" (2014).


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: For his performance as psychopathic drifter Ray Marcus in Tom Ford's thriller "Nocturnal Animals" (2016), he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Taylor-Johnson later starred as military commander Ives in Christopher Nolan's spy action epic "Tenet" (2020), and assassin Tangerine in David Leitch's thriller "Bullet Train" (2022). As part of Sony's Spider-Man Universe he will star as another Marvel character, Kraven the Hunter, in a 2023 self-titled film.


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: Aaron Perry Johnson was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, the son of civil engineer Robert Johnson and Sarah, a housewife. He has a sister, Gemma, who appeared in a small role in his 2002 film "Tom & Thomas". Johnson is Jewish. He was educated at Holmer Green Senior School, and attended the Jackie Palmer Stage School in High Wycombe between 1996 and 2008, where he studied drama, tap, jazz, acrobatics, and singing.


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: Taylor-Johnson began acting at the age of six. On stage, he appeared in a London production of Shakespeare's "Macbeth", playing the son of Macduff alongside Rufus Sewell, who played Macbeth, in 1999. He appeared in Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" in 2000. His television roles have included Niker in the 2004 BBC adaptation of the novel "Feather Boy", Aaron in Danny Brocklehurst's ITV1 serial "Talk to Me", and Owen Stephens in "Nearly Famous". In 2003, Taylor-Johnson appeared as a young Charlie Chaplin in "Shanghai Knights" alongside Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, with Chaplin depicted as a member of a London gang of street thugs. That year he also guest starred in a special live episode of ITV drama "The Bill". In 2006, he appeared in "The Illusionist", appearing in the early flashback scenes as Edward Norton's character, Eduard Abramovicz, as a teenager. The scenes show the young Eduard as he first learns magic, and to do this, Johnson had to learn how to perform the ball trick displayed by his character. He learned how to perform the balancing of the egg on the stick, although that was effected mechanically. Also in 2006, he starred in the film "The Thief Lord", as Prosper.


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: Taylor-Johnson appeared as John Lennon in the 2009 biographical film "Nowhere Boy", directed by Sam Taylor-Wood. His performance saw him receive the Empire Award for Best Newcomer and he was also nominated for Young British Performer of the Year by the London Film Critics' Circle. In 2010, Taylor-Johnson appeared as David "Dave" Lizewski/Kick-Ass, the lead character in "Kick-Ass", based on the superhero comic book of the same name by Scottish writer Mark Millar. His performance in "Kick-Ass" saw him nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award. He has also appeared as the central character, William, in Hideo Nakata's "Chatroom". In December 2010, Taylor-Johnson joined the cast of "Albert Nobbs" as a replacement for Orlando Bloom, who dropped out of the production due to his wife's pregnancy. Taylor-Johnson starred in R.E.M.'s 2011 music video "Überlin", which was also directed by his then-fiancée.


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: In 2012, Taylor-Johnson played Count Vronsky in "Anna Karenina". Later that year, he starred as Ben in Oliver Stone's "Savages". HitFix film critic Drew McWeeny was positive of the bond between Johnson and co-star Taylor Kitsch, which "seems not only credible but lived in and authentic throughout the film", and noted the evolution in maturity of Johnson since "Kick-Ass". Taylor-Johnson starred in the "Godzilla" reboot, released in May 2014. Taylor-Johnson played Quicksilver in "" (2015), the sequel to 2012's "The Avengers", as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Taylor-Johnson first appeared as the character in a post-credits scene of the film "" (2014). The role reunited him with Elizabeth Olsen, who played his wife in "Godzilla".


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: In 2016, he played Ray, a menacing Texan, in Tom Ford's thriller "Nocturnal Animals". For the role, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. Taylor-Johnson also became first Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor winner since Richard Benjamin who did not receive an Academy Award nomination. For the role he also received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In 2017, he played an American soldier (alongside John Cena) in Doug Liman's thriller "The Wall", and in 2018, he appeared in "Outlaw King", a British-American historical action drama about Robert the Bruce and the Wars of Scottish Independence. In May 2019, Taylor-Johnson was cast in Christopher Nolan's "Tenet".


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: In 2022, Taylor-Johnson played one of the leading roles in "Bullet Train", an action-thriller film based on the novel "Mariabītoru" by Kōtarō Isaka. In March 2021, Taylor-Johnson signed on as a co-star and producer on the biographical drama film "Rothko", directed by his wife, Sam Taylor-Johnson. In May 2021, Taylor-Johnson was cast as another Marvel character in "Kraven the Hunter", set to be released in January 2023 as part of the Sony's Spider-Man Universe. In October 2022, he joined the cast of "The Fall Guy", reuniting him with "Bullet Train" director David Leitch.


title: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

text: Aaron Johnson began a relationship with director Sam Taylor-Wood, after meeting on the 2009 set of the film "Nowhere Boy" when he was 18 and she was 42. They married in the chapel at Babington House, Somerset, England on 21 June 2012. The two subsequently changed their surnames to Taylor-Johnson. The couple have two daughters, and he has two stepdaughters from his wife's previous marriage.


title: Helen Keller

text: Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness at the age of 19 months. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.


title: Helen Keller

text: She worked for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) from 1924 until 1968. During this time, she toured the United States and traveled to 35 countries around the globe advocating for those with vision loss.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller was also a prolific author, writing 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to Mahatma Gandhi. Keller campaigned for those with disabilities, for women's suffrage, labor rights, and world peace. In 1909 she joined the Socialist Party of America. She was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller's 1903 autobiography, "The Story of My Life" publicized her education and life with Sullivan. It was adapted as a play by William Gibson, and this was also adapted as a film under the same title, "The Miracle Worker". Her birthplace has been designated and preserved as a National Historic Landmark. Since 1954 it has been operated as a house museum and sponsors an annual "Helen Keller Day".


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971. She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the newly founded Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the daughter of Arthur Henley Keller (1836–1896), and Catherine Everett (Adams) Keller (1856–1921), known as "Kate". Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green, that Helen's paternal grandfather had built decades earlier. She had four siblings: two full siblings, Mildred Campbell (Keller) Tyson and Phillip Brooks Keller; and two older half-brothers from her father's first marriage, James McDonald Keller and William Simpson Keller.


title: Helen Keller

text: Her father worked for many years as an editor of the Tuscumbia "North Alabamian". He had served as a captain in the Confederate Army.


title: Helen Keller

text: The family were part of the slaveholding elite before the war, but lost status later. Her mother was the daughter of Charles W. Adams, a Confederate general.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller's paternal lineage was traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland. One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Keller reflected on this fact in her first autobiography, stating "that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his".


title: Helen Keller

text: At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain". Contemporary doctors believe it might have been meningitis, caused by the bacterium "Neisseria meningitidis" (meningococcus), or possibly "Haemophilus influenzae". (This could have caused the same symptoms, but is a less likely cause due to its 97% juvenile mortality rate at that time.) The illness left Keller both deaf and blind. She lived, as she recalled in her autobiography, "at sea in a dense fog".


title: Helen Keller

text: At that time, Keller was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, who was two years older and the daughter of the family cook, and understood the girl's signs; By the age of seven, Keller had more than 60 home signs to communicate with her family, and could distinguish people by the vibration of their footsteps.


title: Helen Keller

text: In 1886, Keller's mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' "American Notes" of the successful education of Laura Bridgman, a deaf and blind woman, dispatched the young Keller and her father to consult physician J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice.


title: Helen Keller

text: Chisholm referred the Kellers to Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated. It was then located in South Boston. Michael Anagnos, the school's director, asked Anne Sullivan, a 20-year-old alumna of the school who was visually impaired, to become Keller's instructor. It was the beginning of a nearly 50-year-long relationship: Sullivan developed as Keller's governess and later her companion.


title: Helen Keller

text: Sullivan arrived at Keller's house on March 5, 1887, a day Keller would forever remember as "my soul's birthday". Sullivan immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present. Keller initially struggled with lessons since she could not comprehend that every object had a word identifying it. When Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word for "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the mug. But soon she began imitating Sullivan's hand gestures. "I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed," Keller remembered. "I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation."


title: Helen Keller

text: The next month Keller made a breakthrough, when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water". Writing in her autobiography, "The Story of My Life", Keller recalled the moment: "I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!" Keller quickly demanded that Sullivan sign the names of all the other familiar objects in her world.


title: Helen Keller

text: Helen Keller was viewed as isolated but was very in touch with the outside world. She was able to enjoy music by feeling the beat and she was able to have a strong connection with animals through touch. She was delayed at picking up language, but that did not stop her from having a voice.


title: Helen Keller

text: In May 1888, Keller started attending the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In 1894, Keller and Sullivan moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, and to learn from Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1896, they returned to Massachusetts, and Keller entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College of Harvard University, where she lived in Briggs Hall, South House. Her admirer, Mark Twain, had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers, who, with his wife Abbie, paid for her education. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She maintained a correspondence with the Austrian philosopher and pedagogue Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was one of the first to discover her literary talent.


title: Helen Keller

text: Determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned to speak and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" people's speech using the Tadoma method, which means using her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker. She became proficient at using braille and using fingerspelling to communicate. Shortly before World War I, with the assistance of the Zoellner Quartet, she determined that by placing her fingertips on a resonant tabletop she could experience music played close by.


title: Helen Keller

text: Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Helen Keller long after she taught her. Sullivan married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914. Polly Thomson (February 20, 1885 – March 21, 1960) was hired to keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who had no experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller moved to Forest Hills, Queens, together with Sullivan and Macy, and used the house as a base for her efforts on behalf of the American Foundation for the Blind. "While in her thirties Helen had a love affair, became secretly engaged, and defied her teacher and family by attempting an elopement with the man she loved." He was the fingerspelling socialist "Peter Fagan, a young "Boston Herald" reporter who was sent to Helen's home to act as her private secretary when lifelong companion, Anne, fell ill."


title: Helen Keller

text: Anne Sullivan died in 1936, with Keller holding her hand, after falling into a coma as a result of coronary thrombosis. Keller and Thomson moved to Connecticut. They traveled worldwide and raised funds for the blind. Thomson had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered and died in 1960. Winnie Corbally, a nurse originally hired to care for Thomson in 1957, stayed on after Thomson's death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her life.


title: Helen Keller

text: On January 22, 1916, Keller and Sullivan traveled to the small town of Menomonie in western Wisconsin to deliver a lecture at the Mabel Tainter Memorial Building. Details of her talk were provided in the weekly "Dunn County News" on January 22, 1916:


title: Helen Keller

text: A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that will linger long with those fortunate enough to have received it. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller and her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had a hand in imparting it Saturday evening to a splendid audience that filled The Memorial. The wonderful girl who has so brilliantly triumphed over the triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave a talk with her own lips on "Happiness", and it will be remembered always as a piece of inspired teaching by those who heard it.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller became a world-famous speaker and author. She was an advocate for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about Deaf people's conditions. She was a suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist, birth control supporter, and opponent of Woodrow Wilson. In 1915, she and George A. Kessler founded the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health, and nutrition.


title: Helen Keller

text: In 1916, she sent money to the NAACP, as she was ashamed of the Southern un-Christian treatment of "colored people".


title: Helen Keller

text: In 1920, Keller helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She traveled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain. Keller and Twain were both considered political radicals allied with leftist politics.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller, who believed that the poor were "ground down by industrial oppression", wanted children born into poor families to have the same opportunities to succeed that she had enjoyed. She wrote, "I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment. I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone."


title: Helen Keller

text: In 1909 Keller became a member of the Socialist Party; she actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working class from 1909 to 1921. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the effects of war; in addition, she supported causes that opposed military intervention. She had speech therapy to have her voice understood better by the public. When the Rockefeller-owned press refused to print her articles, she protested until her work was finally published.


title: Helen Keller

text: She supported Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the presidency. Before reading "Progress and Poverty" by Henry George, Helen Keller was already a socialist who believed that Georgism was a good step in the right direction. She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature".


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller claimed that newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. The editor of the "Brooklyn Eagle" wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development". Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before he knew of her political views:


title: Helen Keller

text: In 1912, Keller joined the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, known as the Wobblies), saying that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In "Why I Became an IWW", Keller explained that her motivation for activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities:


title: Helen Keller

text: The last sentence refers to prostitution and syphilis, the former a "life of shame" that women used to support themselves, which contributed to their contracting syphilis. Untreated, it was a leading cause of blindness. In the same interview, Keller also cited the 1912 strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts for instigating her support of socialism.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller supported eugenics which had become popular with new understandings (as well as misapprehensions) of principles of biological inheritance. In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, saying that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals. Keller also expressed concerns about human overpopulation.


title: Helen Keller

text: From 1946 to 1957 Keller visited 35 countries. In 1948 she went to New Zealand and visited deaf schools in Christchurch and Auckland. She met Deaf Society of Canterbury Life Member Patty Still in Christchurch.


title: Helen Keller

text: One of her earliest pieces of writing, at age 11, was "The Frost King" (1891). There were allegations that this story had been plagiarized from "The Frost Fairies" by Margaret Canby. An investigation into the matter revealed that Keller may have experienced a case of cryptomnesia, which was that she had Canby's story read to her but forgot about it, while the memory remained in her subconscious.


title: Helen Keller

text: At age 22, Keller published her autobiography, "The Story of My Life" (1903), with help from Sullivan and Sullivan's husband, John Macy. It recounts the story of her life up to age 21 and was written during her time in college.


title: Helen Keller

text: In an article Keller wrote in 1907, she brought to public attention the fact that many cases of childhood blindness could be prevented by washing the eyes of every newborn baby with a disinfectant solution. At the time, only a fraction of doctors and midwives were doing this. Thanks to Keller's advocacy, this commonsense public health measure was swiftly and widely adopted.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller wrote "The World I Live In" in 1908, giving readers an insight into how she felt about the world. "Out of the Dark", a series of essays on socialism, was published in 1913.


title: Helen Keller

text: When Keller was young, Anne Sullivan introduced her to Phillips Brooks, who introduced her to Christianity, Keller famously saying: "I always knew He was there, but I didn't know His name!"


title: Helen Keller

text: Her spiritual autobiography, "My Religion", was published in 1927 and then in 1994 extensively revised and re-issued under the title "Light in My Darkness". It advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Christian theologian and mystic who gave a spiritual interpretation of the teachings of the Bible and who claimed that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ had already taken place.


title: Helen Keller

text: But in Swedenborg's teaching it [Divine Providence] is shown to be the government of God's Love and Wisdom and the creation of uses. Since His Life cannot be less in one being than another, or His Love manifested less fully in one thing than another, His Providence must needs be universal ... He has provided religion of some kind everywhere, and it does not matter to what race or creed anyone belongs if he is faithful to his ideals of right living.


title: Helen Keller

text: The Helen Keller Archives in New York are owned by the American Foundation for the Blind. Archival material of Helen Keller stored in New York was lost when the Twin Towers were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.


title: Helen Keller

text: On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' two highest civilian honors. In 1965 she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Connecticut, a few weeks short of her eighty-eighth birthday. A service was held at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and her body was cremated in Bridgeport, Connecticut). Her ashes were buried at the Washington National Cathedral next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson.


title: Helen Keller

text: Keller's life has been interpreted many times. She appeared in a silent film, "Deliverance" (1919), which told her story in a melodramatic, allegorical style.


title: Helen Keller

text: She was also the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1954 documentary "Helen Keller in Her Story", narrated by her friend and noted theatrical actress Katharine Cornell. She was also profiled in "The Story of Helen Keller", part of the Famous Americans series produced by Hearst Entertainment.


title: Helen Keller

text: "The Miracle Worker" is a cycle of dramatic works ultimately derived from her autobiography, "The Story of My Life". The various dramas each describe the relationship between Keller and Sullivan, depicting how the teacher led her from a state of almost feral wildness into education, activism, and intellectual celebrity. The common title of the cycle echoes Mark Twain's description of Sullivan as a "miracle worker". Its first realization was the 1957 "Playhouse 90" teleplay of that title by William Gibson. He adapted it for a Broadway production in 1959 and an Oscar-winning feature film in 1962, starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. It was remade for television in 1979 and 2000."


title: Helen Keller

text: In 1984, Keller's life story was made into a TV movie called "The Miracle Continues". This film, a semi-sequel to "The Miracle Worker", recounts her college years and her early adult life. None of the early movies hint at the social activism that would become the hallmark of Keller's later life, although a Disney version produced in 2000 states in the credits that she became an activist for social equality.


title: Helen Keller

text: The Bollywood movie "Black" (2005) was largely based on Keller's story, from her childhood to her graduation.


title: Helen Keller

text: A documentary called "Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy" was produced by the Swedenborg Foundation in the same year. The film focuses on the role played by Emanuel Swedenborg's spiritual theology in her life and how it inspired Keller's triumph over her triple disabilities of blindness, deafness and a severe speech impediment.


title: Helen Keller

text: On March 6, 2008, the New England Historic Genealogical Society announced that a staff member had discovered a rare 1888 photograph showing Helen and Anne, which, although previously published, had escaped widespread attention. Depicting Helen holding one of her many dolls, it is believed to be the earliest surviving photograph of Anne Sullivan Macy.


title: Helen Keller

text: A painting titled "The Advocate: Tribute to Helen Keller" was created by three artists from Kerala, India as a tribute to Helen Keller. The Painting was created in association with a non-profit organization Art d'Hope Foundation, artists groups Palette People and XakBoX Design & Art Studio. This painting was created for a fundraising event to help blind students in India and was inaugurated by M. G. Rajamanikyam, IAS (District Collector Ernakulam) on Helen Keller day (June 27, 2016). The painting depicts the major events of Helen Keller's life and is one of the biggest paintings done based on Helen Keller's life.


title: Helen Keller

text: In 2020, the documentary essay "Her Socialist Smile" by John Gianvito evolves around Keller's first public talk in 1913 before a general audience, when she started speaking out on behalf of progressive causes.


title: Helen Keller

text: In 2003, Alabama honored its native daughter on its state quarter. The Alabama state quarter is the only circulating U.S. coin to feature braille.


title: Helen Keller

text: Streets are named after Helen Keller in Zürich, Switzerland; in the U.S, in Getafe, Spain; in Lod, Israel, in Lisbon, Portugal, and in Caen, France.


title: Helen Keller

text: A preschool for the deaf and hard of hearing in Mysore, India, was originally named after Helen Keller by its founder, K. K. Srinivasan.


title: Helen Keller

text: A stamp was issued in 1980 by the United States Postal Service depicting Keller and Sullivan, to mark the centennial of Keller's birth. That year her birth was also recognized by a presidential proclamation from U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Pennsylvania annually commemorates her June 27 birthday as Helen Keller Day.


title: Helen Keller

text: On October 7, 2009, the State of Alabama donated a bronze statue of Keller to the National Statuary Hall Collection, as a replacement for its 1908 statue of education reformer Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry.


title: Dennis Rader

text: Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself, for "bind, torture, kill"), the BTK Strangler or the BTK Killer. Between 1974 and 1991, he killed ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, and sent taunting letters to police and media outlets describing the details of his crimes. After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.


title: Dennis Rader

text: Rader was born on March 9, 1945, to Dorothea Mae Rader () and William Elvin Rader, one of four sons. Sources give Rader's place of birth as either Columbus, Kansas, or Pittsburg, Kansas. He grew up in Wichita. Both parents worked long hours and paid little attention to their children at home; Rader later described feeling ignored by his mother in particular and resenting her for it.


title: Dennis Rader

text: From a young age, Rader harbored sadistic sexual fantasies about torturing "trapped and helpless" women. He also exhibited zoosadism by torturing, killing, and hanging small animals. Rader acted out sexual fetishes for voyeurism, autoerotic asphyxiation, and cross-dressing; he often spied on female neighbors while dressed in women's clothing, including women's underwear that he had stolen, and masturbated with ropes or other bindings around his arms and neck.


title: Dennis Rader

text: Years later, during his "cooling off" periods between murders, Rader would take pictures of himself wearing women's clothes and a female mask while bound. He later admitted that he was pretending to be his victims as part of a sexual fantasy. However, Rader kept his sexual proclivities well-hidden, and he was widely regarded in his community as "normal, polite, and well mannered".


title: Dennis Rader

text: After graduating from Wichita Heights High School, Rader attended Kansas Wesleyan University, but received mediocre grades and dropped out after one year. He served in the United States Air Force from 1966 to 1970. On discharge, he moved to Park City (a suburb of Wichita), where he worked in the meat department of an IGA supermarket where his mother was a bookkeeper. Rader married Paula Dietz on May 22, 1971; they had two children, Kerri and Brian. He attended Butler County Community College in El Dorado, earning an associate degree in electronics in 1973. He then enrolled at Wichita State University, and graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in Administration of Justice.


title: Dennis Rader

text: Rader initially worked as an assembler for the Coleman Company, an outdoor supply company. He then worked at the Wichita-based office of ADT Security Services from 1974 to 1988, where he installed security alarms as part of his job, in many cases for homeowners concerned about the BTK killings. Rader was a census field operations supervisor for the Wichita area in 1989, before the 1990 federal census.


title: Dennis Rader

text: In May 1991, Rader became a dogcatcher and compliance officer in Park City. In this position, neighbors recalled him as being sometimes overzealous and extremely strict, as well as taking special pleasure in bullying and harassing single women. One neighbor complained that Rader killed her dog for no reason.


title: Dennis Rader

text: Rader was a member of Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita and had been elected president of the church council. He was also a Cub Scout leader.


title: Dennis Rader

text: On July 26, 2005, after Rader's arrest, his wife was granted an "emergency divorce" (waiving the normal waiting period).


title: Dennis Rader

text: In an interview with ABC News in 2019, Rader's daughter Kerri said she still writes to her father and has now forgiven him, but still struggles to reconcile him with the BTK killer, stating her childhood seemed normal and they were a "normal American family".


title: Dennis Rader

text: On January 15, 1974, four members of the Otero family were murdered in Wichita, Kansas. The victims were Joseph Otero, age 38; Julie Otero, age 33; Joseph Otero Jr., age 9; and Josephine Otero, age 11. Their bodies were discovered by the family's three older children, Charlie, Danny, and Carmen, who had been at school at the time of the killings. After his 2005 arrest, Rader confessed to killing the Otero family. Rader wrote a letter that had been stashed inside an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library in October 1974, which described in detail the killing of the Otero family in January of that year.


title: Dennis Rader

text: Between the spring of 1974 and winter 1977, Rader killed three more women: Kathryn Bright (April 4, 1974), Shirley Vian Relford (March 17, 1977), and Nancy Fox (December 8, 1977). In early 1978, he sent another letter to television station KAKE in Wichita, claiming responsibility for the murders of the Oteros, Bright, Vian Relford, and Fox. He suggested many possible names for himself, including the one that stuck: BTK. He demanded media attention in this second letter, and it was finally announced that Wichita did indeed have a serial killer at large. A poem was enclosed titled "Oh! Death to Nancy," a parody of the lyrics to the American folk song "O Death". In the letter, he claimed to be driven to kill by "factor X", which he characterized as a supernatural element that also motivated Jack the Ripper, the Son of Sam, and the Hillside Strangler murders.


title: Dennis Rader

text: He also intended to kill others, such as Anna Williams, who in 1979, aged 63, escaped death by returning home much later than expected. Rader explained during his confession that he became obsessed with Williams and was "absolutely livid" when she evaded him. He spent hours waiting at her home but became impatient and left when she did not return home from visiting friends.