title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: This essay discusses the fairy-story as a literary form. It was initially written as the 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Tolkien focuses on Andrew Lang's work as a folklorist and collector of fairy tales. He disagreed with Lang's broad inclusion, in his Fairy Book collections, of traveller's tales, beast fables, and other types of stories. Tolkien held a narrower perspective, viewing fairy stories as those that took place in Faerie, an enchanted realm, with or without fairies as characters. He viewed them as the natural development of the interaction of human imagination and human language.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: In addition to his mythopoeic compositions, Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasy stories to entertain his children. He wrote annual Christmas letters from Father Christmas for them, building up a series of short stories (later compiled and published as "The Father Christmas Letters"). Other works included "Mr. Bliss" and "Roverandom" (for children), and "Leaf by Niggle" (part of "Tree and Leaf"), "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", "Smith of Wootton Major" and "Farmer Giles of Ham". "Roverandom" and "Smith of Wootton Major", like "The Hobbit", borrowed ideas from his legendarium.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book called "The Hobbit", which he had written some years before for his own children, came in 1936 to the attention of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the London publishing firm George Allen & Unwin, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it for publication. When it was published a year later, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, and it became popular enough for the publishers to ask Tolkien to produce a sequel.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what became his most famous work: the epic novel "The Lord of the Rings" (originally published in three volumes in 1954–1955). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for "The Lord of the Rings", during which time he received the constant support of the Inklings, in particular his closest friend C. S. Lewis, the author of "The Chronicles of Narnia". Both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are set against the background of "The Silmarillion", but in a time long after it.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Tolkien at first intended "The Lord of the Rings" to be a children's tale in the style of "The Hobbit", but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing. Though a direct sequel to "The Hobbit", it addressed an older audience, drawing on the immense backstory of Beleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which eventually saw posthumous publication in "The Silmarillion" and other volumes. Tolkien strongly influenced the fantasy genre that grew up after the book's success.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: "The Lord of the Rings" became immensely popular in the 1960s and has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the 20th century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC, "The Lord of the Rings" was found to be the UK's "Best-loved Novel". Australians voted "The Lord of the Rings" "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by the Australian ABC. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, "The Lord of the Rings" was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2002 Tolkien was voted the 92nd "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC, and in 2004 he was voted 35th in the SABC3's Great South Africans, the only person to appear in both lists. His popularity is not limited to the English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found "The Lord of the Rings" to be their favourite work of literature.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Tolkien wrote a brief "Sketch of the Mythology", which included the tales of Beren and Lúthien and of Túrin; and that sketch eventually evolved into the "Quenta Silmarillion", an epic history that Tolkien started three times but never published. Tolkien desperately hoped to publish it along with "The Lord of the Rings", but publishers (both Allen & Unwin and Collins) declined. Moreover, printing costs were very high in 1950s Britain, requiring "The Lord of the Rings" to be published in three volumes. The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous series "The History of Middle-earth", edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien. From around 1936, Tolkien began to extend this framework to include the tale of "The Fall of Númenor", which was inspired by the legend of Atlantis.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Tolkien appointed his son Christopher to be his literary executor, and he (with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, later a well-known fantasy author in his own right) organized some of this material into a single coherent volume, published as "The Silmarillion" in 1977. It received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel in 1978.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: In 1980, Christopher Tolkien published a collection of more fragmentary material, under the title "Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth". In subsequent years (1983–1996), he published a large amount of the remaining unpublished materials, together with notes and extensive commentary, in a series of twelve volumes called "The History of Middle-earth". They contain unfinished, abandoned, alternative, and outright contradictory accounts, since they were always a work in progress for Tolkien and he only rarely settled on a definitive version for any of the stories. There is not complete consistency between "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit", the two most closely related works, because Tolkien never fully integrated all their traditions into each other. He commented in 1965, while editing "The Hobbit" for a third edition, that he would have preferred to rewrite the book completely because of the style of its prose.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Before his death, Tolkien negotiated the sale of the manuscripts, drafts, proofs and other materials related to his then-published works—including "The Lord of the Rings", "The Hobbit" and "Farmer Giles of Ham"—to the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Marquette University's John P. Raynor, S.J., Library in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After his death his estate donated the papers containing Tolkien's "Silmarillion" mythology and his academic work to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. The Bodleian Library held an exhibition of his work in 2018, including more than 60 items which had never been seen in public before.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: In 2009, a partial draft of "Language and Human Nature", which Tolkien had begun co-writing with C. S. Lewis but had never completed, was discovered at the Bodleian Library.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology. He specialized in English philology at university and in 1915 graduated with Old Norse as his special subject. He worked on the "Oxford English Dictionary" from 1918 and is credited with having worked on a number of words starting with the letter W, including "walrus", over which he struggled mightily. In 1920, he became Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of linguistics from five to twenty. He gave courses in Old English heroic verse, history of English, various Old English and Middle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory Germanic philology, Gothic, Old Icelandic, and Medieval Welsh. When in 1925, aged thirty-three, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, he boasted that his students of Germanic philology in Leeds had even formed a "Viking Club". He also had a certain, if imperfect, knowledge of Finnish.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Privately, Tolkien was attracted to "things of racial and linguistic significance", and in his 1955 lecture "English and Welsh", which is crucial to his understanding of race and language, he entertained notions of "inherent linguistic predilections", which he termed the "native language" as opposed to the "cradle-tongue" which a person first learns to speak. He considered the West Midlands dialect of Middle English to be his own "native language", and, as he wrote to W. H. Auden in 1955, "I am a West-midlander by blood (and took to early west-midland Middle English as a known tongue as soon as I set eyes on it)."


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Parallel to Tolkien's professional work as a philologist, and sometimes overshadowing this work, to the effect that his academic output remained rather thin, was his affection for constructing languages. The most developed of these are Quenya and Sindarin, the etymological connection between which formed the core of much of Tolkien's "legendarium". Language and grammar for Tolkien was a matter of aesthetics and euphony, and Quenya in particular was designed from "phonaesthetic" considerations; it was intended as an "Elven-latin", and was phonologically based on Latin, with ingredients from Finnish, Welsh, English, and Greek. An addition from late 1945 was Adûnaic or Númenórean, a language of a "faintly Semitic flavour", connected with Tolkien's Atlantis legend, which by "The Notion Club Papers" ties directly into his ideas about the inability of language to be inherited, and via the "Second Age" and the story of Eärendil was grounded in the "legendarium", thereby providing a link of Tolkien's 20th-century "real primary world" with the legendary past of his Middle-earth.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the mythology associated with them, and he consequently took a dim view of auxiliary languages: in 1930 a congress of Esperantists were told as much by him, in his lecture "A Secret Vice", "Your language construction will breed a mythology", but by 1956 he had concluded that "Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c, &c, are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends".


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: The popularity of Tolkien's books has had a small but lasting effect on the use of language in fantasy literature in particular, and even on mainstream dictionaries, which today commonly accept Tolkien's idiosyncratic spellings "dwarves" and "dwarvish" (alongside "dwarfs" and "dwarfish"), which had been little used since the mid-19th century and earlier. (In fact, according to Tolkien, had the Old English plural survived, it would have been "dwarrows" or "dwerrows".) He also coined the term "eucatastrophe", though it remains mainly used in connection with his own work.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Tolkien learnt to paint and draw as a child, and continued to do so all his adult life. From early in his writing career, the development of his stories was accompanied by drawings and paintings, especially of landscapes, and by maps of the lands in which the tales were set. He also produced pictures to accompany the stories told to his own children, including those later published in "Mr Bliss" and "Roverandom", and sent them elaborately illustrated letters purporting to come from Father Christmas. Although he regarded himself as an amateur, the publisher used the author's own cover art, his maps, and full-page illustrations for the early editions of "The Hobbit". He prepared maps and illustrations for "The Lord of the Rings", but the first edition contained only the maps, his calligraphy for the inscription on the One Ring, and his ink drawing of the Doors of Durin. Much of his artwork was collected and published in 1995 as a book: "". The book discusses Tolkien's paintings, drawings, and sketches, and reproduces approximately 200 examples of his work. Catherine McIlwaine curated a major exhibition of Tolkien's artwork at the Bodleian Library, "", accompanied by a book of the same name that analyses Tolkien's achievement and illustrates the full range of the types of artwork that he created.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" led directly to a popular resurgence and the shaping of the modern fantasy genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy, as in the work of authors such as Ursula Le Guin and her "Earthsea" series. In 2008, "The Times" ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". His influence has extended to music, including the Danish group the Tolkien Ensemble's setting of all the poetry in "The Lord of the Rings" to their vocal music; and to a broad range of games set in Middle-earth.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: In a 1951 letter to publisher Milton Waldman (1895–1976), Tolkien wrote about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which "[t]he cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama". The hands and minds of many artists have indeed been inspired by Tolkien's legends. Personally known to him were Pauline Baynes (Tolkien's favourite illustrator of "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" and "Farmer Giles of Ham") and Donald Swann (who set the music to "The Road Goes Ever On"). Queen Margrethe II of Denmark created illustrations to "The Lord of the Rings" in the early 1970s. She sent them to Tolkien, who was struck by the similarity they bore in style to his own drawings. Tolkien was not implacably opposed to the idea of a dramatic adaptation, however, and sold the film, stage and merchandise rights of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" to United Artists in 1968. United Artists never made a film, although director John Boorman was planning a live-action film in the early 1970s. In 1976, the rights were sold to Tolkien Enterprises, a division of the Saul Zaentz Company, and the first film adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings" was released in 1978 as an animated rotoscoping film directed by Ralph Bakshi with screenplay by the fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle. It covered only the first half of the story of "The Lord of the Rings".


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: In 1977, an animated musical television film of "The Hobbit" was made by Rankin-Bass, and in 1980, they produced the animated musical television film "The Return of the King", which covered some of the portions of "The Lord of the Rings" that Bakshi was unable to complete. From 2001 to 2003, New Line Cinema released "The Lord of the Rings" as a trilogy of live-action films that were filmed in New Zealand and directed by Peter Jackson. The series was successful, performing extremely well commercially and winning numerous Oscars.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: From 2012 to 2014, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema released "The Hobbit", a series of three films based on "The Hobbit", with Peter Jackson serving as executive producer, director, and co-writer. The first instalment, "", was released in December 2012; the second, "", in December 2013; and the last instalment, "", in December 2014. In 2017, Amazon acquired the global television rights to "The Lord of the Rings", for a series of new stories set before "The Fellowship of the Ring".


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Tolkien and the characters and places from his works have become eponyms of many real-world objects. These include geographical features on Titan (Saturn's largest moon),


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: and species including the wasp "Shireplitis tolkieni", 37 new species of "Elachista" moths, and many fossils.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Since 2003, The Tolkien Society has organized Tolkien Reading Day, which takes place on 25 March in schools around the world. In 2013, Pembroke College, Oxford University, established an annual lecture on fantasy literature in Tolkien's honour. In 2012, Tolkien was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admired. A 2019 biographical film, "Tolkien", focused on Tolkien's early life and war experiences. The Tolkien family and estate stated that they did not "approve of, authorise or participate in the making of" the film.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: Several blue plaques in England commemorate places associated with Tolkien, including for his childhood, his workplaces, and places he visited.


title: J. R. R. Tolkien

text: On 2 September 2017, the Oxford Oratory, Tolkien's parish church during his time in Oxford, offered its first Mass for the intention of Tolkien's cause for beatification to be opened. A prayer was written for his cause.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor and film director. He has been nominated for four Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award. Hawke has directed three feature films, three off-Broadway plays, and a documentary. He has also written three novels and one graphic novel. He made his film debut with the 1985 science fiction feature "Explorers", before making a breakthrough appearance in the 1989 drama "Dead Poets Society". He appeared in various films before taking a role in the 1994 Generation X drama "Reality Bites", for which he received critical praise. Hawke starred alongside Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy: "Before Sunrise" (1995), "Before Sunset" (2004), and "Before Midnight" (2013), co-writing the latter two with Delpy and Linklater. More recently, he has starred in Scott Derrickson's horror films "Sinister" (2012) and "The Black Phone" (2021).


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke has been nominated twice for both the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; his writing contributions to "Before Sunset" and "Before Midnight" were recognized, as were his performances in "Training Day" (2001) and "Boyhood" (2014). Hawke was further honored with Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for both films, as well as British Academy Film Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for the latter. He made his directorial film debut with "Chelsea Walls" (2001). His other films include the science fiction drama "Gattaca" (1997), the contemporary adaptation of "Hamlet" (2000), Sidney Lumet's crime drama "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (2007), and the horror film "Sinister" (2012). Hawke garnered critical acclaim for his performance as a Protestant minister in Paul Schrader's drama "First Reformed" (2017), receiving numerous accolades, including the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, and a nomination for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor. The following year, he directed his third feature film "Blaze" (2018). In 2022, he starred in the Marvel television miniseries "Moon Knight" as Arthur Harrow.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In addition to his film work, Hawke has appeared in many theater productions. He made his Broadway debut in 1992 in Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull", and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 2007 for his performance in Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia". In 2010, Hawke directed Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind", for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Director of a Play. In 2018, he starred in the Roundabout Theater Company's revival of Sam Shepard's play "True West" alongside Paul Dano.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke was born in 1970 in Austin, Texas, to Leslie (née Green), a charity worker, and James Hawke, an insurance actuary. Hawke's parents were high school sweethearts in Fort Worth, Texas, and married young, when Hawke's mother was 17. Hawke was born a year later. Hawke's parents were both students at the University of Texas at Austin at the time of his birth. They separated and later divorced in 1974, when he was four years old.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: After the separation, Hawke was raised by his mother. The two relocated several times, before settling in New York City, where Hawke attended the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights. Hawke's mother remarried when he was 10 and the family moved to West Windsor Township, New Jersey. There, Hawke attended the public West Windsor Plainsboro High School (renamed to West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in 1997). He later transferred to the Hun School of Princeton, a secondary boarding school, from which he graduated in 1988.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In high school, Hawke aspired to be a writer, but developed an interest in acting. He made his stage debut at age 13, in a production at The McCarter Theatre of George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan." He also performed in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School productions of "Meet Me in St. Louis" and "You Can't Take It with You". At the Hun School, he took acting classes at the McCarter Theatre, located on the Princeton campus. After graduation from high school, he studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, dropping out after he was cast in "Dead Poets Society" (1989). He enrolled in New York University's English program for two years, but dropped out to pursue other acting roles.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke obtained his mother's permission to attend his first casting call at the age of 14, and secured his first film role in Joe Dante's "Explorers" (1985), in which he played an alien-obsessed schoolboy alongside River Phoenix. The film was favorably reviewed but had poor box office results. This failure caused Hawke to quit acting for a brief period after the film's release. Hawke later described the disappointment as difficult to bear at such a young age, adding, "I would never recommend that a kid act."


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 1989, Hawke made his breakthrough appearance in Peter Weir's "Dead Poets Society", playing one of the students taught by Robin Williams as a charismatic English teacher. The "Variety" reviewer noted "Hawke, as the painfully shy Todd, gives a haunting performance." The film received considerable acclaim, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Film and an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. With revenue of $235 million worldwide, it remains Hawke's most commercially successful movie to date. Hawke later described the opportunities he was offered as a result of the film's success as critical to his decision to continue acting:


title: Ethan Hawke

text: While filming "Dead Poets Society" he auditioned for what would be his next film, 1989's comedy drama "Dad", where he played Ted Danson's son and Jack Lemmon's grandson. Hawke's next film, 1991's "White Fang", brought his first leading role. The film, an adaptation of Jack London's novel of the same name, featured Hawke as Jack Conroy, a Yukon gold hunter who befriends a wolfdog (played by Jed). According to "The Oregonian", "Hawke does a good job as young Jack ... He makes Jack's passion for White Fang real and keeps it from being ridiculous or overly sentimental." He appeared in Keith Gordon's "A Midnight Clear" (1992), a well-received war film based on William Wharton's novel of the same name. In the survival drama "Alive" (1993), adapted from Piers Paul Read's , Hawke portrayed Nando Parrado, one of the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke's next role was in the Generation X drama "Reality Bites" (1994), in which he played Troy Dyer, a slacker who mocks the ambitions of his girlfriend (played by Winona Ryder). Film critic Roger Ebert called Hawke's performance convincing and noteworthy: "Hawke captures all the right notes as the boorish Troy (and is so convincing it is worth noting that he has played quite different characters equally well in movies as different as "Alive" and "Dead Poets Society")." "The New York Times" noted, "Mr. Hawke's subtle and strong performance makes it clear that Troy feels things too deeply to risk failure and admit he's feeling anything at all." The following year Hawke received critical acclaim for his performance in Richard Linklater's 1995 drama "Before Sunrise". The film follows a young American man (Hawke) and a young French woman (Julie Delpy), who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, spending the night exploring the city and getting to know one another. The "San Francisco Chronicle" praised Hawke's and Delpy's performances: "[they] interact so gently and simply that you feel certain that they helped write the dialogue. Each of them seems to have something personal at stake in their performances."


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Away from acting, Hawke directed the music video for the 1994 song "Stay (I Missed You)", by singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb, who was a member of Hawke's theater company at the time. Spin magazine named Hawke and Loeb's video as its video of the year in 1994. In a 2012 interview, Hawke said that the song, which was included in "Reality Bites", is the only number-one popular song by an unsigned artist in the history of music.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: He published his first novel in 1996, "The Hottest State", about a love affair between a young actor and a singer. Hawke said of the novel,


title: Ethan Hawke

text: The book met with a mixed reception. "Entertainment Weekly" said that Hawke "opens himself to rough literary scrutiny in "The Hottest State". If Hawke is serious ... he'd do well to work awhile in less exposed venues." "The New York Times" thought Hawke did "a fine job of showing what it's like to be young and full of confusion", concluding that "The Hottest State" was ultimately "a sweet love story".


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In Andrew Niccol's science fiction film "Gattaca" (1997), "one of the more interesting scripts" Hawke said he had read in "a number of years", he played the role of a man who infiltrates a society of genetically perfect humans by assuming another man's identity. Although "Gattaca" was not a success at the box office, it drew generally favorable reviews from critics. The "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" reviewer wrote that "Hawke, building on the sympathetic-but-edgy presence that has served him well since his kid-actor days, is most impressive". In 1998, Hawke appeared alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert De Niro in "Great Expectations", a contemporary film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel of the same name, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. During the same year, Hawke collaborated with Linklater again on "The Newton Boys", based on the true story of the Newton Gang. Critical reviews for each film were mixed. The following year, Hawke starred in "Snow Falling on Cedars", based on David Guterson's novel of the same title. Set in the Pacific Northwest and featuring a love affair between a European-American man and Japanese-American woman, the film met with an unenthusiastic reception; "Entertainment Weekly" noted, "Hawke scrunches himself into such a dark knot that we have no idea who Ishmael is or why he acts as he does."


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke's next film role was in Michael Almereyda's 2000 film "Hamlet", in which he played the title character. The film transposed the famous William Shakespeare play to contemporary New York City, a technique Hawke felt made the play more "accessible and vital". "Salon" reviewer wrote: "Hawke certainly isn't the greatest Hamlet of living memory ... but his performance reinforces Hamlet's place as Shakespeare's greatest character. And in that sense, he more than holds his own in the long line of actors who've played the part." In 2001, Hawke appeared in two more Linklater movies: "Waking Life" and "Tape", both critically praised. In the animated "Waking Life", he shared a single scene with former co-star Delpy continuing conversations begun in "Before Sunrise". The real-time drama "Tape", based on a play by Stephen Belber, takes place entirely in a single motel room with three characters played by Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Uma Thurman. Hawke regarded "Tape" as his "first adult performance", a performance commended by Ebert for showing "both physical and verbal acting mastery".


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke's next role, and one for which he received substantial critical acclaim, came in "Training Day" (2001). Hawke played rookie cop Jake Hoyt, alongside Denzel Washington, as one of a pair of narcotics detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department spending 24 hours in the gang neighborhoods of South Los Angeles. The film was a box office hit, taking $104 million worldwide, and garnered generally favorable reviews. "Variety" wrote that "Hawke adds feisty and cunning flourishes to his role that allow him to respectably hold his own under formidable circumstances." Paul Clinton of CNN reported that Hawke's performance was "totally believable as a doe-eyed rookie going toe-to-toe with a legend [Washington]". Hawke himself described "Training Day" as his "best experience in Hollywood". His performance earned him Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke pursued a number of projects away from acting throughout the early 2000s. He made his directorial debut with "Chelsea Walls" (2002), an independent drama about five struggling artists living in the famed Chelsea Hotel in New York City. The film was critically and financially unsuccessful. A second novel, 2002's "Ash Wednesday", was better received and made the "New York Times" Best Seller list. The tale of an AWOL soldier and his pregnant girlfriend, the novel attracted critical praise. "The Guardian" called it "sharply and poignantly written ... makes for an intense one-sitting read". "The New York Times" noted that in the book Hawke displayed "a novelist's innate gifts ... a sharp eye, a fluid storytelling voice and the imagination to create complicated individuals", but was "weaker at narrative tricks that can be taught". In 2003, Hawke made a television appearance, guest starring in the second season of the television series "Alias", where he portrayed a mysterious CIA agent.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2004, Hawke returned to film, starring in two features, "Taking Lives" and "Before Sunset". Upon release, "Taking Lives" received broadly negative reviews, but Hawke's performance was favored by critics, with the "Star Tribune" noting that he "plays a complex character persuasively." "Before Sunset", the sequel to "Before Sunrise" (1995) co-written by Hawke, Linklater, and Delpy, was much more successful. The "Hartford Courant" wrote that the three collaborators "keep Jesse and Celine iridescent and fresh, one of the most delightful and moving of all romantic movie couples." Hawke called it one of his favorite movies, a "romance for realists". "Before Sunset" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Hawke's first screenwriting Oscar nomination.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke starred in the 2005 action thriller "Assault on Precinct 13", a loose remake of John Carpenter's 1976 film of the same title, with an updated plot. The film received ambivalent reviews; some critics praised the dark swift feel of the film, while others compared it unfavorably to John Carpenter's original. Hawke also appeared that year in the political crime thriller "Lord of War", playing an Interpol agent chasing an arms dealer played by Nicolas Cage. In 2006, Hawke was cast in a supporting role in "Fast Food Nation", directed by Richard Linklater based on Eric Schlosser's best-selling 2001 book. The same year, Hawke directed his second feature, "The Hottest State", based on his eponymous 1996 novel. The film was released in August 2007 to a tepid reception.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2007, Hawke starred alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney in the crime drama "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead". The final work of Sidney Lumet, the film received critical acclaim. "USA Today" called it "highly entertaining", describing Hawke and Hoffman's performances as excellent. Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" praised Hawke's performance, noting that he "digs deep to create a haunting portrayal of loss". The following year, Hawke starred with Mark Ruffalo in the crime drama "What Doesn't Kill You". Despite the favorable reception, the film was not given a proper theatrical release due to the bankruptcy of its distributor. In 2009, Hawke appeared in two features: "New York, I Love You", a romance movie comprising 12 short films, and "Staten Island", a crime drama co-starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Seymour Cassel.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2010, Hawke starred as a vampire hematologist in the science fiction horror film "Daybreakers". Filmed in Australia with the Spierig brothers, the feature received reasonable reviews, and earned US$51 million worldwide. His next role was in Antoine Fuqua's "Brooklyn's Finest" as a corrupt narcotics officer. The film opened in March to a mediocre reception, yet his performance was well received, with the New York "Daily News" concluding, "Hawke—continuing an evolution toward stronger, more intense acting than anyone might've predicted from him 20 years ago—drives the movie." In the 2011 television adaptation of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick", Hawke played the role of Starbuck, the first officer to William Hurt's Captain Ahab. He then starred opposite Kristin Scott Thomas in Paweł Pawlikowski's "The Woman in the Fifth", a "lush puzzler" about an American novelist struggling to rebuild his life in Paris.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2012, Hawke entered the horror genre for the first time, by playing a true crime writer in Scott Derrickson's "Sinister", which grossed US$87 million at the worldwide box office—the film was the first in a series of highly profitable films for Hawke after the start of the new decade. In the week prior to the US opening of "Sinister", Hawke explained that he was previously turned off by horror because good acting is not always required for success; however, the producer of "Sinister", Jason Blum, who formerly ran a theater company with Hawke, made the offer to the actor based on the character and director.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: During 2013, Hawke starred in three films of different genres. "Before Midnight", the third installment of the "Before" series, reunited Hawke with Delpy and Linklater. Like its predecessors, the film garnered a considerable degree of critical acclaim; "Variety" wrote that "one of the great movie romances of the modern era achieves its richest and fullest expression in "Before Midnight"," and called the scene in the hotel room "one for the actors' handbook." The film earned co-writers Hawke, Linklater, and Delpy another Academy Award nomination, for Best Adapted Screenplay.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke then starred in the horror-thriller "The Purge", about an American future where crime is legal for one night of the year. Despite mixed reviews, the film topped the weekend box office with a US$34 million debut, the biggest opening of Hawke's career. Hawke's third film of 2013 was the action thriller "Getaway", which was both critically and commercially unsuccessful.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: The release of Linklater's "Boyhood", a film shot over the course of 12 years, occurred in mid-2014. It follows the life of an American boy from age 6 to 18, with Hawke playing the protagonist's father. The film became the best-reviewed film of 2014, and was named "Best Film" of the year by numerous critics associations. Hawke said in an interview that the attention was a surprise to him. When he first became involved with Linklater's project, it did not feel like a "proper movie," and was like a "radical '60s film experiment or something". At the following awards season, the film was nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture, while winning Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama and BAFTA Award for Best Film. It also earned Hawke multiple awards nominations, including the Academy, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke next worked with the Spierig brothers again on the science fiction thriller "Predestination", in which Hawke plays a time-traveling agent on his final assignment. Following its premiere at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival, the film was released in Australia in August 2014 and in the US in January 2015. The film received largely positive reviews and was nominated for the AACTA Award for Best Film. He then reunited with his "Gattaca" director Andrew Niccol for "Good Kill". In this modern war film, Hawke played a drone pilot with a troubled conscience, which led to "The Hollywood Reporter" calling it his "best screen role in years." Also in 2014, Hawke appeared in the movie "Cymbeline" which reunited him with his "Assault on Precinct 13" co-star John Leguizamo.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In September 2014, Hawke's documentary debut, "", screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), winning second runner-up for TIFF's People's Choice Award for Best Documentary. Conceived after a dinner party at which both Hawke and Bernstein were present, the film is a profile of classical musician Seymour Bernstein, who explained that, even though he is typically a very private person, he was unable to decline Hawke's directorial request because he is "so endearing". Bernstein and Hawke developed a friendship through the filming process, and the classical pianist performed for one of Hawke's theater groups. The film was released in March 2015 to a warm reception; the "Los Angeles Times" reviewer described it as "quietly moving, indefinitely deep".


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke had two films premiered at the 2015 TIFF, both garnering favorable reviews. In Robert Budreau's drama film "Born to Be Blue", he played the role of jazz musician Chet Baker. The film is set in the late 1960s and focuses on the musician's turbulent career comeback plagued by heroin addiction. His portrayal of Baker was well received; "Rolling Stone" noted that "Everything that makes Ethan Hawke an extraordinary actor — his energy, his empathy, his fearless, vanity-free eagerness to explore the deeper recesses of a character — is on view in "Born to Be Blue"." In Rebecca Miller's romantic comedy "Maggie's Plan", Hawke starred as an anthropologist and aspiring novelist alongside Greta Gerwig and Julianne Moore. His other films that year included the coming-of-age drama "Ten Thousand Saints" and the psychological thriller "Regression" opposite Emma Watson. In November 2015, Hawke published his third novel, "Rules for a Knight", in the form of a letter from a father to his four children about the moral values in life.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2016, Hawke starred in Ti West's western film "In a Valley of Violence", in which he played a drifter seeking revenge in a small town controlled by its Marshal (John Travolta). He then portrayed two unpleasant characters in a row, first as the abusive father of a talented young baseball player in "The Phenom", then as the harsh husband of Maud Lewis (played by Sally Hawkins) in "Maudie". While some critics praised his unexpected turns, others felt that Hawke was "miscast" as a cruel figure. He subsequently reunited with "Training Day" director Antoine Fuqua and actor Denzel Washington for "The Magnificent Seven" (2016), a remake of the 1960 western film of the same name. On June 7, his fourth book, "Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars", a graphic novel he wrote with artist Greg Ruth, was released.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2017, Hawke appeared in a cameo role in the science fiction film "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" by Luc Besson; and starred in Paul Schrader's drama film "First Reformed", as a former military chaplain tortured by the loss of his son he encouraged to enlist in the armed forces, and focused on impending cataclysmic climate change. The film premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival to a positive reception.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2018, Hawke had two films premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. In "Juliet, Naked", a romantic comedy adapted from Nick Hornby's novel of the same name, he appeared as an obscure rock musician whose eponymous album set the plot in motion. His third feature film, "Blaze", based on the life of little-known country musician Blaze Foley, was selected in the festival's main competition section. In addition, Hawke starred in Budreau's crime thriller "Stockholm" which premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. Hawke was in the 2019 western drama "The Kid", directed by Vincent D'Onofrio.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2019, Hawke and Jason Blum adapted the book "The Good Lord Bird" into the miniseries based on the same name which premiered on October 4, 2020, on Showtime. He stars as abolitionist John Brown alongside Daveed Diggs, Ellar Coltrane, and includes an appearance of Maya Hawke. In the 2020 biographical film "Tesla", he plays the title character, inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: His third novel, "A Bright Ray of Darkness", was published in February 2021. In 2022, Hawke starred as the primary villain Arthur Harrow in the Disney+ streaming series "Moon Knight", produced by Marvel Studios, and as serial killer of children The Grabber in the Blumhouse feature, "The Black Phone". The latter marked Hawke's ninth collaboration with Blumhouse. Also that year, he appeared in Robert Eggers' "The Northman", a 10th-century Viking epic which was filmed in Ireland, alongside Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Willem Dafoe.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2022, Hawke's six-part biographical documentary on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, "The Last Movie Stars," was broadcast on HBO Max. Hawke also voiced Bruce Wayne/Batman in the animated children’s television series "Batwheels".


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke has described theater as his "first love", a place where he is "free to be more creative". Hawke made his Broadway debut in 1992, portraying the playwright Konstantin Treplev in Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull" at the Lyceum Theater in Manhattan. The following year Hawke was a co-founder and the artistic director of Malaparte, a Manhattan theater company, which survived until 2000. Outside the New York stage, Hawke made an appearance in a 1995 production of Sam Shepard's "Buried Child", directed by Gary Sinise at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. In 1999, he starred as Kilroy in the Tennessee Williams play "Camino Real" at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke returned to Broadway in Jack O'Brien's 2003 production of "Henry IV", playing Henry Percy (Hotspur). "New York" magazine wrote: "Ethan Hawke's Hotspur ... is a compelling, ardent creation." Ben Brantley of "The New York Times" reported that Hawke's interpretation of Hotspur might be "too contemporary for some tastes," but allowed "great fun to watch as he fumes and fulminates." In 2005, Hawke starred in the Off-Broadway revival of David Rabe's dark comedy "Hurlyburly". "The New York Times" critic Brantley praised Hawke's performance as the central character Eddie, reporting that "he captures with merciless precision the sense of a sharp mind turning flaccid". The performance earned Hawke a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: From November 2006 to May 2007, Hawke starred as Mikhail Bakunin in Tom Stoppard's trilogy play "The Coast of Utopia", an eight-hour-long production at the Lincoln Center Theater in New York. The "Los Angeles Times" complimented Hawke's take on Bakunin, writing: "Ethan Hawke buzzes in and out as Bakunin, a strangely appealing enthusiast on his way to becoming a famous anarchist." The performance earned Hawke his first Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play. In November 2007, he directed "Things We Want", a two-act play by Jonathan Marc Sherman, for the artist-driven Off-Broadway company The New Group. The play has four characters played by Paul Dano, Peter Dinklage, Josh Hamilton, and Zoe Kazan. "New York" magazine praised Hawke's "understated direction", particularly his ability to "steer a gifted cast away from the histrionics".


title: Ethan Hawke

text: The following year, Hawke received the Michael Mendelson Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Theater. In his acceptance speech, Hawke said "I don't know why they're honoring me. I think the real reason they are honoring me is to help raise money for the theater company. Whenever the economy gets hit hard, one of the first thing to go is people's giving, and last on that list of things people give to is the arts because they feel it's not essential. I guess I'm here to remind people that the arts are essential to our mental health as a country."


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2009, Hawke appeared in two plays under British director Sam Mendes: as Trofimov in Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" and as Autolycus in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale". The two productions, launched in New York as part of the Bridge Project, went on an eight-month tour in six countries. "The Cherry Orchard" won a mixed review from the "New York Daily News", which wrote "Ethan Hawke ... fits the image of the 'mangy' student Trofimov, but one wishes he didn't speak with a perennial frog in his throat." Hawke's performance in "The Winter's Tale" was better received, earning him a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In January 2010, Hawke directed his second play, "A Lie of the Mind", by Sam Shepard on the New York stage. It was the first major Off-Broadway revival of the play since its 1985 premiere. Hawke said that he was drawn to the play's take on "the nature of reality", and its "weird juxtaposition of humor and mysticism". In his review for "The New York Times", Ben Brantley noted the production's "scary, splendid clarity", and praised Hawke for eliciting a performance that "connoisseurs of precision acting will be savoring for years to come". "Entertainment Weekly" commented that although "A Lie of the Mind" "wobbles a bit in its late stages", Hawke's "hearty" revival managed to "resurrect the spellbinding uneasiness of the original". The production garnered five Lucille Lortel Award nominations including Outstanding Revival, and earned Hawke a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Director of a Play.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke next starred in the Off-Broadway premiere of a new play, Tommy Nohilly's "Blood from a Stone", from December 2010 to February 2011. The play was not a critical success, but Hawke's portrayal of the central character Travis earned positive feedback; "The New York Times" said he was "remarkably good at communicating the buried sensitivity beneath Travis's veneer of wary resignation." A contributor from the "New York Post" noted it was Hawke's "best performance in years". Hawke won an Obie Award for his role in "Blood from a Stone". The following year Hawke played the title role in Chekhov's "Ivanov" at the Classic Stage Company. In early 2013, he starred in and directed a new play "Clive", inspired by Bertolt Brecht's "Baal" and written by Jonathan Marc Sherman. Later that year, he played the title role in a Broadway production of "Macbeth" at the Lincoln Center Theater, but his performance failed to win over the critics, with the "New York Post" calling it "underwhelming" for showing untimely restraint in a flashy production.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2019, Hawke returned to Broadway in the revival of Sam Shepard's "True West", co-starring Paul Dano. The show was met with critical acclaim. It received the Critic's Pick from "The New York Times". The show's previews began on December 27, 2018, and officially opened January 24, 2019, closing on March 17, 2019. Hawke is a member of the LAByrinth theatre company.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke lives in Boerum Hill, a Brooklyn neighborhood in New York City, and owns a small island in Nova Scotia, Canada. He is a second cousin twice-removed of Tennessee Williams on his father's side. Hawke's maternal grandfather, Howard Lemuel Green, served five terms in the Texas Legislature (1957–67), served as the elected Tarrant County Judge in Texas from 1967 to 1975, and was also a minor-league baseball commissioner.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: On May 1, 1998, Hawke married actress Uma Thurman, whom he had met on the set of "Gattaca" in 1996. They have two children, Maya (b. 1998) and Levon Roan Thurman-Hawke (b. 2002). The couple separated in 2003 amid allegations of Hawke's infidelity, and filed for divorce the following year. The divorce was finalized in August 2005.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In 2008, Hawke married Ryan Shawhughes, who had briefly worked as a nanny to his and Thurman's children before graduating from Columbia University. Dismissing speculation about their relationship, Hawke said, "my [first] marriage disintegrated due to many pressures, none of which were remotely connected to Ryan." They have two daughters.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke identifies as a feminist and has criticized "the movie business [being] such a boys' club." He has also spoken in support of Colin Kaepernick and individual rights.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke has served as a co-chair of the New York Public Library's Young Lions Committee, one of New York's major philanthropic boards. In 2001, Hawke co-founded the Young Lions Fiction Award, an annual prize for achievements in fiction by writers under 35. In November 2010, he was honored as a Library Lion by the New York Public Library. In May 2016, Hawke joined the library's board of trustees.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: Hawke supports the Democratic Party, and supported Bill Bradley, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton for President of the United States in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2016, respectively. He is also a supporter of gay rights; in March 2011, he and his wife released a video supporting same-sex marriage in New York.


title: Ethan Hawke

text: In an October 2012 interview, Hawke said that he prefers great art to politics, explaining that his preference shows "how little" he cares about the latter; "I think about the first people of our generation to do great art. I see Michael Chabon write a great book; when I see Philip Seymour Hoffman do "Death of a Salesman" last year—I see people of my generation being fully realized in their work, and I find that really kind of exciting. But politics? I don't know. Paul Ryan is certainly not my man."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg attended Harvard University, where he launched Facebook in February 2004 with his roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Originally launched to select college campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually beyond colleges, reaching one billion users by 2012. Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with majority shares. In 2007, at age 23, he became the world's youngest self-made billionaire.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Since 2008, "Time" magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year award, which he was recognized with in 2010. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked tenth on "Forbes" list of The World's Most Powerful People. In the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2022 he was ranked 11th with a wealth of $57.7 billion, down from his status as the third richest American in 2021 with a net worth of $134.5 billion. As of November 2022, Zuckerberg's net worth was $33.5 billion according to the "Forbes" Real Time Billionaires making him the 29th richest person in the world.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On April 10 and 11, 2018, Zuckerberg testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding the usage of personal data by Facebook in relation to the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data breach.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York, on May 14, 1984, the son of psychiatrist Karen () and dentist Edward Zuckerberg. He and his three sisters (Arielle, businesswoman Randi, and writer Donna) were raised in a Reform Jewish household in Dobbs Ferry, New York. His great-grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Austria, Germany, and Poland. He attended high school at Ardsley High School before transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy. He was captain of the fencing team.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg began using computers and writing software in middle school. In high school, he built a program that allowed all the computers between his house and his father's dental office to communicate with each other. During Zuckerberg's high-school years, he worked to build a music player called the Synapse Media Player. The device used machine learning to learn the user's listening habits, which was posted to "Slashdot" and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from "PC Magazine". A "New Yorker" profile said of Zuckerberg: "some kids played computer games. Mark created them."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: The "New Yorker" noted that by the time Zuckerberg began classes at Harvard in 2002, he had already achieved a "reputation as a programming prodigy". He studied psychology and computer science and belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi and Kirkland House. In his sophomore year, he wrote a program that he called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he created a different program he initially called Facemash that let students select the best-looking person from a choice of photos. Arie Hasit, Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, explained:


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: We had books called Face Books, which included the names and pictures of everyone who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a site and placed two pictures or pictures of two males and two females. Visitors to the site had to choose who was "hotter" and according to the votes there would be a ranking.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: The site went up over a weekend, but by Monday morning, the college shut it down, because its popularity had overwhelmed one of Harvard's network switches and prevented students from accessing the Internet. In addition, many students complained that their photos were being used without permission. Zuckerberg apologized publicly, and the student paper ran articles stating that his site was "completely improper".


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: The following semester, in January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com, in partnership with his roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. An earlier inspiration for Facebook may have come from Phillips Exeter Academy, the prep school from which Zuckerberg graduated in 2002. It published its own student directory, "The Photo Address Book", which students referred to as "The Facebook". Such photo directories were an important part of the student social experience at many private schools. With them, students were able to list attributes such as their class years, their friends, and their telephone numbers.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to "The Harvard Crimson", and the newspaper began an investigation in response. While Zuckerberg tried to convince the editors not to run the story, Zuckerberg broke into two of the editors' email accounts. He did it based on the editors' private login data logs from TheFacebook.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Following the official launch of the Facebook social media platform, the three filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg that resulted in a settlement. The agreed settlement was for 1.2 million Facebook shares and $20 million in cash.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg's Facebook started off as just a "Harvard thing" until Zuckerberg decided to spread it to other schools, enlisting the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz. They began with Columbia, New York University, Stanford, Dartmouth, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Brown, and Yale.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year in order to complete the project. Zuckerberg, Moskovitz and the other co-founders moved to Palo Alto, California, where they leased a small house that served as an office. Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel, who invested in the company. They got their first office in mid-2004. According to Zuckerberg, the group planned to return to Harvard, but they eventually decided to remain in California, where Zuckerberg appreciated the "mythical place" of Silicon Valley, the center of computer technology in California. They had already turned down offers by major corporations to buy the company. In an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg explained his reasoning: "It's not because of the amount of money. For me and my colleagues, the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people. Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me." The same year, speaking at Y Combinator's "Startup School" course at Stanford University, Zuckerberg made a controversial assertion that "young people are just smarter" and that other entrepreneurs should bias towards hiring young people.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: He restated these goals to "Wired" magazine in 2010: "The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open." Earlier, in April 2009, Zuckerberg sought the advice of former Netscape CFO Peter Currie about financing strategies for Facebook. On July 21, 2010, Zuckerberg reported that the company reached the 500-million-user mark. When asked whether Facebook could earn more income from advertising as a result of its phenomenal growth, he explained:


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: I guess we could ... If you look at how much of our page is taken up with ads compared to the average search query. The average for us is a little less than 10 percent of the pages and the average for search is about 20 percent taken up with ads ... That's the simplest thing we could do. But we aren't like that. We make enough money. Right, I mean, we are keeping things running; we are growing at the rate we want to.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In 2010, Steven Levy, who wrote the 1984 book "", wrote that Zuckerberg "clearly thinks of himself as a hacker". Zuckerberg said that "it's OK to break things" "to make them better". Facebook instituted "hackathons" held every six to eight weeks where participants would have one night to conceive of and complete a project. The company provided music, food, and beer at the hackathons, and many Facebook staff members, including Zuckerberg, regularly attended. "The idea is that you can build something really good in a night", Zuckerberg told Levy. "And that's part of the personality of Facebook now ... It's definitely very core to my personality."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In 2007, Zuckerberg was added to MIT Technology Review's TR35 list as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. "Vanity Fair" magazine named Zuckerberg number 1 on its 2010 list of the Top 100 "most influential people of the Information Age". Zuckerberg ranked number 23 on the "Vanity Fair" 100 list in 2009. In 2010, Zuckerberg was chosen as number 16 in "New Statesman"s annual survey of the world's 50 most influential figures.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In a 2011 interview with PBS shortly after the death of Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg said that Jobs had advised him on how to create a management team at Facebook that was "focused on building as high quality and good things as you are".


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On October 1, 2012, Zuckerberg visited Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow to stimulate social media innovation in Russia and to boost Facebook's position in the Russian market. Russia's communications minister tweeted that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev urged the social media giant's founder to abandon plans to lure away Russian programmers and instead consider opening a research center in Moscow. In 2012, Facebook had roughly 9 million users in Russia, while domestic clone VK had around 34 million. Rebecca Van Dyck, Facebook's head of consumer marketing, said that 85 million American Facebook users were exposed to the first day of the Home promotional campaign on April 6, 2013.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On August 19, 2013, "The Washington Post" reported that Zuckerberg's Facebook profile was hacked by an unemployed web developer.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: At the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt conference, held in September, Zuckerberg stated that he is working towards registering the 5 billion people who were not connected to the Internet as of the conference on Facebook. Zuckerberg then explained that this is intertwined with the aim of the Internet.org project, whereby Facebook, with the support of other technology companies, seeks to increase the number of people connected to the internet.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg was the keynote speaker at the 2014 Mobile World Congress (MWC), held in Barcelona, Spain, in March 2014, which was attended by 75,000 delegates. Various media sources highlighted the connection between Facebook's focus on mobile technology and Zuckerberg's speech, stating that mobile represents the future of the company. Zuckerberg's speech expands upon the goal that he raised at the TechCrunch conference in September 2013, whereby he is working towards expanding Internet coverage into developing countries.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Alongside other American technology figures like Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, Zuckerberg hosted visiting Chinese politician Lu Wei, known as the "Internet czar" for his influence in the enforcement of China's online policy, at Facebook's headquarters on December 8, 2014. The meeting occurred after Zuckerberg participated in a Q&A session at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on October 23, 2014, where he conversed in Mandarin Chinese; although Facebook is banned in China, Zuckerberg is highly regarded among the people and was at the university to help fuel the nation's burgeoning entrepreneur sector.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg fielded questions during a live Q&A session at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park on December 11, 2014. The founder and CEO explained that he does not believe Facebook is a waste of time, because it facilitates social engagement, and participating in a public session was so that he could "learn how to better serve the community".


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg receives a one-dollar salary as CEO of Facebook. In June 2016, "Business Insider" named Zuckerberg one of the "Top 10 Business Visionaries Creating Value for the World" along with Elon Musk and Sal Khan, due to the fact that he and his wife "pledged to give away 99% of their wealth—which was then estimated at $55.0 billion."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On May 25, 2017, at Harvard's 366th commencement Day, Zuckerberg, after giving a commencement speech, received an honorary degree from Harvard.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In January 2019, Zuckerberg laid plans to integrate an end-to-end encrypted system for three major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. On August 14, 2020, Facebook integrated the chat systems for Instagram and Messenger on both iOS and Android devices. The update encouraged cross-communication between Instagram and Facebook users.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: A month after Zuckerberg launched Facebook in February 2004, i2hub, another campus-only service, created by Wayne Chang, was launched. i2hub focused on peer-to-peer file sharing. At the time, both i2hub and Facebook were gaining the attention of the press and growing rapidly in users and publicity. In August 2004, Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Adam D'Angelo, and Sean Parker launched a competing peer-to-peer file sharing service called Wirehog, a precursor to Facebook Platform applications, which launched in 2007.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In 2013, Zuckerberg launched Internet.org, which he described as an initiative to provide Internet access to the five billion people without it as of the launch date. The project faced significant opposition in India, where activists said its limited internet ran counter to the principle of net neutrality; Zuckerberg responded that a limited internet was better than no internet. Internet.org was shut down in India in February 2016, although Zuckerberg later met with Narendra Modi to discuss further possibilities.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg is a board member of the solar sail spacecraft development project Breakthrough Starshot, which he co-founded in 2016.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally making them believe he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com (later called ConnectU). They filed a lawsuit in 2004; it was dismissed on a technicality on March 28, 2007. It was refiled soon thereafter in federal court in Boston. Facebook countersued in regards to Social Butterfly, a project put out by The Winklevoss Chang Group, an alleged partnership between ConnectU and i2hub. On June 25, 2008, the case settled and Facebook agreed to transfer over 1.2 million common shares and pay $20 million in cash.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In November 2007, confidential court documents were posted on the website of "02138", a magazine that catered to Harvard alumni. They included Zuckerberg's Social Security number, his parents' home address, and his girlfriend's address. Facebook filed to have the documents removed; the judge ruled in favor of "02138".


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In 2005, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg had illegally spent Saverin's money on personal expenses. The lawsuit was settled out of court, though terms of the settlement were sealed, the company affirmed Saverin's title as co-founder of Facebook, and Saverin agreed to stop talking to the press.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In June 2010, Pakistani Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque launched a criminal investigation into Zuckerberg and Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes after a "Draw Muhammad" contest was hosted on Facebook. The investigation named the anonymous German woman who created the contest. Sidiqque asked the country's police to contact Interpol to have Zuckerberg and the three others arrested for blasphemy. On May 19, 2010, Facebook's website was temporarily blocked in Pakistan until Facebook removed the contest from its website at the end of May. Sidiqque also asked its UN representative to raise the issue with the United Nations General Assembly.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In June 2010, Paul Ceglia, the owner of a wood pellet fuel company in Allegany County, upstate New York, filed suit against Zuckerberg, claiming 84 percent ownership of Facebook and seeking monetary damages. According to Ceglia, he and Zuckerberg signed a contract on April 28, 2003, that an initial fee of $1,000 entitled Ceglia to 50% of the website's revenue, as well as an additional 1% interest in the business per day after January 1, 2004, until website completion. Zuckerberg was developing other projects at the time, among which was "Facemash", the predecessor of Facebook, but did not register the domain name "thefacebook.com" until January 1, 2004. Facebook management dismissed the lawsuit as "completely frivolous". Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told a reporter that Ceglia's counsel had unsuccessfully sought an out-of-court settlement.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On October 26, 2012, federal authorities arrested Ceglia, charging him with mail and wire fraud and of "tampering with, destroying and fabricating evidence in a scheme to defraud the Facebook founder of billions of dollars." Ceglia is accused of fabricating emails to make it appear that he and Zuckerberg discussed details about an early version of Facebook, although after examining their emails, investigators found there was no mention of Facebook in them. Some law firms withdrew from the case before it was initiated and others after Ceglia's arrest.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In January 2017, Zuckerberg filed eight "quiet title and partition" lawsuits against hundreds of native Hawaiians to claim small tracts of land which they own. This land is contained within the 700 acres of land in the Hawaiian island of Kauai that Zuckerberg had purchased in 2014. University of Hawaii law professor Kapua Sproat stated that Zuckerberg's lawsuits was "the face of neocolonialism". Zuckerberg responded to criticisms in a Facebook post, stating that the lawsuits were a good faith effort to pay the partial owners of the land their "fair share". When he learned that Hawaiian land ownership law differs from that of the other 49 states, he dropped the lawsuits. Zuckerberg stated that he regretted not taking the time to understand the process and its history before moving ahead.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On April 10 and 11, 2018, Zuckerberg testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding the usage of personal data by Facebook in relation to the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data breach. He has called the whole affair a breach of trust between Aleksandr Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook. Zuckerberg has refused requests to appear to give evidence on the matter to a Parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On October 1, 2020, the US Senate Commerce Committee unanimously voted to issue subpoenas to the CEOs of three top tech firms, including Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Twitter's Jack Dorsey. The subpoenas aimed to force the CEOs to testify about the legal immunity the law affords tech platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. US Republicans argued that the law unduly protected social media companies against allegations of anti-conservative censorship.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In March 2021, it was announced that Zuckerberg would testify before Congress again on March 26, when he will be questioned about the role that Facebook played in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol Building.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: A movie based on Zuckerberg and the founding years of Facebook, "The Social Network" was released on October 1, 2010, starring Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. After Zuckerberg was told about the film, he responded, "I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive." Also, after the film's script was leaked on the Internet and it was apparent that the film would not portray Zuckerberg in a wholly positive light, he stated that he wanted to establish himself as a "good guy". The film is based on the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich, which the book's publicist once described as "big juicy fun" rather than "reportage". The film's screenwriter Aaron Sorkin told "New York" magazine, "I don't want my fidelity to be the truth; I want it to be storytelling", adding, "What is the big deal about accuracy purely for accuracy's sake, and can we not have the true be the enemy of the good?"


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Upon winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture on January 16, 2011, producer Scott Rudin thanked Facebook and Zuckerberg "for his willingness to allow us to use his life and work as a metaphor through which to tell a story about communication and the way we relate to each other." Sorkin, who won for Best Screenplay, retracted some of the impressions given in his script:


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On January 29, 2011, Zuckerberg made a surprise guest appearance on "Saturday Night Live", which was hosted by Jesse Eisenberg. They both said it was the first time they had met. Eisenberg asked Zuckerberg, who had been critical of his portrayal by the film, what he thought of the movie. Zuckerberg replied, "It was interesting." In a subsequent interview about their meeting, Eisenberg explained that he was "nervous to meet him, because I had spent now, a year and a half thinking about him ..." He added, "Mark has been so gracious about something that's really so uncomfortable ... The fact that he would do "SNL" and make fun of the situation is so sweet and so generous. It's the best possible way to handle something that, I think, could otherwise be very uncomfortable."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: According to David Kirkpatrick, former technology editor at "Fortune" magazine and author of "The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World," (2011), "the film is only "40% true ... he is not snide and sarcastic in a cruel way, the way Zuckerberg is played in the movie." He says that "a lot of the factual incidents are accurate, but many are distorted and the overall impression is false", and concludes that primarily "his motivations were to try and come up with a new way to share information on the Internet".


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Although the film portrayed Zuckerberg's creation of Facebook in order to elevate his stature after not getting into any of the elite final clubs at Harvard, Zuckerberg said he had no interest in joining the clubs. Kirkpatrick agreed that the impression implied by the film is "false". Karel Baloun, a former senior engineer at Facebook, noted that the "image of Zuckerberg as a socially inept nerd is overstated ... It is fiction ..." He likewise dismissed the film's assertion that he "would deliberately betray a friend."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg voiced himself on an episode of "The Simpsons" titled "Loan-a Lisa", which first aired on October 3, 2010. In the episode, Lisa Simpson and her friend Nelson encounter Zuckerberg at an entrepreneurs' convention. Zuckerberg tells Lisa that she does not need to graduate from college to be wildly successful, referencing Bill Gates and Richard Branson as examples.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On October 9, 2010, "Saturday Night Live" lampooned Zuckerberg and Facebook. Andy Samberg played Zuckerberg. The real Zuckerberg was reported to have been amused: "I thought this was funny."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Stephen Colbert awarded a "Medal of Fear" to Zuckerberg at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on October 30, 2010, "because he values his privacy much more than he values yours".


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On December 7, 2018, "Epic Rap Battles of History" released a rap battle video between Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg founded the Start-up: Education foundation. On September 22, 2010, it was reported that Zuckerberg had donated $100 million to Newark Public Schools, the public school system of Newark, New Jersey. Critics noted the timing of the donation as being close to the release of "The Social Network", which painted a somewhat negative portrait of Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg responded to the criticism, saying, "The thing that I was most sensitive about with the movie timing was, I didn't want the press about "The Social Network" movie to get conflated with the Newark project. I was thinking about doing this anonymously just so that the two things could be kept separate." Newark Mayor Cory Booker stated that he and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had to convince Zuckerberg's team not to make the donation anonymously. The money was largely wasted, according to journalist Dale Russakoff.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In 2010, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and investor Warren Buffett signed "The Giving Pledge", in which they said they would donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time, and invited others among the wealthy to donate 50 percent or more of their wealth to charity. In December 2012, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan said that over the course of their lives they would give the majority of their wealth to "advancing human potential and promoting equality" in the spirit of The Giving Pledge.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On December 19, 2013, Zuckerberg announced a donation of 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, to be executed by the end of the month—based on Facebook's valuation as of then, the shares totaled $990 million in value. On December 31, 2013, the donation was recognized as the largest charitable gift on public record for 2013. "The Chronicle of Philanthropy" placed Zuckerberg and his wife at the top of the magazine's annual list of 50 most generous Americans for 2013, having donated roughly $1 billion to charity.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In October 2014, Zuckerberg and Chan donated US$25 million to combat the Ebola virus disease, specifically the West African Ebola virus epidemic.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On December 1, 2015, Zuckerberg and Chan pledged to transfer 99% of their Facebook shares, then valued at US$45 billion, to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The funds would not be transferred immediately, but over the course of their lives. Instead of forming a charitable corporation to donate the value of the stock to, as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and other billionaires have done, Zuckerberg and Chan chose to use the structure of a limited liability company (LLC). Some journalists and academics have said the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative conducts philanthrocapitalism.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In 2016, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative gave $600 million to create the tax-exempt charity Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a collaborative research space in San Francisco's Mission Bay District near the University of California, San Francisco, with the intent to foster interaction and collaboration between scientists at UCSF, University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. Intellectual property generated would be jointly owned by Biohub and the discoverer's home institution. Unlike foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which open up all research funded to unrestricted access and reuse by the public, Biohub retained the right to commercialize any research it funds. Inventors will have the option of making their discoveries open-source, with permission from Biohub. To increase access to scientific research and promote open science, CZ Biohub requires its investigators and staff scientists to publish submitted manuscripts and related data on preprints servers like bioRxiv.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Zuckerberg donated $25 million to a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-backed accelerator that is searching for treatments for the disease. He also announced $25 million in grants to support local journalism that was impacted by the pandemic and $75 million in advertisement purchases in local newspapers by Facebook, Inc., where Facebook would market itself.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In 2002, Zuckerberg registered to vote in Westchester County, New York, where he grew up, but did not cast a ballot until November 2008. Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Spokeswoman, Elma Rosas, told Bloomberg that Zuckerberg is listed as "no preference" on voter rolls, and he voted in at least two of the past three general elections, in 2008 and 2012.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg has never revealed his own political affiliation or voting history: some news outlets consider him to be a conservative, while others consider him liberal.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On February 13, 2013, Zuckerberg hosted his first ever fundraising event for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Zuckerberg's particular interest on this occasion was education reform, and Christie's education reform work focused on teachers unions and the expansion of charter schools. Later that year, Zuckerberg hosted a campaign fundraiser for Newark mayor Cory Booker, who was running in the 2013 New Jersey special Senate election. In September 2010, with the support of Governor Chris Christie, Booker obtained a US$100 million pledge from Zuckerberg to Newark Public Schools. In December 2012, Zuckerberg donated 18 million shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a community organization that includes education in its list of grant-making areas.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On April 11, 2013, Zuckerberg led the launch of a 501(c)(4) lobbying group called FWD.us. The founders and contributors to the group were primarily Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors, and its president was Joe Green, a close friend of Zuckerberg. The goals of the group include immigration reform, improving the state of education in the United States, and enabling more technological breakthroughs that benefit the public, yet it has also been criticized for financing ads advocating a variety of oil and gas development initiatives, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Keystone XL pipeline. In 2013, numerous liberal and progressive groups, such as The League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn.org, the Sierra Club, Democracy for America, CREDO, Daily Kos, 350.org, and Presente and Progressives United agreed to either pull their Facebook ad buys or not buy Facebook ads for at least two weeks, in protest of Zuckerberg ads funded by FWD.us that were in support of oil drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline, and in opposition to Obamacare among Republican United States senators who back immigration reform.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: A media report on June 20, 2013, revealed that Zuckerberg actively engaged with Facebook users on his own profile page after the online publication of a FWD.us video. In response to a claim that the FWD.us organization is "just about tech wanting to hire more people", the Internet entrepreneur replied: "The bigger problem we're trying to address is ensuring the 11 million undocumented folks living in this country now and similar folks in the future are treated fairly."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In June 2013, Zuckerberg joined Facebook employees in a company float as part of the annual San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration. The company first participated in the event in 2011, with 70 employees, and this number increased to 700 for the 2013 march. The 2013 pride celebration was especially significant, as it followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that deemed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: When questioned about the mid-2013 PRISM scandal at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in September 2013, Zuckerberg stated that the U.S. government "blew it". He further explained that the government performed poorly in regard to the protection of the freedoms of its citizens, the economy, and companies.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg placed a statement on his Facebook wall on December 9, 2015, which said that he wants "to add my voice in support of Muslims in our community and around the world" in response to the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris attacks and the 2015 San Bernardino attack. The statement also said that Muslims are "always welcome" on Facebook, and that his position was a result of the fact that "as a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: On February 24, 2016, Zuckerberg sent out a company-wide internal memo to employees formally rebuking employees who had crossed out handwritten "Black Lives Matter" phrases on the company walls and had written "All Lives Matter" in their place. Facebook allows employees to free-write thoughts and phrases on company walls. The memo was then leaked by several employees. As Zuckerberg had previously condemned this practice at previous company meetings, and other similar requests had been issued by other leaders at Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote in the memo that he would now consider this overwriting practice not only disrespectful, but "malicious as well." According to Zuckerberg's memo, ""Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean other lives don't – it's simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve." The memo also noted that the act of crossing something out in itself, "means silencing speech, or that one person's speech is more important than another's." Zuckerberg also said in the memo that he would be launching investigations into the incidents. New York's "Daily News" interviewed Facebook employees who commented anonymously that, "Zuckerberg was genuinely angry about the incident and it really encouraged staff that Zuckerberg showed a clear understanding of why the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' must exist, as well as why writing through it is a form of harassment and erasure."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In January 2017, Zuckerberg criticized Donald Trump's executive order to severely limit immigrants and refugees from some countries.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg funded a state-level ballot initiative for the 2020 general election that would raise taxes by altering California's Proposition 13 to require the tax assessment of commercial and industrial properties in the state at market rate.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Zuckerberg met his future wife, fellow Harvard student Priscilla Chan, at a frat party during his sophomore year there. They began dating in 2003. In September 2010, Chan, who was by then a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco, moved into Zuckerberg's rented house in Palo Alto, California. On May 19, 2012, they married in the grounds of his mansion in an event that also celebrated her graduation from medical school. On July 31, 2015, Zuckerberg revealed that they were expecting a baby girl and that Chan had previously experienced three miscarriages. Their daughter, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg, was born on December 1, 2015. They announced in a Chinese New Year video that their daughter's Chinese name is Chen Mingyu (). Their second daughter, August, was born in August 2017. On September 21, 2022, Zuckerberg announced that he and Chan are expecting their third daughter, due in 2023. The couple also have a Puli dog named Beast, who has over two million followers on Facebook.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: Raised as a Reform Jew, Zuckerberg later identified as an atheist, but in 2016 said, "I was raised Jewish and then I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important."


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In 2017, Zuckerberg and his wife began a nationwide tour "to visit every state in the union and learn more about a sliver of the nearly two billion people who regularly use the social network". He met with farmers and business owners, and spoke at Mother Emanuel, where a shooting took place in 2015.


title: Mark Zuckerberg

text: In an August 2022 appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience", Zuckerberg said one of his biggest regrets was competing on the fencing team in high school instead of wrestling. "Motherboard" implicitly criticized this by comparing it to another potential regret: Facebook's "enabling genocide in Myanmar because it did not bother to hire moderators who speak Burmese", an incident for which Zuckerberg apologized at the time. In the same interview, he also said he regretted that Facebook had throttled posts about the Hunter Biden laptop controversy.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American actor. His films have grossed more than $5.4billion in North America and more than $9.3billion worldwide, making him the seventh-highest-grossing actor in North America. He is the recipient of various accolades, including the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Cecil B. DeMille Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and four Golden Globe Awards. He has been a leading man in films of several genres and is regarded as an American cultural icon.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Following the initial phase of his career in bit parts and supporting roles, Ford gained worldwide fame for his starring role as Han Solo in the epic space opera film "Star Wars" (1977), reprising the role in four sequels over the course of the next 42 years. He is also widely known for his portrayal of Indiana Jones in the titular film franchise, beginning with the action-adventure film "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), and for playing other characters in different franchises, most notably Rick Deckard in the dystopian science fiction films "Blade Runner" (1982) and "Blade Runner 2049" (2017) and the Tom Clancy character Jack Ryan in the spy thriller films "Patriot Games" (1992) and "Clear and Present Danger" (1994). His career spans six decades and includes collaborations with some of the most acclaimed and influential filmmakers of his time, such as George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Peter Weir, Roman Polanski and Mike Nichols.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford has portrayed heroic characters in other films such as the thrillers "Witness" (1985), for which he received his only Academy Award nomination, "The Fugitive" (1993), and "Air Force One" (1997), as well as the historical sports drama "42" (2013). In addition to heroic roles, he played morally ambiguous and darker characters in films such as the coming-of-age comedy drama "American Graffiti" (1973), the conspiracy thriller "The Conversation" (1974), the survival drama "The Mosquito Coast" (1986), the legal drama "Presumed Innocent" (1990), and the supernatural suspense thriller "What Lies Beneath" (2000). Ford has also appeared in several romantic comedies and dramas throughout his career, including "Heroes" (1977), "Working Girl" (1988), "Sabrina" (1995), "Six Days, Seven Nights" (1998), "Random Hearts" (1999), "Morning Glory" (2010), and "The Age of Adaline" (2015).


title: Harrison Ford

text: Outside acting, Ford is a licensed pilot who has often assisted the emergency services in rescue missions near his home in Wyoming. He is also a dedicated environmental activist, having served as the inaugural Vice Chair of Conservation International since 1991. He is married to actress Calista Flockhart.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Harrison Ford was born at the Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on July 13, 1942, to former radio actress Dorothy (née Nidelman) and advertising executive and former actor John William "Christopher" Ford. His younger brother, Terence, was born in 1945. Their father was a Catholic of German and Irish descent, while their mother was an Ashkenazi Jew whose parents were emigrants from Minsk, Belarus, then in the Russian Empire. When asked in which religion he and his brother were raised, Ford jokingly responded "Democrat" and more seriously stated that they were raised to be "liberals of every stripe". When asked about what influence his Jewish and Irish Catholic ancestry may have had on him, he quipped, "As a man I've always felt Irish, as an actor I've always felt Jewish."


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford was a Boy Scout, achieving the second-highest rank of Life Scout. He worked at Napowan Adventure Base Scout Camp as a counselor for the Reptile Study merit badge. Because of this, he and director Steven Spielberg later decided to depict the young Indiana Jones as a Life Scout in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989). Ford graduated in 1960 from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. His voice was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH, and he was its first sportscaster during his senior year. He attended Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where he was a philosophy major and a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity. A self-described "late bloomer", Ford took a drama class in the final quarter of his senior year to get over his shyness and became fascinated with acting.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In 1964, after a season of summer stock with the Belfry Players in Wisconsin, Ford traveled to Los Angeles to apply for a job in radio voice-overs. He did not get it, but stayed in California and eventually signed a $150-per-week contract with Columbia Pictures' new talent program, playing bit roles in films. His first known role was an uncredited one as a bellhop in "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round" (1966). There is little record of his non-speaking (or "extra") roles in film. Ford was at the bottom of the hiring list, having offended producer Jerry Tokovsky after he played a bellboy in the feature. He was told by Tokovsky that when actor Tony Curtis delivered a bag of groceries, he did it like a movie star; Ford felt his job was to act like a bellboy.


title: Harrison Ford

text: His speaking roles continued next with "Luv" (1967), though he was still uncredited. He was finally credited as "Harrison J. Ford" in the 1967 Western film "A Time for Killing", starring Glenn Ford, George Hamilton and Inger Stevens, but the "J" did not stand for anything since he has no middle name. It was added to avoid confusion with a silent film actor named Harrison Ford, who appeared in more than 80 films between 1915 and 1932 and died in 1957. Ford later said that he was unaware of the existence of the earlier actor until he came upon a star with his own name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Ford soon dropped the "J" and worked for Universal Studios, playing minor roles in many television series throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, including "Gunsmoke", "Ironside", "The Virginian", "The F.B.I.", "Love, American Style" and "Kung Fu". He appeared in the western "Journey to Shiloh" (1968) and had an uncredited, non-speaking role in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1970 film "Zabriskie Point" as an arrested student protester. French filmmaker Jacques Demy chose Ford for the lead role of his first American film, "Model Shop" (1969), but the head of Columbia Pictures thought Ford had "no future" in the film business and told Demy to hire a more experienced actor. The part eventually went to Gary Lockwood. Ford later commented that the experience had been nevertheless a positive one because Demy was the first to show such faith in him.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Not happy with the roles offered to him, Ford became a self-taught professional carpenter to support his then-wife and two young sons. Clients at this time included the writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, who lived on the beach at Malibu. Ford appears in the documentary "". He and his wife became friends of the writers. Casting director and fledgling producer Fred Roos championed the young Ford and secured him an audition with George Lucas for the role of Bob Falfa, which Ford went on to play in "American Graffiti" (1973). Ford's relationship with Lucas profoundly affected his career later. After director Francis Ford Coppola's film "The Godfather" was a success, he hired Ford to expand his office and gave him small roles in his next two films, "The Conversation" (1974) and "Apocalypse Now" (1979); in the latter film, Ford played an army officer named "G. Lucas".


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford began to receive bigger roles in films throughout the late 1970s, including "Heroes" (1977), "Force 10 from Navarone" (1978) and "Hanover Street" (1979). Ford also co-starred alongside Gene Wilder in the buddy-comedy western "The Frisco Kid" (1979), playing a bank robber with a heart of gold. His previous work in "American Graffiti" eventually landed him his first starring film role when he was hired by Lucas to read lines for actors auditioning for roles in Lucas' upcoming epic space-opera film "Star Wars" (1977). Lucas was eventually won over by Ford's performance during these line reads and cast him as Han Solo. "Star Wars" became one of the most successful and groundbreaking films of all time, and brought Ford, and his co-stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, widespread recognition. He returned to star in the similarly successful "Star Wars" sequels "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) and "Return of the Jedi" (1983), as well as the "Star Wars Holiday Special" (1978). Ford wanted Lucas to kill off Han Solo at the end of "Return of the Jedi", saying, "That would have given the whole film a bottom," but Lucas refused.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford's status as a leading actor was solidified with "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), an action-adventure collaboration between George Lucas and Steven Spielberg that gave Ford his second franchise role as the heroic, globe-trotting archaeologist Indiana Jones. Like "Star Wars", the film was massively successful and became the highest-grossing film of the year. Spielberg was interested in casting Ford from the beginning, but Lucas was not, having already worked with the actor in "American Graffiti" and "Star Wars". Lucas eventually relented after Tom Selleck was unable to accept. Ford went on to reprise the role throughout the rest of the decade in the prequel "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984), and the sequel "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". During the June 1983 filming of "Temple of Doom" in London, Ford herniated a disc in his back. The 40-year-old actor was forced to fly back to Los Angeles for surgery and returned six weeks later.