Portal:Biography
The Biography Portal
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of their life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.
Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, from literature to film, form the genre known as biography.
An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An unauthorized biography is one written without such permission or participation. An autobiography is written by the person themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter. (Full article...)
Featured biography
Angelina Jolie is an American film actress, a former fashion model, and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. After appearing as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out, Jolie's acting career began in earnest a decade later with the low budget production Cyborg 2, subsequently playing her first leading role in a major film in Hackers. She appeared in the critically acclaimed biographical films George Wallace and Gia, and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted. She achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and since then has established herself as one of the best known and highest paid actresses in Hollywood. She had her biggest commercial success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children as well as three biological children. Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted for her work with refugees through UNHCR. (Read more...)
Selected portrait
Mohammed Alim Khan (1880–1944) was the last emir of the Manghit dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of the Emirate of Bukhara in Central Asia. He reigned from 3 January 1911 to 30 August 1920, and was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, the first Great Khan. (Read more...)
Photo credit: Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1911) Source: Library of Congress
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Quote of the week
"I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul."
In "J'accuse…!", L'Aurore 13 January 1898
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On this day – November 15
Births
- 1708 - William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1778) (pictured)
- 1731 - William Cowper, English poet (d. 1800)
- 1738 - William Herschel, German-born astronomer (d. 1822)
- 1887 - Georgia O'Keeffe, American painter (d. 1986)
- 1891 - Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (d. 1944)
- 1929 - Ed Asner, American actor (d. 2021)
Deaths
- 1630 - Johannes Kepler, German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1571)
- 1919 - Alfred Werner, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1866)
- 1954 - Lionel Barrymore, American actor (b. 1878)
- 1958 - Tyrone Power, American actor (b. 1914)
- 1978 - Margaret Mead, American anthropologist (b. 1901)
WikiProjects
List of WikiProjects and work groups that involve biography articles:
See also: Biographies of living persons • Manual of Style (biographies)
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