Ava DuVernay: producing history
Ava DuVernay was raised in the infamous city of Compton, near Los Angeles, California. Growing up she spent summers travelling between old world and new, spending summer months with family in a small town between Montgomery and Selma, Alabama. While she was attending UCLA in the mid-1990s, DuVernay was intrigued by journalism. She […]
Ellen DeGeneres: funny on the up
Ellen DeGeneres spent most of her formative years in a place not many would expect: the Southern United States. Metairie, Louisiana was the setting for early hardship in DeGeneres’s life; her family was in and out of practicing different religions, and when she was just a teenager her parents divorced. Perhaps knowing her future career […]
Jesse Ventura: a better body of work
Born in Minneapolis to parents who had each seen service in the Second World War, Jesse Ventura could be described as having hard work and grit in his DNA. Indeed, after finishing high school, Ventura went directly into the United States Navy’s SEAL programme. He served as a SEAL during the Vietnam War, braving wartime […]
Winston Churchill: no impediment to liberty
During the first part of his childhood, Winston Churchill lived in Dublin, Ireland with his mother and father, who themselves were of mixed descent, including American lineage on his mother’s side. His parents were very much an integral part of Irish political society, where his grandfather served as Viceroy. As such, Churchill was always tended […]