This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1998.
Naomi Ellen Watts is a British actress. After her family moved to Australia, she made her film debut there in the drama For Love Alone (1986) and then appeared in three television series, Hey Dad..! (1990), Brides of Christ (1991), and Home and Away (1991), and the film Flirting (1991). After moving to the United States, Watts initially struggled as an actress, taking roles in small-scale films until she starred in David Lynch's psychological thriller Mulholland Drive in 2001 as an aspiring actress. The role began her rise to international prominence.
Alan Irwin Menken is an American composer, pianist, music director, and record producer, best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Menken's music for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) has each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), and Disenchanted (2022), among others. His accolades include winning eight Academy Awards — becoming the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, a Tony Award, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Daytime Emmy Award. Menken is one of eighteen people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. He is one of two people to have won a Razzie, an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony ("REGOT").
Lukas Daniel Haas is an American actor. His acting career has spanned four decades, during which he has appeared in more than 50 feature films and a number of television shows and stage productions. His notable credits include in the films Witness (1985), Mars Attacks! (1996), Inception (2010), The Revenant (2015), First Man (2018), and as The Patient in the music video for My Chemical Romance's rock ballad "Welcome to the Black Parade".
Harlan Coben is an American writer of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past, murders, or fatal accidents and have multiple twists. Among his novels are two series, each involving the same protagonist set in and around New York and New Jersey; some characters appear in both.
Timothy John Winton is an Australian writer. He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books, and short stories. In 1997, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and has won the Miles Franklin Award four times.
DHX Cookie Jar Inc. was a Canadian media production and distribution company owned by DHX Media. The company was first established in 1976 as CINAR Films Inc., a Montreal-based studio that was heavily involved in children's entertainment. The company's business model, which included the licensing of its properties into educational markets, had a significant impact on its success; by 1999, CINAR held CDN$1.5 billion of the overall children's television market.
David Jonathan Heyman is a British film producer and the founder of Heyday Films. Heyman secured the rights to the Harry Potter film series in 1999 and went on to produce all eight installments of the franchise and the three installments of the Fantastic Beasts spin-off prequel series. He also received three Academy Award nominations for his work on the films Gravity, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Marriage Story.
Aunjanue L. Ellis is an American actress. She has appeared in numerous films, including Men of Honor (2000), Undercover Brother (2002), Ray (2004), Freedomland (2006), The Express: The Ernie Davis Story (2008), The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009), The Help (2011), The Birth of a Nation (2016), and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018). For her portrayal of Oracene Price in the sports drama King Richard (2021), she was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Critics' Choice Award.
Vanessa Anne Hudgens is an American actress and singer. After making her feature film debut in Thirteen (2003), Hudgens rose to fame portraying Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical film series (2006–2008), which brought her significant mainstream media success. The success of the first film led Hudgens to acquire a recording contract with Hollywood Records, with whom she released two studio albums, V (2006) and Identified (2008).
Kevin Connolly is an American actor and director. He is best known for his role as Eric Murphy in the HBO series Entourage, and his role as the eldest son Ryan Malloy in the 1990s television sitcom Unhappily Ever After. Connolly is also a director, having directed many episodes of television as well as the films Gardener of Eden, Dear Eleanor, and Gotti.
The Comfort Zone is the second studio album by American singer and actress Vanessa Williams, released on August 20, 1991, by Mercury's Wing Records Label.
The Buxtehude Bull is an award for youth literature, established in 1971 by Winfried Ziemann, a local book merchant from Buxtehude, a Hanseatic City located in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region. The town council took over the sponsorship of the award in 1981. The award is given annually to the best children's or young-adults' book published in German in the preceding year. The writer is presented with a small steel statue of the bull Ferdinand, from the popular work The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, and also receives a monetary prize of €5,000.
Neil Claude Cross is a British novelist and scriptwriter, best known as the creator of the drama series Luther and Hard Sun. He is also the showrunner for the TV adaptation of The Mosquito Coast, which began airing in 2021.
Sterling Gray Van Wagenen is an American film and stage producer, writer, director, and convicted sex offender. He is a co-founder of the Sundance Film Festival, and, in association with his former cousin-in-law Robert Redford, he was the founding executive director of the Sundance Institute.
Naomi Sarah Ackie is an English actress. She made her television debut as Jen in the Doctor Who episode "Face the Raven" (2015). For her role as Bonnie on the television dark comedy-drama series The End of the F***ing World, she received the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2020. Ackie is well known for her role as Jannah in the film Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). In 2021, she had a main role on the third season of Master of None. In 2022, she garnered critical acclaim for her portrayal of American pop icon, singer Whitney Houston in the biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, earning a Rising Star nomination at the British Academy Film Awards.
The CINAR scandal was a major accounting scandal in Canada that came to light in March 2000 at CINAR, renamed to Cookie Jar Group, one of the world's most successful children's television production companies at the time. It was exposed when investigators revealed that US$122 million was invested into Bahamian bank accounts without the board members' approval. The scandal resulted in Canada's longest criminal trial ever brought before a jury.
Myron M. Levoy was an American author of children's and young adults literature. After graduating from Purdue University he worked as a chemical engineer and was involved in the field of space engineering before becoming a full-time author.
Alan and Naomi is a 1977 young adult novel by Myron Levoy. The story takes place in 1944 and is about a friendship which develops between a Jewish New York boy and a refugee child from Nazi-occupied Paris. The book was adapted in 1992 into a movie of the same name.
