Sir Thomas Sean Connery was a Scottish actor. He was the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. Connery originated the role in Dr. No (1962) and continued starring as Bond in the Eon Productions films From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Connery made his final appearance in the franchise in Never Say Never Again (1983), a non-Eon-produced Bond film.
Local Hero is a 1983 Scottish comedy-drama film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Peter Riegert, Peter Capaldi, Denis Lawson, Fulton Mackay and Burt Lancaster. Produced by David Puttnam, the film is about an American oil company representative who is sent to the fictional village of Ferness on the west coast of Scotland to purchase the town and surrounding property for his company. For his work on the film, Forsyth won the 1984 BAFTA Award for Best Direction.
Douglas Garven Alexander is a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, previously Paisley South, from 1997 until his defeat in 2015. During this time, he served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Scottish Secretary, Transport Secretary and International Development Secretary in the Cabinet under Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He subsequently served in Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Shadow Foreign Secretary.
Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, Lord of Roslin was a Scottish noblesse. Sinclair held the title Earl of Orkney and was Lord High Admiral of Scotland under the King of Scotland. He was sometimes identified by another spelling of his surname, St. Clair. He was the grandfather of William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness, the builder of Rosslyn Chapel. He is best known today because of a modern legend that he took part in explorations of Greenland and North America almost 100 years before Christopher Columbus. William Thomson, in his book The New History of Orkney, wrote: "It has been Earl Henry's singular fate to enjoy an ever-expanding posthumous reputation which has very little to do with anything he achieved in his lifetime."
Claire Patricia Grogan, known professionally as Clare Grogan or sometimes as C. P. Grogan, is a Scottish actress and singer. She is best known as the lead singer of the 1980s new wave music group Altered Images, as well as for supporting roles in the 1981 film Gregory's Girl and the science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf as the first incarnation of Kristine Kochanski.
Gregory's Girl is a 1980 Scottish coming-of-age romantic comedy film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn and Clare Grogan. The film is set in and around a state secondary school in the Abronhill district of Cumbernauld.
William David Forsyth. known as Bill Forsyth, is a Scottish film director and writer known for his films Gregory's Girl (1981), Local Hero (1983) and Comfort and Joy (1984) as well as his adaptation of the Marilynne Robinson novel Housekeeping (1987).
John Gordon Sinclair is a Scottish actor. He is best known for playing Gregory in the 1981 film Gregory's Girl. There was a Gordon Sinclair already registered with Equity, so he took John Gordon Sinclair as his professional name. In 2019, Sinclair played Drew Cubbin in the BBC drama Traces.
Tunes of Glory is a 1960 British drama film directed by Ronald Neame, starring Alec Guinness and John Mills, featuring Dennis Price, Kay Walsh, John Fraser, Duncan MacRae, Gordon Jackson and Susannah York. It is based on the 1956 novel and screenplay by James Kennaway. The film is a psychological drama focusing on events in a wintry Scottish Highland regimental barracks in the period immediately following the Second World War. Writer Kennaway served with the Gordon Highlanders, and the title refers to the bagpiping that accompanies every important action of the battalion.
Comfort and Joy is a 1984 Scottish comedy film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Bill Paterson as a radio disc jockey whose life undergoes a bizarre upheaval after his girlfriend leaves him. After he witnesses an attack on an ice cream van by angry competitors, he is led into the struggle between two Italian families over the ice cream market of Glasgow. The film received a BAFTA Award Nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 1985.
Clan Sutherland also known as House of Sutherland is a Highland Scottish clan whose traditional territory is the shire of Sutherland in the far north of Scotland. The chief of the clan was also the powerful Earl of Sutherland, however in the early 16th century this title passed through marriage to a younger son of the chief of Clan Gordon. The current chief is Alistair Sutherland who holds the title Earl of Sutherland.
There are several types of mass media in Scotland: television, cinema, radio, newspapers, magazines, game design and websites. The majority of Scotland's media is located in Glasgow, the countries largest city, which serves as the HQ for much of the countries major media employers such as broadcasters BBC Scotland and STV, radio services including BBC Radio Scotland, Clyde 1 and Pure Radio Scotland. Game design and production company, Rockstar North, has its international offices in the countries capital city, Edinburgh.
Gary Stevenson, better known as Gary Lewis, is a Scottish actor. He has had roles in films such as Billy Elliot, Joyeux Noël, Gangs of New York and Eragon as well as major roles in the television docudrama Supervolcano and the Starz series Outlander.
The World's End Murders is the colloquial name given to the murder of two girls, Christine Eadie, 17, and Helen Scott, 17, in Edinburgh, in October 1977. The case is so named because both victims were last seen alive leaving The World's End pub in Edinburgh's Old Town. The only person to stand trial accused of the murders, Angus Robertson Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 in controversial circumstances. Following the amendment of the law of double jeopardy, which would have prevented his retrial, Sinclair was retried in October 2014 and convicted of both murders on 14 November 2014. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years, the longest sentence by a Scottish court, meaning he would have been 106 years old when he was eligible for a potential release on parole. He died at HM Prison Glenochil aged 73 on 11 March 2019. Coincidentally, he died on the same day the BBC's Crimewatch Roadshow programme profiled the murders.
Scotland has produced many films, directors and actors.
That Sinking Feeling is a 1979 Scottish comedy film written and directed by Bill Forsyth, his first film as a director. The film is set in his home city of Glasgow in Scotland. The young actors in film were members of the Glasgow Youth Theatre. The film also features Richard Demarco, the Edinburgh gallery owner, playing himself. The four main actors went on to feature in Forsyth's following film Gregory's Girl.
Douglas Sannachan is a Scottish actor and film maker most widely known for playing Billy the window cleaner in Gregory's Girl. His famous line was "If I don't see you through the week, I'll see you through a window". He grew up in the Calton area of Glasgow and was a pupil at John Street Secondary School, Glasgow. When he was 16 years old he was the subject of a chapter of a book called The Year of the Child by Bel Mooney.
Your Cheatin' Heart is a BBC Scotland six-part comedy drama serial, broadcast in 1990 and written by John Byrne. It starred Tilda Swinton, John Gordon-Sinclair, Katy Murphy, Eddi Reader and Ken Stott. The format is similar to Byrne's earlier serial Tutti Frutti but the tone is much darker.
The 2020 New Year Honours in New Zealand were appointments by Elizabeth II in her right as Queen of New Zealand, on the advice of the New Zealand government, to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by New Zealanders, and to celebrate the passing of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. They were announced on 31 December 2019.
Traces is a British television crime drama produced by Red Production Company. Co-created and written by Val McDermid and Amelia Bullmore, and based upon an original idea by McDermid, it originally premiered on Alibi on 9 December 2019. The series was rerun on BBC One on 4 January 2021 and Series One began repeating on Drama on 15 January 2022. A second six-episode series was released in February 2022.
