Surprising Celebrity Relations

Just an addition to your post, Holden, I just very recently discovered that Bryce Dallas Howard, of The Village and Lady in the Water fame, is Ron Howard's daughter:

Have we done the Richardsons and Redgraves yet?

Vanessa (Julia, Camelot) and Michael Redgrave (Mourning Becomes Electra) are the parents of Joely (Nip/Tuck) and Natasha Richardson (Nell, The Parent Trap).

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If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

Johann von Goethe

Ewwww, grody. Is Chinatown their favorite movie?



Sir Michael Redgrave is the father of both Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave. Actress Rachel Kempson is their mother. Vanessa and Lynn have a brother, Corin, who is also an actor (In the Name of the Father, The Girl in the Café). Vanessa Redgrave's first husband was director Tony Richardson (Tom Jones, Look Back in Anger). Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson's two daughters are Natasha and Joely Richardson, making Michael Redgrave their Grandfather and Lynn their Aunt.

But you were close. Just not as surprising as you thought. Perhaps?


*as an aside, I hope that Angelina Jolie and Joely Richardson are Gay Married someday. Not just because it'd be hot and I'm sure a lovely ceremony, but because Ms. Richardson could change her name to Joely Jolie (come on: you know Angelina would be the "man" in that relationship...she may be the man in any relationship). Joely Jolie would be like Marcel Marceau, only damn sexy.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

crap, Holden, ya got me! Thanks for the fix, hon.

Okay, gonna try this again, but I'm keeping it simple!

Tyne Daly of Cagney and Lacey fame, is the sister of Tim Daly of Wings and Private Practice.

Yep, I think the Cusacks are easy to spot, and I did the same thing, except it was when I first saw Stigmata. The second she was on the screen, I said, "She's a Cusack, too!"

That reminds me, has the Arquette family been mentioned? I'll go double check . . .

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And I don't mention this one because it's so surprising, as anyone who knows who Charlie McCarthy is must be well aware of the link, but the great ventriloquist Edgar Bergan is the father of Candice Bergen. Egdar's wife and Candy's Mom was Frances Westerman, who was a model and best known as The Chesterfield cigarette girl. I was reminded of this one last week when TCM was running a bunch of Edgar's movies with Charlie and Mortimer Snerd (his puppets). As inherently silly as this sounds, Edgar Bergan was a huge radio star. I mean, I could be a convincing ventriloquist on radio, but his characters were beloved, and he and his wooden friends did become movie and television stars, too. Candice of course started coming to prominence as an actress in the 1970s and enjoyed her greatest popularity in the '80s and early '90s as the titular star of the sitcom "Murphy Brown". Candy tells tales of Charlie McCarthy having his own room and bed in their home, and that he was often referred to as her brother.

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Lionel Barrymore (It's a Wonderful Life), is the great-uncle of Drew Barrymore (E.T., Charlie's Angels).

That's a good connect, but now you've opened up a can of worms with all the Barrymore acting clan.

Of course, the Great Profile, John Barrymore, is her grandfather, and Dolores Costello (The Magnificent Ambersons) is her grandmother. That would also make Ethel Barrymore (Pinky) her great-aunt. John and Dolores' son, John Drew Barrymore, is Drew's pop. His main claim to fame is for a few westerns and his role as a dope dealer in High School Confidential! (1958). I believe there are a few more acting relations in the timeline, including som of Drew's siblings. I'm stopping now though because I'm guessing Holden may have discussed this somewhere.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

*Mark beat me to some of this, but anyway...


Well, you left out the rest of the Barrymore clan, but yes, Drew is of the famous Barrymore acting family. Ethel, John and Lionel are sister and brothers, all renowned, legendary thespians of the stage and screen in the first half of the 20th Century. But their theatrical lineage extends well before the movies to their parents Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew, who were stars of the stage in the 1870s and 1880s. Georgiana's mother (which makes her Drew's great-great grandmother) Louisa Lane Drew was an actress, manager and theatre owner (she appeared in plays with John Wilkes Booth, fer cripe's sake).

So John Barrymore is Drew's grandfather, Lionel and Ethel are great uncle and great aunt to her...though all three had long since passed before Drew was even born. John Barrymore worked in films, but his legend was built as a stage actor, where he is still revered. Drew's Dad, John Drew Barrymore, was an actor as well, though he never lived up to the legendary Barrymore name. Drew's half-brother, John Blyth Barrymore, had a middling career like his father's. Ethel Barrymore had three children, none of whom really did anything in the business. Lionel had two children, but they also never made it in showbiz. The acting success gene apparently skipped that generation completely and landed fully on Drew.

And so he did...

OK, by request, the Arquettes...



With such an unusual name, there's not much surprise in this, but for the record Rosanna Arquette (After Hours, Desperately Seeking Susan), Patricia Arquette (True Romance, Flirting with Disaster) and David Arquette (Scream, 3000 Miles to Graceland) are all siblings. They also have two other brothers, Richmond, who has had some very minor roles in film and TV projects, and Robert. Robert is also in showbiz, and started as a child actor (he was the boy on the carnival ride in The Tubes' famous video "She's a Lady", for all you '80s music and MTV fans). But Robert is now the transgendered Alexis Arquette, mostly infamous as a "celebrity" rather than an actor/actress and appeared on one season of the VH1 reality show "The Surreal Life" with other has-beens and never-wases from the D-List.

All five of them are all the children of character actor Lewis Arquette, who worked for years without ever becoming a star. But he did lots of television work in the '70s, '80s and '90s, and his most memorable film role is probably the local farmer who becomes the narrator of the atrocious play in Christopher Guest's Waiting for Guffman. Lewis' father was Cliff Arquette, who was a comedian, actor and musician who had his greatest pop cultural impact as his character Charlie Weaver, initially created for Jack Parr's "Tonight Show" in 1959, and whom subsequently made many television and commerical appearances, always as Weaver, including on the original version of the gameshow "The Hollywood Squares".

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Thank you! I didn't know about Richmond, until I ran a search today. I still haven't looked at his list, to be able to say if I've seen anything that he has been in. Alexis, on the other hand, I remember best from the not so popular, but I like it, The Wedding Singer. He pulled off a near perfect Boy George, in my opinion.

I waited for Mark to note this one, but...



William Katt, probably still best known as the star of the cult '80s TV show "The Greatest American Hero", is the son of actor Bill Williams (star of the early '50s Western series "The Adventures of Kit Carson") and TV icon Barbara Hale, forever known as faithful Della Street to Raymond Burr's "Perry Mason", a role she originated in the 1957-1966 run of that show and brought back for a couple dozen Perry Mason TV movies in the 1980s and 1990s (Burr died in 1993). Barbara appears in Big Wednesday, John Milius' surfing movie that starred William Katt, and Katt later played Paul Drake Jr. in a bunch of those initial "Perry Mason" movies in the 1980s.

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Maybe it's true I mentioned that one at MovieJustice, but I can't remember anymore.

I love him in the movie, House. It's cheesy, but it's great. My daughter watches it a lot. Maybe I should get The Greatest American Hero for her to check out. I can't remember one thing about that show, though. Is he a clutsy superhero?

Yeah, I like House (1986) a lot, too. The scene where he's trying to bury the body to "This is Dedicated to the One I Love" is superb.



"The Greatest American Hero" is fun, definitely worth a rental anyway. Katt played a High School teacher named Ralph Hinkley who, long story short, one night meets both an F.B.I. Agent named Bill Maxwell (the great Robert Culp) and a spaceship in the desert. The E.T.s give Ralph the "super suit" which has special powers he can use, with Maxwell's guidance, to battle evil doers. The hitch comes in that they lose the instruction manual that first night, so Ralph is always discovering new powers and never sure how to control or master them. Ralph is essential a decent, peaceful guy, and Bill Maxwell is a shoot first and ask questions later type, so there's always that clash of personalities. Ralph also has a girlfriend who is a lawyer, played by Connie Sellecca, and a class full of "troubled" tough kids (I call them kids, but they all had to be in their mid to late twenties) led by Michael Paré (Eddie & the Cruisers, Streets of Fire) and Faye Grant ("V"), all of whom also get sucked into the various plots of espionage.

It's essentially a combo of an action show and a comedy, with this incompetent Superman thing to tie them together. It had a great pilot and good first season, and Katt and Culp in particular are just great in it, but truthfully it became a bit repetitive after a while (it lasted three seasons), and sometimes the writing went above what they could accomplish effects-wise on a tight weekly early 1980s budget. But it is worth taking a trip down memory lane for. The entire series is on R1 DVD. I think a kid would love it. I know I did when I was eleven and twelve and it was first on the air.

It was created by Stephen J. Cannell ("The Rockford Files", "The A-Team") and its most lasting impact may be the theme song, "Believe it or Not", sung by Joey Scarbury, which made it all the way to #2 on the Billboard Top 40 in 1981 and is still regularly played on the radio today ("Believe it or not I'm walkin' on air, I never thought I could feel so free-ee-ee, Flying away on a wing and a prayer, Who could it be? Believe it or not it's just me...").

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Yep, I love that scene. The sequel was decent. I have that one as well. It's nowhere near as good as the first, but it's still watchable, in my opinion. There is a part 3, but I haven't checked into it yet. I have no clue when they ended these.

I remember that now. Yeah, I'm for sure going to get this. I'm sure they will like it. Thanks again!

Not a blood relation, but this was his boy...



TV icon Carroll O'Connor had a son named Hugh. Hugh was born in Rome and adopted by Carroll and his wife while on location for Cleopatra (1963). As an adult Hugh co-starred on Carroll's 1988-1994 series "In the Heat of the Night" (adapted from the 1967 movie of the same name). Hugh O'Connor had beaten Hodgkin's Disease as a teenager, but also became addicted to narcotics. In and out of treatment and recovery for years for his addiction, Hugh took his own life with a handgun in 1995. A devastated and angry Carroll O'Connor cut public service announcements urging parents to "Get between your kid and drugs any way you can." He also went on a crusade on any talkshow that would have him, and when he named the coke dealer who sold Hugh his last drugs shortly before his suicide as a "partner in murder", the dealer had the balls to actually bring a $10-million lawsuit against Carroll for slander. The jury sided with O'Connor.

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This also isn't surprising given the famous name (and I covered it in my Eastwood thread), but Clint Eastwood has some kids in the business. His two oldest children, from his first marriage to Maggie Johnson, are Kyle and Alison. Kyle co-starred with Dad in Honkytonk Man (1982) when he was fourteen but gravitated to Clint's other passion, Jazz, and as an adult has become a respected and successful musician, primarily on the upright double bass. Alison Eastwood co-starred in one of Clint's movies as a child too, playing the older of his two daughters in Tightrope (1984) when she was twelve. As an adult she was in Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil (1997) and then started a career as an actress on her own, appearing in small indie flicks such as Friends & Lovers and Just a Little Harmless Sex. She also did a shoot for Playboy, I'm happy to say. This year she took another stride in her father's footsteps by directing her first film, Rails & Ties (2007), starring Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden.

Clint has fathered other children over the years, illegitimately, though none with his longtime girlfriend Sondra Locke. Of those only his daughter with actress Frances Fisher, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood, has been in any of his movies. She played Clint's young daughter in True Crime (1999) at the age of six.