Aries Celebrities

In terms of sales and lasting popularity, Elton John was the biggest pop superstar of the early '70s.

He was born Reginald Dwight on March 25, 1947 to a middle-class family living in Pinner, England. Dwight began playing piano at the age of four, and when he was 11, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. After studying for six years, he left school with the intention of breaking into the music business. In 1961, he joined his first band, Bluesology, and divided his time between playing with the group, giving solo concerts at a local hotel, and running errands for a London publishing house. By 1965, Bluesology were backing touring American soul and RandB musicians like Major Lance, Doris Troy and the Bluebells.

By the summer of 1968, he had begun recording singles for release under his own name.

Elton John released the album The Big Picture in September 1997. Earlier that month, he captured the hearts of millions when he sang a re-written version of "Candle in the Wind" at the funeral of Princess Diana. A recording of the song, released as "Candle in the Wind 1997" became the first single to outsell Bing Crosby's "White Christmas." All proceeds from the sale of the single were donated to the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.

In 2000, John played a two night stand at Madison Square Garden which was recorded for a live album, At Last -- One Night Only, released in November of the same year. His latest, Songs From The West Coast, came out in 2001. In the 1960s graffiti appeared on London and New York City streets proclaiming "Clapton is God." For the next 30 years, Eric Clapton (born 1945) forged out a career as an extraordinary guitar player, singer, and songwriter, becoming a musician of legendary proportion.

Eric Clapton's musical roots were formed by American blues artists such as Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, and Sonny Boy Williamson. During his career, he experimented with many musical forms, including rock, pop, reggae, and even techno-jazz. However, he always seemed to find his way back to his beloved blues where his music is fueled by a life filled with personal struggles and tragedies. Billie Holiday (1915-1959) was a jazz vocalist with perhaps the most emotional depth of any singer in jazz history.

Billie Holiday's life was tragic. Born into out-of-wedlock poverty, she rose to a position of artistic pre-eminence in the world of jazz, but her personal life was one of constant turmoil and struggle. She fought seemingly endless wars--with drug addiction, with narcotics agents' harassment, with racism, with self-serving lovers, and with human parasites in and out of the music business. Withal, her vocal artistry was joyously, bittersweetly transcendant. Many serious listeners consider her the greatest jazz vocalist ever. Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) was a Dutch painter whose formal distortions and humanistic concerns made him a principal forerunner of 20th-century expressionism.

Born on March 30, 1853, at Groot-Zundert in the province of Brabant, Vincent Van Gogh was the son of a Protestant minister. His uncle was a partner in Goupil and Company, art dealers, and Vincent entered the firm at the age of 16 and remained with it for 6 years. He served the firm first in The Hague and then in London, where he fell in love with his landlady's daughter, who rejected him; then he worked for Goupil's branch in Paris.

In 1890, van Gogh was invited to show with Les Vingt in Brussels, where he sold his first painting. That same year, he was represented at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. Van Gogh shot himself on July 27, 1890, and died on July 29 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. The film actor, director, and writer Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889-1977) was one of the most original creators in the history of the cinema. His remarkable portrayal of "the tramp"--a sympathetic comic character in ill-fitting clothes and a trademark mustache--won admiration from international audiences.

Charlie Chaplin was born in a poor district of London on April 16, 1889. His mother, a talented singer, spent most of her life in and out of mental hospitals; his father was a fairly successful vaudevillian until he began drinking. After his parents separated, Charlie and his half brother, Sidney, spent most of their childhood in the Lambeth Workhouse. Barely able to read and write, Chaplin left school to tour with a group of clog dancers. Later he had the lead in a comedy act; by the age of 19 he had become one of the most popular music-hall performers in England.

By the early 1920's Chaplin was making his own films with actors Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Having control of his own films lead to classics, such as The Kid 1920, The Gold Rush 1925, City Lights 1931, Modern Times 1936 and The Great Dictator 1940. These films made him the most popular and successful film star of his time.

In 1952 Chaplin visited Europe and was not allowed to return to the US, he settled in Switzerland. He made a film, The King In New York, in 1957, which was full of criticism of McCarthy and American society in general.

He was allowed to return to the US in 1972 to receive an Oscar for his services to film. He died in Switzerland aged 88. Schooled in low-budget filmmaking, Francis Ford Coppola (born 1939) has gone on to direct some of the most financially successful and critically acclaimed movies in U.S. cinematic history.

As a young boy he edited home movies. Polio left him almost paralysed for a year at nine, and he developed an interest in comic books, puppetry, and television.

In 1971 Coppola's film The Godfather became one of the highest-grossing movies in history, and brought him an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay. The film received an Academy Award for Best Picture, and a Best Director nomination.

In 1974, The Godfather Part II was released. This rivalled its predecessor as a high-grosser at the box office and won six Academy Awards. Coppola won Oscars as the Best Producer, Director and Writer. No sequel before or since has ever been so honoured.

Since the 1980's Coppola has continued to enjoy a successful career. Directing many pictures including Rumble Fish, Tough Guys Don't Dance, The Rainmaker and Bram Stoker's Dracula. William Wordsworth (1770-1850), an early leader of romanticism in English poetry, ranks as one of the greatest lyric poets in the history of English literature.

He was born in Cumberland, 1770. Visited France in the early years of the revolution, 1790-91. Gained the friendship of Coleridge by the publication of his first poems, and went to live near him in Somersetshire. The friends went on a walking tour, the result of which was "Lyrical Ballads," published in 1798, at Bristol. After a tour in Germany, Wordsworth and his sister lived at Grasmere until 1808, the poet being married in 1802, and "The Prelude" (begun in 1799) being finished in 1805. In 1813 Wordsworth was named distributor of stamps for Westmoreland, and henceforth lived at Rydal Mount. "The Excursion" appeared next year, and in 1815 "The White Doe of Rylstone" was published. Other poems followed, but the whole fragment of "The Recluse" was not published until 1888. In 1843, Wordsworth became poet-laureate. Died 1850. Beginning with his early career in the films of the 1950s, through his powerful roles in such classics as On the Waterfront ,A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Godfather, Marlon Brando (born 1924) has captivated the American public with his intense onscreen presence, as well as with his personal life of controversy and excess.

In 1947, he played the brutish Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, and the stage actor made his motion picture debut as a paraplegic World War II veteran in The Men (1950).

A slew of poor roles in the 1960s was followed by an upturn in 1972 with his depiction of Mafia boss Don Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Winning an Oscar for the role, Brando turned down the award in protest of Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans.

Brando passed away aged 80 from lung failure at UCLA Medical Center in LA on Thursday 1st July 2004.