Stage actress Patina Miller

 Patina Miller is one of Broadway's more recent breakout stars.

Although she's known to many people as Daisy Grant, Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord's press officer in "Madame Secretary," her primary métier is the stage.  She played Deloris Van Cartier in both the West End and Broadway productions of Sister Act, based on the movie of the same name.  Her role in the 2013 Broadway revival of Pippin gained her two awards - an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical and a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical.

 

Ms. Miller has also been in the movies.  She played Commander Paylor in two Hunger Games movies, Mockingjay - Part 1 and Mockingjay - Part 2.  In addition, she has been on other TV series, including thirty episodes of the daytime serial "All My Children" as Pam Henderson.

The COVID pandemic has put Broadway on hold for a long time, but when it comes back, Patina Miller is sure to be one of the stars leading its return. 

Model Adriana Lima

Adriana Lima is another hot model from sultry Brazil.

Ms. Lima may be best known for being a spokesmodel for Maybelline, a role she served from 2003 to 2009.  She was also a Victoria's Secret angel, but don't hold that against her.  

But she also modeled for a whole lot of fashion brands as well, as as Armani, Gianni Versace, Prada, Intimissimi, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, and others. Her magazine credits, both covers and editorials, include Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle.  And she's appeared in fashion shows for way too many fashion designers to list here.

Though she turns 40 this year, Ms. Lima is hardly washed up. As recently as 2018, she became a brand ambassador for Puma.

Fun fact: Ms. Lima is of Portuguese, Native Brazilian, African, Japanese, Swiss, and West Indian descent, and she's quadrilingual, being fluent in her native Portuguese, Spanish, English and French.

Model Ciara James

 Ciara James is a fashion model who was active in the late 1980s.

She worked primarily out of London and was represented in that city by the Laraine Ashton agency.  Further biographical data on her is scant. 

TV newswoman Pat Harvey

Another day, another news personality. 😊

Pat Harvey is a living legend in Los Angeles newscasting.  She's a co-anchor of CBS station KCBS-TV's 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM, and 11:00 PM news programs.  She joined the station after having been an anchorwoman at KCAL-TV, where she'd anchored a nightly three-hour newscast - the first such newscast in the nation.  . In recognition of her 20th anniversary with KCAL and contributions to the people of Southern California, the Los Angeles City Council and L.A. County Board of Supervisors declared Oct. 30, 2009, ‘Pat Harvey Day’ by proclamation.

A recipient of the Los Angeles area's Governor¹s Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2015, Ms. Harvey has been involved in numerous charities, and her journalism career  has included reporting on many stories, such as the civil war in El Salvador, the AIDS epidemic in Eastern Africa and Russia, the first multiracial elections in South Africa in 1994, and the installation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

Among Ms. Harvey's other TV news achievements are working as a guest co-anchor in Brisbane, Queensland in Australia and helping to launch CNN's Headline News channel, where she was one of the original anchors. 

And she's met a lot of  interesting people. 😃

Yes, that's Motown legend Smokey Robinson with our heroine.  😎

Pat Harvey has come a long way from Saginaw, Michigan, where she was a general assignment reporter and later a producer and anchor of the station¹s 6:00 PM and 11:00 PM newscast at WNEM-TV.

TV newswoman Kimberly Gill

Kimberly Gill is an anchorwoman at WDIV-TV, the NBC affiliate in Detroit.

The South Carolina native worked as an anchor at CBS affiliate KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh and at ABC affiliate WEWS-TV in Cleveland (where she hosted a morning news program) before making her way to the Motor City.  She's been with WDIV since November 2014, and she's become a trusted new source in Detroit.

Ms. Gill got her start in tellvsion news in South Carolina, working for CBS affiliate WBTW-TV in Florence as both an anchor on the station's morning weekday news program and as a producer and anchor for WBTW's 12:00 PM report. 

Fun fact: Ms. Gill worked as a truck driver and as an aircraft refueler to pay for her studies at the University of South Carolina, where she earned her broadcast journalism B.A. degree.

Actress Samantha Ferris

Samantha Ferris is a Canadian actress who has appeared in numerous TV shows in one-shot roles.

Her most prominent role was on "Somewhere Between," a 2017 ABC series about a woman (played by Paula Patton, an earlier honoree on this blog) who seeks to prevent her daughter's murder after it happens - when she later wakes up in a time before her daughter is killed.  Ms. Ferris played a San Francisco cop who seeks to track down the killer.

Ms Ferris has played small roles in sci-fi series such as "Battlestar Galactica" and "Stargate SG-1," and she's also had a recurring role on the TV series "Supernatural," about two brothers who hunt ghosts and goblins. Ms. Ferris has played Ellen Harvelle, a bar owner who helps the the two brothers.  She's also done numerous TV movies.

Fun fact: Samantha Ferris was a TV reporter in Bellingham, Washington, the northwesternmost city in the continental United States, before changing to an acting career.

TV newswoman Jessica Dean

Jessica Dean is a CNN correspondent who came to the cable news channel from Little Rock by way of Philadelphia.

 

She started out in TV news by covering the Arkansas state legislature while working as a reporter and as an anchorwoman at KARK-TV and KATV-TV in her hometown after having worked as a reporter at a TV statin in Fort Smith, in western Arkansas.

Ms. Dean eventually made her way to Philadelphia, where she was the co-anchor of the weekday evening newscasts at KYW-TV, Philly's CBS affiliate. (Coincidentally, another famous Jessica in television journalism - the late Jessica Savitch - got her start at the same station when it was an NBC affiliate.)  In addition to local stories in the Greater Philadelphia Tri-State area, she was a panelist for a debate during the 2017 New Jersey gubernatorial campaign. 

Since joining CNN, Ms. Dean has covered President Biden's 2020 campaign and transition period.

Jessica Dean holds a degree from the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. 

Amal Clooney

 Oh, come on, do I have to tell you who this is?

Yes, she's actor George Clooney's wife, but Amal Clooney is better known now - and known before her marriage - as an esteemed human rights lawyer.  

It's fitting that Mrs. Clooney has been involved in too many cases for me to repeat here, because - wait for it - I could never do justice to describing them.  But here are the situations of a few of her best-known clients .  She represented Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, of al-Jazeera English, in 2014 when he was held in Egypt with other reporters  Though given a three-year prison sentence, he was pardoned by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Mrs. Clooney was also part of legal team defending former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, who was given a thirteen-year prison sentence for unsubstantiated and unproven charges for crimes that were not clear.  The sentence was eventually overturned, in November 2018, by the Maldivian Supreme Court, which said that Nasheed should never have been brought to trial.

Mrs. Clooney also represents Iraqi Yazidi activist ad Nobel laureate Nadia Murad in her ongoing fight against members of the Islamic state that terrorized the Yazidi population in northern Iraq.

There's to much more for me to cover here.  To find out more about Amal Clooney's career, I urge you to go to her Wikipedia biography, which was my primary source for this blog entry.

As for her personal life . . . she married George Clooney in April 2014, and though born in Lebanon,  the former Amal Alamuddin was raised in Buckinghamshire in England.  She's considered a British national treasure.

And because she's Hollywood royalty by marriage . . . well, I guess I ought to post at least one glamour picture of her here. 😊

Stage actress Kate Baldwin

Kate Baldwin - not to be confused with Kate Bolduan, the CNN anchorwoman (whom I'll get to eventually) - is a theater actress who honed her skills in the Chicago suburbs before relocating to New York City.

She studied theater at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was born (though she grew up in Wisconsin), and she performed at a professional theater in nearby Lincolnshire before heading for Broadway . . . and off-Broadway, having since thrived in both. 

Ms. Baldwin's credits on the Great White Way include time-honored musicals such as the 2002 production of  Thoroughly Modern Millie and the 2004 production of Wonderful Town.  And her performance as Sharon McLonergan in the 2009 revival of  Finian's Rainbow got her a Tony nomination. Perhaps her biggest role on Broadway as as Irene Malloy in the 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly!, starring Bette Midler in the title role.  Ms. Baldwin was nominated for a Drama Desk award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. 

Ms. Baldwin's off-Broadway credits include Babes in Arms and A Connecticut Yankee, among others.

TV actress Tori Anderson

Tori Anderson, originally from Canada, is best known for her roles on young-adult TV shows. 

Her two best know roles are as Dr. London Blake in "Open Heart," about London's younger sister, who works with her in a hospital and seeks to solve the mystery of their missing father.  Ms. Anderson also played Queen Titania in "The Other Kingdom," about fairies who get to live as mortals for ninety days before deciding whether or not to stay mortal.

In 2017, she played Evie Covington in the CW series :"No Tomorrow," about a woman - Evie - who gets involved with a man who wants to live life to the fullest before the end of the world - which he predicts is eight months away.  Alas, the series' run was much shorter (only three months).

Ms. Anderson has done a few basic-cable TV movies, and she also had a recurring role on the NBC crime drama "Blindspot," as socialite Blake Crawford.