title: Martin Durkin (director)

texts:
<mask> is an English television producer and director, notably for Britain's Channel 4. He has produced, directed and executive-produced programmes covering the arts, science, history, entertainment, features and social documentaries. He is a libertarian, but was formerly connected to the now defunct Revolutionary Communist Party, and a number of his documentaries have caused controversies, including those critical of state spending  and environmentalism. He has been described as "the scourge of the greens" and "one of the environmentalists' favourite hate figures". Documentaries

Against Nature
In 1997, Channel 4 broadcast <mask>'s documentary series Against Nature, which attacked the environmental movement as being a threat to personal freedom and for crippling economic development. The UK's then broadcasting regulator the Independent Television Commission received 151 complaints from viewers and interviewees featured in the programme with four complaints upheld. In its report on the series, the ITC rejected 147 complaints that mainly were concerned with fairness and misrepresentation, stating that "the programmes' line that green ideologies were, at least in some respects, open to criticism on both scientific and humanitarian grounds, was a legitimate approach".It stated that environmentalists had been permitted a fair chance to air their side of the story in the televised debates that followed the broadcast. The ITC stated that four complaints were upheld because: "the programmes breached the Programme Code in respect of the failure to make the four interviewees adequately aware of the nature of the programmes, and the way their contributions were edited." For these reasons, Channel 4 later issued a public apology on prime time television. According to The Independent, Durkin "accepts the charge of misleading contributors, but describes the verdict of distortion as 'complete tosh'". Equinox

Durkin produced 2 documentaries for Channel 4's science strand Equinox. In 1998 he produced "Storm in a D-Cup", which argued that the medical dangers of silicone breast implants had been exaggerated for political reasons and highlighting evidence that implants may even carry medical benefits. In 2000 he produced The Rise and Fall of GM defending the science of genetic modification.The 1998 documentary on breast implants was originally developed for the BBC but was eventually produced for Channel 4 after the BBC declined to commission it; the BBC's in-house researcher concluded that <mask> had ignored evidence contradicting his claims in the programme. Environmental activist and writer George Monbiot wrote "Neither <mask> nor, extraordinarily, Charles Furneaux, the commissioning editor of the science series Equinox, has a science background. They don't need one, for science on Channel 4 has been reduced to a crude manifesto for corporate libertarianism." The film later won awards from the British Medical Association and the American Society for Plastic Surgeons. The Rise and Fall of GM
This documentary, which argues in favour of genetic modification, was broadcast on Channel 4 on 20 March 2000, also met with complaints. Environmentalist activists organised a campaign in an effort to discredit the film. A joint letter signed by a number of scientists from the Third World  was issued in protest of <mask>'s claims in this documentary.Mae-Wan Ho, a scientist featured on the programme, later said of her participation in the programme: "I feel completely betrayed and misled. They did not tell me it was going to be an attack on my position." However, although broadcasting regulator Ofcom received 17 complaints about the programme none was upheld; Ofcom concluded that 'although the programme set out to be a critical analysis of the case against GM, it nevertheless gave opportunity for a number of anti-GM speakers to explain their views clearly and fairly.' Ofcom review of complaints against <mask>, ofcom.org.uk; accessed 20 December 2015. The Great Global Warming Swindle

The Great Global Warming Swindle was a 2007 documentary film promoting climate change denial that premiered on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2007 and was subsequently criticised heavily by scientists. The film features scientists and others who oppose the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activity. The second part of the programme examines the conditions under which one of the current theories was developed.It alleges political pressures on those who do reject anthropogenic causes of global warming, speculates on reasons for the wide adoption of this consensus and on factors leading to its original development. The film also interviews deniers who view environmental policies as holding back developing nations from industrialising. The film has drawn widespread complaints  from some in the scientific community, citing numerous errors and misleading claims. Carl Wunsch who appeared on the programme has since repudiated the film, and described it "as close to propaganda as anything since World War II". <mask> responded that Wunsch had been told very explicitly the nature of the programme and now appeared to be back-tracking. The film was praised by opponents of the scientific consensus on global warming, including Andrew Bolt, Dominic Lawson and Steven Milloy, and <mask>'s work has been defended in an interview in Spiked. It later emerged that <mask> had fallen out with geneticist Armand Leroi (with whom <mask> had previously refused to work), after Leroi questioned the accuracy of the data used in the film in an email to <mask>.Leroi copied the e-mail to various colleagues including Guardian journalist and Bad Science columnist Ben Goldacre and science writer and mathematics expert Simon Singh. <mask> replied to Leroi copying in the others with the single sentence: "You're a big daft cock." Singh then sent an email to <mask> that said: "I have not paid the same attention to your programme as Armand has done, but from what I did see it is an irresponsible piece of film-making. If you can send me a copy of the programme then I will examine it in more detail and give you a more considered response...it would be great if you could engage in the debate rather just resorting to one line replies." <mask> responded by claiming that global warming had stopped, and concluded with, "Never mind a bit of irresponsible film-making. Go and fuck yourself." <mask> later apologised for his language, saying that he had sent the e-mails when tired and had just finished making the programme, and that he was "eager to have all the science properly debated with scientists qualified in the right areas."The film was awarded the Best Documentary trophy at the Io Isabella film festival and was shortlisted for the Best Documentary prize in the British television industry's 2008 Broadcast Awards. An official judgement issued on 21 July 2008 by the British media regulator Ofcom found that the programme "did not fulfill obligations to be impartial and to reflect a range of views on controversial issues". It upheld complaints by Sir David King that his views had been misrepresented, and Carl Wunsch, on the points that he had been misled as to its intent, and that the impression had been given that he agreed with the programme's position on climate change. However, the regulator said that because "the link between human activity and global warming... became settled before March 2007" the audience was not "materially misled so as to cause harm or offence". Ofcom declined to rule on the accuracy of the programme, saying: "It is not within Ofcom's remit or ability in this case as the regulator of the 'communications industry' to establish or seek to adjudicate on 'facts' such as whether global warming is a man-made phenomenon". Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story

In 2010 <mask> made a programme called Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story for Channel 4. Ostensibly about Britain's national debt, the film makes a case for lower taxes, a smaller public sector and a free-market economy.The film argues that Hong Kong's social and economic success is attributable to the positive non-interventionism implemented in 1961 by John James Cowperthwaite. In the film, <mask> argued that increasing public spending would stunt the economy instead of reviving it. The film featured Nigel Lawson, Geoffrey Howe, Brendan Barber and Alastair Darling. Brexit: The Movie

In 2016 <mask> made a documentary film called Brexit: The Movie, about that year's referendum on EU membership, arguing for a vote to Leave. The film had a budget of £100,000, funded by crowdfunding. As executive producer
<mask> has executive produced a wide range of programmes. Productions include: The Naked Pilgrim, an architectural travelogue that followed art critic Brian Sewell's pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela; produced for UK's Channel Five it won the Sandford St. Martin Trust award for best programme in 2004; Face of Britain for Channel 4, a three-part series presented by Neil Oliver, which looked at the Wellcome Trust's DNA project profiling the ancestry of various British communities; How Do They Do It?, an engineering series for Discovery Channel; Secret Intersex, a two-part series about intersexuality for Channel 4, which was short listed for Best Science Programme in the 2004 Royal Television Society awards.He has served on the steering committees of the World Congress of Science Producers and the Edinburgh Television Festival and as a judge on the Bafta and Royal Television Society Awards. References

External links

 Geoffrey Lean, "Global Warming: An inconvenient truth or hot air? ", The Independent, 4 March 2007. Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story · Watch on 4OD · Play on 4OD Player
 Robin McKie, "Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change", The Observer, 4 March 2007. Profile of <mask> on GMWatch.org Profile of <mask>, GMWatch.org; accessed 20 December 2015. "More digs at Durkin", The Guardian, 22 March 2000. Friends of the Earth press release, foe.co.uk, 2 April 1998.Independent Television Commission ruling on "Against Nature", ofcom.org.uk; accessed 20 December 2015. "Why does Channel 4 seem to be waging a war against the greens?" The Guardian, 22 July 2008. Brexit - The Movie web site

Living people
English television producers
British documentary film directors
1962 births

masks:
Martin Richard Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Martin Durkin
Durkin
Martin Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Durkin
Martin Durkin
Martin Durkin
Martin Durkin


title: Natalie Portman

type: original

texts:
<mask> (born <mask>, , ) is an Israeli-born American actress. With an extensive career in film since her teenage years, she has starred in various blockbusters and independent films, for which she has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. Portman began her acting career at age twelve, when she starred as the young protégée of a hitman in the action drama film Léon: The Professional (1994). While in high school, she made her Broadway debut in a 1998 production of The Diary of a Young Girl and gained international recognition for starring as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999). From 1999 to 2003, <mask> attended Harvard University for a bachelor's degree in psychology, while continuing to act in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (2002, 2005) and in The Public Theater's 2001 revival of Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull. In 2004, Portman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for playing a mysterious stripper in the romantic drama Closer. <mask>'s career progressed with her starring roles as Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta (2005), Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and a troubled ballerina in the psychological horror film Black Swan (2010), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.She went on to star in the romantic comedy No Strings Attached (2011) and featured as Jane Foster in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Thor (2011), and Thor: The Dark World (2013), which established her among the world's highest-paid actresses. She has since portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic Jackie (2016), earning her third Academy Award nomination, and a biologist in the science fiction film Annihilation (2018). <mask> also reprised her role of Foster in the Disney+ animated series What If...? and the 2022 film Thor: Love and Thunder. Portman's directorial ventures include the short film Eve (2008) and the biographical drama A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015). She is vocal about the politics of the United States and Israel, and is an advocate for animal rights and environmental causes. She is married to dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she has two children.Early life and education
<mask> was born on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, to Jewish parents with roots in Poland, Austria and Russia. She is the only child of Shelley (née Stevens), an American homemaker who works as Portman's agent, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born gynecologist. Her maternal grandparents were American Jews, whereas her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants to Israel. Portman and her family first lived in Washington, D.C., but relocated to Connecticut in 1988 and then moved to Long Island in 1990. While living in Washington, Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland. Her native language is Hebrew. While living on Long Island, she attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County.She studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop, and regularly attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. Describing her early life, Portman has said that she was "different from the other kids. I was more ambitious. I knew what I liked and what I wanted, and I worked very hard. I was a very serious kid." When Portman was ten years old, a Revlon agent spotted her at a pizza restaurant and asked her to become a child model. She turned down the offer but used the opportunity to get an acting agent.She auditioned for the 1992 off-Broadway Ruthless!, a musical about a girl who is prepared to commit murder to get the lead in a school play. <mask> and Britney Spears were chosen as the understudies for star Laura Bell Bundy. Career

1994–1998: Early work and acting background
Six months after Ruthless! ended, <mask> auditioned for and secured a leading role in Luc Besson's action drama Léon: The Professional (1994). To protect her privacy, she adopted her paternal grandmother's maiden name, <mask>, as her stage name. She played Mathilda, an orphan child who befriends a middle-aged hitman (played by Jean Reno). Her parents were reluctant to let her do the part due to the explicit sexual and violent nature of the script, but agreed after Besson took out the nudity and killings committed by <mask>'s character.<mask> herself said that after those scenes were removed, she found nothing objectionable about the content. Even so, her mother was displeased with some of the "sexual twists and turns" in the finished film, which were not part of the script. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post commended <mask> for bringing a "genuine sense of tragedy" to her part, but Peter Rainer of the Los Angeles Times believed that she "isn't enough of an actress to unfold Mathilda's pain" and criticized Besson's sexualization of her character. After filming The Professional, <mask> went back to school and during the summer break of 1994, she filmed a part in Marya Cohn's short film Developing. In it she played a young girl coping with her mother's (played by Frances Conroy) cancer. She also enrolled at the Stagedoor Manor performing arts camp, where she played Anne Shirley in a staging of Anne of Green Gables. Michael Mann offered her the small part of the suicidal stepdaughter of Al Pacino's character in the action film Heat (1995) for her ability to portray dysfunction without hysteria.Impressed by her performance in The Professional, the director Ted Demme cast her as a precocious teenager who flirts with her much-older neighbor (played by Timothy Hutton) in the ensemble comedy-drama Beautiful Girls (1996). Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "Portman, a budding knockout, is scene-stealingly good even in an overly showy role." She subsequently went back to Stagedoor Manor to appear in a production of the musical Cabaret. Also in 1996, Portman had brief roles in Woody Allen's musical Everyone Says I Love You and Tim Burton's comic science fiction film Mars Attacks!. Portman was cast opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), but she dropped out during rehearsals when studio executives found her too young for the role. She was also offered Adrian Lyne's Lolita, based on the novel of the same name, but she turned down the part due to its excessive sexual content. She later bemoaned that her parts in The Professional and Beautiful Girls prompted a series of offers to play a sexualized youngster, adding that it "dictated a lot of my choices afterwards 'cos it scared me ... it made me reluctant to do sexy stuff".<mask> instead signed on to star as Anne Frank in a Broadway adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, which was staged at the Music Box Theatre from December 1997 to May 1998. In preparation, she twice visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and interacted with Miep Gies, who had preserved Anne's diary after the family was captured; she found a connection with Frank's story, given her own family's history with the Holocaust. Reviewing the production for Variety, Greg Evans disliked her portrayal, which he thought had "little of the charm, budding genius or even brittle intelligence that the diary itself reveals". Conversely, Ben Brantley found an "ineffable grace in her awkwardness". The experience of performing the play was emotionally draining for her, as she attended high school during the day and performed at night; she wrote personal essays in Time and Seventeen magazines about her experience. 1999–2006: Star Wars, education, and transition to adult roles

<mask> began filming the part of Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy in 1997, which marked her first big-budget production. The first film of the series, Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, when she was in her senior year of high school.<mask> was unfamiliar with the franchise when she was cast, and watched the original Star Wars trilogy before filming began. She worked closely with the director George Lucas on her character's accent and mannerisms, and watched the films of Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn, and Katharine Hepburn to draw inspiration from their voice and stature. Filming in arduous locations in Algeria proved challenging for <mask>, who struggled with the process of making a film involving special effects. She did not attend the film's premiere so she could study for her high school finals. Critics disliked the film but with earnings of $924 million worldwide it was the second highest-grossing film of all time to that point, and it established <mask> as a global star. <mask> graduated from Syosset High School in 1999. Her high school paper, "A Simple Method to Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar", co-authored with scientists Ian Hurley and Jonathan Woodward, was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search.Following production on The Phantom Menace, <mask> initially turned down a lead role in the coming-of-age film Anywhere but Here (1999) after learning it would involve a sex scene, but the director Wayne Wang and actress Susan Sarandon (who played <mask>'s mother in the film) demanded a rewrite of the script. She was shown a new draft, and decided to accept the part. Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon called <mask>'s performance "astonishing" and added that "unlike any number of actresses her age, she's neither too maudlin nor too plucky". She received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination for it. <mask>'s sole screen appearance in 2000 was in Where the Heart Is, a romantic drama filmed in Texas, in which she played a pregnant teenager. After finishing work on the film, she began attending Harvard University to pursue her bachelor's degree in psychology, and significantly reduced her acting roles over the next few years. She studied advanced Hebrew literature, neurobiology, and she served as Alan Dershowitz's research assistant.In the summer of 2001, she returned to Broadway (at the Delacorte Theater) to perform Chekhov's drama The Seagull, which was directed by Mike Nichols and co-starred Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Linda Winer of Newsday wrote that the "major surprises come from <mask>, whose Nina transforms with astonishing lyricism from the girl with ambition to Chekhov's most difficult symbol of destruction". Also in 2001, <mask> was among several celebrities who made cameo appearances in the comedy Zoolander. The following year, she reprised her role of Amidala in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, which she had filmed in Sydney and London during her summer break of 2000. She was excited by the opportunity to play a confident young woman who did not depend on the male lead. When asked about balancing her career and education, she said, "I don't care if [college] ruins my career. I'd rather be smart than a movie star."In 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called "Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: data from near-infrared spectroscopy". Portman graduated from Harvard in 2003 and her sole screen appearance that year was in the brief part of a young mother in the war film Cold Mountain. Portman began 2004 by featuring in the romantic comedy Garden State, written and directed by its star Zach Braff. She was the first actor to sign on to the film after finding a connection with her part of a spirited young girl suffering from epilepsy. Her role in it is considered a prime example of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character type. Portman later said she found it upsetting to have contributed to the trope. She followed it by playing a mysterious stripper in Closer, a romantic drama directed by Mike Nichols based on the play of the same name, and co-starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Clive Owen.<mask> agreed to her first sexually explicit adult role after turning down such parts in the past, saying it reflected her own maturity as a person. She had also performed her first nude scenes for the film, but they were deleted from the final cut when she insisted that they were inessential to the story. Closer grossed over $115 million worldwide against a $27 million budget, and the critic Peter Travers took note of <mask>'s "blazing, breakthrough performance", writing that she "digs so deep into the bruised core of her character that they seem to wear the same skin." She won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and received an Academy Award nomination in the same category. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, the final installment of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, was <mask>'s first film release of 2005. It earned over $848 million to rank as the second-highest-grossing film of the year. She next played a Jewish-American girl in Free Zone, a drama from Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai.To prepare, she studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and read memoirs of Yitzhak Rabin, which she said allowed her to explore both the role and her own heritage. Controversy arose when she filmed a kissing scene at the Western Wall, where gender segregation is enforced, and she later issued an apology. Critics disliked the film for its heavy-handed approach to the conflicts in the Middle East. <mask>'s final film role in 2005 was that of Evey Hammond in the political thriller V for Vendetta, based on the comics of the same name, about an alternative future where a neo-fascist regime has subjugated the United Kingdom. She was drawn to the provocative nature of the script, and worked with a dialect coach to speak in an English accent. Owing to a scene in which her character is tortured, her head was shaved on camera; she considered it an opportunity to rid herself of vanity. Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle deemed it Portman's strongest performance to that point, and remarked that she "keeps you focused on her words and actions instead of her bald head."She was awarded the Saturn Award for Best Actress. <mask> began 2006 by hosting an episode of the television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. One of her sketches, a song named "Natalie's Rap", was released later in 2009 on Incredibad, an album by the Lonely Island. In the anthology film Paris, je t'aime, consisting of eighteen short films, she had a role in the segment named "Faubourg Saint-Denis" from director Tom Tykwer. Later that year, she starred in Miloš Forman's Goya's Ghosts, about the painter Francisco Goya. Forman cast her in the film after finding a resemblance between her and Goya's portrait The Milkmaid of Bordeaux. She insisted on using a body double for her nude scenes after discovering on set that she had to perform them when they were not originally in the script.It received predominantly negative reviews, but Roger Ebert was appreciative of Portman for playing her dual role "with fearless conviction". 2007–2015: Career expansion and Black Swan

Portman began 2007 by replacing Jodie Foster in Wong Kar-wai's romantic drama My Blueberry Nights, which was his first English-language film. For her role as a gambler, she trained with a poker coach. Richard Corliss of Time magazine believed that "for once she's not playing a waif or a child princess but a mature, full-bodied woman" and commended her "vibrancy, grittiness and ache, all performed with a virtuosa's easy assurance". Her next appearance was in Hotel Chevalier, a short film from Wes Anderson, which served as a prologue to his feature The Darjeeling Limited (in which Portman had a cameo). In the short, she and Jason Schwartzman play former lovers who reunite in a Paris hotel room. For the first time, Portman performed an extended nude scene; she was later disappointed at the undue focus on it and she subsequently swore off further nude appearances.Keen to work in different genres, <mask> accepted a role in the children's film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, in which she played an employee at a magical toy store. She also appeared in Paul McCartney's music video "Dance Tonight" from his album Memory Almost Full, directed by Michel Gondry. Scarlett Johansson and <mask> starred as rival sisters Mary and Anne Boleyn, respectively, in the period film The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). She was excited by the opportunity to work opposite another actress her age, bemoaning that such casting was rare in film. Derek Elley of Variety was critical of <mask>'s English accent and wrote that she "doesn't quite bring the necessary heft to make Anne a truly dominant power player". The film had modest box-office earnings. She served as a jury member of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and also launched her own production company, named handsomecharlie films, after her late dog.<mask>'s directorial debut, the short film Eve, opened the short-film screenings at the 65th Venice International Film Festival. It is about a young woman who goes to her grandmother's romantic date, and <mask> drew inspiration for the older character (played by Lauren Bacall) from her own grandmother. A poorly received adaptation of Ayelet Waldman's novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, entitled The Other Woman, marked <mask>'s first film role of 2009. She appeared in a faux perfume commercial called Greed, directed by Roman Polanski, and in the anthology film New York, I Love You, she directed a segment and also starred in a different segment directed by Mira Nair. <mask> next took on a role opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in the drama film Brothers, a remake of the 2004 Danish film of the same name. Her role was that of a war widow, for which she interacted with military wives. The film was shot during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike, and Portman found it challenging to shoot certain scenes without a bound script.Claudia Puig of USA Today found her to be "subdued and reactive in a part that doesn't call for her to do much else". After producing and co-starring alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the black comedy Hesher (2010), Portman played a ballerina overwhelmed with the prospect of

masks:
Natalie Portman
Natalie Hershlag
Portman
Portman
Portman
Natalie Herschlag
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman
Portman


title: Natalie Portman

texts:
 performing Swan Lake in Darren Aronofsky's psychological horror film Black Swan. She was trained by the professional ballerina Mary Helen Bowers, and in preparation, she trained for five to eight hours daily for six months and lost . Her performance was acclaimed; writing for Empire, Dan Jolin found her to be "simultaneously at her most vulnerable and her most predatory, at once frostily brittle and raunchily malleable [...] before peaking at the film's denouement with a raw, alluring showstopper of a performance." Black Swan emerged as a sleeper hit, grossing over $329 million worldwide against a $13 million budget, and earned Portman several prizes including the Academy Award for Best Actress. Following her Oscar win, controversy arose over who performed the bulk of the on-screen dancing in the film. Sarah Lane, one of <mask>'s dancing doubles in the film, claimed that the actress performed only about five percent of the full-body shots, adding that she was asked by the film's producers not to speak publicly about it during awards season.Aronofsky defended Portman by insisting that she had performed 80 percent of the on-screen dancing. Portman next served as an executive producer for No Strings Attached (2011), a romantic comedy starring Ashton Kutcher and her as a young couple in a casual sex relationship. She described the experience of making it as a "palate cleanser" from the intensity of her Black Swan job. It received unfavorable reviews but was a commercial success. She next agreed to the stoner film Your Highness for the opportunity of playing an athletic and foul-mouthed character, which she believed was rare for actresses. Critics were dismissive of the film's reliance on scatological humor and it proved to be a box-office bomb. In her final film release of 2011, <mask> took on the part of Jane Foster, a scientist and love-interest of the titular character (played by Chris Hemsworth) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Thor.She liked the idea of Kenneth Branagh directing a big-budget film that emphasized character; she signed on to it before receiving a script, and helped develop her part by reading the biography of scientists such as Rosalind Franklin. Richard Kuipers of Variety commended <mask>'s "sterling work in a thinly written role" for adding dimension to the film's romantic subplot. Thor earned $449.3 million worldwide to emerge as the 15th highest-grossing film of 2011. In 2012, <mask> topped Forbes listing of the most bankable stars in Hollywood. Her sole screen appearance that year was in Paul McCartney's music video "My Valentine", alongside Johnny Depp. The following year, she reprised the role of Jane Foster in Thor: The Dark World, which earned over $644 million worldwide to emerge as the 10th highest-grossing film of 2013. Forbes featured her in their Celebrity 100 listing of 2014, and estimated her income from the previous year to be $13 million.In 2015, <mask> appeared alongside an ensemble cast, including Christian Bale, in Terrence Malick's experimental drama film Knight of Cups, which marked her first project after giving birth. She shot for it within a week; she did not receive a traditional script or dialogues and improvised most of her scenes with Bale. She said that shooting with Malick influenced her own directorial venture, A Tale of Love and Darkness, which released in the same year. Based on Israeli author Amos Oz's autobiographical novel of the same name which is set in Jerusalem during the last years of the British Mandate of Palestine, the Hebrew-language film starred <mask> who also produced and co-wrote it. She wanted to adapt the book since she first read it a decade ago, but postponed it until she was old enough to play the leading role of a mother herself. She collaborated closely with Amos, showing him drafts of her script as she adapted the book. A. O. Scott of The New York Times found it to be a "conscientious adaptation of a difficult book" and was appreciative of <mask>'s potential as a filmmaker.She next produced and starred in the western film Jane Got a Gun about a young mother seeking vengeance. Initially scheduled to be directed by Lynne Ramsay, the production was plagued with numerous difficulties. Ramsay did not turn up on set for the first day of filming and was eventually replaced with Gavin O'Connor. Michael Fassbender, Jude Law and Bradley Cooper were all cast as the male lead, before Ewan McGregor played the part. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian reviewed that <mask>'s "stately performance" was not enough to save the "laborious and solemn western", and it grossed less than $4 million against its $25 million budget. 2016–present: Jackie and continued success

<mask> portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the Pablo Larraín-directed biopic Jackie (2016), about Kennedy's life immediately after the 1963 assassination of her husband. She was initially intimidated to take on the part of a well-known public figure, and eventually researched Kennedy extensively by watching videos of her, reading books, and listening to audiotapes of her interviews.She also worked with a dialect coach to adapt Kennedy's unique speaking style. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter termed it an "incandescent performance" and added that "her Jackie is both inscrutable and naked, broken but unquestionably resilient, a mess and yet fiercely dignified". She won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also served as producer for the comedy horror film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, directed by Burr Steers, and starred in Rebecca Zlotowski's French-Belgian drama Planetarium. The 2017 experimental romance Song to Song marked Portman's second collaboration with Terrence Malick, which like their previous film polarized critics. In 2018, <mask> starred in the science fiction film Annihilation, based on Jeff VanderMeer's novel. She played a biologist and former soldier who studies a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating organisms.She was pleased to headline a rare female-led science fiction film, and she moved her family near Pinewood Studios during filming. For the action sequences, she underwent movement training with the dancer Bobbi Jene Smith. Benjamin Lee of The Guardian took note of Portman's "strong, fiercely compelling presence" and commended her for playing the part without unnecessary sentimentality. It only received a limited theatrical release and was distributed on Netflix internationally. Her next appearance was in Xavier Dolan's first English-language film, the ensemble drama The Death & Life of John F. Donovan (2018), which was termed a "shocking misfire" by Eric Kohn of IndieWire. She then starred as a troubled pop singer in Vox Lux, sharing the part with Raffey Cassidy. She was drawn to the idea of showcasing the negative effects of fame, and in preparation, she watched documentaries on musicians and listened to the music of Sia, who wrote her songs in the film.For the climactic dance routines, she trained with her husband, Benjamin Millepied, who choreographed the sequence. It received mixed reviews from critics, but <mask>'s performance earned unanimous praise. Comparing it to her performances in Black Swan and Jackie, Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph wrote that "this role has a similar audacity and extravagance that few actresses would dare attempt, let alone be allowed to get away with". Unused footage from Thor: The Dark World and a new voice-over was used for <mask>'s brief appearance in the 2019 superhero film Avengers: Endgame. She then portrayed a psychologically troubled astronaut (based on Lisa Nowak) in the drama Lucy in the Sky, directed by Noah Hawley. She replaced the film's producer Reese Witherspoon, who backed out due to a scheduling conflict. The film was poorly received, though <mask>'s performance was praised.The following year, she narrated the Disney+ nature documentary Dolphin Reef. Upcoming projects
<mask> will next reprise her role as Jane Foster in Thor: Love and Thunder, which is scheduled for release in 2022. She also voiced the same character in Marvel's Disney+ animated series What If...? In March 2021, it was announced that <mask> will produce and star alongside Lupita Nyong’o in the limited series adaptation of the Laura Lipman novel Lady in the Lake. In March 2021, <mask> and her producing partner, Sophie Mas, founded the production company MountainA, and signed a first-look television deal with Apple TV+. Activism
<mask>, who is an advocate for animal rights, became a vegetarian at age eight, a decision which came after she witnessed a demonstration of laser surgery on a chicken while attending a medical conference with her father. She became a vegan in 2009 after reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals and later produced a documentary on factory farming systems in the U.S. by the same title.In September 2017, she was recognized for her work on the film by the Environmental Media Association Awards with the Ongoing Commitment Award. She does not wear animal products and has praised animal-friendly products designed by Stella McCartney and Target. In 2007, she launched her own brand of animal-friendly footwear with no fur, leather, or feathers. In 2007, Portman traveled to Rwanda with Jack Hanna, to film the documentary, Gorillas on the Brink. Later, at a naming ceremony, Portman named a baby gorilla Gukina, which means "to play". Portman has been an advocate of environmental causes since childhood, when she joined an environmental song and dance troupe known as World Patrol Kids. Portman has also supported anti-poverty causes.In 2004 and 2005, she traveled to Uganda, Guatemala, and Ecuador as the Ambassador of Hope for FINCA International, an organization that promotes micro-lending to help finance women-owned businesses in developing countries. In an interview conducted backstage at the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia and appearing on the PBS program Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, she discussed microfinance. Host Fareed Zakaria said that he was "generally wary of celebrities with fashionable causes", but included the segment with Portman because "she really knew her stuff". In the "Voices" segment of the April 29, 2007, episode of the ABC Sunday morning program This Week with George Stephanopoulos, <mask> discussed her work with FINCA and how it can benefit women and children in Third World countries. In fall-2007, she visited several university campuses, including Harvard, USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, New York University, and Columbia, to inspire students with the power of microfinance and to encourage them to join the Village Banking Campaign to help families and communities lift themselves out of poverty. Portman is a supporter of the Democratic Party, and for the 2004 presidential election she campaigned for the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry. Prior to the 2008 presidential election, she supported Senator Hillary Clinton of New York in the Democratic primaries.Portman later campaigned for the eventual Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. In a 2008 interview, she also stated: "I even like John McCain. I disagree with his war stance – which is a really big deal – but I think he's a very moral person." In 2010, her activist work and popularity with young people earned her a nomination for VH1's Do Something Awards, which is dedicated to honoring individuals who do good. In 2011, Portman and her then-fiancé Benjamin Millepied were among the signers of a petition to President Obama in support of same-sex marriage. She supported Obama's re-election campaign in 2012. In 2009, Portman signed a petition that defended Roman Polanski, who was charged with drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old girl in 1977, and has been a fugitive for decades.In February 2018, she expressed regret over signing the petition. In January 2011, <mask> was appointed an ambassador of WE Charity (formerly known as Free The Children), an international charity and educational partner, spearheading their Power of a Girl campaign. She hosted a contest challenging girls in North America to fundraise for one of WE Charity's all-girl schools in Kenya. As incentives for the contest winner, Portman offered the designer Rodarte dress she wore to the premiere of Black Swan, along with tickets to her next film premiere. It was announced in May 2012 that Portman would be working with watch designer Richard Mille to develop a limited-edition timepiece with proceeds supporting WE Charity. During WE Day California 2019 Portman gave a pro vegan speech in front of the student audience, linking vegan lifestyle and feminism. In December 2019, she visited Kenya a second time with WE Charity and spoke with young girls determined to improve their lives through access to education.In 2006, <mask> served as a guest lecturer at Columbia University for a course in terrorism and counterterrorism, where she spoke about her film V for Vendetta. In February 2015, <mask> was among other alumni of Harvard University including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Darren Aronofsky and Susan Faludi who wrote an open letter to the school demanding it divest its $35,900,000,000 endowment from coal, gas, and oil companies. Later that year in May, she spoke at the annual Harvard Class Day to the graduating class of 2015. At Harvard, <mask> wrote a letter to The Harvard Crimson in response to an essay critical of Israeli actions toward Palestinians. She has nevertheless criticized the Israeli government, specifically Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Portman was critical of Netanyahu's re-election in 2015, saying she was "disappointed" and often found his comments racist. In November 2017, Portman was announced as the Genesis Prize recipient for 2018, which includes $2,000,000 in prize money.The following April, <mask> announced that she did not plan to attend the awards ceremony scheduled for June, due to "recent events in Israel" that left her feeling uncomfortable attending public events there. The ceremony was canceled. <mask> later clarified that she was not boycotting Israel, but did not want to "appear as endorsing" Netanyahu, who was set to give a speech at the ceremony. She is also a member of the One Voice movement. In January 2018, she donated $50,000 to the Time's Up initiative. <mask> took part in the 2018 Women's March in Los Angeles, where she spoke about the "sexual terrorism" she experienced at age thirteen after the release of her film Léon: The Professional. She told the crowd, "I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort."She drew attention to the Me Too movement, revealing that her first fan letter was a "rape fantasy" from a man and that her local radio station created a countdown until her eighteenth birthday (when she would become of legal age to consent to have intercourse). In 2020, Portman endorsed the "defund the police" movement. In 2020, Portman collaborated with JusticeLA to create a public service announcement #SuingToSaveLives about the health of people in L.A. County jails amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Later in 2020, <mask> was announced as one of the investors in an almost all-female group that was awarded a new franchise in the National Women's Soccer League, the top level of the women's sport in the U.S. The new team, since unveiled as Angel City FC, is set to start play in 2022. Personal life and endorsements

Portman is married to French dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she has two children. The couple began dating in 2009 after having met while working together on the set of Black Swan, and wed in a Jewish ceremony held in Big Sur, California, on August 4, 2012.The family lived in Paris for a time after Millepied accepted the position of director of dance with the Paris Opera Ballet, and Portman expressed a desire to become a French citizen. As of 2013, they reside in Los Angeles. In 2006, Portman commented that she felt more Jewish in Israel and that she would like to raise her children Jewish: "A priority for me is definitely that I'd like to raise my kids Jewish, but the ultimate thing is to have someone who is a good person and who is a partner." In January 2014, her husband Millepied said he was in the process of converting to Judaism. In 2010, Portman signed on with Dior and appeared in several of the company's advertising campaigns. In October 2012, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority banned a Dior advertisement that featured Portman wearing Dior mascara after a complaint from Dior's competitor, L'Oreal. The ASA ruled that the photographs of Portman "misleadingly exaggerated the likely effects of the product".Portman is the face of one of the company's fragrances, Miss Dior, inspired by Catherine Dior. She has starred in campaign videos for the fragrance, and promoted a new version of the fragrance, Rose N'Roses, in 2021. Filmography and awards

Portman's most acclaimed and highest-grossing films, according to the online portal Box Office Mojo and the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, include Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002), Closer (2004), Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), V for Vendetta (2005), Black Swan (2010), No Strings Attached (2011), Thor (2011), Thor: The Dark World (2013), Jackie (2016), and Annihilation (2018). Portman was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama and the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Black Swan, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for Closer. She has received two more Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Closer and Best Actress for Jackie; and two more Golden Globe nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Anywhere but Here (1999) and Best Actress in a Drama for

masks: Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman Portman


title: Josh Boden

texts:
<mask><mask><mask> (born December 12, 1986) is a former Canadian football wide receiver in the Canadian Football League (CFL). His career came to an end as the result of several years of criminal activity, including sexual assault, many under the alias <mask>. On November 5, 2018, Boden was charged with second-degree murder after the 2009 killing of Kimberly Hallgarth. Football career
Boden wore the number 1, weighs 205 lb. and is 6'1 tall. In his Canadian Junior Football League career, Boden played for the South Surrey Rams (now the Langley Rams of the British Columbia Football Conference. In his only season there, Boden was BCFC Most Outstanding Receiver, Special Teams Player, Offensive Player and Rookie of the Year.He won the CJFL Rookie of the Year award as well. BC Lions
In 2005, Boden attended the BC Lions training camp. In a preseason game against the Calgary Stampeders, he scored a 14-yard touchdown. Boden was officially signed as a free agent by B.C. in May 2006, but as a member of the Territorial Protected List. In 2006, he attended training camp again and made the teams as a member of the Developmental Roster. In 2007, Boden made the team's roster as a backup wide receiver.During a game on September 29, 2007, he caught his first CFL pass and finished the game with 3 catches for 83 yards. <mask> was released by the Lions following being charged with domestic assault and robbery in April 2008. The charges were dropped on August 14, 2008, and <mask> stated his intention to resume his football career. BC Lions general manager Wally Buono stated he did not intend to re-sign him. In two seasons with the Lions he caught 14 passes for 237 yards. Hamilton Tiger-Cats
Three months after being released by the Lions he formally signed with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on September 24, 2008, in time for a September 27 game against the Lions at BC Place. Nevertheless, he never played a regular season game for the Ti-Cats.After he was cut, GM Bob O'Billovich said Boden was cut because Chris Bauman's post-concussion problems were cleared. Criminal history

<mask> goes by the alias <mask> and has an extensive criminal history of violence, sexual assault, and involvement with prostitutes. 2008
<mask> was charged with assault, theft, and mischief (court file number 197454) in April 2008 in connection with a complaint laid by former girlfriend Kimberly Lynn Hallgarth, age 33. Hallgarth changed her story on the witness stand in August 2008 and charges were dropped. The charges resulted in Boden's dismissal from the BC Lions. On October 12, 2008, Boden was charged with four firearms offences. 2009
On or about March 15, 2009, Kim Hallgarth was found brutally murdered at her 6776 Colborne Avenue, Burnaby, BC residence (IHIT File #2009-2220).Boden was a "person of interest" in the Hallgarth investigation. <mask>, <mask>'s mother, said that her son always blamed Hallgarth for "ruining" his football career. It was reported that Kimberly Hallgarth owned a nail salon but also worked as a prostitute. It has been noted that Boden's mother, Karen, was placed in a safe house to hide from her son and also altered her appearance to not be recognized by the son she now fears. On Monday September 7, 2009, Boden was arrested by Vancouver Police after the police allegedly observed him fondling a woman. Boden was taken into custody after a violent struggle near Commercial Drive and Broadway in Vancouver and charged with sexual assault and resisting or obstructing the police. Boden was also a person of interest in four other sexual assaults by a muscular black male during the summer of 2009.Previous firearms charges were dismissed Thursday October 11, 2009 due to prosecution not proving the four firearms in Boden's possession were operational. 2011
On December 12 or 13, 2011, Boden was convicted of two counts of sexual assault and one count of assaulting and one count of obstructing a police officer. 2012

<mask> was charged under Criminal Code of Canada 264.1. Uttering threats according to B.C. Court file number 192462 January 14, 2012. These charges were thrown out of court. On April 13, 2012, while on bail for previous charges, <mask> was charged with four counts of assault at Tinseltown Cinema in Vancouver according to B.C.Court file number 11232. On July 26, 2012, Crown lawyer Michaela Donnelly asked for a one-year jail sentence for the former BC Lions football player convicted of sex crimes at Vancouver SkyTrain stations. Boden was set to appear in Vancouver Provincial Court on August 31, 2012 for decision. On August 31, 2012, <mask> was sentenced to one year of imprisonment for the 2009 sex-crimes he committed as well as obstruction and assaulting a police officer. He served six months, given credit for time already in custody, and was to be on probation for three years after his release. 2014
Boden was charged with four counts of assault causing bodily harm and breaching his probation conditions. This was relating to a complaint to Surrey RCMP received from a woman alleging that <mask>den assaulted her several times dating back to 2013.These charges were thrown out of court. On July 15, 2014, <mask> Boden was facing multiple charges: Procuring someone to be a prostitute, living on the avails of prostitution, aiding a person to engage in prostitution and criminal harassment. These charges were related to incidents that took place in Vancouver and Port Moody in February 2014. These charges were thrown out of court. 2018
On November 5, 2018, Boden was charged with second-degree murder after the 2009 killing of Kimberly Hallgarth. References

External links
Just Sports Stats

1986 births
Living people
21st-century Canadian criminals
BC Lions players
Canadian football wide receivers
Canadian male criminals
Crime in British Columbia
Hamilton Tiger-Cats players
Players of Canadian football from British Columbia
Sportspeople from Vancouver
Violence against women in Canada

masks:
Joshua (
Josh
) Joseph Boden
Mike Boden
Boden
Boden
Joshua Boden
Mike Boden
Joshua Boden
Karen Boden
Josh
Joshua Boden
Joshua Boden
Josh Boden
Josh Bo
Joshua Joseph


title: Seyyed Hossein Nasr

texts:
<mask> (; , born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian philosopher and University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. Born in Tehran, Nasr completed his education in Iran and the United States, earning a bachelor's degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master's in geology and geophysics, and a doctorate in the history of science from Harvard University. He returned to his homeland in 1958 and was appointed a professor of philosophy and Islamic sciences at Tehran University. He held various academic positions in Iran, including vice-chancellor at Tehran University and President of Aryamehr University, and established the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy at the request of Empress Farah Pahlavi, which soon became one of the most prominent centers of philosophical activity in the Islamic world. During his time in Iran, he also studied with several traditional masters of Islamic philosophy and sciences. The 1979 revolution forced him to exile with his family to the United States, where he has lived and taught Islamic sciences and philosophy ever since, establishing himself as one of the world's leading representatives of the Islamic philosophical tradition and the perennialist school of thought. Nasr writes and speaks from the viewpoint of perennial philosophy, which is based in metaphysics.Although Islam and Sufism are major influences on his writings, his perennialist approach inquires into the essence of all orthodox religions, regardless of their formal particularities. He is the author of over fifty books and more than five hundred articles. Biography

Origins
Seyyed <mask> <mask> was born on 7 April 1933 in Tehran to <mask> Valiallah Khan Nasr, who was a physician to the royal family, philosopher and homme de lettres, and one of the founders of modern education in Iran. Nasr's parents were originally from Kashan. His mother was well-versed in Persian literature and poetry. He is a descendant of Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri from his mother's side, is the cousin of Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo as well as the father of American academic Vali <mask>. The surname "Nasr", which means "victorious", was given to his grandfather by the Shah.The title "Seyyed" indicates a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Education

Nasr completed his primary education in Tehran, and his education was supplemented by religious and philosophical discussions with his father and an entourage of theologians, ministers, scholars, and mystics. He immersed himself in the Koranic studies, Persian literature, Arabic and French languages at an early age. While he was completing his first year of secondary school at Firooz Bahram High School, his father was hurt in a serious accident, so his mother sent him to continue his education in the United States so that he would not be present at the time of his father's imminent death. He would later say that there are three things that his father left him: "first of all, love of knowledge for our own Persian culture, our religious, literary, philosophical tradition; secondly, an avid interest in what was going on in the West in the realm of science and philosophy, literature and everything else; thirdly, a sense of serenity that he had within himself." In the United States, Nasr first attended Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, graduating in 1950 as the valedictorian of his class. He then applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston to study physics and was accepted with a scholarship.When he realized, after an encounter with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, that the study of physics would not bring answers to his questions, he enrolled in additional courses on metaphysics and philosophy with Giorgio de Santillana who introduced him to the works of René Guénon. From there, Nasr discovered the works of other Perennialist metaphysicians, notably Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, and Marco Pallis. This school of thought has shaped Nasr's life and thinking ever since. The widow of Commaraswamy gave him access to the library of her late husband, and Nasr spent much of his time there and worked to catalogue the library. He visited Schuon and Burckhardt in Switzerland while still a student and was initiated into the Alawi branch of the Shadhili Sufi order. He considered the works of Schuon, with central importance given to the practice of a spiritual discipline in addition to doctrinal knowledge, especially instrumental in determining his intellectual and spiritual life. After receiving an MIT B.S.degree in physics in 1954, Nasr enrolled in the graduate program in geology and geophysics at Harvard University, where he received a Master of Science in both fields in 1956, and went on to pursue his PhD degree in the history of science and learning at the same university. He planned to write his dissertation under the supervision of George Sarton, but Sarton died before he could begin his dissertation work and so he wrote it under the direction of I. Bernard Cohen, Hamilton Gibb, and Harry Wolfson. At the age of twenty-five, Nasr graduated with a PhD from Harvard and completed his first book, Science and Civilization in Islam, the title being a direct tribute to Science and Civilization in China, the work by Joseph Needham which had for task to present to Westerners the complex developments of the history of science and technology in China, a mission Nasr was himself following for the Islamic civilization. His doctoral dissertation entitled "Conceptions of Nature in Islamic Thought" was published in 1964 by Harvard University Press as An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines. Apart from mastering Arabic and French he was initially taught in his childhood, during his student years, Nasr also learned Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish and German. Back to Iran
After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1958, Nasr was offered the position of associate professor at MIT, as well as a three year research position as a junior fellow followed by a formal teaching position at Harvard, but he decided to return to Iran. That same year, Tehran University hired him as associate professor of philosophy and the history of science.He continued his study of Islamic sciences with traditional Iranian masters and philosophers (Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i, Allameh Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini and Sayyid Muhammad Kazim Assar), completing his dual education, academic and traditional. He had married and started a family at this point. His son, Vali <mask>, would go on to become an academic and expert on the Islamic world. At thirty, <mask> <mask> <mask> was the youngest person to become a full professor at Tehran University. He was quickly recognized as an authority in Islamic philosophy, Islamic science and Sufism. For fifteen years he conducted a doctoral seminar in comparative philosophy and Islamic philosophy with Henry Corbin who was at that time the director of the French Institute for Iranian Studies in Tehran. Five years later he would be made the dean of the faculty of letters and then vice-chancellor of the university.In 1972, the Shah chose him to become the President of Aryamehr University (now Sharif University of Technology). There, Nasr created a faculty for the humanities in order to encourage the students not to focus exclusively on scientific matters. He also designed courses that focused on the assessment of modern technology and its impact on human society and the environment. During this time, he was also involved in the creation of the Islamic and Iranian studies departments at Harvard, Princeton, the University of Utah, and the University of Southern California. Nasr refused to engage in the politics of his country despite a number of offers for ministerial positions and ambassadorship. In 1974, Empress Farah Pahlavi commissioned him to establish and lead the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy (now the Institute for Research in Philosophy), the first academic institution to be conducted in accordance with the intellectual principles of the Traditionalist School. During that time, Nasr, Tabataba'i, William Chittick, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Kenneth Morgan, Sachiko Murata, Toshihiko Izutsu, and Henry Corbin held various philosophical discourses.The book Shi'ite Islam and the traditionalist journal Sophia Perennis were products of this period. In 1978, he was named director of the Empress's private bureau, while continuing to teach philosophy at Tehran University, and serve as chancellor of Aryamehr University, and President of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy. Return to the West

In January 1979, the revolution put an end to the Pahlavi dynasty and Nasr, who was visiting London with his family at the time, was unable to return to Iran. He lost everything, including his manuscripts and library. His family settled in Boston. After a few months of teaching at the University of Utah, Nasr was appointed a professor of Islamic studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, which had the largest Ph.D. program in religious studies in the United States. During the 1980-1981 academic year, Nasr delivered the Gifford lectures at the University of Edinburgh, which were later published under the title Knowledge and the Sacred.According to William Chittick, "three out of the four of his first books in English (An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, Three Muslim Sages, and Science and Civilization in Islam) were published by Harvard University Press, and they immediately established him as one of the major and original voices in Islamic studies. His strong endorsement of the writings of Schuon and Burckhardt in these books were in turn instrumental in bringing the Traditionalist school to the notice of official academia". Nasr left Temple University in 1984 to become a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., a position he holds to this day. That same year, he established the Foundation for Traditional Studies which published the journal Sophia and works on traditional thought. He has authored over fifty books and over five hundred articles based on the principles of the philosophia perennis. He is regularly invited to give courses and conferences at various institutions and universities of the five different continents on the major themes for which he has become well known: Islam, philosophy, metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, spirituality, religion, science, ecology, literature, art, etc. His works have been translated into twenty-eight different languages.Notable aspects of his works
Nasr's expertise encompasses traditional culture (wisdom, religion, philosophy, science and art), Western thought from antiquity to the present day, and the history of science. He argues in favor of revelation, tradition, and what he considers "scientia sacra", in opposition to rationalism, relativism, and modern western materialism. Nasr has not developed a new system of thought, but instead hopes to revive traditional doctrines that he believes have been  forgotten in the modern world. He is content to recall what, according to him, corresponds to the many manifestations of a timeless wisdom. Although Islam and Sufism are present throughout his writings, his universalist perspective, which is that of perennial philosophy, takes into account what he assumes to be the  common essence of all orthodox religions beyond their formal particularities or their current state: "My philosophical world is a kind of synthesis between the perennial philosophy, which I espouse and represent, and the Islamic philosophical tradition, which I have tried to revive and to which I also belong. And so I would say that for the first category, there are Guénon and Schuon; if I had to name a third person, then Coomaraswamy; and for the second category, Ibn Sina, Suhrawardı, Ibn Arabi, and Mulla Sadra." According to Sarah Robinson-Bertoni, Nasr is one of the principal figures in Islamic philosophy, working at the crossroads of Western and Islamic intellectual traditions.Harry Oldmeadow considers Nasr to be "of the living traditionalists the most widely known in academic circles". For him, Nasr's works are characterized by "rigorous scholarly methodology, an encyclopedic erudition about all matters Islamic, a robustness of critical thought, and a sustained clarity of expression"; and he is "the foremost traditionalist thinker" to base himself on "eternal wisdom (sophia perennis)" in order to provide a solution to the contemporary environmental crisis. The Perennialist or Traditionalist school

When he discovered the writings of the most influential members of what would become the Traditionalist or Perennialist school (René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings), the student <mask> <mask> Nasr fully aligned himself to their perspective founded on the philosophia perennis. Thus, in the middle of a "materialistic century", this School provides Nasr with the keys to his spiritual quest: an esoteric doctrine and method within the framework of a Sufi path. For Patrick Laude:

For Nasr, the expression, "philosophia perennis", as understood by the Perennialist School refers to both the universal metaphysical truth and to its spiritual realization. The latter can only be considered, according to Nasr, in the framework of a tradition, thus with the aid of a method, rites, symbols and other means sanctified by revelation. The truth, though veiled, is innate to the human spirit and its realization leads to what he calls "knowledge", that is to say gnosis or wisdom (sophia), hence the expression "sophia perennis", common ground at the heart of all religions.Nasr clarifies that the notion of the philosophia perennis does not derive from a compilation "of wisdom writings of various historical traditions", which would have resulted in the conviction of the existence of common truths, but it is these very truths which, by "the practice of intellection, the use of the intellect" understood in a spiritual manner, are revealed to the human spirit which then observes "their presence in other times and climes and in fact in all the sacred traditions the world over". The language of the perennial philosophy is symbolism. God and the world

According to Seyyed <mask> Nasr, the "Divine Reality" includes, metaphysically speaking, an "Impersonal Essence" and a personal aspect that the believer "ordinarily identifies with God", in accordance with the perspective of "most religions". Only the "esoteric dimension" within these religions take into account the "Impersonal Essence", as can be seen most notably in "the Kabbalah, Sufism, and among many Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Angelus Silesius". "God as ultimate Reality" is thus at the same time "Essence" and "Person" or "Supra-Being and Being". Understood in this way, God or the Principle,

God is not only "Absolute and Infinite", He is also "the Supreme Good or Perfection". Now, according to Nasr, the specificity of infinitude and of good in divinis requires that they exteriorize themselves, that is to say, that they manifest themselves in multiplicity, hence the world.A world that is imperfect despite the perfection of its source because, as Nasr explains, this exteriorization implies a distance from the "Good", hence the presence of evil; the latter, contrary to the good, does not have its root in God. This "imperfect world" – the visible and tangible world of man – constitutes only the periphery of a hierarchy of increasingly subtle "worlds" according to their degree of proximity to Being. For Nasr, God is the only reality, and the world, which participates in His reality is therefore "unreal", not as "nothingness pure and simple" but as "relative reality"; it is an illusion to consider the world, says Nasr, as "reality" in the same way as the Principle. Nasr holds that traditional wisdom or the sophia perennis "has always seen God as Reality and the world as a dream from which the sage awakens through [spiritual] realization [...] and the ordinary man through death". To consider the world as "the reality, [...] as is done by most modern philosophy [...] leads to nihilism and skepticism by reducing God to an abstraction, to the 'unreal', and philosophy itself to the discussion of more or less secondary questions or to providing clever answers to ill-posed problems". For Nasr, "Ultimate Reality" is at once "above everything" and "omnipresent" in the universe, "transcendent and immanent". On the human plane, still according to Nasr, "The Reality" – or "The Truth" – lies in the heart of man "created in the image of God", whence the possibility of a "unitive knowledge which sees the world not as separative creation but as manifestation that is united through symbols and the very ray of existence".The human being

"The key to the understanding of the anthrōpos", according to Nasr, is situated in "sapential teachings"; it is neither situated in "exoteric religious formulations", which relate essentially to "salvation", nor in what he considers to be "profane" science, generally evolutionary. Beyond his faith in "creationism ex nihilo" Nasr believes that the doctrines "of all traditions" attest that "the genesis of man, occurred in many stages: first, in the Divinity Itself so that there is an uncreated 'aspect' to man", hence the possibility of "supreme union"; then "in the Logos which is in fact the prototype of man and another face of that same reality which the Muslims call the Universal Man and which each tradition identifies with its founder"; after this, "man is created on the cosmic level and what the Bible refers to as the celestial paradise where he is dressed with a luminous body"; "he then descends to the level of the terrestrial paradise and is given yet another body of an ethereal and incorruptible nature"; finally, "he is born into the physical world with a body which perishes" but he principially remains a reflection of "the Absolute not only in his spiritual and mental faculties but even in his body". Thus, Nasr rejects biology's modern evolutionary synthesis, which he thinks is a "desperate attempt to substitute a set of horizontal, material causes in a unidimensional world to explain effects whose causes belong to other levels of reality". For Nasr, in

masks:
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Hossein
Nasr
Seyyed
Nasr
Nasr
Seyyed
Hossein
Nasr
Seyyed
Hossein
Hossein


title: Seyyed Hossein Nasr

texts:
 accordance with "the traditional view of the anthrōpos", the human being is a "bridge between Heaven and earth (pontifex)". Responsible to God for his actions, he is the custodian and protector of the earth, "on the condition that he remain faithful to himself as the central terrestrial figure created in the 'form of God', [...] living in this world but created for eternity". This aspect of humanity, for Nasr, "is reflected in all of his being and his faculties". Among these faculties, Nasr underlines the primacy of intelligence, sentiments, and will: "as a theomorphic being", his intelligence "can know the truth as such", his sentiments "are capable [...] of reaching out for the ultimate through love, suffering, sacrifice, and also fear", and his will "is free to choose [...], it reflects the Divine Freedom".But, "because of man's separation from his original perfection", a consequence "of what Christianity calls the fall", itself followed by further declines, these faculties no longer operate invariably according to their "theomorphic nature". Thus, "intelligence can become reduced to mental play", "sentiments can deteriorate to little more than gravitation around that illusory coagulation which [...] is the ego" and "the will can be debased to nothing other than the urge to do that which removes man from the source of his own being". "All traditional sciences of nature, [...] are also sciences of the self on the basis of the microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondence", therefore by virtue of an "inward link that binds man as the microcosm to the cosmos". This ideal man, underlines Nasr, is "primordial man [...] perfect, [...] plenary reflection of all those Divine Qualities", who knew everything "in God and through God". Knowledge and the intellect

According to <mask> <mask> Nasr, "man contains within himself many levels of existence", that "the Western tradition" synthesises in the ternary "spirit, soul, and body (pneuma, psychē, and hylē or spiritus, anima, and corpus". "The human spirit is an extension and reflection of the Divine Spirit", it coincides with the "intellect" and "resides at the center of the spiritual heart" of the human being. Nasr always uses the word "intellect" in "its original sense of intellectus (nous)" and not "of reason (ratio)", which is only its "reflection" and which "is identified with the analytical functions of the mind"; "the intellect is the light of the sacred shining upon our minds".The intellect, which "is the root and the center of consciousness" is also "the source of inner illumination and intellection", which Nasr, following Guénon, also calls "intellectual intuition", and that implies an "illumination of the heart and the mind of man", making possible a "knowledge of an immediate and direct nature, [...] tasted and experienced", which extends to "certain aspects of reality" up to "the Absolute Reality". The human intellect is "the subjective pole of the Word or of the Logos – the universal Intellect – by which all things were made and which constitutes the source of objective revelation, that is to say, formal and established religion". For Nasr, in the vast majority of cases, this "inner revelation", or intellection, cannot become operative except by virtue of an external revelation which provides an objective cadre for it and enables it to be spiritually efficacious", hence the necessity of faith and spiritual practices associated with the realization of the virtues, with the aid of the grace issuing from each revelation. Huston Smith summarises in an analysis of Nasr's works, that Nasr contends it is "God who knows Himself" through man. For Nasr, indeed, "discrimination between the Real and the unreal terminates in the awareness of the nondual nature of the Real, the awareness which is the heart of gnosis and which represents not human knowledge but God's knowledge of Himself", consciousness which is at the same time "the goal of the path of knowledge and the essence of scientia sacra". Nasr contends that this wisdom, which corresponds – beyond salvation -– to deliverance from the bonds of all limitation, "is present in the heart of all traditions", whether it be the Hindu Vedanta, Buddhism, the Jewish Kabbalah, the Christian metaphysics of an Eckhart or an Erigena, or Sufism. It alone "is able to solve certain apparent contradictions and riddles in sacred texts".The sacred

Terry Moore, in his introduction to a long interview that Seyyed <mask> <mask> gave to the Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, recalls that for Nasr,

Still, according to Moore, it is this relationship with the sacred, through the channel of "Tradition" that anchors Seyyed <mask> Nasr's worldview. Nasr considers the sense of the sacred as inseparable from any spiritual quest. This sense emanates from the awareness of the eternal and immutable reality of the Divine, which is both transcendent and immanent to all universal manifestation, therefore also to the human being. The sacred manifests itself in "revelation, the sacred rites of various religions, spiritual and initiatory practices, sacred art, virgin nature", in fact everything that transmits "the presence of the Divine". Metaphysics

For Nasr, true metaphysics – the scientia sacra –, which is the intellectual foundation of the Traditionalist School, "is the science of the Real; of the origin and the end of things; of the Absolute and in its light, the relative" and, as a corollary, of the degrees of existence. It is therefore:

True metaphysics, underlines Nasr, can only be assimilated by intellectual intuition, that is to say that it is necessarily associated with a path of spiritual realization, an approach foreign to modern philosophy, which has been instrumental in reducing the significance of metaphysics to just another mental activity. Metaphysical knowledge stems from the true understanding of symbolism.Religion and spirituality

According to Nasr, man is "a theomorphic being living in this world but created for eternity" because his "soul is immortal". The post-mortem salvation of the soul, reminds Nasr, is "the first duty of man", according to every religion, – a soul tainted here below by its "centrifugal tendencies", its "passions". Nasr contends that all religions have an origin in God, reveal the paths which "leads to either felicity in the hereafter or damnation, to the paradisal or infernal states", and require "faith". Each new "descent" of a revelation brings a particular "spiritual genius", "fresh vitality, uniqueness and the grace which make its rites and practices operative, not to speak of the paradisal vision which constitutes the origin of its sacred art or of the sapience which lies at the heart of its message". This wisdom, continues Nasr, accounts for the "Ultimate Reality", which is both "beyond everything and at the very heart and center of man's soul", that is to say in his "spirit". The quest for wisdom or knowledge, through "spiritual practice" and the "cultivation of virtues", can lead to "salvation in the highest sense of this term, which means total deliverance from the bonds of all limitations". Nasr argues that spirituality requires a constant practice and a rigorous discipline within the framework of a religion, and he considers the current commercialization of the "pseudo-spiritual" to be indicative of people wanting the spiritual result without the effort.Daoud Riffi emphasizes that Sufism is the spiritual path followed by Seyyed <mask> <mask> in a universalist framework which attests to the principial unity of all major religions. Nasr's Sufism relates to the intellect in its medieval sense, that is, the spiritual heart: "True knowledge is therefore a matter of the heart, not of the mind, and the fruit of an interior asceticism." Exoterism and esoterism

Nasr says that every integral religion "possesses at once an external or exoteric dimension" and "an inner or esoteric dimension". The first is "concerned with the external and formal aspect of human life" with a view to the posthumous salvation of those "who follow the precepts" of their religion and who "have faith in its truths". The second concerns "the formless and the essential" with a view to the realization of "the Supreme Essence, here and now". These two dimensions unfold in "a hierarchy of levels from the most outward to the most inward which is the Supreme Center". Nasr thus distinguishes three modes of "approaching ultimate Reality": "the ways of work, love and knowledge", which correspond to as many predispositions of human nature.The most interiorizing paths integrate those which are less so, but the latter, not necessarily possessing the capacity "to understand what is beyond them", sometimes become the causes of "tensions" within the same religion. Nasr adds that "all human beings can be saved if only they follow religion according to their own nature and vocation". And he warns "on the social level, on the level of human action, the barriers and conditions established by the exoteric dimension of the religion should not be transgressed", including by those who "follow the path of esoterism, the inward or mystical path". Since there are "questions that exoterism cannot answer," it is important "for religion to keep alive the reality and the significance of esoterism for people who have the capability and need to understand the inner or esoteric dimension of the tradition". This is what Islam, for example, continues to accomplish today with its inner dimension, Sufism, which remains a living tradition. On the other hand,

The essential unity of religions

In a commentary on a work by Nasr, Adnan Aslan reports that for Nasr, the various religions are "forms of the eternal truth which has been revealed by God to humankind through various agencies". It is this common truth which constitutes "the transcendent unity of religions", he says, referring to the expression proposed by Frithjof Schuon."It is only on the level of the Supreme Essence [...], standing above all the cosmic sectors from the angelic to the physical within which a particular religion is operative, that the ultimate unity of religions is to be sought". This unity, for Nasr, is "not to be found at the level of external forms; [...] religions do not simply say the same thing despite the remarkable unanimity of principles and doctrines and the profound similarity of applications of these principles". At the heart of every religion lies "what Schuon calls the religio perennis", that is to say, "a doctrine concerning the nature of reality and a method for being able to attain what is Real". Doctrine and method vary from one religion to another but their essence and goal are universal. As a result, no religion is in itself "better" than another, concludes Nasr, since "all authentic religions come from the same Origin", but in practical terms it is nevertheless necessary "to distinguish the possibilities" that remain valid in the current state of "degradation" of each of the religions. For Nasr, given the celestial origin of all religions, it is appropriate to respect their slightest particularities and to treat them "with reverence, as every manifestation of the sacred should be". Interreligious dialogue

According to Jane I. Smith, Nasr is "one of the most visible partners" of Islamic-Christian dialogue thanks to "his training in Christian theology and philosophy, combined with his remarkable knowledge of all Islamic sciences".Nasr points out that ordinary believers consider their religion to be the religion. Injunctions such as: "I am the way, the truth, the life" (Jesus) or "No one sees God unless he has seen me" (Mohammed), necessarily lead, for these same believers, to the certainty of the pre-eminence of their own religion, a conviction that could lead to the refusal to consider other religions as valid. This refusal, for Nasr, can be considered as legitimate since it stems from revelation, therefore from God; God wants to "save souls", he does not ask the believer to deal with "comparative religion" nor to accept the validity of other revelations. In a traditional world, such exclusivism presented no hindrance, but in today's world, the mixing of populations calls many believers to question the value of the religions they encounter daily. Religion as it is seen in the world, says Nasr, "comes from the wedding between a Divine Norm and a human collectivity destined providentially to receive the imprint of that Norm." Thus, "racial, ethnic and cultural differences" constitute "one of the causes for multiplicity" of religions, "but religion itself cannot be reduced to its terrestrial embodiment". For Nasr, there is only one truth and it necessarily manifests itself in "all the different authentic religious universes, otherwise God would not be merciful and just".But it is not, according to Nasr, the exoteric level, that of divergences, which allows access to a true understanding and acceptance of other religions; only esotericism, which transcends the formal dimensions of religions, allows, according to him, uncompromising adherence to the authenticity of all revelations, by recognizing in them a supra-formal unity which resolves these very differences. Nasr actively participates in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. In 2008, he was the main Muslim speaker, opposite Benedict XVI, at the first Catholic-Muslim Forum organized by the Vatican. For Nasr, "one of the reasons why it is so difficult to have a deep religious dialogue today" with Christians, is due – besides their conviction "that there is no salvation outside the Church" – to the absence of an "esoteric dimension, interior [...], mystical", which centuries of secularism have stifled. For Islam, which is not "theologically threatened by the presence of other religions in the same way that Christianity is", the influence of secularism occurred much later than in the West, and Sufism, which is its interior dimension, continues to inspire "the most profound doctrines that have been formulated concerning the plurality of religions and the relationship between them". For Nasr, as Jahanbegloo emphasizes, dialogue is "not only a pursuit of truth, but also a challenge to spiritual responsibility" of each religion to try to "heal the wounds of the present-day secularized world" in which we live. Tradition

In Knowledge and the Sacred, Nasr defines tradition as follows:

For Nasr, the tradition therefore presents two aspects: "one is truths that are of a transcendent order in their origin, that came from the Divine, from God", revealed at the birth of each of the great religions and, on the other hand, the transmission of these truths by these same religions and by the civilizations they have generated; tradition is therefore not limited to religion – this is its heart – but it is deployed in all areas of a culture, hence the names "traditional art, traditional sciences, traditional architecture, traditional music, traditional clothing, etc."Following René Guénon – to whom he is "indebted for clarifying this fundamental concept" –, Nasr refers to a "Primordial Tradition", which he defines as being the single truth from which emanate all truths, the immutable and timeless archetype from which all traditions originate. According to Nasr, at a time when Heaven and Earth were still "united", the original or archetypal man was directly enlightened, spiritually and intellectually, by the Primordial Tradition. The value of tradition, for Nasr, is not manifested by a simple nostalgia for the past, it stems from the wisdom that this tradition conveys, instructing the human being on his own nature and that of the world, and calling him to achieve his original perfection. Only the truths conveyed by tradition, continues Nasr, allow us to grasp the full scope of the errors of modern thought and its misdeeds on man and nature. Ecology

It was in 1966, during the Rockefeller Foundation Lectures at the University of Chicago, that <mask> <mask> Nasr, for the first time, made public the importance that he placed on nature and his concern for its degradation. He was one of the first philosophers to turn to this question and he is considered to be the founder of environmentalism in the Muslim world. In several works he deals with the causes of the mutilation of the planet and the restorative remedies.Causes

Tarik Quadir argues that "the ecological crisis, for Nasr, is only an externalization of an inner malaise [...] due in large part to the various applications of modern [western] science. [...] Following the loss of the vision of the universe proper to medieval Christian worldview, [...] this science ignores or denies the existence of any reality other than that of the material aspect of nature". Indeed, as Nasr explains, "the Renaissance and its aftermath […] witnessed the rise of a secular humanism and the absolutization of earthly man with immeasurable consequences for both the world of nature and traditional civilizations conquered by this new type of man, who gives free rein to his Promethean ambition to dominate nature and its forces in order to gain wealth or to conquer others civilizations, or both. [...] Nature, more than a lifeless mass, has thus become a machine to be dominated and manipulated by a purely earthly man". Thus, it is "to modernism and its false presumptions about the nature of man and the world", that Nasr attributes "the destruction of the natural environment", in addition to "the disintegration of the social fabric", and he deplores that all States, "from monarchies to communist governments, to revolutionary regimes, […] all want to copy avidly Western science and technology, without thought of their cultural, social and environmental consequences". Nasr believes that another cause of ecological problems is found in scientism, that is, the conviction that "modern science provides if not the only, at least the most reliable means to true knowledge" and that it leads thereby "to human progress", as imagined by those who evaluate a human society solely in terms of its economic growth. Nasr corroborates the observation that the development of the current economic system rests largely on human passions, which it feeds in its turn, thus generating a continuous blossoming of new needs which, in reality, are only desires.Finally, "if modern man destroys nature with

masks: Seyyed Hossein Hossein Nasr Hossein Hossein Nasr Seyyed Hossein