title: Jessica Biel

text: In 2016, Biel co-starred with Patrick Wilson (with whom she had worked on "The A-Team") in the thriller "A Kind of Murder", based on the novel "The Blunderer" by Patricia Highsmith. She voiced the character Vix in the animated film "Spark", with Susan Sarandon and Hilary Swank, which was released in 2016. Biel also appeared in the drama "The Book of Love", based on the book "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", about an introverted architect (Jason Sudeikis) who loses his wife (Biel) and sets out to help a teenager named Millie (Maisie Williams). Biel also produced the project from its conception some years prior, and was directed by Bill Purple, who directed her in the short film "Hole in the Paper Sky". The film was released in January 2017.


title: Jessica Biel

text: On August 2, 2017, Biel's eight-episode limited series murder mystery, "The Sinner", debuted on USA Network. Biel is both executive producer and played the series' lead character Cora Tannetti. She stated that she moved into production so that she could develop projects with challenging and interesting roles rather than waiting for them to happen.


title: Jessica Biel

text: In October 2021, it was announced Biel would star and executive produce the true-crime drama "Candy" for Hulu.


title: Jessica Biel

text: In January 2007, Biel began dating singer-songwriter Justin Timberlake. They became engaged in December 2011 and married on October 19, 2012, at the Borgo Egnazia resort in Fasano, Italy. Biel and Timberlake have two sons together: one born in April 2015, and another born in July 2020.


title: Jessica Biel

text: Alongside anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Biel publicly lobbied in June 2019 against California's vaccination bill that would limit medical exemptions from vaccinations without approval from a state public health officer.


title: Jessica Biel

text: On July 18, 2006, Biel participated in a charity auction to raise medical funds for teen Molly Bloom, who was injured in a limousine accident. "I promise I'm a cheap date", Biel quipped in a pre-recorded video. John Schiffner of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, successfully bid $30,000 to have lunch with Biel. Biel and Schiffner lunched at The Palm restaurant in Denver, Colorado, on August 18, 2006. In early 2007, Biel co-founded the Make the Difference Network with her father and another business partner, Kent McBride. In 2010, Biel climbed to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro with members of the United Nations Foundation to raise awareness of the global water crisis. That same year Biel earned a nomination for a Do Something Award. Biel teamed with nonprofit health care organization WomanCare Global to develop content that will provide girls with sex education.


title: All of Us Are Dead

text: All of Us Are Dead () is a South Korean coming-of-age zombie apocalypse horror streaming television series. It stars Park Ji-hu, Yoon Chan-young, Cho Yi-hyun, Lomon, Yoo In-soo, Lee Yoo-mi, Kim Byung-chul, Lee Kyu-hyung, and Jeon Bae-soo. The series mostly takes place at a high school in South Korea as a zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out and threatens the safety of the students. It is based on the Naver webtoon of the same name by Joo Dong-geun, which was published between 2009 and 2011. This series was filmed at Sunghee Girls' High School in Andong, South Korea.


title: All of Us Are Dead

text: The series was released on January 28, 2022, on Netflix. Following its release, the series was watched over 474.26 million hours in its first 30 days on the service. On June 6, 2022, the series was renewed for a second season.


title: All of Us Are Dead

text: After a failed science experiment, a local high school is overrun with zombies, and the trapped students struggle to survive. With no food or water, and communication cut-off by the government, they must use equipment around the school to protect themselves in the midst of a battleground or they will become part of the infected.


title: All of Us Are Dead

text: "All of Us Are Dead" consists of one season with twelve episodes at a run time of 53 to 72 minutes. The full series was released in all Netflix worldwide markets on January 28, 2022.


title: All of Us Are Dead

text: On April 12, 2020, Netflix announced through a press release that JTBC Studios and Film Monster would produce a series called "All of Us Are Dead" based on the popular webtoon "Now at Our School". On April 19, 2020, Yoon Chan-young was confirmed to star in the series as one of the students. Park Ji-hu joined the main cast on April 22. On July 1, they were officially joined by Cho Yi-hyun, Lomon and Yoo In-soo. In selecting the cast, director Lee Jae-kyoo said, "I thought that bringing on actors who were great at acting but still unknown to the public would add to the immersion of the series".


title: All of Us Are Dead

text: Production was temporarily suspended in August 2020 due to the re-spreading of COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea.


title: All of Us Are Dead

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 87% based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 6.90/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "While "All of Us Are Dead" loses some of its bite with an overlong season, its emotional grounding puts plenty of meat on the bone." Metacritic gave it a weighted average score of 67 out of 100 based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: All of Us Are Dead

text: "IGN" rated the series a 7 out of 10 and noted that the series was "clever, thrilling, and also... a bit exhausting." "Variety" praised the series, stating it "makes the most out of its nightmarish central location to otherworldly, dizzying effect." The series received generally positive reviews for its performances, screenplay, and action sequences, although its long runtime was criticized.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray", and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts in "one of the first celebrity trials", imprisonment, and early death from meningitis at age 46.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, Wilde read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote "Salome" (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: At the height of his fame and success, while "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison, he wrote "De Profundis" (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, and never returned to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin (now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College), the second of three children born to an Anglo-Irish couple: Jane, née Elgee, and Sir William Wilde. Oscar was two years younger than his brother, William (Willie) Wilde.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Jane Wilde was a niece (by marriage) of the novelist, playwright and clergyman Charles Maturin (1780 – 1824), who may have influenced her own literary career. She believed, mistakenly, that she was of Italian ancestry, and under the pseudonym ""Speranza"" (the Italian word for 'hope'), she wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848; she was a lifelong Irish nationalist. Jane Wilde read the Young Irelanders' poetry to Oscar and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. Her interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece and Rome in her home.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: William Wilde was Ireland's leading oto-ophthalmologic (ear and eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland. He also wrote books about Irish archaeology and peasant folklore. A renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the city's poor at the rear of Trinity College Dublin was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road. On his father's side Wilde was descended from a Dutchman, Colonel de Wilde, who went to Ireland with King William of Orange's invading army in 1690, and numerous Anglo-Irish ancestors. On his mother's side, Wilde's ancestors included a bricklayer from County Durham, who emigrated to Ireland sometime in the 1770s.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde was baptised as an infant in St. Mark's Church, Dublin, the local Church of Ireland (Anglican) church. When the church was closed, the records were moved to the nearby St. Ann's Church, Dawson Street. Davis Coakley mentions a second baptism by a Catholic priest, Father Prideaux Fox, who befriended Oscar's mother circa 1859. According to Fox's testimony in "Donahoe's Magazine" in 1905, Jane Wilde would visit his chapel in Glencree, County Wicklow, for Mass and would take her sons with her. She asked Father Fox in this period to baptise her sons.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: I am not sure if she ever became a Catholic herself but it was not long before she asked me to instruct two of her children, one of them being the future erratic genius, Oscar Wilde. After a few weeks I baptized these two children, Lady Wilde herself being present on the occasion.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In addition to his two full siblings, Oscar Wilde had three half siblings, who were born out of wedlock before the marriage of his father: Henry Wilson, born in 1838 to one woman, and Emily and Mary Wilde, born in 1847 and 1849, respectively, to a second woman. Sir William acknowledged paternity of his illegitimate or "natural" children and provided for their education, arranging for them to be reared by his relatives rather than with his legitimate children in his family household with his wife.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In 1855, the family moved to No. 1 Merrion Square, where Wilde's sister, Isola Francesca Emily Wilde was born 2 April 1857. She was named in tribute to Iseult of Ireland, wife of Mark of Cornwall and lover of the Cornish knight, Sir Tristan. She shared the name Francesca with her mother while Emily was the name of her maternal aunt. Oscar was very close to her and grief struck when she died at the age of nine of a febrile illness. Isola lit up their lives like "a golden ray of sunshine dancing about our home". The Wildes' new home was larger. With both his parents' success and delight in social life, the house soon became the site of a "unique medical and cultural milieu". Guests at their salon included Sheridan Le Fanu, Charles Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt, William Rowan Hamilton and Samuel Ferguson.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Until he was nine, Wilde was educated at home, where a French nursemaid and a German governess taught him their languages. He joined his brother Willie at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, which he attended from 1864 to 1871. At Portora, although he was not as popular as his older brother, Wilde impressed his peers with the humorous and inventive school stories he told. Later in life he claimed that his fellow students had regarded him as a "prodigy" for his ability to speed read, claiming that he could read two facing pages simultaneously and consume a three-volume book in half an hour, retaining enough information to give a basic account of the plot. He excelled academically, particularly in the subject of Classics, in which he ranked fourth in the school in 1869. His aptitude for giving oral translations of Greek and Latin texts won him multiple prizes, including the Carpenter Prize for Greek Testament. He was one of only three students at Portora to win a Royal School scholarship to Trinity in 1871.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Until his early twenties, Wilde summered at the villa, Moytura House, which his father had built in Cong, County Mayo. There the young Wilde and his brother Willie played with George Moore. Isola died at age nine of meningitis. Wilde's poem "" is written to her memory:


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde left Portora with a royal scholarship to read classics at Trinity College Dublin, from 1871 to 1874, sharing rooms with his older brother Willie Wilde. Trinity, one of the leading classical schools, placed him with scholars such as R. Y. Tyrell, Arthur Palmer, Edward Dowden and his tutor, Professor J. P. Mahaffy, who inspired his interest in Greek literature. As a student Wilde worked with Mahaffy on the latter's book "Social Life in Greece". Wilde, despite later reservations, called Mahaffy "my first and best teacher" and "the scholar who showed me how to love Greek things". For his part, Mahaffy boasted of having created Wilde; later, he said Wilde was "the only blot on my tutorship".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The University Philosophical Society also provided an education, as members discussed intellectual and artistic subjects such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne weekly. Wilde quickly became an established member – the members' suggestion book for 1874 contains two pages of banter (sportingly) mocking Wilde's emergent aestheticism. He presented a paper titled "Aesthetic Morality". At Trinity, Wilde established himself as an outstanding student: he came first in his class in his first year, won a scholarship by competitive examination in his second and, in his finals, won the Berkeley Gold Medal in Greek, the University's highest academic award. He was encouraged to compete for a demyship (a half-scholarship worth £95 (£ today) per year) to Magdalen College, Oxford – which he won easily.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: At Magdalen, he read Greats from 1874 to 1878, and from there he applied to join the Oxford Union, but failed to be elected.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Attracted by its dress, secrecy, and ritual, Wilde petitioned the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford, and was soon raised to the "Sublime Degree of Master Mason". During a resurgent interest in Freemasonry in his third year, he commented he "would be awfully sorry to give it up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy". Wilde's active involvement in Freemasonry lasted only for the time he spent at Oxford; he allowed his membership of the Apollo University Lodge to lapse after failing to pay subscriptions.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Catholicism deeply appealed to him, especially its rich liturgy, and he discussed converting to it with clergy several times. In 1877, Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX in Rome. He eagerly read the books of Cardinal Newman, a noted Anglican priest who had converted to Catholicism and risen in the church hierarchy. He became more serious in 1878, when he met the Reverend Sebastian Bowden, a priest in the Brompton Oratory who had received some high-profile converts. Neither his father, who threatened to cut off his funds, nor Mahaffy thought much of the plan; but Wilde, the supreme individualist, balked at the last minute from pledging himself to any formal creed, and on the appointed day of his baptism into Catholicism, sent Father Bowden a bunch of altar lilies instead. Wilde did retain a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He wore his hair long, openly scorned "manly" sports though he occasionally boxed, and he decorated his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other "objets d'art". He once remarked to friends, whom he entertained lavishly, "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china." The line quickly became famous, accepted as a slogan by aesthetes but used against them by critics who sensed in it a terrible vacuousness. Some elements disdained the aesthetes, but their languishing attitudes and showy costumes became a recognised pose. Wilde was once physically attacked by a group of four fellow students, and dealt with them single-handedly, surprising critics. By his third year Wilde had truly begun to develop himself and his myth, and considered his learning to be more expansive than what was within the prescribed texts. This attitude resulted in his being rusticated for one term, after he had returned late to a college term from a trip to Greece with Mahaffy.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde did not meet Walter Pater until his third year, but had been enthralled by his "Studies in the History of the Renaissance", published during Wilde's final year in Trinity. Pater argued that man's sensibility to beauty should be refined above all else, and that each moment should be felt to its fullest extent. Years later, in "De Profundis", Wilde described Pater's "Studies..." as "that book that has had such a strange influence over my life". He learned tracts of the book by heart, and carried it with him on travels in later years. Pater gave Wilde his sense of almost flippant devotion to art, though he gained a purpose for it through the lectures and writings of critic John Ruskin. Ruskin despaired at the self-validating aestheticism of Pater, arguing that the importance of art lies in its potential for the betterment of society. Ruskin admired beauty, but believed it must be allied with, and applied to, moral good. When Wilde eagerly attended Ruskin's lecture series "The Aesthetic and Mathematic Schools of Art in Florence", he learned about aesthetics as the non-mathematical elements of painting. Despite being given to neither early rising nor manual labour, Wilde volunteered for Ruskin's project to convert a swampy country lane into a smart road neatly edged with flowers.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem "", which reflected on his visit there the year before, and he duly read it at Encaenia. In November 1878, he graduated with a double first in his B.A. of Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores (Greats). Wilde wrote to a friend, "The dons are " beyond words – the Bad Boy doing so well in the end!"


title: Oscar Wilde

text: After graduation from Oxford, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met again Florence Balcombe, a childhood sweetheart. She became engaged to Bram Stoker and they married in 1878. Wilde was disappointed but stoic: he wrote to her, remembering "the two sweet years – the sweetest years of all my youth" during which they had been close. He also stated his intention to "return to England, probably for good". This he did in 1878, only briefly visiting Ireland twice after that.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Unsure of his next step, Wilde wrote to various acquaintances enquiring about Classics positions at Oxford or Cambridge. "The Rise of Historical Criticism" was his submission for the Chancellor's Essay prize of 1879, which, though no longer a student, he was still eligible to enter. Its subject, "Historical Criticism among the Ancients" seemed ready-made for Wilde – with both his skill in composition and ancient learning – but he struggled to find his voice with the long, flat, scholarly style. Unusually, no prize was awarded that year.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: With the last of his inheritance from the sale of his father's houses, he set himself up as a bachelor in London. The 1881 British Census listed Wilde as a boarder at 1 (now 44) Tite Street, Chelsea, where Frank Miles, a society painter, was the head of the household.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Celebrated in London’s high society, Lillie Langtry was introduced to Wilde at Frank Miles studio in 1877. The most glamorous woman in England, Langtry assumed great importance to Wilde during his early years in London, and they remained close friends for many years, with Wilde tutoring her in Latin and later encouraging her to pursue acting. She wrote in her autobiography that he "possessed a remarkably fascinating and compelling personality", and "the cleverness of his remarks received added value from his manner of delivering them."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: He had been publishing lyrics and poems in magazines since entering Trinity College, especially in "Kottabos" and the "Dublin University Magazine". In mid-1881, at 27 years old, he published "Poems", which collected, revised and expanded his poems.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Though the book sold out its first print run of 750 copies it was not generally well received by the critics, "Punch" for example saying "The poet is Wilde, but his poetry's tame". By a tight vote, the Oxford Union condemned the book for alleged plagiarism. The librarian, who had requested the book for the library, returned the presentation copy to Wilde with a note of apology. Biographer Richard Ellmann argues that Wilde's poem "" was a sincere, though flamboyant, attempt to explain the dichotomies the poet saw in himself; one line reads: "To drift with every passion till my soul / Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The book had further printings in 1882. It was bound in a rich, enamel parchment cover (embossed with gilt blossom) and printed on hand-made Dutch paper; over the next few years, Wilde presented many copies to the dignitaries and writers who received him during his lecture tours.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Aestheticism was sufficiently in vogue to be caricatured by Gilbert and Sullivan in "Patience" (1881). Richard D'Oyly Carte, an English impresario, invited Wilde to make a lecture tour of North America, simultaneously priming the pump for the US tour of "Patience" and selling this most charming aesthete to the American public. Wilde journeyed on the SS "Arizona", arriving 2 January 1882, and disembarking the following day. Originally planned to last four months, the tour continued for almost a year owing to its commercial success. Wilde sought to transpose the beauty he saw in art into daily life. This was a practical as well as philosophical project: in Oxford he had surrounded himself with blue china and lilies, and now one of his lectures was on interior design. In a British Library article on aestheticism and decadence, Carolyn Burdett writes, "Wilde teased his readers with the claim that life imitates art rather than the other way round. His point was a serious one: we notice London fogs, he argued, because art and literature has taught us to do so. Wilde, among others, 'performed' these maxims. He presented himself as the impeccably dressed and mannered dandy figure whose life was a work of art."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: When asked to explain reports that he had paraded down Piccadilly in London carrying a lily, long hair flowing, Wilde replied, "It's not whether I did it or not that's important, but whether people believed I did it". Wilde believed that the artist should hold forth higher ideals, and that pleasure and beauty would replace utilitarian ethics.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde and aestheticism were both mercilessly caricatured and criticised in the press: the "Springfield Republican", for instance, commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more a bid for notoriety rather than devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. T. W. Higginson, a cleric and abolitionist, wrote in "Unmanly Manhood" of his general concern that Wilde, "whose only distinction is that he has written a thin volume of very mediocre verse", would improperly influence the behaviour of men and women.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: According to biographer Michèle Mendelssohn, Wilde was the subject of anti-Irish caricature and was portrayed as a monkey, a blackface performer and a Christy's Minstrel throughout his career. ""Harper's Weekly" put a sunflower-worshipping monkey dressed as Wilde on the front of the January 1882 issue. The drawing stimulated other American maligners and, in England, had a full-page reprint in the "Lady's Pictorial". ... When the "National Republican" discussed Wilde, it was to explain 'a few items as to the animal's pedigree.' And on 22 January 1882 the "Washington Post" illustrated the Wild Man of Borneo alongside Oscar Wilde of England and asked 'How far is it from this to this?'" Though his press reception was hostile, Wilde was well received in diverse settings across America: he drank whiskey with miners in Leadville, Colorado, and was fêted at the most fashionable salons in many cities he visited.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: His earnings, plus expected income from "The Duchess of Padua", allowed him to move to Paris between February and mid-May 1883. While there he met Robert Sherard, whom he entertained constantly. "We are dining on the Duchess tonight", Wilde would declare before taking him to an expensive restaurant. In August he briefly returned to New York for the production of "Vera", his first play, after it was turned down in London. He reportedly entertained the other passengers with "", about the rise and fall of empires. E. C. Stedman, in "Victorian Poets", describes this "lyric to England" as "manly verse – a poetic and eloquent invocation".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In London, he had been introduced in 1881 to Constance Lloyd, daughter of Horace Lloyd, a wealthy Queen's Counsel. She happened to be visiting Dublin in 1884, when Wilde was lecturing at the Gaiety Theatre. He proposed to her, and they married on 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St James's Church, Paddington, in London. Although Constance had an annual allowance of £250, which was generous for a young woman (equivalent to about £ in current value), the Wildes had relatively luxurious tastes. They had preached to others for so long on the subject of design that people expected their home to set new standards. No. 16, Tite Street was duly renovated in seven months at considerable expense. The couple had two sons together, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). Wilde became the sole literary signatory of George Bernard Shaw's petition for a pardon of the anarchists arrested (and later executed) after the Haymarket massacre in Chicago in 1886.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde had a number of favourite haunts in London. These included the Hotel Café Royal in Piccadilly; today the Oscar Wilde Lounge provides a traditional afternoon tea service, Hatchards bookstore in Piccadilly, and the department stores Liberty & Co. on Great Marlborough Street and Harrods in Knightsbridge; Wilde was among Harrods' first selected customers who were granted extended credit.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Criticism over artistic matters in "The Pall Mall Gazette" provoked a letter in self-defence, and soon Wilde was a contributor to that and other journals during 1885–87. He enjoyed reviewing and journalism; the form suited his style. He could organise and share his views on art, literature and life, yet in a format less tedious than lecturing. Buoyed up, his reviews were largely chatty and positive. Wilde, like his parents before him, also supported the cause of Irish nationalism. When Charles Stewart Parnell was falsely accused of inciting murder, Wilde wrote a series of astute columns defending him in the "Daily Chronicle".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: His flair, having previously been put mainly into socialising, suited journalism and rapidly attracted notice. With his youth nearly over, and a family to support, in mid-1887 Wilde became the editor of "The Lady's World" magazine, his name prominently appearing on the cover. He promptly renamed it as "The Woman's World" and raised its tone, adding serious articles on parenting, culture, and politics, while keeping discussions of fashion and arts. Two pieces of fiction were usually included, one to be read to children, the other for the ladies themselves. Wilde worked hard to solicit good contributions from his wide artistic acquaintance, including those of Lady Wilde and his wife Constance, while his own "Literary and Other Notes" were themselves popular and amusing.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The initial vigour and excitement which he brought to the job began to fade as administration, commuting and office life became tedious. At the same time as Wilde's interest flagged, the publishers became concerned anew about circulation: sales, at the relatively high price of one shilling, remained low. Increasingly sending instructions to the magazine by letter, Wilde began a new period of creative work and his own column appeared less regularly. In October 1889, Wilde had finally found his voice in prose and, at the end of the second volume, Wilde left "The Woman's World". The magazine outlasted him by one issue.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: If Wilde's period at the helm of the magazine was a mixed success from an organizational point of view, it played a pivotal role in his development as a writer and facilitated his ascent to fame. Whilst Wilde the journalist supplied articles under the guidance of his editors, Wilde the editor was forced to learn to manipulate the literary marketplace on his own terms.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: During the late 1880s, Wilde was a close friend of the artist James McNeill Whistler and they dined together on many occasions. At one of these dinners, Whistler said a bon mot that Wilde found particularly witty, Wilde exclaimed that he wished that he had said it, and Whistler retorted "You will, Oscar, you will." Herbert Vivian—a mutual friend of Wilde and Whistler—attended the dinner and recorded it in his article "The Reminiscences of a Short Life", which appeared in "The Sun" in 1889. The article alleged that Wilde had a habit of passing off other people's witticisms as his own—especially Whistler's. Wilde considered Vivian's article to be a scurrilous betrayal, and it directly caused the broken friendship between Wilde and Whistler. The Reminiscences also caused great acrimony between Wilde and Vivian, Wilde accusing Vivian of "the inaccuracy of an eavesdropper with the method of a blackmailer" and banishing Vivian from his circle. Vivian's allegations did not diminish Wilde's reputation as an epigrammatist. London theatre director Luther Munday recounted some of Wilde's typical quips: He said of Whistler that "he had no enemies, but was intensely disliked by his friends." Of Hall Caine that "he wrote at the top of his voice." Of Rudyard Kipling that "he revealed life by splendid flashes of vulgarity." Of Henry James that "he wrote fiction as if it were a painful duty," and of Marion Crawford that "he immolated himself on the altar of local colour."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde published "The Happy Prince and Other Tales" in 1888, and had been regularly writing fairy stories for magazines. In 1891 he published two more collections, "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories", and in September "A House of Pomegranates" was dedicated "To Constance Mary Wilde". "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", which Wilde had begun in 1887, was first published in "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine" in July 1889. It is a short story, which reports a conversation, in which the theory that Shakespeare's sonnets were written out of the poet's love of the boy actor "Willie Hughes", is advanced, retracted, and then propounded again. The only evidence for this is two supposed puns within the sonnets themselves.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The anonymous narrator is at first sceptical, then believing, finally flirtatious with the reader: he concludes that "there is really a great deal to be said of the Willie Hughes theory of Shakespeare's sonnets." By the end fact and fiction have melded together. Arthur Ransome wrote that Wilde "read something of himself into Shakespeare's sonnets" and became fascinated with the "Willie Hughes theory" despite the lack of biographical evidence for the historical William Hughes' existence. Instead of writing a short but serious essay on the question, Wilde tossed the theory amongst the three characters of the story, allowing it to unfold as background to the plot. The story thus is an early masterpiece of Wilde's combining many elements that interested him: conversation, literature and the idea that to shed oneself of an idea one must first convince another of its truth. Ransome concludes that Wilde succeeds precisely because the literary criticism is unveiled with such a deft touch.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Though containing nothing but "special pleading", it would not, he says "be possible to build an airier castle in Spain than this of the imaginary William Hughes" we continue listening nonetheless to be charmed by the telling. "You must believe in Willie Hughes," Wilde told an acquaintance, "I almost do, myself."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde, having tired of journalism, had been busy setting out his aesthetic ideas more fully in a series of longer prose pieces which were published in the major literary-intellectual journals of the day. In January 1889, "The Decay of Lying: A Dialogue" appeared in "The Nineteenth Century", and "Pen, Pencil and Poison", a satirical biography of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, in "The Fortnightly Review", edited by Wilde's friend Frank Harris. Two of Wilde's four writings on aesthetics are dialogues: though Wilde had evolved professionally from lecturer to writer, he retained an oral tradition of sorts. Having always excelled as a wit and raconteur, he often composed by assembling phrases, "bons mots" and witticisms into a longer, cohesive work.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde was concerned about the effect of moralising on art; he believed in art's redemptive, developmental powers: "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine." In his only political text, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", he argued political conditions should establish this primacy – private property should be abolished, and cooperation should be substituted for competition. At the same time, he stressed that the government most amenable to artists was no government at all. Wilde envisioned a society where mechanisation has freed human effort from the burden of necessity, effort which can instead be expended on artistic creation. George Orwell summarised, "In effect, the world will be populated by artists, each striving after perfection in the way that seems best to him."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: This point of view did not align him with the Fabians, intellectual socialists who advocated using state apparatus to change social conditions, nor did it endear him to the monied classes whom he had previously entertained. Hesketh Pearson, introducing a collection of Wilde's essays in 1950, remarked how "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" had been an inspirational text for revolutionaries in Tsarist Russia but laments that in the Stalinist era "it is doubtful whether there are any uninspected places in which it could now be hidden".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde considered including this pamphlet and "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", his essay-story on Shakespeare's sonnets, in a new anthology in 1891, but eventually decided to limit it to purely aesthetic subjects. "Intentions" packaged revisions of four essays: "The Decay of Lying"; "Pen, Pencil and Poison"; "The Truth of Masks" (first published 1885); and "The Critic as Artist" in two parts. For Pearson the biographer, the essays and dialogues exhibit every aspect of Wilde's genius and character: wit, romancer, talker, lecturer, humanist and scholar and concludes that "no other productions of his have as varied an appeal". 1891 turned out to be Wilde's "annus mirabilis"; apart from his three collections he also produced his only novel.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The first version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was published as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine", along with five others. The story begins with a man painting a picture of Gray. When Gray, who has a "face like ivory and rose leaves", sees his finished portrait, he breaks down. Distraught that his beauty will fade while the portrait stays beautiful, he inadvertently makes a Faustian bargain in which only the painted image grows old while he stays beautiful and young. For Wilde, the purpose of art would be to guide life as if beauty alone were its object. As Gray's portrait allows him to escape the corporeal ravages of his hedonism, Wilde sought to juxtapose the beauty he saw in art with daily life.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Reviewers immediately criticised the novel's decadence and homosexual allusions; "The Daily Chronicle" for example, called it "unclean", "poisonous", and "heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction". Wilde vigorously responded, writing to the editor of the "Scots Observer", in which he clarified his stance on ethics and aesthetics in art – "If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly will see its moral lesson." He nevertheless revised it extensively for book publication in 1891: six new chapters were added, some overtly decadent passages and homo-eroticism excised, and a preface was included consisting of twenty-two epigrams, such as "Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Contemporary reviewers and modern critics have postulated numerous possible sources of the story, a search Jershua McCormack argues is futile because Wilde "has tapped a root of Western folklore so deep and ubiquitous that the story has escaped its origins and returned to the oral tradition". Wilde claimed the plot was "an idea that is as old as the history of literature but to which I have given a new form". Modern critic Robin McKie considered the novel to be technically mediocre, saying that the conceit of the plot had guaranteed its fame, but the device is never pushed to its full. On the other hand, Robert McCrum of "The Guardian" lists it among the 100 best novels ever written in English, calling it "an arresting, and slightly camp, exercise in late-Victorian gothic". The novel has been the subject of many adaptations to film and stage, and one of its most quoted lines, "there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about", features in Monty Python's "Oscar Wilde sketch" in an episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The 1891 census records the Wildes' residence at 16 Tite Street, where Oscar lived with his wife Constance and two sons. Not content with being better known than ever in London, though, he returned to Paris in October 1891, this time as a respected writer. He was received at the "salons littéraires", including the famous "mardis" of Stéphane Mallarmé, a renowned symbolist poet of the time. Wilde's two plays during the 1880s, "Vera; or, The Nihilists" and "The Duchess of Padua", had not met with much success. He had continued his interest in the theatre and now, after finding his voice in prose, his thoughts turned again to the dramatic form as the biblical iconography of Salome filled his mind. One evening, after discussing depictions of Salome throughout history, he returned to his hotel and noticed a blank copybook lying on the desk, and it occurred to him to write in it what he had been saying. The result was a new play, "Salomé", written rapidly and in French.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: A tragedy, it tells the story of Salome, the stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but mother's delight, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils. When Wilde returned to London just before Christmas the "Paris Echo" referred to him as ""le great event"" of the season. Rehearsals of the play, starring Sarah Bernhardt, began but the play was refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain, since it depicted biblical characters. "Salome" was published jointly in Paris and London in 1893, but was not performed until 1896 in Paris, during Wilde's later incarceration.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde, who had first set out to irritate Victorian society with his dress and talking points, then outrage it with "Dorian Gray", his novel of vice hidden beneath art, finally found a way to critique society on its own terms. "Lady Windermere's Fan" was first performed on 20 February 1892 at St James's Theatre, packed with the cream of society. On the surface a witty comedy, there is subtle subversion underneath: "it concludes with collusive concealment rather than collective disclosure". The audience, like Lady Windermere, are forced to soften harsh social codes in favour of a more nuanced view. The play was enormously popular, touring the country for months, but largely trashed by conservative critics. The success of the play saw Wilde earn £7,000 in the first year alone (worth £ today).


title: Oscar Wilde

text: His first hit play was followed by "A Woman of No Importance" in 1893, another Victorian comedy, revolving around the spectre of illegitimate births, mistaken identities and late revelations. Wilde was commissioned to write two more plays and "An Ideal Husband", written in 1894, followed in January 1895.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Peter Raby said these essentially English plays were well-pitched: "Wilde, with one eye on the dramatic genius of Ibsen, and the other on the commercial competition in London's West End, targeted his audience with adroit precision".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In mid-1891 Lionel Johnson introduced Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, Johnson's cousin and an undergraduate at Oxford at the time. Known to his family and friends as "Bosie", he was a handsome and spoilt young man. An intimate friendship sprang up between Wilde and Douglas and by 1893 Wilde was infatuated with Douglas and they consorted together regularly in a tempestuous affair. If Wilde was relatively indiscreet, even flamboyant, in the way he acted, Douglas was reckless in public. Wilde, who was earning up to £100 a week from his plays (his salary at "The Woman's World" had been £6), indulged Douglas's every whim: material, artistic, or sexual.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Douglas soon initiated Wilde into the Victorian underground of gay prostitution and Wilde was introduced to a series of young working-class male prostitutes (rent boys) from 1892 onwards by Alfred Taylor. These infrequent rendezvous usually took the same form: Wilde would meet the boy, offer him gifts, dine him privately and then take him to a hotel room. Unlike Wilde's idealised relations with Ross, John Gray, and Douglas, all of whom remained part of his aesthetic circle, these consorts were uneducated and knew nothing of literature. Soon his public and private lives had become sharply divided; in "De Profundis" he wrote to Douglas that "It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement... I did not know that when they were to strike at me it was to be at another's piping and at another's pay."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Douglas and some Oxford friends founded a journal, "The Chameleon", to which Wilde "sent a page of paradoxes originally destined for the "Saturday Review"". "" was to come under attack six months later at Wilde's trial, where he was forced to defend the magazine to which he had sent his work. In any case, it became unique: "The Chameleon" was not published again.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Lord Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, was known for his outspoken atheism, brutish manner and creation of the modern rules of boxing. Queensberry, who feuded regularly with his son, confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred about the nature of their relationship several times, but Wilde was able to mollify him. In June 1894, he called on Wilde at 16 Tite Street, without an appointment, and clarified his stance: "I do not say that you are it, but you look it, and pose at it, which is just as bad. And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you" to which Wilde responded: "I don't know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight". His account in "De Profundis" was less triumphant: "It was when, in my library at Tite Street, waving his small hands in the air in epileptic fury, your father... stood uttering every foul word his foul mind could think of, and screaming the loathsome threats he afterwards with such cunning carried out". Queensberry only described the scene once, saying Wilde had "shown him the white feather", meaning he had acted in a cowardly way. Though trying to remain calm, Wilde saw that he was becoming ensnared in a brutal family quarrel. He did not wish to bear Queensberry's insults, but he knew to confront him could lead to disaster were his liaisons disclosed publicly.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde's final play again returns to the theme of switched identities: the play's two protagonists engage in "bunburying" (the maintenance of alternative personas in the town and country) which allows them to escape Victorian social mores. "Earnest" is even lighter in tone than Wilde's earlier comedies. While their characters often rise to serious themes in moments of crisis, "Earnest" lacks the by-now stock Wildean characters: there is no "woman with a past", the principals are neither villainous nor cunning, simply idle cultivés, and the idealistic young women are not that innocent. Mostly set in drawing rooms and almost completely lacking in action or violence, "Earnest" lacks the self-conscious decadence found in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Salome".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The play, now considered Wilde's masterpiece, was rapidly written in Wilde's artistic maturity in late 1894. It was first performed on 14 February 1895, at St James's Theatre in London, Wilde's second collaboration with George Alexander, the actor-manager. Both author and producer assiduously revised, prepared and rehearsed every line, scene and setting in the months before the premiere, creating a carefully constructed representation of late-Victorian society, yet simultaneously mocking it. During rehearsal Alexander requested that Wilde shorten the play from four acts to three, which the author did. Premieres at St James's seemed like "brilliant parties", and the opening of "The Importance of Being Earnest" was no exception. Allan Aynesworth (who played Algernon) recalled to Hesketh Pearson, "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than [that] first night." "Earnest"s immediate reception as Wilde's best work to date finally crystallised his fame into a solid artistic reputation. In a review of the play for "The Pall Mall Gazette" H. G. Wells wrote, "More humorous dealing with theatrical conventions it would be difficult to imagine. Mr Oscar Wilde has decorated a humour that is Gilbertian with innumerable spangles of that wit that is all his own". "The Importance of Being Earnest" remains his most popular play.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde's professional success was mirrored by an escalation in his feud with Queensberry. Queensberry had planned to insult Wilde publicly by throwing a bouquet of rotting vegetables onto the stage; Wilde was tipped off and had Queensberry barred from entering the theatre. Fifteen weeks later Wilde was in prison.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: On 18 February 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite". Wilde, encouraged by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a private prosecution against Queensberry for libel, since the note amounted to a public accusation that Wilde had committed the crime of sodomy.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Queensberry was arrested for criminal libel, a charge carrying a possible sentence of up to two years in prison. Under the 1843 Libel Act, Queensberry could avoid conviction for libel only by demonstrating that his accusation was in fact true, and furthermore that there was some "public benefit" to having made the accusation openly. Queensberry's lawyers thus hired private detectives to find evidence of Wilde's homosexual liaisons.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde's friends had advised him against the prosecution at a "Saturday Review" meeting at the Café Royal on 24 March 1895; Frank Harris warned him that "they are going to prove sodomy against you" and advised him to flee to France. Wilde and Douglas walked out in a huff, Wilde saying "it is at such moments as these that one sees who are one's true friends". The scene was witnessed by George Bernard Shaw who recalled it to Arthur Ransome a day or so before Ransome's trial for libelling Douglas in 1913. To Ransome it confirmed what he had said in his 1912 book on Wilde: that Douglas's rivalry for Wilde with Robbie Ross and his arguments with his father had resulted in Wilde's public disaster, as Wilde wrote in "De Profundis". Douglas lost his case. Shaw included an account of the argument between Harris, Douglas and Wilde in the preface to his play "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The libel trial became a "cause célèbre" as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Taylor and Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of private detectives had directed Queensberry's lawyers, led by Edward Carson QC, to the world of the Victorian underground. Wilde's association with blackmailers and male prostitutes, cross-dressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses since they too were accomplices to the crimes of which Wilde was accused.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The trial opened at the Old Bailey on 3 April 1895 before Justice Richard Henn Collins amid scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. The extent of the evidence massed against Wilde forced him to declare meekly, "I am the prosecutor in this case". Wilde's lawyer, Sir Edward Clarke, opened the case by pre-emptively asking Wilde about two suggestive letters Wilde had written to Douglas, which the defence had in its possession. He characterised the first as a "prose sonnet" and admitted that the "poetical language" might seem strange to the court but claimed its intent was innocent. Wilde stated that the letters had been obtained by blackmailers who had attempted to extort money from him, but he had refused, suggesting they should take the £60 (equal to £ today) offered, "unusual for a prose piece of that length". He claimed to regard the letters as works of art rather than something of which to be ashamed.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Carson, a fellow Dubliner who had attended Trinity College Dublin at the same time as Wilde, cross-examined Wilde on how he perceived the moral content of his works. Wilde replied with characteristic wit and flippancy, claiming that works of art are not capable of being moral or immoral but only well or poorly made, and that only "brutes and illiterates", whose views on art "are incalculably stupid", would make such judgements about art. Carson, a leading barrister, diverged from the normal practice of asking closed questions. Carson pressed Wilde on each topic from every angle, squeezing out nuances of meaning from Wilde's answers, removing them from their aesthetic context and portraying Wilde as evasive and decadent. While Wilde won the most laughs from the court, Carson scored the most legal points. To undermine Wilde's credibility, and to justify Queensberry's description of Wilde as a "posing somdomite", Carson drew from the witness an admission of his capacity for "posing", by demonstrating that he had lied about his age under oath. Playing on this, he returned to the topic throughout his cross-examination. Carson also tried to justify Queensberry's characterisation by quoting from Wilde's novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray", referring in particular to a scene in the second chapter, in which Lord Henry Wotton explains his decadent philosophy to Dorian, an "innocent young man", in Carson's words.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Carson then moved to the factual evidence and questioned Wilde about his friendships with younger, lower-class men. Wilde admitted being on a first-name basis and lavishing gifts upon them, but insisted that nothing untoward had occurred and that the men were merely good friends of his. Carson repeatedly pointed out the unusual nature of these relationships and insinuated that the men were prostitutes. Wilde replied that he did not believe in social barriers, and simply enjoyed the society of young men. Then Carson asked Wilde directly whether he had ever kissed a certain servant boy, Wilde responded, "Oh, dear no. He was a particularly plain boy – unfortunately ugly – I pitied him for it." Carson pressed him on the answer, repeatedly asking why the boy's ugliness was relevant. Wilde hesitated, then for the first time became flustered: "You sting me and insult me and try to unnerve me; and at times one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In his opening speech for the defence, Carson announced that he had located several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had had sex with Wilde. On the advice of his lawyers, Wilde dropped the prosecution. Queensberry was found not guilty, as the court declared that his accusation that Wilde was "posing as a Somdomite " was justified, "true in substance and in fact". Under the Libel Act 1843, Queensberry's acquittal rendered Wilde legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his defence, which left Wilde bankrupt.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. Robbie Ross found Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel, Pont Street, Knightsbridge, with Reginald Turner. Both men advised Wilde to go at once to Dover and try to get a boat to France; his mother advised him to stay and fight. Wilde, lapsing into inaction, could only say, "The train has gone. It's too late." On 6 April 1895, Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, a term meaning homosexual acts not amounting to buggery (an offence under a separate statute). At Wilde's instruction, Ross and Wilde's butler forced their way into the bedroom and library of 16 Tite Street, packing some personal effects, manuscripts, and letters. Wilde was then imprisoned on remand at Holloway, where he received daily visits from Douglas.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on 26 April 1895, before Mr Justice Charles. Wilde pleaded not guilty. He had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to give evidence; he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde. Fearing persecution, Ross and many others also left the United Kingdom during this time. Under cross examination Wilde was at first hesitant, then spoke eloquently:


title: Oscar Wilde

text: This response was counter-productive in a legal sense as it only served to reinforce the charges of homosexual behaviour. The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict. Wilde's counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, was finally able to get a magistrate to allow Wilde and his friends to post bail. The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the £5,000 surety required by the court, having disagreed with Wilde's treatment by the press and the courts. Wilde was freed from Holloway and, shunning attention, went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of his firm friends. Edward Carson approached Frank Lockwood QC, the Solicitor General and asked "Can we not let up on the fellow now?" Lockwood answered that he would like to do so, but feared that the case had become too politicised to be dropped.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The final trial was presided over by Mr Justice Wills. On 25 May 1895 Wilde and Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. The judge described the sentence, the maximum allowed, as "totally inadequate for a case such as this", and that the case was "the worst case I have ever tried". Wilde's response "And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?" was drowned out in cries of "Shame" in the courtroom.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Although it is widely believed that the charges were related to Wilde's consensual activities, "The Trials of Oscar Wilde", which includes an original transcript of the libel trial (which came to light in 2000), suggests that he took advantage of teenagers. Antony Edmonds feels that Wilde would have faced prosecution today: "For example, he certainly paid for sex with youths under the age of 18 which is a criminal offence. But even if his activities had led only to exposure and not to arrest, he would have been savagely pilloried in the media. Wilde was 39 when he seduced Alphonse Conway, and Conway was an inexperienced boy of 16". However, Oscar Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, argues, "One is taking it out of context, he was not an odious predator. The boys seemed to be willing partners and there appeared to be a relationship going on between him and them". Marriageable age (and the age of consent) in England was 16 at the time, having been 13 as recently as 1885: the 1875 Offences against the Person Act 1875 raised the age of consent to 13 years old, and a decade later, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 raised the age of consent to 16 years old, just ten years before the trial.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: He first entered Newgate Prison in London for processing, then was moved to Pentonville Prison, where the "hard labour" to which he had been sentenced consisted of many hours of walking a treadmill and picking oakum (separating the fibres in scraps of old navy ropes), and where prisoners were allowed to read only the Bible and "The Pilgrim's Progress".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: A few months later he was moved to Wandsworth Prison in London. Inmates there also followed the regimen of "hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed", which wore harshly on Wilde's delicate health. In November he collapsed during chapel from illness and hunger. His right ear drum was ruptured in the fall, an injury that later contributed to his death. He spent two months in the infirmary.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Richard B. Haldane, the Liberal MP and reformer, visited Wilde and had him transferred in November to Reading Gaol, west of London on 23 November 1895. The transfer itself was the lowest point of his incarceration, as a crowd jeered and spat at him on the railway platform. He spent the remainder of his sentence there, addressed and identified only as "C.3.3" – the occupant of the third cell on the third floor of C ward.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: About five months after Wilde arrived at Reading Gaol, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was brought to Reading to await his trial for murdering his wife on 29 March 1896; on 17 June Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution, which took place on Tuesday, 7 July 1896 – the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. From Wooldridge's hanging, Wilde later wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen, but Haldane eventually succeeded in allowing access to books and writing materials. Wilde requested, among others, the Bible in French; Italian and German grammars; some Ancient Greek texts; Dante's "Divine Comedy"; Joris-Karl Huysmans's new French novel about Christian redemption, "En route"; and essays by St Augustine, Cardinal Newman and Walter Pater.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Between January and March 1897 Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas. He was not allowed to send it, but was permitted to take it with him when released from prison. In reflective mode, Wilde coldly examines his career to date, how he had been a colourful "agent provocateur" in Victorian society, his art, like his paradoxes, seeking to subvert as well as sparkle. His own estimation of himself was: one who "stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age". It was from these heights that his life with Douglas began, and Wilde examines that particularly closely, repudiating him for what Wilde finally sees as his arrogance and vanity: he had not forgotten Douglas' remark, when he was ill, "When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting." Wilde blamed himself, though, for the ethical degradation of character that he allowed Douglas to bring about in him and took responsibility for his own fall, "I am here for having tried to put your father in prison." The first half concludes with Wilde forgiving Douglas, for his own sake as much as Douglas's. The second half of the letter traces Wilde's spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment through his prison reading. He realised that his ordeal had filled his soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde was released from prison on 19 May 1897 and sailed that evening for Dieppe, France. He never returned to the United Kingdom.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: On his release, he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out Wilde's instructions to send a copy to Douglas (who later denied having received it). The letter was partially published in 1905 as "De Profundis"; its complete and correct publication first occurred in 1962 in "The Letters of Oscar Wilde".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Though Wilde's health had suffered greatly from the harshness and diet of prison, he had a feeling of spiritual renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, Wilde wept. "I intend to be received into the Catholic Church before long", Wilde told a journalist who asked about his religious intentions.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: He spent his last three years impoverished and in exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after Saint Sebastian and the titular character of "Melmoth the Wanderer" (a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, Wilde's great-uncle). Wilde wrote two long letters to the editor of the "Daily Chronicle", describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating penal reform. His discussion of the dismissal of Warder Martin for giving biscuits to an anaemic child prisoner repeated the themes of the corruption and degeneration of punishment that he had earlier outlined in "The Soul of Man under Socialism".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde spent mid-1897 with Robert Ross in the seaside village of Berneval-le-Grand in northern France, where he wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", narrating the execution of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, who murdered his wife in a rage at her infidelity. It moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners. No attempt is made to assess the justice of the laws which convicted them but rather the poem highlights the brutality of the punishment that all convicts share. Wilde juxtaposes the executed man and himself with the line "Yet each man kills the thing he loves". He adopted the proletarian ballad form and the author was credited as "C33", Wilde's cell number in Reading Gaol. He suggested that it be published in "Reynolds' Magazine", "because it circulates widely among the criminal classes – to which I now belong – for once I will be read by my peers – a new experience for me". It was an immediate roaring commercial success, going through seven editions in less than two years, only after which "[Oscar Wilde]" was added to the title page, though many in literary circles had known Wilde to be the author.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Although Douglas had been the cause of his misfortunes, he and Wilde were reunited in August 1897 at Rouen. This meeting was disapproved of by the friends and families of both men. Constance Wilde was already refusing to meet Wilde or allow him to see their sons, though she sent him money – three pounds a week. During the latter part of 1897, Wilde and Douglas lived together near Naples for a few months until they were separated by their families under the threat of cutting off all funds.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde's final address was at the dingy Hôtel d'Alsace (now known as L'Hôtel), on rue des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris. "This poverty really breaks one's heart: it is so "sale" [filthy], so utterly depressing, so hopeless. Pray do what you can" he wrote to his publisher. He corrected and published "An Ideal Husband" and "The Importance of Being Earnest", the proofs of which, according to Ellmann, show a man "very much in command of himself and of the play" but he refused to write anything else: "I can write, but have lost the joy of writing".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: He wandered the boulevards alone and spent what little money he had on alcohol. A series of embarrassing chance encounters with hostile English visitors, or Frenchmen he had known in better days, drowned his spirit. Soon Wilde was sufficiently confined to his hotel to joke, on one of his final trips outside, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go". On 12 October 1900 he sent a telegram to Ross: "Terribly weak. Please come". His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping with the dead!" "I am sure", Turner replied, "that you must have been the life and soul of the party."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: By 25 November 1900 Wilde had developed meningitis, then called "cerebral meningitis". Robbie Ross arrived on 29 November, sent for a priest, and Wilde was conditionally baptised into the Catholic Church by Fr Cuthbert Dunne, a Passionist priest from Dublin, Wilde having been baptised in the Church of Ireland and having moreover a recollection of Catholic baptism as a child, a fact later attested to by the minister of the sacrament, Fr Lawrence Fox. Fr Dunne recorded the baptism,


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde died of meningitis on 30 November 1900. Different opinions are given as to the cause of the disease: Richard Ellmann judged it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (from the prison injury, see above) treated for several years ("") and made no allusion to syphilis.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris; in 1909 his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery, inside the city. His tomb there was designed by Sir Jacob Epstein. It was commissioned by Robert Ross, who asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes, which were duly transferred in 1950. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitalia, which were initially censored by French Authorities with a golden leaf. The genitals have since been vandalised; their current whereabouts are unknown. In 2000, Leon Johnson, a multimedia artist, installed a silver prosthesis to replace them. In 2011, the tomb was cleaned of the many lipstick marks left there by admirers and a glass barrier was installed to prevent further marks or damage.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and Crime Act 2017 (homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967). The 2017 Act implements what is known informally as the Alan Turing law.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: On 14 February 1995, Wilde was commemorated with a stained-glass window at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. The memorial, above the monument to Geoffrey Chaucer, was unveiled by his grandson Merlin Holland, while Sir John Gielgud read from the final part of "De Profundis" and Dame Judi Dench read an extract from "The Importance of Being Earnest".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In 2014 Wilde was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: The Oscar Wilde Temple, an installation by visual artists McDermott & McGough, opened in 2017 in cooperation with Church of the Village in New York City, then moved to Studio Voltaire in London the next year.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde's life has been the subject of numerous biographies since his death. The earliest were memoirs by those who knew him: often they are personal or impressionistic accounts which can be good character sketches, but are sometimes factually unreliable. Frank Harris, his friend and editor, wrote a biography, "Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions" (1916); though prone to exaggeration and sometimes factually inaccurate, it offers a good literary portrait of Wilde. Lord Alfred Douglas wrote two books about his relationship with Wilde. "Oscar Wilde and Myself" (1914), largely ghost-written by T. W. H. Crosland, vindictively reacted to Douglas's discovery that "De Profundis" was addressed to him and defensively tried to distance him from Wilde's scandalous reputation. Both authors later regretted their work. Later, in "Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up" (1939) and his "Autobiography" he was more sympathetic to Wilde. Of Wilde's other close friends, Robert Sherard; Robert Ross, his literary executor; and Charles Ricketts variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence. The first more or less objective biography of Wilde came about when Hesketh Pearson wrote "Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit" (1946). In 1954 Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland published his memoir "Son of Oscar Wilde", which recounts the difficulties Wilde's wife and children faced after his imprisonment. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1989.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: "Oscar Wilde, a critical study" by Arthur Ransome was published in 1912. The book only briefly mentioned Wilde's life, but subsequently Ransome (and The Times Book Club) were sued for libel by Lord Alfred Douglas. At the High Court in London in April 1913 Douglas lost the libel action after a reading of "De Profundis" refuted his claims.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Richard Ellmann wrote his 1987 biography "Oscar Wilde", for which he posthumously won a National (US) Book Critics Circle Award in 1988 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. The book was the basis for the 1997 film "Wilde", directed by Brian Gilbert and starring Stephen Fry as the title character.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Neil McKenna's 2003 biography, "The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde," offers an exploration of Wilde's sexuality. Often speculative in nature, it was widely criticised for its pure conjecture and lack of scholarly rigour. Thomas Wright's "Oscar's Books" (2008) explores Wilde's reading from his childhood in Dublin to his death in Paris. After tracking down many books that once belonged to Wilde's Tite Street library (dispersed at the time of his trials), Wright was the first to examine Wilde's marginalia.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In 2018, Matthew Sturgis' "Oscar: A Life", was published in London. The book incorporates rediscovered letters and other documents and is the most extensively researched biography of Wilde to appear since 1988. Rupert Everett starred as Wilde and wrote the screenplay for "The Happy Prince" (2018), a biographical drama film about Wilde following his release from prison.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Parisian literati also produced several biographies and monographs on him. André Gide wrote "In Memoriam, Oscar Wilde" and Wilde also features in his journals. Thomas Louis, who had earlier translated books on Wilde into French, produced his own "L'esprit d'Oscar Wilde" in 1920. Modern books include Philippe Jullian's "Oscar Wilde", and "L'affaire Oscar Wilde, ou, Du danger de laisser la justice mettre le nez dans nos draps" ("The Oscar Wilde Affair, or, On the Danger of Allowing Justice to put its Nose in our Sheets") by , a French religious historian.


title: Anna Faris

text: Anna Kay Faris (; born November 29, 1976) is an American actress. She rose to prominence for her work in comedic roles, particularly the lead part of Cindy Campbell in the "Scary Movie" film series (2000–2006). She has appeared in a number of films, including "The Hot Chick" (2002), "May" (2002), "Lost in Translation" (2003), "Brokeback Mountain" (2005), "Just Friends" (2005), "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" (2006), "Smiley Face" (2007), "The House Bunny" (2008), "What's Your Number?" (2011), "The Dictator" (2012), and "Overboard" (2018).


title: Anna Faris

text: On television, Faris had a recurring role as Erica in the final season of the NBC sitcom "Friends" (2004) and starred as Christy Plunkett in the CBS sitcom "Mom" (2013–2020). She has also had voice-over roles in the film series "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" (2009–2013) and "Alvin and the Chipmunks" (2009–2015), as well as "The Emoji Movie" (2017).


title: Anna Faris

text: In 2015, Faris launched "Unqualified", an advice podcast, and in 2017, her memoir of the same name was published, which became a "New York Times" Best Seller.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris was born on November 29, 1976, in Baltimore, Maryland, the second child of Jack, a sociology professor, and Karen Faris, a special education teacher. Both her parents, natives of Seattle, Washington, were living in Baltimore as her father had accepted a professorship at Towson University. When Faris was six, the family moved to Edmonds, Washington. Her father worked at the University of Washington as a vice president of internal communications, and later headed the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association, while her mother taught at Seaview Elementary School in Edmonds.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris has an older brother, Robert, who is also a sociologist and professor at the University of California, Davis. In interviews, she has described her parents as "ultra liberal" and said that she and her brother were raised in an irreligious but "very conservative", traditional atmosphere. At age six, her parents enrolled her in a community drama class for children, as they usually encouraged her to act. She enjoyed watching plays and eventually produced her own material in her bedroom with neighborhood friends. She has said in interviews she often imagined her orthodontal retainer talking to her, and that she pictured herself "on talk shows to talk about [her] talking retainer".


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris attended Edmonds-Woodway High School (where she graduated in 1994), and while studying, performed onstage with a Seattle repertory company and in nationally broadcast radio plays. She once described herself as "a drama-club dork," and said she used to wear a Christmas-tree skirt in school. She then attended the University of Washington and earned a degree in English literature in 1999. Despite her love of acting, she admitted she "never really thought [she] wanted to become a movie star" and continued to act "just to make some extra money," hoping one day to publish a novel. After graduating from college, she was going to travel to London, where she had a receptionist job lined up at an ad agency. However, she ended up living in Los Angeles "at the last minute," once she committed to the idea of pursuing mainstream acting, and eventually got the starring role in "Scary Movie." At 22, she lived in a studio apartment at The Ravenswood in Hancock Park.


title: Anna Faris

text: Her parents encouraged her to pursue acting when she was young, and she gave her first professional performance when she was 9 years old in a three-month run of Arthur Miller's play "Danger: Memory!" at the Seattle Repertory Theater. She made US$250 for the role, which was "huge" for her at the time. "I felt like I was rolling in the dough," she recalled. She went on to play Scout in a production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" at the Issaquah, Washington, Village Theatre, and played the title character in "Heidi" and Rebecca in "Our Town". While in high school, she appeared in a frozen yogurt TV commercial. Around this time, "my third or fourth job was a training video for Red Robin, which is a burger chain out West. I play, like, the perfect hostess. And I think they still use it," she said in May 2012.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris had a small role in the made-for-TV movie "Deception: A Mother's Secret", where she played a character named Liz, and was later cast in a supporting role in the small-scale drama "Eden", which screened at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Her first major film role came shortly after college, in independent slasher film "Lovers Lane" (1999), where she played an ill-fated cheerleader. A B-movie, it received a straight-to-video release and little attention. Critical reception was mixed, but for her part, Faris got her early acting reviews by writers; "efilmcritic.com" Greg Muskewitz found her the film's "one center of interest".


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris's breakout role came in 2000 when she starred in the horror-comedy parody film "Scary Movie", portraying Cindy Campbell, a play on the character of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) in the slasher thriller "Scream". It marked her first starring credit, as she had appeared only in small and supporting parts in theater plays and low-budget features. She found the experience a "great boot camp" for her, as she told UK's "The Guardian" in 2009, explaining that she "hadn't done much before that. With those movies, you have to be so exact with your props and the physical comedy and everything, so it was a great training ground." "Scary Movie" was a major commercial success, ranking atop the box office charts with a US$42 million opening weekend gross. It went on to earn US$278 million worldwide. For her performance, Faris received nominations for the Breakthrough Female Performance and Best Kiss Awards at the 2001 MTV Movie Awards. She subsequently reprised her role in "Scary Movie 2", released on July 4, 2001.Her next film role was that of the lesbian colleague of a lonely and traumatized young woman in the independent psychological thriller "May" (2002), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released in selected theaters. In its review, "The Digital Fix" found it "one of the finest examples of independent American genre filmmaking" and asserted that Faris played her role "with an infectious level of enthusiasm, frequently skirting the border between a believable performance and one that is completely over the top, but always managing to come down on the right side." Later in 2002, she starred alongside Rob Schneider and Rachel McAdams in the comedy "The Hot Chick", about a teenage girl whose mind is magically swapped with that of a 30-year-old criminal. It was a modest commercial success, grossing US$54 million worldwide.


title: Anna Faris

text: In 2003, Faris was "cast last-minute" opposite Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Sofia Coppola's drama "Lost in Translation", where she played a "bubbly, extroverted" actress getting in with an aging actor in Tokyo. She felt the film gave her the chance to get people to know her body of work a "little more," and called it "the best experience of [her] life" at the time. While "Variety" remarked that Faris "contributes an amusing turn" as her "vacuous movie star" character, "New York Times" concluded that the actress, "who barely registers in the "Scary Movie" pictures—and she's the star—comes to full, lovable and irritating life as a live-wire starlet [...] this movie will secure her a career." Budgeted at US$4 million, "Lost in Translation" grossed US$119.7 million globally. Also in 2003, she portrayed Cindy Campbell for the third time in "Scary Movie 3".


title: Anna Faris

text: In 2004, Faris debuted on the last season of the sitcom "Friends" in the recurring role of Erica, the mother whose twin babies are adopted by Chandler and Monica; and in the summer that year, she filmed a small part in Ang Lee's drama "Brokeback Mountain" (2005). As her character had just "one scene in the movie," she only spent two days on set in Calgary. For the film, Faris, along with her co-stars, received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris starred in the 2005 comedies "Waiting..." and "Just Friends", both alongside Ryan Reynolds. "Waiting..." was an independent production about restaurant employees who collectively stave off boredom and adulthood with their antics. Budgeted at US$3 million, it made US$18.6 million, but a "View London" reviewer, remarking that the director had "assembled a decent comic cast," felt that "he gives them practically nothing to do. Reynolds and [...] Faris were hilarious together in "Just Friends", so it's a shame that their talents are so wasted here." In "Just Friends", Faris portrayed Samantha James, an emerging, self-obsessed pop singer landing in New Jersey with a formerly overweight nerd (played by co-star Reynolds), now a successful record producer. It grossed US$50.9 million around the globe, and earned Faris nominations for an MTV Movie Award and two Teen Choice Awards.


title: Anna Faris

text: She played Cindy Campbell for the fourth and final time in "Scary Movie 4", which premiered on April 14, 2006. It was intended as the final chapter in the franchise, but a fifth feature was released on April 12, 2013; Faris did not return to appear in it. Also in 2006, she appeared opposite Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson in Ivan Reitman's romantic comedy "My Super Ex-Girlfriend", playing Hannah, the co-worker of a man (Wilson) dating a neurotic and aggressive superhero (Thurman). While critical response was mixed, it made US$61 million worldwide, and Faris and Thurman both got MTV Movie Award nominations for Best Fight.


title: Anna Faris

text: In Gregg Araki's independent stoner comedy "Smiley Face" (2007), Faris starred as Jane F, a young woman who has a series of misadventures after eating a large number of cupcakes laced with cannabis. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received a limited theatrical release in Los Angeles. Reviews were largely positive; according to the film-critics aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, writers agreed that her "bright performance and Gregg Araki's sharp direction" made the film "more than [the] average stoner comedy." It earned her the "Stonette of the Year" prize at "High Times" magazine's Stony Awards.


title: Anna Faris

text: She appeared opposite Diane Keaton and Jon Heder in the small-scale comedy "Mama's Boy", playing an aspiring singer and the love interest of a self-absorbed 29-year-old (Heder). Distributed for a limited release to certain parts of the United States only, it premiered on November 30, 2007, to lukewarm critical and commercial responses. She followed it with a starring part in a mainstream feature, Fred Wolf's comedy "The House Bunny, where s"he appeared as Shelley, a former Playboy bunny who signs up to be the "house mother" of an unpopular university sorority after being expelled from the Playboy Mansion. Although it received average reviews, critics were unanimously favorable towards Faris's part, most of them agreeing, according to website Rotten Tomatoes, that she was "game" in what they called a "middling, formulaic comedy." The film was released on August 22, 2008, in the US, and made US$70 million in its global theatrical run.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris's first movie of 2009 was the British science fiction-comedy "Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel", which follows two social outcasts and their cynical friend as they attempt to navigate a time-travel conundrum in the middle of a British pub. Faris played Cassie, a girl from the future who sets the adventure in motion. "The Guardian" described her appearance as a "bewildered cameo". It received a theatrical release only in the UK, and later had several television premiere airings across Europe. In the black comedy "Observe and Report" (2009), Faris co-starred opposite Seth Rogen, portraying a bitchy cosmetic counter employee on whom Rogen has a crush. She was drawn to appear in the movie, as it gave Faris the opportunity to play an "awful character" rather than the usual "roles where you have to win the audience over or win the guy over, and be charming." Controversy arose regarding a scene where Rogen has sex with Faris's intoxicated character, with various advocacy groups commenting that it constituted date rape. Budgeted at US$18 million, "Observe and Report" made US$26 million. Faris voiced a weather intern and the love interest of a wannabe scientist in the animated "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" as well as Jeanette Miller (one of the chipettes) in the live-action hybrid "", both of which were box office successes.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris starred in the computer-animated live-action film "Yogi Bear" as a nature documentary filmmaker befriending the titular character. It was released by Warner Bros. on December 17, 2010, receiving largely negative reviews, with many critics unimpressed by its screenplay. "The Hollywood Reporter", while admitting to find her "very talented" in its verdict, wondered "what on earth" made her agree to play her role. The film, however, made US$201 million worldwide.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris's subsequent film release was the retro comedy "Take Me Home Tonight", about a group of friends partying on one summer night during the 1980s. Filmed in 2007, it received a wide theatrical release four years later, on March 4, 2011, to negative reviews and lackluster earnings. Faris, however, obtained a Teen Choice Award nomination for Choice Movie Actress – Comedy. She next had the starring part and served as executive producer of "What's Your Number?", where she appeared with Chris Evans. In the movie, she played a woman who looks back at the past 19 men she's had relationships with and wonders if one of them might be her one true love. It garnered generally mediocre reviews, who concluded that the "comic timing" of Faris was "sharp as always," but felt it was wasted in "this predictable, boilerplate comedy." It was released on September 30, 2011, and made US$30 million worldwide. She also reprised her voice-over role in "", released on December 16, 2011.


title: Anna Faris

text: Her next film role was that of a human rights activist befriending a childish autocrat in the political satire "The Dictator" (2012), co-starring Sacha Baron Cohen. Faris, who was eager to work with Baron Cohen as she had been his fan "for years," stated that "90 percent" of the acting in the film was improvised. Critics gave it decent reviews, with Faris's role garnering a similar reception; "Los Angeles Times" called her "the film's standout" and stated that when "she opens her mouth, that rasp that has made her so much fun to watch (the ""Scary Movie"" franchise most memorably) takes hold and turns the dialogue inside out. The kind of true-believer purity she brings to Zoey's eco-terrorizing rants comes close to stealing Baron Cohen's comic thunder." The picture was a box office success, grossing US$179 million globally, and earned Faris the Star of the Year Award at the National Association of Theatre Owners.


title: Anna Faris

text: In 2013, Faris acted for the third time with then-husband Chris Pratt, following "Take Me Home Tonight" and "What's Your Number?" in a segment of "Movie 43", an independent anthology black comedy that featured 14 different storylines, with each segment having a different director. The film was universally panned by critics, with the "Chicago Sun-Times" calling it "the "Citizen Kane" of awful." In the British romantic comedy "I Give It a Year" (2013), Faris played an old flame of a writer (Rafe Spall) who hastily tied the knot. Released shortly after "Movie 43", the film received mixed reviews and was a commercial success in the UK.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris obtained the main role of the CBS sitcom series "Mom", which debuted on September 23, 2013. Her character is Christy, a newly sober single mom who tries to pull her life together in Napa Valley. As she landed the part, the show gave Faris, who had guest-starred in various television programs until then, her first full-time television role. Throughout its eight-season run, the sitcom has become the third most-watched comedy on television, and has received generally favorable reviews; "Vulture" called her "the most talented comic actress of her generation," and "Boston Herald" critic, Mark A. Perigard wrote in his verdict: "This is dark material, yet Faris balances it with a genuine winsomeness, able to wring laughs out of the most innocuous lines." She has been nominated for one Prism Award and two People's Choice Awards. In 2020, Faris left the show after seven seasons.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris reprised her voice-role in the animated science-fiction comedy sequel "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2", released in theaters four days after "Mom" premiered on television. Like the first film, "Meatballs 2" was a commercial success, grossing US$274.3 million worldwide. The following year, she had an uncredited cameo in the closing-credits sequence of the action-comedy "22 Jump Street", appearing in a segment called "30 Jump Street: Flight Academy".


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris and "Mom" co-star Allison Janney hosted the 41st People's Choice Awards, which were held January 7, 2015. In November, she launched "Unqualified", a free-form advice podcast; along with producer Sim Sarna, she is the host of the show, which consists of interviews with celebrities and cultural figures, followed by personal phone-calls to listeners asking for relationship and other advice. Faris was inspired to create the podcast after listening to "Serial", and explaining the evolution of the idea, she said: "I love to talk about relationships; that's all I want to talk about with my friends. And then I just thought, I kind of want a hobby [...] So I started asking around to some friends, and I asked this technical producer guy what equipment I should buy on Amazon. And I just started recording my friends when they would come over. And then with my dear friend Sim, we started flushing out the whole thing, which clearly there's still a lot more flushing out to do. It started out as a dinky hobby." As of May 2018, 122 episodes have been released.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris reprised her voice-over role in "", the fourth installment in the "Alvin and the Chipmunks" film series. In 2016, she had a brief appearance as an exaggerated version of herself in the action-comedy "Keanu", and starred in the music video for the song "Hold On To Me" by Mondo Cozmo. In 2017, Faris voiced one of the lead characters, Jailbreak, in the CG animated comedy "The Emoji Movie" (originally set to be voiced by Ilana Glazer), which was universally panned by critics. It was also her second Sony Animation movie outside of the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris published her first book, "Unqualified", in October 2017; it was described as part "memoir—including stories about being "the short girl" in elementary school, finding and keeping female friends, and dealing with the pressures of the entertainment industry and parenthood—part humorous, unflinching advice from her hit podcast." The memoir became one of the "top 20 blockbuster books of autumn," according to Amazon, and received a positive critical response; "The New York Times" found the book to be "goofily self-deprecating, casually profane and occasionally raw, earnest and blunt, like Ms. Faris herself," and "The Ringer" remarked: ""Unqualified" is observant, sharp, and startlingly revealing, not only about Faris's romantic history, but of the broader discrepancies between modern male and female Hollywood stardom writ large."


title: Anna Faris

text: In "Overboard" (2018), a remake of the 1987 film of the same name starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Faris played a single, working-class mother who convinces a spoiled wealthy playboy (Eugenio Derbez) with amnesia that they are married. While publications such as "Indie Wire" and "Film Inquiry" praised the chemistry between Derbez and Faris, most critics felt that the film made "poor use of the ever-charming" Faris. Her first leading film role since 2011's "What's Your Number", "Overboard" was a commercial success, grossing over US$91.2 million worldwide.


title: Anna Faris

text: During her career, Faris has been called one of the "most talented comedic actresses" of her generation by several publications. "Cosmopolitan" magazine named her "the Cosmo's Fun Fearless Female of the Year" in 2010, and Tad Friend described her in "The New Yorker" as "Hollywood's most original comedic actress." A "Vulture" article called Faris "her generation's Goldie Hawn" and she has been often compared to comedian Lucille Ball. "The Wrap", likening her to Ball, asserted the actress "has impeccable timing and isn't afraid to cast dignity aside in pursuit of a hearty laugh," while "NPR" described her as "Hawn's heir apparent—a modern-day Lucille Ball with an up-for-anything mania and a gift for the low arts of slapstick and pulling faces."


title: Anna Faris

text: Although some of her movies have been critically panned or flopped at the box office, Faris remains often acclaimed for her portrayals in most of them; "The A.V. Club" once stated it was a "pleasure to watch" Faris on screen and described her as "a gifted, likeable comedian who tends to be the best element of many terrible movies." "Slate" magazine's Dana Stevens wrote in her review for Faris's vehicle "What's Your Number?": "More than any contemporary comedienne I can think of [...] Faris demonstrates this fearless anything-for-a-laugh quality. It would be wonderful to see her in a movie that tested the limits of that audacity, rather than forcing her to tamp it down." Most critics agree that her 2007 independent comedy "Smiley Face" remains one of her best films; "Los Angeles Times" remarked that this film was "an opportunity for the actress to show that she can carry a movie composed of often hilarious nonstop misadventures. No matter how outrageously or foolishly Faris' Jane behaves, she remains blissfully appealing—such are Faris' fearless comedic skills and the freshness of her radiant blond beauty."


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris has appeared on the covers and photo sessions of several magazines throughout her career; she graced the September 2000 cover of "Raygun", and in subsequent years the list has included "Playboy", "Self", "Cosmopolitan", among others. She was featured in "GQ UK" June 2001 pictorial of "Young Hollywood." She has been listed as No. 57, No. 39, No. 42 and No. 44 in "Maxim" magazine's "Hot 100" in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2011 respectively. In 2009, she was ranked No. 60 in "FHM" "100 Sexiest Women in the World," and ranked No. 96 on the same list in 2010. "Ask Men" also featured her as No. 78 on its 2009 "100 Most Desirable Women in the World" list.


title: Anna Faris

text: Faris started dating actor Ben Indra shortly after they met on the set of the 1999 indie slasher film "Lovers Lane". They married in June 2004. Faris filed for divorce in April 2007 citing irreconcilable differences. As part of their divorce agreement in February 2008, she agreed to pay Indra $900,000 in addition to other property and acting royalties.


title: Anna Faris

text: During her divorce from Indra and after filming "The House Bunny", Faris got breast implants, which she first revealed in an interview with "The New Yorker" in April 2011. She said that she felt sexy wearing a padded bra to play a Playboy bunny and that her decision "wasn't a career thing—it was a divorce thing." She has since been open about her augmentation, saying in her memoir "Unqualified" that she had previously been insecure about her breasts. In an April 2018 interview with "Women's Health", Faris said that she is "still floored that I did it, because I am a staunch feminist. I kept thinking, 'Am I betraying my own gender by doing this?'... But it came down to a really simple thing: I wanted to fill out a bikini. What would that feel like?"