Favorite Pic of the Day for July 6th

Above:

Rendezvous by StudioMGphotography

 

Happy Birthday today July 6th

Happy 80th to actor Sylvester Stallone!

Check out more of the Italian Stallion HERE:

& more of today's BIRTHDAYS HERE:

Love these shots of Stallone taken by paparazzo Ron Galella in 1979.  Galella was 'lurking' outside of Stallone's Malibu home in the early morning when the actor came out wearing just his purple briefs to fetch his morning paper.  Thankfully Sly seemed to take it all in stride, unlike Marlon Brando, who knocked Galella out a few years earlier for trying to take his picture in New York.

Seasonal Sightings:

Ear Buds: I Know Him So Well

No one in your life is with you constantly 
No one is completely on your side
And though I'd move my world to be with him
Still, the gap between us is too wide

Goal, to find someone who looks at you the way Cole Escola looks at Aaron Tveit when he sings...  I love both Escola and Tveit, and have followed both of their careers for years.  Tveit I first discovered during his turn in Next To Normal, and Escola since cracking up over his line delivery on Hulu's Difficult People.

Recently I went down the Youtube Rabbit hole of Tviet's performances in Miscast.  Miscast is the annual benefit concert hosted by MCC Theater in New York City, where Broadway stars perform songs from roles they would not traditionally be cast in. The gala features famous actors singing opposite their usual type, offering thrilling, gender-bent, or otherwise unexpected renditions of iconic musical numbers.  I think I discovered Miscast after seeing a video of Tveit  performing Take Me or Leave Me from Rent with Gavin Creel.

I think my favorite Tveit Miscast performances is his 2022 performance of Mein Herr from Cabaret.  Tveit gives it his all, and looks incredibly hot doing so. (check it out on Youtbue HERE:)  For his 2025 performance, Tveit sang I Know Him So Well from Chess, about month before the revival opened on Broadway. Tveit shared his performance that night was a tribute to his friend Gavin Creel.

Cole Escola also performed that evening, singing Iowa Stubborn from The Music Man.  I was struck as Aaron was singing by Escola looking so bewitched by his performance.  Now, I could be reading too much into it, Escola might have been worried about just farting, or thinking about what he was having for dinner.  Maybe it's because Tveit's voices so bewitches me, but watching Escola in the background was a fun highlight for me.

Toby Stephens: Actors & SKIN

Although born to two famous parents, Maggie Smith and Sir. Robert Stephens, English actor Toby Stephens didn't rely just on his parents and his good looks.   Stephens honed his acting skills by studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.   Stephens began acting in 1992 in both television and film, along with roles on radio dramas and a long line of theatre roles.

Stephens is also uniquely tied to the James Bond franchise as one of the few actors to play both a primary Bond villain and James Bond himself.   He played the diamond-smuggling, adrenaline-obsessed billionaire Gustav Graves in the 2002 film Die Another Day opposite Pierce Brosnan.  Although he never played the famous spy on screen, Stephens is the official voice of James Bond for the BBC Radio 4 adaptations of Ian Fleming's novels. 

One of my biggest TV crushes remains Nick Nelson from Heartstopper.  Actor Kit Connor is another English ginger, and I love me a ginger.  Stephens reminds me a bit of an older Connor, and should play his father in a future piece.  In many of Stephen's nude scenes we get a hint of ginger with a flash of pubes.  

The true story of a group of Cambridge University Students who are recruited to spy for the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.

It's interesting that both of the nude scenes I'm featuring here did not occur in films, but in dramatic television projects on British network television. In 2003, Stephens starred alongside Tom Hollander and  Rupert Penry-Jones in the four-part British drama Cambridge Spies.  Based on the true story of four Cambridge University students who are recruited in 1934 to spy for the Soviet Union. Cambridge Spies was first broadcast on BBC Two in May 2003.

The Camomile Lawn

The stories of five young cousins, their family and friends as their paths cross and cross again.

Like so many actors, Toby Stephens had his biggest on-screen exposure in his first professional television role. The Camomile Lawn is a television adaptation of the 1984 book of the same name by Mary Wesley.  Set just before and during the Second World War, with an aftermath that takes place in the mid 1980s, the action begins at the Cornish country house of Helena Cuthbertson.  The title is drawn from a camomile lawn between the house and the sea cliffs on which some significant events take place.  If you check out the clip below, at the very end, there's a 'blink or you will miss it' full frontal.