Age: 99
male
Melvin James Brooks (né Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, and songwriter. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 21 entertainers to win the EGOT (which includes an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony). He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2024. Brooks began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show Your Show of Shows(1950–1954). There, he worked with Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, and Carl Reiner. With Reiner, he co-created the comedy sketch The 2000 Year Old Man. He released several comedy albums, starting with 2000 Year Old Man in 1960. Brooks received five nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, finally winning in 1999. With Buck Henry, he created the hit satirical spy comedy series Get Smart (1965–1970) on NBC television. Brooks won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Producers (1967). He then rose to prominence by directing a string of successful comedy films such as The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), and High Anxiety (1977). Later, Brooks made History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), Life Stinks (1991), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). A musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers, ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2007 and earned Brooks three Tony Awards. The project was remade into a musical film in 2005. He wrote and produced the Hulu series History of the World, Part II (2023). Brooks was married to actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until she died in 2005. Their son, Max Brooks, is an actor and author known for his novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006). In 2021, Mel Brooks published his memoir titled All About Me!. Three of his films are included on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of the past 100 years (1900–2000), all of which were ranked in the top 15: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.
Mel Brooks
Ray-Ray
for Ray-Ray in The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning
Suggested by shedevilvhs1989
King Triton and his wife, Queen Athena, rule over the underwater kingdom of Atlantica, filled with music and laughter. They have seven young daughters: Aquata, Andrina, Arista, Attina, Adella, Alana, and the youngest of whom is Ariel. One day, while the merpeople relax in a lagoon above water, Triton gives Athena a music box. However, a pirate ship approaches. Everyone escapes except Athena, who is killed by the ship when she tries to recover the music box. Devastated by his wife's death, Triton throws the music box away, and music is banned from Atlantica, forever. Ten years later, Ariel and her sisters live under a strict routine maintained by their governess, Marina Del Rey and her assistant, Benjamin. Marina hates being the girls' governess and longs to be Triton's attaché, a job currently filled by Sebastian the crab. Ariel is frustrated by their current lifestyle, which brings her into arguments with her father. One day, Ariel encounters Flounder, a young fish whom she later follows to an underground music club. She is overjoyed by the presence of music, and is shocked when she sees Sebastian performing there. When her presence is revealed, the entire band stops playing and hides, believing Ariel will tell her father about them. Ariel sings a song explaining her love of music and the remembrance of her mother, and she joins the club with an oath. Ariel returns to the palace, and her sisters confront her over her disappearance. She explains where she was, and the following night the girls go to the club to have fun. Marina finds them and she later reports their activities to Triton, who destroys the club with his trident. Sebastian, Flounder, and the band are sent to prison, while Marina gets the job she wants. Triton confines his daughters to the palace and Ariel says that her mother would not have wanted music forbidden. She swims to the bedroom, with her sisters following, and everyone is not happy, aside from Marina. That night, Ariel frees her friends and leaves Atlantica. Sebastian leads them to a deserted place far away from the palace where Ariel finds Athena's music box, as Sebastian hoped. In the kingdom, Marina happily talks to Triton about her new job, but one of Ariel's sisters informs Triton that Ariel is not in Atlantica, while Triton orders his guards to find Ariel, angering Marina. In her lair, Marina tells Benjamin that she releases her electric eels from the dungeon. Marina is about to finish the job to have Sebastian killed and Ariel eliminated from the palace. Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian decide to return to Atlantica to bring the music box to Triton, hoping that it will change his mind, as he has not remembered how to be happy after Athena died. On the way back, they are confronted by Marina and her eels. Before music is restored back into Atlantica, the final battle begins when Ariel is banned from Atlantica by Marina. Marina wants to stop them so she will retain her position of power, and a struggle ensues. Flounder and Ariel are rescued from Marina's electric eels by the band. While Triton arrives in time seeing that Ariel has helped the band defeat the eels by having them tangle themselves. Marina barrels towards Sebastian and tries to kill him, but Ariel pushes her away, getting hit in the process. Triton witnesses the incident and blames himself. He sings the lyrics of "Athena's Song", and Ariel recovers. Triton apologizes to Ariel for not listening to her and sends her home to the palace before he orders his guards to place Marina under arrest. On the next day, thanks to Ariel, Triton restores music to Atlantica and appoints Sebastian as Atlantica's first official court composer, much to everyone's delight. Everyone, including Ariel and her sisters and their friends Flounder and Sebastian, rejoices except Marina who is sent to jail.
