2.6 Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise's career is an amazing Hollywood success story, although his early life wasn't easy. Cruise, who has made millions of dollars during his career, has established his reputation as a serious actor in films such as Top Gun, Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July.

Tom Cruise was born on July 3, 1962 in Syracuse, New York. He had a difficult childhood. The family moved from place to place as his father was looking for work. Tom and his three sisters lived in at least ten different towns. When he was at high school, Tom was interested in sports and athletics. However, as he changed schools regularly, school work was always a problem: he found reading and spelling difficult.

During his teenage years, Tom spent most of his time playing sports. However, a knee injury ended his dreams of becoming a professional wrestler, so he decided to try acting instead.

After leaving school, Tom went to New York where he studied acting in night classes. Life was hard; he found it difficult to find parts because he wasn't “pretty enough” for television. Finally, he got a part in the movie Taps. The rest is history.

Nowadays, Cruise's life and career seem perfect. He has his own production company. The first film that he produced was Mission Impossible.

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Расставьте следующие события в правильном порядке:

1.Tom injured his knee.

2.He found it hard to get parts on television

3.He went to night classes.

4.He appeared in Taps.

5.He changed schools frequently - 1 6.He produced a film.

2.7 Thomas Gainsborough

(1727-1788)

Gainsborough was born in Suffolk. He was the youngest of the nine children in the family. He went to school in his native town.

When a boy he was very good at drawing, and according to a story about him, he made such a good portrait from memory of a thief whom he had seen robbing a garden that the thief was caught.

Gainsborough painted portraits and landscapes and is often compared with Reynolds; his style is also influenced by the Dutch masters and Van Dyck. Despite these influences he worked out his personal style. His portraits are painted in clear tones. His colour is always tender and soft.

He succeeded as a portrait-painter. Among his most famous portraits are the portrait of Mrs. Siddon, a famous actress in a blue dress, and the picture known as "Blue Boy" - a boy in a blue costume.

Gainsborough was fond of painting landscapes. Even in the portrait painting he is an out-of-door painter. If you think of his finest portraits you will immediately remember that the backgrounds are well-observed country scenes. The famous “Blue Boy” is placed against an open sky and a background of brown and green landscape. In Mrs. Sheridan’s portrait the background is the wide sky and broad view into the valley.

Gainsborough painted some 500 pictures. There is a representative collection of his drawings at the British Museum.

He loved the country-side of his childhood and often said that the Suffolk countryside had made him a painter.

He lived in that period when landscape painting was not in fashion. Rich people did not spend money on landscapes. So it's really remarkable that there were more than 40 unsold landscapes in his studio at the time of his death. (1415)

Подберите пропущенные слова согласно информации в тексте:

1. There were ... children in the family.

2. Gainsborough was influenced by the works of Reynolds and Van Dyck but still he worked out ….

3. Gainsborough painted portraits and landscapes but he became famous as ….

4. His favourite colour was ...

5. Gainsborough often said that ... made him a painter.

6. Gainsborough painted mostly portraits because ... were not in fashion.

7. One can see Gainsborough's paintings at the ... in London