Dramas also took a turn with existentialist thrillers such as Fight Club ( 1999 ) and the tale of suburban angst American Beauty ( 1999 ).

He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s, culminating in his first Academy Award for The Usual Suspects ( Best Supporting Actor ), followed by a Best Actor Academy Award win for American Beauty ( 1999 ).

Spacey won universal praise and a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a depressed suburban father who re-evaluates his life in 1999's American Beauty ; the same year, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Dunst was offered the role of Angela in the 1999 drama film American Beauty, but turned it down because she did not want to appear in the film's suggestive sexual scenes or kiss co-star Kevin Spacey.

Further credits include Coming to America, Action Jackson, Jerry Maguire, The Running Man, American Beauty, Can't Buy Me Love, and Oliver Stone's The Doors.

Abdul served as the choreographer for several film and theater productions, including the 1998 musical Reefer Madness and the cheerleading scenes in the 1999 film American Beauty ( she had previously also choreographed the 1991 film The Doors ).

The Grateful Dead also had major successes with the more reflective and stripped back Workingman's Dead and American Beauty in 1970.

* Sam Mendes-Academy Award-winning film director ( for American Beauty ) and four-time Laurence Olivier Award winner

* American Beauty ( 1931 )

Judd is currently the magazine advertising " face " of American Beauty, an Estée Lauder cosmetic brand sold exclusively at Kohl's department stores, and H. Stern jewelers.

Next he teamed up with American Beauty director Sam Mendes for the adaptation of Max Allan Collins's and Richard Piers Rayner's graphic novel Road to Perdition, in which he played an anti-hero role as a hitman on the run with his son.

Ball began writing American Beauty as a play in the early 1990s, partly inspired by the media circus around the Amy Fisher trial in 1992.

Producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen took American Beauty to DreamWorks ; the fledgling film studio bought Ball's script for $ 250, 000, outbidding several other production bodies.

American Beauty marked acclaimed theater director Mendes ' film debut ; courted after his successful productions of the musicals Oliver!

Released in North America on September 15, 1999, American Beauty was positively received by critics and audiences alike ; it was the best-reviewed American film of the year and grossed over $ 350 million worldwide.

Academics have offered many possible readings of American Beauty ; film critics are similarly divided, not so much about the quality of the film as their interpretations of it.

" The literary critic and author Wayne C. Booth concludes that the film resists any one interpretation: " Beauty cannot be adequately summarized as ' here is a satire on what's wrong with American life '; that plays down the celebration of beauty.

With " innumerable voices intruding on the original author's ," Booth says, those who interpret American Beauty " have forgotten to probe for the elusive center ".

Mendes called American Beauty a rites of passage film about imprisonment and escape from imprisonment.

Like other American films of 1999 — such as Fight Club, Bringing Out the Dead and Magnolia — American Beauty instructs its audience to " more meaningful lives ".

The feminist academic and author Sally R. Munt argues that American Beauty uses its " art house " trappings to direct its message of non-conformity primarily to the middle classes, and that this approach is a " cliché of bourgeois preoccupation ... the underlying premise being that the luxury of finding an individual ' self ' through denial and renunciation is always open to those wealthy enough to choose, and sly enough to present themselves sympathetically as a rebel.

`` His address '', Walter added, `` is that great foundling home, the American Express.

Now I wish to enter the American market, where the competition is very strong.

As it is, they consider that the North is now reaping the fruits of excess egalitarianism, that in spite of its high standard of living the `` American way '' has been proved inferior to the English and Scandinavian ways, although they disapprove of the socialistic features of the latter.

Of greater importance, however, is the content of those programs, which have had and are having enormous consequences for the American people.

The general acceptance of the idea of governmental ( i.e., societal ) responsibility for the economic well-being of the American people is surely one of the two most significant watersheds in American constitutional history.

A third, one of at least equal and perhaps even greater importance, is now being traversed: American immersion and involvement in world affairs.

BMEWS intelligence is simultaneously flashed to NORAD ( North American Air Defense Command ) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for interpretation ; ;

Even though in most cases the completion of the definitive editions of their writings is still years off, enough documentation has already been assembled to warrant drawing a new composite profile of the leadership which performed the heroic dual feats of winning American independence and founding a new nation.

Obviously there has been no agreement on what American conservatism is, or rather, what it should be.

Mr. Nehru is subjected to stern lectures on neutralism by our Department of State, and an American President observes sourly that Sweden would be a little less neurotic if it were a little more capitalistic ''.

One thing you can say about Mr. Lyford is that he does not suffer from any insecurity as an American.

The picture is the more treacherous when it misrepresents the facts of American life.

The interesting thing about Mr. Lyford's approach, and the approach of the contributors to The Agreeable Autocracies ( Oceana Publications, 1961 ) to the situation of American civilization, is that it is concerned with comprehending the psychological relationships which are having a decisive effect on American life.

Such performance is a great tribute to American scientists and engineers, who in the past five years have had to telescope time and technology to develop these long-range ballistic missiles, where America had none before.

Mr. Stavropoulos is the U.N. legal chief and a very good man, but he is not fully versed on some technical points of American law ''.

The other is that the charge for cabanas and parasols, though modest from an American point of view, still is a little high for many Athenians.

He is said to have reported that once, when she went to a hospital to call on a friend after a serious operation, and the friend protested that it had been `` nothing '', she replied, `` Well, it was your healthy American peasant blood that pulled you through ''.

Finally, there is the undeniable fact that some of the finest American fiction is being written by Jews, but it is not Jewish fiction ; ;

* 1999 – Kwesi Boakye, American actor

* 1917 – Helen Forrest, American singer ( d. 1999 )

* 1916 – Robert Shaw, American conductor ( d. 1999 )

* 1926 – Norman Wexler, American screenwriter ( d. 1999 )

* 1925 – David A. Huffman, American computer scientist, developed the Huffman coding ( d. 1999 )

The current Vehicle registration plates of American Samoa | territorial license plate design, introduced in 1999.

Per a 1999 estimate, there are no merchant marines in American Samoa.

* 1904 – Charles " Buddy " Rogers, American actor and trombonist ( d. 1999 )

* 1930 – Wilmer Mizell, American baseball player ( d. 1999 )

* 1999 – Jesse Stone, American musician and songwriter ( b. 1901 )

* 1912 – Henry Jones, American actor ( d. 1999 )

* 1918 – Sidney Gottlieb, American chemist ( d. 1999 )

* 1999 – Byron Farwell, American historian ( b. 1921 )

* 1910 – Sylvia Sidney, American actress ( d. 1999 )

* 1922 – Rory Calhoun, American actor ( d. 1999 )

* 1999 – Garrett Ryan, American actor

* 1919 – Huntz Hall, American actor ( d. 1999 )

* 1999 – Tristan Lake Leabu, American actor

* 1928 – Art Farmer, American trumpet player ( d. 1999 )

* 1936 – Wilt Chamberlain, American basketball player ( d. 1999 )

* 1999 – Maxim Knight, American actor

* 1905 – Elizabeth Huckaby, American educator ( d. 1999 )

* 1999 – Ellen Corby, American actress ( b. 1911 )

* 1914 – José Silva, American parapsychologist ( d. 1999 )

* 1936 – Andre Dubus, American writer ( d. 1999 )