Paul Simon:

Faith is at the heart of American culture, faith above all in humanity's possibilities. This has been the key to Paul Simon's songs throughout a career rich in musical exploration and deep commitment. His work embraces a world of poetry and music that knows no frontiers, from folk music and do-wop, salsa and rockabilly, to ancient African rhythms and the minimalism of the new American century. But generosity, love and faith run through each tale in Simon's songs. "And I believe in the future," he confessed in the song "Cool, Cool River" from his epic 1990 album Rhythm of Saints, "we shall suffer no more / Maybe not in my lifetime / But in yours I feel sure."

Paul Fredric Simon was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a Hungarian-Jewish family. His mother was a music teacher, his father a bass player on the radio. The boy grew up in Queens, New York City, and attended Forest Hills High School alongside Art Garfunkel. The friends together sang Paul's first song, "The Girls for Me," when they were both 15. Billed as Tom and Jerry, the two had their first hit record at 16: "Hey Schoolgirl," a disarmingly romantic rocker that got the boys their first gig on "American Bandstand" as well as their first appearance on the Billboard charts. Tom and Jerry went their separate ways after high school, but Simon and Garfunkel soon got together again and American music would never be the same.

Elizabeth Taylor:

More than anyone else I can think of, Elizabeth Taylor represents the complete movie phenomenon - what movies are as an art and an industry, and what they have meant to those of us who have grown up watching them in the dark," wrote the venerable film critic Vincent Canby in The New York Times. One of Hollywood's most indelible icons, Taylor has been in the public eye for six decades. Today, she is indefatigable humanitarian who is credited with raising more than $100 million in the crusade against AIDS. But first and foremost she is a thrilling film actress, the last brilliant star to emerge from the great Hollywood studio system, the heart of nearly 60 motion pictures, the muse of some of the movies' most revered film directors, including Joseph L. Mankiewicz, George Stevens, John Huston, George Cukor, Vincente Minnelli, Richard Brooks, Franco Zefferelli, and Mike Nichols, and the screen's finest interpreter of the works of two giants of the American theater - Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee.