1. The actor‘s ultimate dream can turn out to be the ultimate nightmare," said movie pundit Tom O‘Neil, awards columnist for the Web site The Envelope (http://theenvelope.latimes.com/). Winners like F Murray Abraham, Brenda Fricker, Linda Hunt, Marlee Matlin and Louise Fletcher are hardly household names despite earning the film world‘s most coveted award.

2. He said the phenomenon is known in Hollywood circles as the "F Murray Abraham syndrome," named after the well–regarded stage actor who earned the Best Actor Oscar for his role in the 1'84 film "Amadeus" but has hardly been a big star since.

3. "We want to do much more than pay lip service to Shakespeare‘s internationalism as we prepare the ground for artistic collaborations that will continue beyond the life of the festival." Highlights among the visiting companies include the only UK performance of a Janet Suzman‘s production of Hamlet from the Baxter Theatre Centre of South Africa, Peter Stein directing Troilus and Cressida, Yukio Ninagawa‘s Japanese Titus Andronicus, Anglo–Kuwaiti director Sulayman Al Bassam directing a Pan–Arab version of Richard III focusing on Saddam Hussein‘s early days as a secular Arab hero, and, from Theatre for a New Audience in New York, F Murray Abraham playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.