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Ollie Johnston, one of the world’s great animators, has passed away. He was 95. PHOTO: AP

Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank will incarnate Amelia Earhart in a film about the aviation pioneer alongside Hollywood star Richard Gere, industry daily Variety reported Wednesday.

Directed by Indian filmmaker Mira Nair, Amelia, which is being filmed in Canada and South Africa, tells the story of the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean before disappearing over the Pacific in 1937 at age 40.

Gere will play Earhart’s husband, George Putnam, Variety reported.

Swank, 33, walked off with her first Oscar in 2000 for her leading role as a gender-conflicted girl in Boys Don’t Cry, and followed it up with another Oscar in 2004 for her portrayal of a female boxer in Million Dollar Baby.

Gere, 57, who won a Golden Globe for best actor for his role in the musical Chicago, starred in such classic hits as Pretty Woman alongside Julia Roberts in 1990 and American Gigolo in 1980.

Hazel Court, an English beauty who co-starred with the likes of Boris Karloff and Vincent Price in popular horror movies of the 1950s and 1960s, has died. She was 82.

Court died at about 12am on Tuesday at her home near Lake Tahoe from a heart attack, her daughter, Sally Walsh of Los Angeles, said on Wednesday.

While she had a substantial acting career both in the UK and in the US on TV, Court was perhaps best known for her work in such films as 1963’s The Raven, in which she co-starred with Price, Karloff, and Peter Lorre in a take on the classic Edgar Allan Poe poem.

Roger Corman directed her in five movies. Like other “scream queens’’ of the era, Court’s roles often relied on her cleavage and her ability to shriek in fear and die horrible deaths.

The Premature Burial, The Masque of the Red Death, The Curse of Frankenstein and Devil Girl from Mars helped propel her to cult status and brought her fan mail even in her later years.

“She’d probably get over 100 pieces of fan mail a month and she would reply to every single one,’’ her daughter said.

Court had finished an autobiography, Hazel Court: Horror Queen, which will be published in Britain, Walsh said.

The daughter of a professional cricket player, Court was born on Feb. 10, 1926, in the English town of Sutton Coldfield. As a teenager, she was appearing in stage productions when she was spotted and signed by the J. Arthur Rank Organization, which owned movie studios and theaters.

She got her first movie bit part by the time she was 18 and went on to become a popular actress and a pinup girl, her daughter said.

“She was one of the great beauties of all time,’’ Walsh said.

“She was a redhead with really green eyes and almost ... the perfect face. She was on the cover of almost every magazine.’’ She appeared in some of the low-budget Hammer horror movies and co-starred with Patrick O’Neal in the 1957 British TV comedy series Dick and the Duchess. In the late 1950s, she came to the US to work on the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In addition to her acting career, Court was a commissioned sculptor and painter whose works appeared in public galleries.

Ollie Johnston Jr, the creator of Bambi and the last living member of Disney’s celebrated “Nine Old Men,” who set the standards for the art of animation, has died at 95.

Johnston died Monday afternoon of natural causes at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington, according to a press release from Walt Disney Studios. John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios called him “one of the greatest animators of all time.”

Johnston helped create Disney’s legendary status, beginning with his animation of the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. He helped to create such celebrated characters as Bambi and Thumper in Bambi, the Three Good Fairies in Sleeping Beauty, Pongo and Perdita in 101 Dalmatians, and Mowgli and Baloo in The Jungle Book.

Among the most famous scenes he created were Pinocchio’s nose growing when he lied to the Blue Fairy in the 1940 movie; Thumper reciting his lesson about eating clover greens under his mother’s watchful eye in Bambi and Baloo performing The Bare Necessities in The Jungle Book.

Johnston was born on Oct. 31, 1912, in Palo Alto, California, and studied art at Stanford University, where his father was the head of the romance languages department. He joined Disney in 1935 and quickly worked his way through its ranks.
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