Staying Fit
Photo Collage: MOA Staff; (Source: Foc Kan/WireImage/Getty Images; Gotham/WireImage; Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images; Dana Nalbandian/WireImage/Getty Images; Axelle/Bauer-Griffen/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
Feb. 2: Christie Brinkley, 70
Photo Collage: MOA Staff; (Source: Gotham/WireImage)
After starting out life as a surfer girl and illustrator, Christie Brinkley was discovered and signed to a modeling agency, skyrocketing to fame in the 1970s. She became the face of CoverGirl cosmetics and even graced the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue three times in a row. Over the years, Brinkley has flexed her acting muscles, appearing in then-husband Billy Joel’s music video for “Uptown Girl” and later playing Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway, London’s West End and Las Vegas. This spring, she’s set to launch a lifestyle and apparel brand called TWRHLL, which is aimed at women of any age and body type.
Feb. 5: Laura Linney, 60
An actor’s actor with a mile-wide range, Laura Linney is an awards magnet: She’s won four Emmys, including for her roles as first lady Abigail Adams (John Adams) and a high school teacher living with cancer (The Big C); has a trio of Oscar nominations under her belt; and has been nominated for five Tonys for her work on the Broadway stage. For four seasons, Netflix subscribers have had the chance to watch her and Jason Bateman break bad as a couple on Ozark who launder money for a Mexican drug cartel. Most recently, Linney appeared in the Flannery O’Connor biopic Wildcat as the Southern Gothic author’s conservative Catholic mother.
Feb. 5: Michael Sheen, 55
After taking the U.K. theater world by storm with his performances as Romeo and Henry V, the Wales-born actor has found great success on the big and small screens playing modern historic figures: He’s starred as Prime Minister Tony Blair three times (including in The Queen), channeled talk show host David Frost in Frost/Nixon (a part he originated onstage), and earned a Golden Globe nomination for his turn as the pioneering sex researcher William Masters in Showtime’s Masters of Sex. Following his turn as the angel Aziraphale in the cult favorite Amazon Prime series Good Omens, he’s set to play royal son–turned–tabloid fixture Prince Andrew in the miniseries A Very Royal Scandal.
Feb. 9: Alice Walker, 80
Photo Collage: MOA Staff; (Source: Dana Nalbandian/WireImage/Getty Images)
Born in Georgia, the eighth child of sharecroppers, Alice Walker began writing after she was partially blinded in a BB gun accident. In college, she began her activism in the civil rights movement in Mississippi and then began publishing short stories, essays and poetry. In 1982, Walker released her most popular novel to date, the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Color Purple, which was adapted into a Steven Spielberg–directed film, a Broadway musical and a movie musical that hit theaters in December.
Feb. 9: Judith Light, 75
After picking up back-to-back Daytime Emmys for her celebrated role as Karen Wolek on the soap opera One Life to Live, Judith Light moved to prime-time TV, starring as ad exec Angela Bower on Who’s the Boss? A stage veteran, she returned to Broadway after three decades away, earning two Tonys for best performance by a featured actress for Other Desert Cities and The Assembled Parties. Her role in the Amazon Prime dramedy Transparent, in which she played a woman whose spouse comes out as transgender, kicked off a robust second act on television, including most recently the horror comedy Shining Vale and the Max bioseries Julia, on which she plays Julia Child’s publisher Blanche Knopf.
Feb. 10: Elizabeth Banks, 50
Known for her quick wit and charm, the University of Pennsylvania graduate proved a scene stealer in films like Wet Hot American Summer, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and especially the Hunger Games franchise, in which she played the perky (and extravagantly dressed) chaperone Effie Trinket. After appearing as a commentator in Pitch Perfect, Banks helmed the sequel about the a cappella group and later directed the Charlie’s Angels reboot and the comedy thriller Cocaine Bear. Next up, Banks is executive producing an animated reboot of The Flintstones called Bedrock, on which she’ll voice a grownup Pebbles at the dawn of the Bronze Age.
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