August Celebrity Birthdays
A look at the famous and the fascinating on the day they were born
AARP Members Only Access, August 2022
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PHOTO BY: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for City Harvest
Aug. 31: Richard Gere, 73
Born in Philadelphia on Aug. 31, 1949, Richard Gere, 71, took a somewhat surprising route to the world of movies: He got a gymnastics scholarship in college, quit after two years to become a musician and was then cast as an understudy in Broadway’s Grease, before starring as Danny Zuko in the West End production. Following early film performances in Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Days of Heaven, Gere landed the title role in American Gigolo and quickly emerged as a major sex symbol of the 1980s. He’d parlay that status into romantic lead roles in An Officer and a Gentleman and Pretty Woman, which became one of the most-beloved romantic-comedies of the modern era; as Roger Ebert observed, “Gere plays new notes here; his swagger is gone, and he’s more tentative, proper, even shy.” He’d go on to be named People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1999, the same year he reteamed with Julia Roberts on Runaway Bride. In 2002 he received some of the best reviews of his career and a Golden Globe nomination for playing the lawyer Billy Flynn in the best-picture-winning adaptation of Broadway’s Chicago. “As the big-ticket defense lawyer and jury barometer Billy Flynn, Richard Gere has never been better, turning spoiled princeling arrogance into a witty revel,” Elvis Mitchell wrote in The New York Times. “He splashes his winner’s juice sparingly, and the movie’s shift from acid reality to bitter, high-flying musical serves him best.” Future film roles included the infamous Howard Hughes biographer Clifford Irving in The Hoax and Billy the Kid, a fictionalized embodiment of Bob Dylan, in I’m Not There. He earned another Golden Globe nomination for his turn as a hedge fund magnate in 2012’s Arbitrage. His most recent credit includes the 2019 BBC Two miniseries MotherFatherSon, and he’s set to appear in the multigenerational romantic comedy Maybe I Do, opposite former costars Susan Sarandon and Diane Keaton. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic
Aug. 30: Cameron Diaz, 50
With her sparkling blue eyes and mile-wide smile, Cameron Diaz, 50 — who was born Aug. 30, 1972, in San Diego — started modeling at 16, in campaigns for iconic companies such as Calvin Klein and Coca-Cola. It wasn’t long before she brought her natural charm to her film debut, The Mask, opposite Jim Carrey; she was a hit from the start, with Roger Ebert writing, “Cameron Diaz is a true discovery in the film, a genuine sex bomb with a gorgeous face, a wonderful smile and a gift of comic timing. This is her first movie role, after a brief modeling career. It will not be her last.” Following a string of smaller films, including She’s the One and Head Above Water, she made a huge splash with the rom-com My Best Friend’s Wedding, in which she may have out-charismaed Julia Roberts. Soon, she was taking Hollywood by storm, showcasing her comedic skills in the raunchy laugh-fest There’s Something About Mary and the trippy, surrealist Being John Malkovich, for which she received Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA nominations. Diaz attracted a whole new generation of fans as the voice of Princess Fiona in the Shrek franchise and kicked butt in the rebooted Charlie’s Angels. Soon, she was one of the most in-demand actresses for Hollywood’s biggest directors, including Oliver Stone (Any Given Sunday), Cameron Crowe (Vanilla Sky) and Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York). In 2014 she played against type as Ms. Hannigan in a remake of Annie, her final role before her surprise retirement announcement. “When you do something at a really high level for a long period of time, when you’re the person that’s sort of delivering on this one thing, everything around, all parts of you that isn’t that, has to sort of be handed off to other people,” she later told Kevin Hart on his talk show Hart to Heart. “Just, the management of me as a human being … Cameron Diaz is a machine. But for my personal, spiritual self, I was realizing that one part of me that functioned at a high level wasn’t enough.” In the intervening years, she launched a highly successful “clean” wine brand called Avaline, but fans will be happy to know that she’s coming back to the movies in a big way with her Netflix action-comedy Back in Action, opposite Jamie Foxx. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Universal Pictures
Aug. 29: Carla Gugino, 51
Born Aug. 29, 1971, in Sarasota, Florida, actress Carla Gugino, 51, was a straight-A student who graduated as valedictorian before being recruited by a modeling agency. Following her big-screen debut in Troop Beverly Hills, Gugino was a recurring character on the soap opera Falcon Crest and then appeared in the gilded-age miniseries The Buccaneers, based on the Edith Wharton novel. TV roles on Spin City and Chicago Hope followed, and she made a big splash with the critically acclaimed Spy Kids family action franchise. As she landed more high-profile film roles (including in Sin City and American Gangster), Gugino took center stage on the ABC drama Karen Sisco, as the titular U.S. marshal in Miami. She also emerged as a respected stage actress, earning raves for her appearance as Abbie Putnam in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms in 2009, first at Chicago’s Goodman Theater and then on Broadway. “Ms. Gugino displays a depth and range of expression that I cannot imagine any other actress achieving with such blazing honesty and wrenching truth,” Charles Isherwood wrote in The New York Times. “She is simply magnificent.” On the other end of the spectrum, Gugino also starred that year as Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre in the film version of the cult comic book Watchmen. After her turn on the supernatural Fox drama Wayward Pines, she became something of a regular for horror writer-director Mike Flanagan, starring in his film Gerald’s Game, based on a Stephen King novel, and then on his two Netflix miniseries, which are also adapted from scary books — The Haunting of Hill House, based on the Shirley Jackson novel, and The Haunting of Bly Manor, from the Henry James novella The Turning of the Screw. Gugino can’t seem to stay away from creepy houses: She and Flanagan are currently hard at work filming the Netflix miniseries version of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images for Mondays Dark
Aug. 28: Shania Twain, 57
Born in Windsor, Ontario, on Aug. 28, 1965, Shania Twain, 57, got into the country music game at a very young age, first singing in clubs at the age of 8 to supplement her family’s income, writing her own music at 10 and performing with a Top 40 cover band throughout high school. She released her debut self-titled album in 1993, and though it didn’t make much of a splash on the charts, it would pave the way for her sophomore effort, The Woman in Me, which topped the country charts and won best country album at the Grammys. Her 1997 follow-up, Come On Over, included such blockbuster singles as “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” “From This Moment On,” “You’re Still the One” and “That Don’t Impress Me Much.” It sold 40 million copies worldwide, and currently ranks as the fifth-best-selling album of all time — and number 1 among female singers and country artists. Twain and the album picked up nine nominations at two subsequent Grammys (including album, country album, song and record of the year), and she added four more trophies to her mantelpiece. She took a big creative risk with her next album, 2002’s Up!, releasing three color-coded versions with different remixes: red (pop), green (country) and blue (international/Bollywood). In the ensuing years, Twain faced personal and medical challenges, divorcing her husband and creative collaborator, Mutt Lange, and developing dysphonia, the tightening of the vocal muscles. The year 2011 marked a big comeback in many ways, including the debut of her Oprah Winfrey Network show Why Not? With Shania Twain, her induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the release of her memoir, From This Moment On. “I have to say, it’s been satisfying bringing myself up-to-date with myself, if you will, through writing this book,” she wrote. “I can see now that I was missing out on some wonderful feelings and emotions from the memories of my youth as a result of closing the book too tightly behind myself — leaving the chapters to collect dust on a shelf so high above arm’s reach that it would take too much effort to reopen them down the road. Much to my relief, in some instances I can say there were things I thought would be a lot scarier than they actually were when revisiting them, and it surprised me how things seemed so much smaller in retrospect.” The following year, she launched a highly successful Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace, called Shania: Still the One, which ran for more than two years. Twain released her first album of new material in 15 years with 2017’s Now, before turning to acting; in 2019, she made her feature film debut in the racing film Trading Paint, and she played the mother of Christian singer Jeremy Camp (played by K.J. Apa) the following year in I Still Believe. She returned to Vegas for a new residency, Let’s Go!, in December 2019, which will finish out its impressive run in September. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jason Kempin/Getty Images
Aug. 27: Yolanda Adams, 61
Born on Aug. 27, 1961, in Houston, gospel legend Yolanda Adams, 61, has been called by many monikers throughout her decades-long career, including “the first lady of modern gospel” and “the queen of contemporary gospel.” After graduating from Texas Southern University with a degree in radio and television broadcasting, Adams worked as a schoolteacher and part-time model, but she couldn’t keep her musical talents hidden for long. She was discovered by producer Thomas Whitfield while performing with the Southeast Inspirational Choir of Houston, which led to the recording of her debut album, Just as I Am, in 1988. Known for blending traditional sounds with influences from R&B, jazz and new jack swing, Adams brought gospel music to the mainstream, earning the first of her eight Grammy nominations in 1995 and eventually picking up four wins, including two for best contemporary soul gospel album, for 2000’s Mountain High… Valley Low and 2002’s The Experience. In 2007, she began hosting the Yolanda Adams Morning Show, and she later released her first book, based on one of her recurring segments, Points of Power: Discover a Spirit-Filled Life of Joy and Purpose. She was awarded the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 for her decades of volunteer work and inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame the following year. For her work on the SpongeBob SquarePants Broadway musical, to which she contributed the song “Super Sea Star Savior,” Adams earned a Tony nomination for best original score. In 2020, Adams helped kick off Super Bowl LIV with a moving rendition of “America the Beautiful,” which she performed alongside the Children’s Choir of Miami. A recent honoree of the Black Music and Entertainment Walk of Fame, Adams embarked on an exciting new role as the star of the BET+ streaming drama Kingdom Business, which offers a behind-the-scenes view into the not-always-holy world of the gospel music industry. Adams plays gospel superstar and record executive Denita Jordan, and she says of the series, “This show isn’t to change the mindset of church people, but to give them a glimpse of how flawed all of us are and how we all need to make different changes in our lives — whether we have faith or not.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Raymond Hall/GC Images
Aug. 26: Melissa McCarthy, 52
A once-in-a-generation comedic talent, Melissa McCarthy was born in Plainfield, Illinois, on Aug. 26, 1970, and she cut her teeth in the world of New York City stand-up before becoming a member of the prestigious Groundlings troupe in Los Angeles. Audiences first began falling in love with her when she played the quirky chef Sookie St. James on Gilmore Girls. In 2010, McCarthy was cast in the sweet CBS sitcom Mike & Molly about a couple who meets in an Overeaters Anonymous group, and she went on to win the 2011 Primetime Emmy for best actress in a comedy. In a memorable bit, she and her fellow nominees stood onstage as their names were called, as in a beauty pageant, and when she won, she wore a tiara during her acceptance speech: “Holy smokes. Wow, it’s my first and best pageant ever. I’m from Plainfield, Illinois, and I’m standing here, and it’s kind of amazing.” The year 2011 also marked her big-screen breakthrough with Bridesmaids, when she stole scenes as Megan; Roger Ebert called her “my favorite” of the titular bridesmaids, writing that she “has the sturdiness and the certainty of a fireplug.” While purely comedic roles tend to get overlooked by the Academy, her star power was undeniable, and she earned her first Oscar nomination. The role cemented her spot on the A-list, and she was soon leading such big-budget comedies as The Heat, Spy and Ghostbusters. And she remained a small-screen fixture as well, earning five guest actress Emmy nods and an eventual win for her work on Saturday Night Live. (Her unexpectedly brilliant impersonation of former White House press secretary Sean Spicer is the stuff of legend.) McCarthy would earn her second Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, a biopic about Lee Israel, the celebrity biographer who got into the business of forging the personal documents of dead celebrities. In 2020, New York Times critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott included McCarthy at number 22 on their list of the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century (so far), with Dargis writing, “Since making the transition from TV to movies, McCarthy has repeatedly demonstrated her range and exhilaratingly helped demolish regressive ideas about who gets to be a film star.” Following her role in last year’s Nine Perfect Strangers miniseries, McCarthy partnered with her frequent collaborator (and husband!) Ben Falcone on the Netflix sitcom God’s Favorite Idiot, in which he plays an average office worker selected by God to be his messenger. McCarthy told Moviefone.com that Falcone would be an ideal choice for such a role: “He’s the kindest person I know.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Elisabetta Villa/Getty Images for RFF
Aug. 25: Tim Burton, 64
Few American directors have as recognizable a viewpoint and visual style as the master of the macabre Tim Burton, 64. Born in Burbank, California, on Aug. 25, 1958, Burton got interested in filmmaking at a young age and attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he majored in animation. He soon got a job in the animation department at Walt Disney Studios, but his artistic vision didn’t quite mesh with the traditionalist institution; he went solo, releasing in 1982 the stop-motion animated short Vincent, which paid homage to horror great Vincent Price. He made his feature directorial debut with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, followed by the ghoulish comedy Beetlejuice, which set a template for his trademark mix of the gothic and the gleeful. Burton proved he could go big-budget with Batman, starring Michael Keaton, which was the first film to cross the $100 million mark at the box office in only 10 days. But he kept coming back to weird stories about misfits, including Edward Scissorhands, which costarred his childhood icon Vincent Price as a Geppetto-like inventor, in his final feature film role; the stop-motion animated musical Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, which looked unlike anything that was being produced by other studios; and Ed Wood, which nabbed Martin Landau an Oscar for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi. Following his spoof of mid-century sci-fi, Mars Attacks!, Burton kicked off a run of remaking classic stories and films, including Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Alice in Wonderland. His good-natured adaptation of the Southern Gothic fantasy novel Big Fish was a particular critical success, earning four Golden Globe nominations. Over the years, Burton also kept coming back to his love of animation, and his two most recent stop-motion films, 2005’s Corpse Bride and 2012’s Frankenweenie, both received Oscar nominations for best animated feature. In his review of a 2009 Burton retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, The New York Times critic Ken Johnson wrote, “Tim Burton’s career is the ultimate revenge of the art nerd. Mr. Burton… who funneled his loneliness, pain and grief into drawing cartoons, has found fame, fortune and a beautiful companion (Helena Bonham Carter) by telling cinematic tales of sensitive misfits triumphing over, or succumbing to, a world of repressive mediocrity.” Recent films have included the biopic Big Eyes about painter Margaret Keane and a remake of Dumbo; and next up Burton is set to bring his unique vision to Netflix’s Wednesday, a comedy horror series about the Addams family daughter, Wednesday, in high school. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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Aug. 24: Paulo Coelho, 75
Born in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 24, 1947, author Paulo Coelho had a rough childhood: Starting at the age of 17, his parents had him committed to a mental institution three times. He would go on to enroll in law school, but he quit to pursue a hippie lifestyle and was soon writing lyrics for Brazilian musicians protesting the country’s military dictatorship. Coelho’s art got him into trouble, leading to imprisonment and torture. In 1986, he had a spiritual awakening while walking the more than 500-mile-long pilgrimage road of Spain’s Santiago de Compostela, which he wrote about in his autobiographical work The Pilgrimage. He later said in an interview, “I was very happy in the things I was doing. I was doing something that gave me food and water… I was working, I had a person whom I loved, I had money, but I was not fulfilling my dream. My dream was, and still is, to be a writer.” The following year, he’d release the novel that would change his life, 1987’s The Alchemist, about a shepherd boy in Spain’s Andalusia region who sets out on a mystical trek. He once told The Guardian that it took him only two weeks to write the best seller because “the book was already written in my soul.” The Alchemist ranks as one of the top-selling books of all time, having sold more than 65 million copies in its first two decades. Since then, he’s continued releasing a new book once every two or three years. Notable works have included his 1992 memoir The Valkyries, about his quest to talk to angels; 1996’s The Fifth Mountain, about the biblical prophet Elijah; and 2008’s The Winner Stands Alone, which is set over the span of 24 hours at the Cannes Film Festival. His most recent book is The Archer, a 2020 New Age fable about, well, an archer. A young boy learns lessons from a retired archer named Tetsuya, who teaches him about the connection between action and the soul and the need to take risks and embrace the unexpected. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Aug. 23: Park Chan-wook, 59
One of the most popular directors to emerge from South Korea in recent decades, Park Chan-wook, 59, was born in Seoul on Aug. 23, 1963. Known for his dark and violent films, the auteur got his start as a film critic before joining the industry in a more hands-on way. Park first made a splash with his 2000 military thriller Joint Security Area, which is set in the aftermath of a shooting incident at the DMZ; Quentin Tarantino later called it one of his top 20 favorite films released since he started making movies in 1992. Next, Park would kick off his unofficial Vengeance Trilogy — Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance — which not only made him an international superstar but also raised global awareness of Korean cinema. He made his English-language debut with 2013’s Stoker, which starred Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman, and which Variety critic Guy Lodge called “a splendidly demented gumbo of Hitchcock thriller, American Gothic fairy tale and a contemporary kink all Park’s own.” In 2016, he released The Handmaiden, an erotic thriller that went on to appear on countless year-end top 10 lists and won the BAFTA for best film not in the English language. Park would next conquer British and American television with a BBC/AMC miniseries based on John Le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl, which starred Florence Pugh in one of her earliest roles. Following his executive producer work on the TV adaptation of Snowpiercer, Park won best director at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for his police thriller Decision to Leave. In his acceptance speech, he said of the pandemic, “Fans didn't visit movie theaters, but it was the time that we were aware of the value of cinema. As we have hope and power to overcome this pandemic, I believe that we cineaste will keep theaters and cinema for good.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Rich Fury/Getty Images
Aug. 22: Ty Burrell, 55
One of the iconic television fathers of recent memory, actor Ty Burrell, 55, was born in the tiny town of Grants Pass, Oregon, on Aug. 22, 1967. He would later learn on the PBS show Finding Your Roots that part of his family tree can be traced to a Black woman named Susannah Weeks, a “free person of color” who overcame incredible odds to become a homesteader and start a new life in Oregon. Burrell earned an MFA at Penn State, and his early acting roles included parts in Evolution and Dawn of the Dead before he began to carve out a niche on sitcoms. While his first two outings, Out of Practice and Back to You, were short-lived, third time was a charm when he was cast on the blockbuster Modern Family in 2009 as the lovably bumbling real estate agent Phil Dunphy. “For Phil… played by the fantastic, gesticulating Ty Burrell, family ought to be like Facebook,” wrote Ginia Bellafante in The New York Times. “He is every misguided middle-aged father who believes his teenagers would rather hang out with him than down a couple of Budweisers in the back of a Sunoco station. ‘I’m the cool dad, that’s my thang,’ Phil tells the interviewer by way of introduction. ‘I’m hip, I surf the Web, I text. LOL: Laugh out loud. OMG: Oh my God. WTF: Why the face?’” During the show’s 11 seasons, Burrell was nominated for a best supporting actor Emmy eight years in a row, winning twice, in 2011 and 2014. On the big screen, Burrell has brought his goofball charisma to such roles as Interpol agent Jean Pierre Napoleon in Muppets Most Wanted and the voice of Bailey, a neurotic beluga whale, in Pixar’s Finding Dory. Most recently, he played another sitcom dad, Jack Harris, on the just-canceled Fox animated series Duncanville, on which Amy Poehler voiced both his wife and his teenage son. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Emma McIntyre/WireImage)
Aug. 21: Kim Cattrall, 66
Kim Cattrall, 66, spent her formative years hopping back and forth across the pond: She was born in Liverpool, England, on Aug. 21, 1956, emigrated to Vancouver, Canada, with her family as a child, returned to England to study acting in London at the age of 11, moved back to Vancouver and then won a scholarship to train at New York’s prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After landing her first film role in the Otto Preminger action thriller Rosebud in 1975, she appeared in such classic 1980s comedies as Police Academy, Big Trouble in Little China and Mannequin, as the titular inanimate object who comes back to life as an ancient Egyptian princess. In 1998, she was cast in what would become her defining role, as the sexpot PR agent Samantha Jones on HBO’s groundbreaking sitcom Sex and the City, a part she’d play for six seasons and two films. The idea of being “a Samantha” entered the lexicon, and Cattrall was nominated for five Emmys, in addition to winning two Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Golden Globe. “You have no idea how many men I’ve had to sleep with this to get this award,” she joked about her character’s promiscuous reputation in her Golden Globe acceptance speech. Cattrall also brought her talents to the stage on both sides of the Atlantic: After first appearing on Broadway in Wild Honey in 1986, she tackled Cleopatra in a 2010 Liverpool production of Antony and Cleopatra, before returning to Broadway in Noel Coward’s Private Lives and then appearing in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth on the West End. Television roles on Sensitive Skin, Tell Me a Story and the soapy Filthy Rich would soon follow, but this year she made headlines for what she didn’t do rather than what she did: When HBO announced they were greenlighting a Sex and the City reboot called And Just Like That…, Cattrall decided not to return, telling Variety: “It’s a great wisdom to know when enough is enough. I also didn’t want to compromise what the show was to me. The way forward seemed clear.” Nonetheless, she returned to the small screen in not one but two roles: first, as the narrator and future Sophie on How I Met Your Father; and then as a Southern debutante mother on the rebooted Queer as Folk. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Aug. 20: Al Roker, 68
Born in Queens, New York, on Aug. 20, 1954, Al Roker, 68, got his start in the wide world of meteorology while still a student at SUNY Oswego. When another weatherman accidentally used profanity on air, Roker was brought in as a substitute and paid $10 per newscast! He bounced around weatherman positions in Washington, D.C., and Cleveland before being promoted to the flagship New York City NBC station WNBC. Soon, he was substituting for Willard Scott on the Today show — as he told Inc. magazine, “mostly because I was close by, and I could wear Willard’s pants.” In 1996, he became the full-time weather anchor for Today, and he has since hosted various portions of the show over the years. His job has seen him reporting from some of the worst natural disasters around the world, including the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. But his career hasn’t been all serious: Since 1995, Roker has cohosted the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and his work across the network has netted him 22 Emmy nominations and eight wins. And he even broke the Guinness World Record for the longest uninterrupted live TV weather report, which stretched for 34 hours. As an author, Roker and Dick Lochte penned a series of murder mysteries about Billy Blessing, a male celebrity chef in New York City with a morning show segment who moonlights as an amateur detective to investigate a murder; the books were later adapted into a Hallmark Movies & Mysteries series, Morning Show Mysteries, starring Holly Robinson Peete as Billie. And in 2016, Roker and his wife, ABC News journalist Deborah Roberts, also published Been There, Done That: Family Wisdom for Modern Times, in which they share anecdotes about parenting and discuss the lessons they learned growing up in a segregated South. Roker’s celebrity has extended well beyond the world of morning television, and in recent years he’s cameoed as himself in everything from the Sharknado franchise and the Zombieland sequel to The Blacklist. After voicing an evil version of himself on the Disney Channel animated series The Proud Family, he returned to the role for the show’s 2022 reboot; in both episodes, he grants wishes that have unforeseen consequences. “There are kids or young adults who come up to me now and say they didn’t know I did the weather,” Roker said on Today. “They just knew me from The Proud Family.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: John Lamparski/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
Aug. 19: Kyra Sedgwick, 57
Born in New York City on Aug. 19, 1965, actress Kyra Sedgwick, 57, made her acting debut at age 16 on the soap opera Another World, and she’d soon start picking up higher-profile gigs in films like Born on the Fourth of July, opposite Tom Cruise. She would go on to meet her future husband, Kevin Bacon, on the set of the PBS film Lemon Sky in 1987 — after, strangely, crossing paths years before while Bacon was doing a play in the ’70s — but Sedgwick wasn’t immediately smitten: She later told Redbook, “He definitely wasn’t my type. In fact, I vividly remember looking at his butt when he walked away after we first met and thinking, ‘Well, I guess some girls like that.’” Nevertheless, the couple has defied Hollywood odds, and they’re still together 35 years later! She’d get her first taste of critical acclaim for the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie Miss Rose White, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination, and she’d nab another for the 1995 film Something to Talk About. In 2005, Sedgwick landed the role of a lifetime as Brenda Leigh Johnson, deputy police chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, in TNT’s The Closer. As Gillian Flynn wrote in Entertainment Weekly: “Kyra Sedgwick, with her unpretentious intelligence and pretty face of triangles, has never been an easy casting choice. Glinting with humor yet never goofy, attractive in an unpeggable way, she’s too often been shunted to the side of the action. With TNT’s The Closer, Sedgwick has a big, bouncy role finely tailored to her.” Over the span of seven seasons, she earned five Emmy nominations for best actress in a drama, winning in 2010. In recent years, Sedgwick has appeared in films like the thriller Big Sky and the charming teen drama The Edge of Seventeen, but she’d get some of the biggest laughs of her career back on television in the recurring role as the antagonistic Deputy Chief (then Chief) Madeline Wuntch on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Last year, Sedgwick headed up the family sitcom Call Your Mother, which was sadly canceled after one season; and earlier this summer, she debuted her latest directorial effort, Space Oddity, at the Tribeca Film Festival. The heartwarming film, about a man who joins a Mars colonization program, costars her husband as the protagonist’s emotionally distant father, while her son, Travis Bacon, composed the music with Scott Hedrick. “My dream is to direct Kevin to his Oscar, and I’m very good at forcing my dreams into reality,” she told Variety. “I think we’ll make that happen at some point in the next 10 years.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Rich Fury/Getty Images for Palm Springs International Film Festival
Aug. 18: Edward Norton, 53
Born into a prominent Boston family on Aug. 18, 1969, Edward Norton, 53, took a somewhat circuitous route to the world of acting, first attending Yale University, where he studied astronomy, history and Japanese. That last field would come in handy when he moved to Japan after graduation to work in his grandfather James Rouse’s company, which was dedicated to establishing low-income housing abroad. Upon his return to the States, he dove headfirst into acting with a role in a Hollywood production of Edward Albee’s Fragments, before he landed his breakout film, the 1996 courtroom thriller Primal Fear. Norton starred as an altar boy who had been charged with murdering an archbishop, and Janet Maslin of The New York Times called his performance “a debut to remember,” marked by “subtle cleverness.” He went on to earn his first Oscar nomination and win a Golden Globe for best supporting actor. Norton quickly picked up another Academy Award nomination for the brutal 1998 drama American History X, in which he played a reformed neo-Nazi skinhead, followed almost immediately by his cult-classic turn as the insomniac unnamed narrator in Fight Club. He made his directorial debut with the 2000 rom-com Keeping the Faith, and then delivered a string of wildly diverse performances, playing a children’s TV show host/giant talking rhino (Death to Smoochy), Nelson Rockefeller (Frida), Bruce Banner (The Incredible Hulk) and a leprous 12th-century king of Jerusalem (Kingdom of Heaven), before teaming up with director Wes Anderson for Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Norton would add a third Oscar nomination to his résumé for the role of a difficult-to-work-with Broadway actor in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). “Norton, who’s come with the baggage of being difficult and demanding over the years, finds just the right balance between arrogance and sincerity,” wrote critic Christy Lemire on RogerEbert.com. He’d reteam with Anderson for Isle of Dogs and last year’s The French Dispatch, and this year, he’s set to appear in the highly anticipated Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion, which transports the whodunnit format to Greece. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Scott Kirkland/Sipa USA via AP Images
Aug. 17: Belinda Carlisle, 64
One of the top female rockers of her generation, Belinda Carlisle, 64, was born on Aug. 17, 1958, in Los Angeles, and she became a chart-topping hitmaker when she formed the all-female new wave band, the Go-Go’s, in 1978. Their 1982 debut album, Beauty and the Beat, featured such hit singles as “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat,” and it would go on to change music history, when it became the first (and thus far only) record by an all-female band who played instruments and wrote their own songs to top the Billboard albums chart. “People automatically assume we were probably put together by some guy,” Carlisle would later say in a 2020 documentary. “But we did it all ourselves.” The band broke up in 1985, and Carlisle found fame as a solo artist, with singles like “Mad About You,” “Circle in the Sand,” “Leave a Light On” and “Heaven Is a Place on Earth,” which reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned a Grammy nomination for best female pop vocal performance. After the Go-Go’s reunited in 1999, the band has been the subject of much critical reappraisal. They got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011, right in front of the location of the former Masque nightclub, where they played their first concert. In 2020, director Alison Ellwood released the Showtime documentary The Go-Go’s, which charted their meteoric rise and, as many critics pointed out, made a very strong case for why they deserved a spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Luckily, voters rectified the situation and the band was inducted last fall, even though they had been eligible since 2006. During her speech inducting them into the hall, Drew Barrymore said: “It’s such an honor. And honestly, it’s really easy to do because the Go-Go’s have been in my personal hall of fame since I was 6 years old.” But Carlisle isn’t resting on her laurels: Last year, she released the compilation record Nobody Owns Me as part of National Album Day, followed this year by The Heaven on Earth Tour, a two-LP live set celebrating her 35 years as a solo artist. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Aug. 16: Steve Carell, 60
Born in Concord, Massachusetts, on Aug. 16, 1962, Steve Carell, 60, originally planned to go to law school. But he made the bold choice of switching to acting after being stumped by the essay question “Why do you want to be an attorney?” on the applications. (The short answer: He didn’t.) After appearing in his college’s improv group, he moved to Chicago, where he landed a spot in The Second City comedy troupe. In 1999, he moved to New York for his breakout turn as a correspondent on The Daily Show, and during his time on the series he began appearing in increasingly higher-profile film roles, including Bruce Almighty and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. The year 2005 proved to be a game changer for Carell, as he left behind The Daily Show to star as the well-meaning but always hilariously inappropriate boss Michael Scott on the American adaptation of The Office. He was nominated for the Emmy for best actor in a comedy six years in a row but, amazingly, never won. Nevertheless, Michael Scott has become one of the most beloved characters in TV history. Entertainment Weekly even included him on their list of the best TV characters of the past 25 years, with Ariana Bacle writing, “The brilliance of the character … is that Michael is both ridiculously annoying and a sympathetic guy who just wants to be loved.” In 2005, Carell also made a major splash on the big screen in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (who can forget the chest-waxing scene?), and when the film pulled in impressive box-office numbers, he emerged as a movie star, in projects like Little Miss Sunshine and Despicable Me. That animated franchise has been such a surprise hit that he’s voiced the lovably villainous Gru in five films, including this summer’s Minions: The Rise of Gru. In 2014, Carell played very against type in Foxcatcher, as the real-life John du Pont, an eccentric millionaire who lures two Olympic wrestlers into his orbit and then commits a shocking murder. “It’s a tricky, triumphant portrayal, a tour de force of slow-burning menace,” wrote Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “Carell is perfection.” The Academy agreed, and the performance landed Carell an Oscar nomination. He’d spend the next few years playing real folks, including tennis legend Bobby Riggs in Battle of the Sexes, journalist David Sheff in Beautiful Boy and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Vice. And then, in 2019, he came roaring back to television in a big way with his Emmy-nominated turn as the disgraced host Mitch Kessler, who’s embroiled in a #MeToo scandal on Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, followed in 2020 by Netflix’s Space Force, in which he played a general tasked with creating the titular sixth branch of the armed services. Later this month, he takes on his darkest TV role to date in The Patient, as a widowed psychotherapist who finds himself kidnapped by a serial killer with a strange request: help him get rid of his homicidal urges — or else. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
Aug. 15: Ben Affleck, 50
Born in Berkeley, California, on Aug. 15, 1972, and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ben Affleck, 50, got his start acting at an early age, appearing in a Burger King commercial and then starring in the PBS educational series The Voyage of the Mimi. As a kid, he played Little League and took drama classes with fellow collaborator Matt Damon before acting in the indie comedies of Kevin Smith, including Mallrats and Chasing Amy. The year 1997 would prove to be a turning point for both Affleck and Damon, who cowrote and costarred in Good Will Hunting, a critically acclaimed crowd-pleaser that won them both an Oscar for best original screenplay. Overnight, Affleck achieved leading man status, and soon he was starring in big-budget films like Armageddon, Shakespeare in Love, Pearl Harbor and his first superhero flick, Daredevil. He hit a roadblock with the critically panned Gigli, though the box-office bomb did come with a silver lining: Affleck met Jennifer Lopez on the set … more on that later. Affleck rebounded with a Golden Globe nomination for his turn as Superman actor George Reeves in the neo-noir Hollywoodland before he began taking a more decisive role behind the camera. He earned raves for directing and cowriting the Boston-set Gone Baby Gone and The Town before striking awards gold with Argo, a rollicking geopolitical thriller about the rescue six diplomats from Iran. “Mr. Affleck handles his own roles, on camera and behind it, with a noticeable lack of self-aggrandizement,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times. “He doesn’t show off with his direction or the performances, going for detail instead of bombast with eerie silences, traded glances, trembling gestures and beaded sweat.” He went on to win best director at the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes, and while he was snubbed at the Oscars, the film picked up three awards, including best picture. Following another celebrated turn in Gone Girl, he began a multi-film run as Bruce Wayne/Batman, though he famously didn’t have a great time immersing himself in the world of DC Comics, calling Justice League “the nadir” of his career. Last year he traded in the cape for a pair of decidedly smaller supporting roles that allowed him to show off his acting chops: as Count Pierre d’Alençon in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel and as Uncle Charlie in The Tender Bar, for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination. Affleck has been in the news in recent months for rekindling his flame with Jennifer Lopez, marrying her in a surprise Las Vegas wedding in July. And next up, he’s reteaming with another old partner, Matt Damon, for a film about Nike’s quest to secure a Michael Jordan endorsement deal. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
Aug. 14: Halle Berry, 56
Born in Cleveland on Aug. 14, 1966, Halle Berry, 56, was a natural beauty from the start, winning the Miss Teen All-American Pageant and, later, being named runner-up for Miss U.S.A. She became a model and then landed a role on the late ’80s series Living Dolls, about a modeling agency, before eventually pursuing grittier roles. She reportedly didn’t shower for days before appearing as a crack addict in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever! After her breakthrough role in the romantic comedy Boomerang, opposite Eddie Murphy, Berry starred in Losing Isaiah and Bulworth. But she earned the biggest raves of her career, as well as an Emmy and a Golden Globe, as the titular groundbreaking actress in the TV movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. In 2000, Berry kicked off a four-film run as Storm in the X-Men series; she’d go on to appear in quite a few big-budget action films, including Swordfish, the James Bond flick Die Another Day and the rebooted Catwoman. It was a decidedly quieter role, in the 2001 drama Monster’s Ball — in which she played a woman who begins a relationship with the racist prison guard who executed her husband — that won Berry a best actress Oscar, making her the first (and thus far only) Black performer to win in the category. Almost as memorable as the performance was her tearful acceptance speech, in which she said, “This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It’s for the women that stand beside me — Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it’s for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.” In recent years, Berry has taken a more decisive role behind the scenes, including starting her own production company, 606 Films, which takes its name from the anti-paparazzi bill she helped pass; as part of the deal, she executive-produced the CBS sci-fi drama Extant, on which she starred as an astronaut who mysteriously becomes pregnant while on a 13-month solo space mission. Following roles in the Kingsman and John Wick franchises, Berry made her directorial debut with 2020’s MMA drama Bruised. This year she starred as the deputy director of NASA in the disaster epic Moonfall, which sees the moon knocked out of orbit and careening toward Earth. Can the planet be saved? If anyone can do the unthinkable, it’s Berry. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: David Acosta/Image Press Agency/Sipa USA via AP Images
Aug. 13: Debi Mazar, 58
Born in Queens, New York, on Aug. 13, 1964, Debi Mazar, 58, got her start as a hip-hop B-girl. Then her life changed forever when she met Madonna at the nightclub Danceteria. Soon, the Material Girl was hiring her to do her makeup, and Mazar went on to appear in five of her music videos. Known for her tough, take-no-prisoners characters, Mazar landed small roles in films such as Goodfellas and Malcolm X, before picking up steam with supporting turns on TV series Civil Wars and L.A. Law. In 2004 she kicked off her recurring role as the foul-mouthed publicist Shauna Roberts on HBO’s Hollywood-set comedy Entourage. She later told People, “I was kind of, almost like embarrassed by my dialogue, because I curse, and I obviously have the ability to be a complete trash mouth, but some of the things I would say would completely make me blush.” She’s perhaps most compelling when she’s being herself, and she capitalized on that by starting her own Cooking Channel show, Extra Virgin, with her tattooed, motorcycle-riding Tuscan chef husband, Gabriele Corcos. The pair, who also opened a now-shuttered Brooklyn restaurant called The Tuscan Gun, won a James Beard Foundation Award for the series. Mazar next seemed to channel her own Big Apple biography to play the hip, free-spirited artist Maggie Amato on TV Land’s Younger, which wrapped up its seven-season run last year. This spring, she costarred on the new Netflix comedy series The Pentaverate, about a secret society that influences world events, which features Mike Myers in eight roles. Mazar, who plays the group’s executive assistant, Patty, described the experience on Today as “like going to comedy school.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic via Getty Images
Aug. 12: Sir Mix-a-Lot, 59
The man who would be Sir Mix-a-Lot, 59, was born Anthony Ray in Seattle on Aug. 12, 1963. He emerged in the mid-1980s as the first notable rapper from the Pacific Northwest. He came out of the gate running, with a trio of chart-topping albums: Swass (1988), which went platinum; Seminar (1989), which went gold; and Mack Daddy (1992), which went platinum. That third album also spawned the megahit single “Baby Got Back,” an ode to female backsides that spent five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 charts and later picked up a Grammy for best rap solo performance. Rolling Stone ranked the gleefully body-positive anthem No. 64 on its list of the best hip-hop songs of all time, quoting Sir’s motivation for writing the song: “[At the time] you had these Spuds McKenzie girls, little skinny chicks looking like stop signs, with big hair and skinny bodies. I did it as a knee-jerk response to that kind of stuff.” He would go on to star on the 1995 UPN series The Watcher, as the titular omniscient narrator who guards the citizens of Las Vegas. He continued to record new albums, the most recent being 2003’s Daddy’s Home. In 2018 he took a surprising career turn with a DIY Network special called Sir Mix-a-Lot’s House Remix, in which he showed off his house-flipping skills. “I ain’t building no damn house,” he told Rolling Stone, “but I’m not one of these cats that’s scared to pick up a hammer.” This year, Mix-a-Lot heads out on tour with dates in Reno, Nevada; Fresno, California; and Portland, Oregon, and he’ll take part in the Flashback Party Jam festival in Phoenix, alongside the Sugarhill Gang, Kid N Play, Digital Underground and more. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP
Aug. 11: Viola Davis, 57
The first Black performer to win the coveted triple crown of acting, Viola Davis, 57, was born in Rhode Island on Aug. 11, 1965, and studied at the esteemed Juilliard School of Performing Arts. Just a few blocks south, she became an acclaimed Broadway actress, performing in three of August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle plays, a series of 10 works about African American life across each of the decades of the 20th century: the 1940s-set Seven Guitars, in 1996; the 1980s-set King Hedley II, in 2001; and the 1950s-set Fences, in 2010 — the latter two earned her a pair of Tony Awards. After taking on the role of a serial killer on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (one of her favorites to date), Davis made a splash with her supporting role in the 2008 drama Doubt, in which she played the mother of a boy who may or may not have been molested by a parish priest. Roger Ebert called her heartbreaking scene opposite Meryl Streep “as good as any I’ve seen this year.” He continued, “It lasts about 10 minutes, but it is the emotional heart and soul of Doubt, and if Viola Davis isn't nominated by the Academy, an injustice will have been done. She goes face to face with the preeminent film actress of this generation, and it is a confrontation of two equals that generates terrifying power.” Despite her brief screen time, she earned her first Oscar nomination, picking up another three years later, for The Help. In 2014 she landed a juicy role as the morally complicated law professor Annalise Keating on the Shonda Rhimes legal drama How to Get Away with Murder, for which she became the first Black actress to win an Emmy for leading a drama. On the big screen, she reteamed with her Fences Broadway costar Denzel Washington for that play’s cinematic adaptation, and her role as Rose Maxson led her to an Oscar win. “You know, there’s one place that all the people with the greatest potential are gathered,” she said in her acceptance speech. “One place, and that’s the graveyard. People ask me all the time, ‘What kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola?’ And I say, exhume those bodies; exhume those stories. The stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition. People who fell in love and lost. I became an artist — and thank God I did — because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.” Davis once again found success performing the words of August Wilson, receiving her fourth Academy Award nomination in 2021 for her role as the titular 1920s blues singer in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. This year, after starring as Michelle Obama in the miniseries The First Ladies, Davis will play the real-life General Nanisca, the leader of an all-female unit of warriors called the Agojie who protected Africa’s Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Hollywood Foreign Press Association
Aug. 10: Justin Theroux, 51
Justin Theroux, 51, was born in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 10, 1971, to a family of storytellers who included his Washington Post reporter mother and his travel writer uncle, Paul Theroux. After making his film debut in 1996’s I Shot Andy Warhol, Theroux appeared in popular movies such as Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and American Psycho, though it was his work with David Lynch in Mulholland Drive that first gained him the attention of critics. Before reteaming with Lynch for 2006’s Inland Empire, Theroux guest-starred on Six Feet Under for two seasons, earning a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. He would go on to show off his surprising range, playing Jesus H. Christ in the biblically inspired comedy The Ten and John Hancock on the HBO miniseries John Adams. In 2014, Theroux began his three-season run on The Leftovers, which grappled with what would happen in the aftermath of a global event that saw 2 percent of the world’s population mysteriously disappear. Critics often raved about this as an underrated gem, and producer Damon Lindelof once joked about hiring him despite some preconceived biases: “I was like, ‘That guy is way too good-looking to pull it off.’ Then he came in and read, and I was like, ‘This guy is a very, very, very good actor, in spite of his good looks.’ ” Last year he starred in Apple TV+’s The Mosquito Coast — based on a book by his uncle, Paul — about an idealistic American inventor who uproots his family to Mexico when he finds himself pursued by the U.S. government. Next, Theroux will return to his hometown to portray Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy on the HBO miniseries The White House Plumbers. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Aug. 9: Hoda Kotb, 58
Future broadcast legend Hoda Kotb, 58, was born in Norman, Okla., on Aug. 9, 1964, to Egyptian parents who moved from Cairo to the United States for their studies. At Virginia Tech, Kotb became involved in the student radio station and earned a degree in broadcast journalism in 1986. She worked as a news assistant in Cairo before becoming a local reporter in affiliates across the United States and then settled in as an anchor in New Orleans from 1992 to 1998. That year she joined the NBC family as a correspondent on Dateline, where she covered hard-hitting topics like the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She also interviewed world leaders including Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2007, NBC announced that it would be expanding Today into a fourth hour, and Kotb was tapped to bring her megawatt charisma to the legendary morning show. She quickly earned fans that year when she opened up about her battle with breast cancer, and the fourth hour became must-see TV when Kathie Lee Gifford was named her official coanchor, in 2008. Following Matt Lauer’s sexual harassment scandal and firing, Kotb began anchoring Today’s opening hour, alongside Savannah Guthrie, in 2018 — the first time two women cohosted the show. “I am pinching myself,” she said during her first appearance. “I think we should send some medics to Alexandria, Virginia, where my mom has likely fainted after hearing the open of that show.” Kotb earned her first Daytime Emmy in 2019, the same year Gifford left Today, and she now has that same magic chemistry with cohost Jenna Bush Hager — the pair has been nominated for hosting Emmys three years running. This year, Kotb showed off her acting chops by appearing as herself in the Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy Marry Me. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: TK
Aug. 8: Keith Carradine, 73
Born into the Carradine acting dynasty on Aug. 8, 1949, Keith Carradine, 73, started dipping his toe into the family business with a pair of Westerns in 1971, first in the Kirk Douglas flick A Gunfight and then in Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Carradine worked with Altman once again, in Thieves Like Us, and it would be that director’s 1975 classic Nashville that would score Carradine his first Oscar. He didn’t win for playing the rock-singing ladies’ man Tom Frank but instead for writing the original song “I’m Easy.” On Broadway, Carradine channeled a real-life Western icon as the star of the musical The Will Rogers Follies, in a performance that Frank Rich of The New York Times called “utterly beguiling.” He’d go on to be nominated for a Tony, a feat he’d pull off once again 22 years later with Hands on a Hardbody. In recent years, Carradine has become a regular on prestige television shows, including, of course, the HBO Western Deadwood, as Wild Bill Hickock. He’d go on to appear on Dexter, Damages and Fargo, before lending his air of folksy gravitas to the role of President Conrad Dalton on the CBS drama Madam Secretary. “It’s a wonderful role,” he told CBS News Chicago. “I’m happy that it’s just an acting role. We’ve become an aspirational show. We depict things the way they could be again and definitely the way they once were, in terms of discourse and how people speak with one another. It gives us a chance to remind one another that we are all in this together.” Last year he returned to familiar territory, playing both a Western politician (the governor in The Power of the Dog) and the cowboy-hat-sporting John Dorie Sr. (on the post-apocalyptic series Fear the Walking Dead). —Nicholas DeRenzo
See 10 Quick Questions for Carradine's Daughter, Martha Plimpton
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PHOTO BY: Desiree Navarro/WireImage via Getty Images
Aug. 7: David Duchovny, 62
Best known for playing the Oxford-educated FBI agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files, David Duchovny, 62, was no academic slouch himself: Born in Manhattan on Aug. 7, 1960, he attended Princeton University, before getting a master’s degree in English literature at Yale. Duchovny was in the process of earning his doctorate when he began commuting from New Haven down to New York to study acting and started appearing in off-Broadway plays. He eventually left behind academia, and following his early appearance as a partygoer in Working Girl, Duchovny memorably played the transgender DEA agent Denise Bryson on Twin Peaks and later starred in the steamy Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries. The year 1993 would prove to be a game-changer as he was hired to play Mulder on Fox’s hit supernatural drama The X-Files, opposite Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully. Ken Tucker wrote in Entertainment Weekly of the duo’s appeal, “There’s marvelous tension between Anderson — who is dubious about these events — and Duchovny, who has the haunted, imploring look of a true believer.” He earned two Emmy nominations during the show’s run and returned to the role of Mulder many times over the years, including in a 1998 film, its 2008 sequel and the rebooted series, which came back for a 10th and 11th season in 2016 and 2018. In 2007, Duchovny struck TV gold once again with a part that probably felt a little closer to home than The X-Files: On the Showtime comedy Californication, he played the hedonistic novelist Hank Moody, a role that in 2008 earned him the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy. He next played 1960s LAPD homicide detective Sam Hodiak in the NBC period drama Aquarius for two seasons, and he began to follow Hank Moody’s lead and publish his own novels: His first book, 2015’s Holy Cow: A Novel, is a globe-trotting adventure about livestock who escape their farm to find a better life out in the real world. Duchovny has been keeping busy in recent years, including a hilarious cameo in last year’s university-set comedy The Chair, in which he played a fictionalized version of himself who’s invited to a prestigious distinguished lecturer position as a publicity stunt for the school. During the pandemic, he also released a new album, starred in Judd Apatow’s The Bubble and published his fourth novel, Truly Like Lightning, which caused Mark Athitakis to write in The Washington Post, “We could use more David Duchovny novels: funny, big-picture, irreverent” — not unlike the man who wrote them. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Aug. 6: Michelle Yeoh, 60
Born in Ipoh, Malaysia, on Aug. 6, 1962, actress Michelle Yeoh, 60, got her start in the world of dance, studying ballet from the age of 4, and she later said that it was this artistic form that helped her star in martial-arts films without any training. Crowned Miss Malaysia in 1983, Yeoh made her on-screen debut in a watch commercial with Jackie Chan, and she soon began appearing in Hong Kong action films, often doing her own stunts: In fact, an appearance in the 1996 film The Stunt Woman left her with a fractured vertebrae and cracked ribs! In 1997, she broke into Hollywood as the first Asian Bond girl, Wai Lin, in Tomorrow Never Dies; Roger Ebert wrote that “her presence in the movie is so effective that she’d be a natural to add to the other regulars, like M, Q and Miss Moneypenny.” Yeoh would gain even more attention as the powerful warrior Yu Shu Lien in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a part that would earn her a BAFTA nomination for best actress. Funnily, Yeoh — who grew up speaking Malaysian, English and later Cantonese — learned the film’s Mandarin script phonetically with the help of crew members. Following roles in Memoirs of a Geisha and The Lady, in which she played the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Yeoh joined two of the biggest sci-fi franchises in the world when she starred in both a Marvel Cinematic Universe film (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) and the streaming series Star Trek: Discovery. It was a decidedly more earthly role, as the ferocious mother-in-law to-be Eleanor in Crazy Rich Asians that would earn her some of the biggest raves of her career; the film was the first contemporary-set Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast since 1993’s Joy Luck Club, and Yeoh told The New York Times of the experience, “We want to be represented, we don’t want to be invisible, we don’t want to be told that we’re not good enough to be on the silver screens. You don’t have to treat us special. Just treat us as equals.” She returned to the world of Marvel for her role as Ying Nan in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, before attracting serious Oscar buzz for this year’s surreal action comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once. The role landed her on Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2022 list, with author Kevin Kwan writing, “[With] Everything Everywhere All at Once, she truly blows our minds. Without vanity, without fuss, Michelle Yeoh astonishes us with her honesty, humor, and grace, and we realize we will never get enough of her achieving the impossible.” Next up, following a turn in the hit animated film Minions: The Rise of Gru, Yeoh will venture into far-off lands with the Avatar sequels. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Rocky Widner / NBAE via Getty Images
Aug. 5: Patrick Ewing, 60
A towering figure in New York City basketball lore, the 7-foot Patrick Ewing, 60, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on Aug. 5, 1962, and moved to the United States at the age of 11. He stretched to 6-foot-10 by junior high school, and though he was originally rather gangly and awkward on the court, his high school coach, Mike Jarvis, once said he’d be “the next Bill Russell, only better offensively.” Ewing began to prove him right when he got a scholarship to Georgetown University and helped lead the Hoyas to three appearances in the NCAA Division I national championship games. The team picked up the national title in 1984, with Ewing himself named the Final Four most outstanding player that year. The future New York Knicks legend kicked off his professional career with a bang as the first pick in the 1985 draft, and he was named NBA rookie of the year. During his 15 years with the Knicks, he was an 11-time NBA All-Star and led the team to 13 appearances in the playoffs. While they made it all the way to the finals in 1994, Ewing never took home the championship — making him one of the greatest NBA players in history who never snagged a ring. But his talents on the court are undeniable, and he still holds the franchise record for points scored, rebounds, blocked shots, steals and field goals made. After leaving the Knicks, Ewing went on to play one season each with the Seattle SuperSonics and the Orlando Magic, before officially retiring in 2002. His time in the NBA was supplemented by two gold medals at the Olympic Games, in 1984 and in 1992 as a member of the Dream Team. In 2008, the icon was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. “This means a lot,” he said of his induction. “I’m being recognized for all of the blood, sweat and tears I’ve put into my 17-year career. Growing up in Massachusetts and having field trips to the Basketball Hall of Fame, I never really realized that one day I’d be in there. This is a dream come true.” Following 15 years as an assistant coach in the NBA, Ewing returned to his alma mater as the head coach of the Georgetown men’s basketball team, though leading the team has been anything but a slam dunk: He has a 68-83 record as coach, and the Hoyas have had only one winning season and one appearance in the NCAA tournament since he took over. Ewing, however, tweeted in March that he’s “not a quitter” and that “my plan is to be back next year coaching at my alma mater and bringing this program back to prominence.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: PBG/AAD/STAR MAX/IPx via AP Images
Aug. 4: Barack Obama, 61
Born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, Barack Obama, 61, was a political and intellectual trailblazer from early in life: A community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, Obama studied at Harvard Law School, where he became the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review. As a young attorney, he met his future wife, Michelle Robinson, when she was his adviser at a Chicago firm during a summer associate program, and he quickly began ascending the political ranks, first as a member of the Illinois Senate in 1996. During this time, he wrote the lyrical 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, which Time included on its list of the 100 greatest nonfiction books written in English since 1923. The audiobook version also went on to win the rising politician his first Grammy for best spoken word album. Obama’s national star began to rise when he delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention; it was a markedly optimistic speech in which he talked about “the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too.” After being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama continued the theme of his DNC speech in his second book, 2006’s The Audacity of Hope, which topped the New York Times best-seller list and earned him another Grammy. In 2007, Obama announced that he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination, kicking off a sometimes bruising primary race against Sen. Hillary Clinton that ended with him becoming the first Black American to be nominated for the presidency by a major party. He ultimately prevailed over Sen. John McCain and won the presidency with nearly 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes. The same year he took office, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” a decision he said left him “both surprised and deeply humbled.” Highlights of his first term included the passage of the Affordable Care Act (dubbed Obamacare) and a $787 billion stimulus bill. Despite criticism from the right, he ultimately won reelection in 2012, beating Republican candidate Mitt Romney by nearly 5 million votes. “Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated,” he said in his election-night speech, later adding, “I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states.” Second-term policy victories included an Iran nuclear deal and a climate change treaty signed by 195 nations. In his post-presidency, Obama decided to stay in Washington, D.C., and he and Michelle signed a deal with Netflix, which included the production of documentaries like the Oscar-nominated Crip Camp and the children’s series Waffles + Mochi. In 2020, he released his third memoir, A Promised Land; novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote in The New York Times that the former president is “as fine a writer as they come,” crafting a book that is “nearly always pleasurable to read, sentence by sentence, the prose gorgeous in places, the detail granular and vivid.” And this year, Obama added yet another accolade to his résumé: an Emmy nomination for narrating the Netflix docuseries Our Great National Parks. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jeremy Smith / imageSPACE /Sipa USA via AP Images
Aug. 3: Martha Stewart, 81
Born on Aug. 3, 1941, Martha Stewart (née Kostyra), 81, grew up in a working-class community in New Jersey, where her Polish American upbringing gave her early training in such domestic arts as cooking, sewing, gardening and canning. While still a schoolgirl, Stewart began planning birthday parties for her neighbors, and she modeled from the age of 13, eventually using her earnings to pay her tuition at Barnard College. After working as a stockbroker from 1965 to 1972, she left Wall Street for greener pastures in Connecticut, where she got to work restoring a Federal-style farmhouse. Soon she established a successful catering business and in 1982 published her first book, Entertaining, which set the tone for her reputation as a skilled perfectionist with impeccable taste. The book launched a media empire that would come to include her own magazine (Martha Stewart Living), a cable TV show, a newspaper column, a radio show and more, and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public in 1999. Her carefully crafted image took a hit when Stewart was accused of insider trading, and she was indicted in 2003 for securities fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and making false statements; ultimately, a jury found her guilty on four counts, and she was sentenced to five months in a minimum-security prison and five months of house arrest. While behind bars, Stewart says she earned the nickname “M. Diddy,” but she spent her time honing her crafting skills, even making a 14-piece Nativity set — a replica of which she later sold on her website for $120. Upon her release, Stewart came back to television in a big way, hosting a spinoff of The Apprentice and launching a daytime talk show that would run until 2012. While she has continued writing cookbooks (her 99th was published last year!), Stewart probably earned the most career buzz in recent years when she and her surprising BFF, rapper Snoop Dogg, launched their VH1 cooking show Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Party Challenge, which went on to earn an Emmy nomination. This June, Stewart dipped her toe into yet another sector of the entertainment world when she launched her first podcast with iHeartRadio. Her first guest? Snoop Dogg, of course. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Udo Salters / Sipa USA via AP Images
Aug. 2: Mary-Louise Parker, 58
Born Aug. 2, 1964, in South Carolina, Mary-Louise Parker, 58, got her acting start as many before her did: on a soap opera. After appearing on the Manhattan-set daytime drama Ryan’s Hope, Parker became one of the most in-demand theater actresses in New York. She earned a Tony nomination for her Broadway debut in 1990’s Prelude to a Kiss and in 1997 originated the role of Li’l Bit in off-Broadway’s How I Learned to Drive, a memory play in which she played a victim of sexual abuse. (She later picked up her first Tony win for the play Proof in 2001.) In between, she was attracting roles on both the big screen (Fried Green Tomatoes, Boys on the Side) and small, including The West Wing and the HBO adaptation of Angels in America, for which she won an Emmy. In 2005, she started her eight-season run on Showtime’s Weeds as suburban-mom–turned–drug-dealer Nancy Botwin. “She’s kind of a loser,” Parker told The New York Times of her role. “She’s not virtuous, and she’s not Robin Hood. She just wants to keep her housekeeper, go to the nice grocery and keep buying her $4 smoothies.” Back on the New York City stage, Parker continued to appear in Broadway shows, including a revival of Hedda Gabler in 2009 and 2019’s The Sound Inside, for which she won her second best actress Tony. Last year, she appeared as Colin Kaepernick’s mother, Teresa, in the Netflix miniseries Colin in Black & White before pulling off an impressive acting feat on the Great White Way: Twenty-five years after first appearing in How I Learned to Drive, she and original costar David Morse reunited for the show’s Broadway debut, earning Parker her fifth Tony nod. Maya Phillips wrote in The New York Times, “If I could direct a scene representing why I love theater, it would look something like this: Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse delivering crushing performances — both sentimental and horrific, utterly complex — of a Pulitzer Prize–winning play to an enthralled audience.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Aug. 1: Sam Mendes, 57
An award-winning director on both big and small screens and British and American stages, Sam Mendes, 57, was born in England on Aug. 1, 1965, graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1987 and quickly ascended the ranks of the London theater world. At the tender age of 24, he directed Judi Dench in the West End production of The Cherry Orchard, and soon he was making a splash with his boldly reimagined productions; his slinky 1993 revival of Cabaret, starring Alan Cumming as Emcee, took Broadway by storm in 1998 and was revived once again in 2014. Mendes made his feature film directorial debut with 1999’s American Beauty, a suburban satire that won five Oscars, including best director for Mendes. “You expect Mendes to shine at dialogue and performance,” Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone. “What’s astonishing is this theater man’s visual sophistication.” Future films included the 2002 period mob drama Road to Perdition, the 2005 Gulf War drama Jarhead, the 2008 period romance Revolutionary Road, which starred his then-wife Kate Winslet, and the 2009 road-trip comedy Away We Go. In 2012, he got into the action game with his first James Bond film, Skyfall, which was critically acclaimed and became the highest-grossing Bond film of all time, pulling in a worldwide box office of $1.1 billion. He returned to the franchise with Spectre in 2015, before turning to the small screen, where he executive-produced The Hollow Crown and Penny Dreadful. Mendes earned raves for his 2019 World War I epic 1917, which unfolds in real time and is based on a story shared by his paternal grandfather. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including three for Mendes himself (best picture, director and screenplay), and it picked up three wins. A frequent Broadway presence over the years, Mendes added two more Tonys, for best play and best director, to his mantel for the 2019 production of Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, and he landed the same two awards this year for The Lehman Trilogy, a 200-minute historic epic in which three actors play multiple generations of the Lehman financial dynasty from their arrival in New York in 1844 to the company’s collapse and bankruptcy 163 years later. “I am proud, especially this year, to be part of the Broadway community in a season of such rampant creativity and diversity, so thank you for remembering us,” he said during his acceptance speech. “I have a lot of people to say thank you to for keeping this show alive during some pretty dark days.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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