March Celebrity Birthdays
A look at the famous and the fascinating on the day they were born
AARP Members Only Access, March 2022
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PHOTO BY: Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Teen Vogue
March 31: Al Gore, 74
Born in Washington, D.C., to a U.S. senator from Tennessee on March 31, 1948, Al Gore, 74, graduated from Harvard University before enlisting in the U.S. Army as a military reporter during the Vietnam War, serving from 1969 to 1971. After returning home, he continued as a journalist at the Nashville-based Tennesseean newspaper, while studying law and philosophy at Vanderbilt. His political career began in 1976, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and he stayed in that role until successfully winning a seat in the Senate in 1984. In 1992, Bill Clinton chose Gore as his running mate, which caused Louis Menand to later write in The New Yorker, “By choosing Gore as his running mate in 1992 — by, in effect, doubling the Southern element of his candidacy — Clinton was casting himself off from the party of George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Mario Cuomo. He was placing all his chips on the future. And he won the bet.” As VP, Gore helped usher in the Internet Age by promoting legislation that helped the “information superhighway” get up and running — and, no, he never claimed that he invented it! (On David Letterman, he later joked during a Top Ten appearance: “Remember, America, I gave you the internet, and I can take it away!”) Gore’s name will forever be synonymous with the contentious 2000 presidential election, in which he won the popular vote by more than a half million votes but lost in the Electoral College, the first time that had happened since 1888. Rather than lick his wounds, he began to fully dedicate his life to environmentalism and global warming, issues he’d cared deeply about since at least 1992, when he published Earth in the Balance. He won the Academy Award for best documentary for An Inconvenient Truth, followed by a Founders Award at the International Emmy Awards; and in 2007, Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” During the pandemic, Gore has been living on his 400-acre farm in Tennessee, but he joked with CBS News that he doesn’t have many calluses on his hands to show for the hard work; while his team works at growing vegetables and tending sheep, he’s been collecting soil samples and learning about regenerative farming techniques. “A realist will tell you ‘Look, we’ve done some damage, some of it regrettably is not recoverable,’” he said. “But we go from where we are. You want to avoid tipping people into despair because some people go from denial to despair without pausing at the intermediate step of actually doing something about it.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Gotham/GC Images
March 30: Celine Dion, 54
Celine Dion, 54, would go on to become one of the greatest vocal powerhouses of her (or any) generation, but the French-Canadian singer came from surprisingly humble beginnings. Born March 30, 1968, in a small town outside of Montreal, Dion was the youngest of 14 children, and her mother used to put her to sleep inside a drawer! She wrote her first song at the age of 12 and became something of a teen star in Canada, eventually performing for Pope John Paul II at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in 1984 and then representing Switzerland at the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest. She released her first album in English, Unison, in 1990, which included the top 10 hit “Where Does My Heart Beat Now,” before winning a Grammy and an Oscar for her love duet with Peabo Bryson from Beauty and the Beast. Her next two albums were once-in-a-generation megahits: 1996’s Falling Into You, which won album of the year at the Grammys and has sold more than 30 million copies; and 1997’s Let’s Talk About Love, which included “My Heart Will Go On” from the Titanic soundtrack. Dion’s signature song, it went on to win the Oscar, the Golden Globe and record and song of the year at the Grammys. In 2003, Dion changed the music business (and tourism in Las Vegas) with her A New Day … concert residency, which was seen by 3 million fans and grossed $385 million before it closed in 2007; she almost single-handedly proved that Sin City — once the territory of Wayne Newton and Siegfried & Roy — was safe for chart-toppers, and seemingly every pop star under the sun has followed her lead. After her husband, René Angélil, died in January 2016, Dion proved her resilience with a cover of Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, the same year she received that show’s Icon Award. In 2019, she topped the charts for the first time in 17 years with her new album Courage. After having to cancel some shows due to muscle spasms this year, she’s scheduled to head back out on her world tour in the spring, with a new Vegas residency planned for the future at the recently opened Resorts World Theatre. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival
March 29: Eric Idle, 79
When it comes to surrealist comedy, sometimes it takes being really smart to get really silly. Case in point: Eric Idle, 79, who got his start making people laugh while studying at Cambridge University, where he was invited to join the prestigious Footlights Dramatic Club. As president, Idle — who was born March 29, 1943, in South Shields, County Durham, England — changed the rules to let in female members, and after graduating began working on the children’s TV show Do Not Adjust Your Set alongside Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Soon they were teaming up with John Cleese and Graham Chapman to create the world-conquering Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which ran on the BBC from 1969 to 1973. Monty Python went on to become a beloved cult-comedy troupe that launched a series of films, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which Idle appeared as the Dead Collector and Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Launcelot, among other uproarious creations. In the mid-1970s, he created a spoof of the Fab Four, known as The Rutles, and he codirected, wrote and starred in the mockumentary The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash. Following a string of appearances in such movies as Splitting Heirs and An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, Idle had a career resurgence with the 2005 Broadway hit Monty Python’s Spamalot, which New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley summed up as “resplendently silly” and a “fitful, eager celebration of inanity.” Idle earned two Tony nominations, and the show itself picked up three wins, including best musical. In 2018, he released Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography, which went on to become a New York Times best seller. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: ABC via Getty Images
March 28: Reba McEntire, 67
Born in McAlester, Oklahoma, on March 28, 1955, Reba McEntire, 67, grew up on her family’s 8,000-acre ranch, and she even participated in barrel races from the ages of 11 to 21. In fact, it was at the National Rodeo Finals in Oklahoma City where she was performing the national anthem that she was discovered by Red Steagall in 1974, setting her on a course for superstardom. From the 1970s to today, McEntire has become a country music powerhouse, with a staggering 106 of her songs entering the Billboard Hot Country charts and 24 reaching No. 1. Rolling Stone ranked “Fancy” at No. 82 on its list of the 100 greatest country songs of all time, and she’s been an awards magnet for decades, picking up three Grammys among dozens of honors from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. In the 1990s, McEntire also began acting, appearing on Broadway as, appropriately, Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun in 2001. “Making her Broadway debut,” wrote Ben Brantley in the New York Times, “Reba McEntire glides into the title role of Annie Get Your Gun like a seabird landing on water … Like Annie Oakley, she’s a nonchalant show-off, making a highly polished performance look so easy that you wonder why we aren’t all Broadway stars.” She followed up that lauded performance with her own namesake sitcom Reba, which ran for six seasons and earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She later made headlines for starring in commercials as the unlikeliest of corporate mascots: KFC’s Colonel Sanders! Last year, McEntire, who now has a recurring role on CBS’s Young Sheldon, made a delightful surprise cameo in the off-the-wall comedy Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar as Trish, a water spirit who saves the title duo from drowning. This month, the recent Kennedy Center honoree releases a new album and DVD called My Chains Are Gone, which features some of her favorite hymns and appearances by the likes of Trisha Yearwood and her ex-step-daughter-in-law Kelly Clarkson. Next up, she’s set to open Reba’s Place, a memorabilia-filled restaurant, bar, store and live music venue that will occupy a century-old Masonic Temple in the town of Atoka in her home state of Oklahoma. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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March 27: Quentin Tarantino, 59
Few directors have made such an immediate impact on cinema with their debut films as Quentin Tarantino, 59, did with Reservoir Dogs in 1992. From the stylized violence to the witty monologues to the classic film references, many of the Oscar–winning director’s trademarks were present from the start. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 27, 1963, Tarantino was working at a video store in California for $200 a week when he sold the scripts for True Romance and Natural Born Killers. And while Reservoir Dogs made a splash, it was his second film, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, that established him as one of America’s most in-demand directors. Currently ranked number 8 on IMDB’s user-voted list of the 250 greatest films of all time, the film earned the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or award and seven Oscar nominations, including one win for Tarantino’s screenplay. A lover of genre films, his next movies were homages to blaxploitation (1997’s Jackie Brown), kung fu and samurai (2003’s Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2004’s Volume 2) and exploitation/slasher (the “Death Proof” segment of 2007’s double feature Grindhouse). And his next trio of films looked back toward the past, beginning with the Nazi revenge flick Inglourious Basterds in 2009, followed by the spaghetti Western Django Unchained, about a formerly enslaved man fighting to free his wife from a sadistic plantation owner, and then the Western The Hateful Eight, about a motley crew of travelers trapped together in a Wyoming cabin during a blizzard. Tarantino likes to say that he’s retiring after his 10th film, so that he goes out on top. And his ninth film — if you count both parts of Kill Bill as one movie — was a rousing success: Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood combined his two favorite loves, the movies and history, into a funny and nostalgic film about the waning days of Hollywood’s golden age, set against the backdrop of the Manson Family murders. The movie picked up two Oscars, including best supporting actor for Brad Pitt, and earned Tarantino three nominations himself, for best picture, director and screenplay. Last year, he adapted the film into his first novel, which topped The New York Times Best sellers list. “Tarantino isn’t trying to play here what another novelist-screenwriter, Terry Southern, liked to call the Quality Lit Game,” critic Dwight Garner wrote in the Times. “He’s not out to impress us with the intricacy of his sentences or the nuance of his psychological insights. He’s here to tell a story in take-it-or-leave-it Elmore Leonard fashion.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Ian West/PA Wire URN:46219496 (Press Association via AP Images)
March 26: Diana Ross, 78
One of the most enduring icons of the Motown years, Diana Ross, 78, was born in Detroit on March 26, 1944, and she was only 15 years old when she joined up with some friends to form the girl group that would go on to become the Supremes. Signed by Berry Gordy Jr. in 1961, Ross and her fellow Supremes racked up a dozen number 1 hits, including “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Baby Love,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Stop! In the Name of Love” ... and a few others that didn’t include the word “love” in the title! Ross continued her chart-topping success after going solo, with “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” though her songs were always majorly underrated by the Grammys. Following a meager two nominations with the Supremes, she earned another 10 as a solo artist, but she amazingly failed to snag a win until a 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award. Beyond the radio, Ross was a crossover success in film, earning a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of jazz great Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues, and later appearing in Mahogany and The Wiz. In 1988, the Supremes were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Ross has won every kind of industry accolade available, including the Kennedy Center Honor in 2007 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. But don’t expect the hardworking diva to be resting on her laurels: In November, she released Thank You, her first new studio album in 15 years, and she’s heading out on a U.K. tour this summer. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Anthony Behar/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)
March 25: Gloria Steinem, 88
It’s nearly impossible to think of someone whose name is more synonymous with female empowerment than feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem, 88. Born in Ohio on March 25, 1934, Steinem studied at Smith College before traveling to India, where she honed her skills as an activist. In 1962, she published a groundbreaking Esquire article about the “contraceptive revolution,” followed by her famous 1963 Show magazine exposé, “A Bunny’s Tale,” for which she went undercover as a waitress at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club in New York City. Soon, Steinem was helping to found New York magazine, where she began writing her wildly popular column The City Politic, in 1968. Along with Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm, she established the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 and then cofounded the feminist magazine Ms. the following year. Over the decades, she’s published a number of books and essay collections, including Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) and Revolutions From Within (1992), and in the 1990s she helped kick-start Take Our Daughters to Work Day. In recent years, Steinem has become even more of a pop culture icon: She was played by Christine Lahti in the 2018 off-Broadway play Gloria: A Life, by Rose Byrne in the FX miniseries Mrs. America, and by Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore in the Julie Taymor–directed The Glorias. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: The 32nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards/Getty Images for GLAAD
March 24: Jim Parsons, 49
After smaller roles in films like Garden State and TV shows like Judging Amy, Jim Parsons, 49, got the break of a lifetime when he was cast in the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory as the fastidious and socially awkward theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper. Audiences might not have guessed when the show premiered in 2007 that it would go on to rank as America’s most-watched sitcom, earning Parsons four Emmys and the highest salary ($26.5 million) of any TV actor. Born in Houston on March 24, 1973, Parsons has also kept one foot in the theater world since making his first stage appearance in a school play at the age of 6. He made his Broadway debut in the 2011 revival of Larry Kramer’s blistering AIDS drama The Normal Heart and went on to receive an Emmy nomination for his performance in the TV adaptation. Later Broadway appearances included starring roles in Harvey, as a man whose best friend is a giant imaginary rabbit, and An Act of God, as the titular deity. In 2018, he appeared in the 50th anniversary production of The Boys in the Band, a groundbreaking 1960s play about a group of gay friends. And in 2020 he appeared on-screen once again, in two Ryan Murphy–produced projects: a film version of The Boys in the Band and the miniseries Hollywood, in which he was nominated for an Emmy for his role as the closeted talent agent Henry Willson. But he hasn’t left the universe of The Big Bang Theory behind entirely: Parsons narrates and executive produces the Wonder Years–like prequel Young Sheldon and also executive produces the Fox sitcom Call Me Kat, starring his former sitcom wife, Mayim Bialik. Next up, he’s set to star opposite Sally Field in the movie Spoiler Alert as the real-life television journalist Michael Ausiello, who tragically lost his husband to cancer. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jonas Gustavsson/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)
March 23: Chaka Khan, 69
Born March 23, 1953 in Great Lakes, Illinois, Chaka Khan, 69, ascended to her throne as the “Queen of Funk” as the lead singer of the band Rufus, with whom she earned her first Grammy win in 1975 for the radio hit “Tell Me Something Good.” In 1978, Khan released her debut solo album, Chaka, which featured the chart-topping, Ashford & Simpson–penned “I’m Every Woman.” Following a cameo as a choir soloist in 1980’s The Blues Brothers, Khan reteamed with Rufus for one final hurrah, “Ain’t Nobody,” before releasing her platinum-charting electro-funk-tinged solo album I Feel for You in 1984. The title track, a Prince cover, went on to win Grammys for best R&B song and best R&B female vocal performance, and Khan remained a Grammy favorite throughout her career: She won her ninth and 10th in 2008 for best R&B album (Funk This) and best R&B vocal performance by a group or duo (“Disrespectful,” with Mary J. Blige). After appearing on Dancing With the Stars and being the first celebrity sent home, Khan went to rehab to deal with her prescription drug addiction, inspired by the death of her good friend Prince. In 2019, she released her first new album in 12 years, Hello Happiness, which The Guardian music critic Damien Morris called “a vital calling card to remind everyone to come hear this unearthly voice, still sizzling with spice.” If you want to hear that voice in person, you’re in luck. Following the pandemic pause, she’s back out on tour, with appearances across the U.S. this spring. Last year, in an interview with singer Jazmine Sullivan for W magazine, Khan said that she’s most proud of her longevity. “I’m most thankful that God has given me so much time and the ability to see so many changes take place on this planet. … I’m very thankful for all my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandbabies. It just makes my life so rich. And it gives me a reason for being and a reason for excelling. Because I definitely ain’t doing this for no damn award.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
March 22: Keegan-Michael Key, 51
Like many comedy greats before him, Keegan-Michael Key, 51, honed his funnyman chops on the stage at Second City before joining the cast of Fox’s sketch series MADtv. But his star really started to rise when he and castmate Peele branched out with their own Comedy Central hit Key & Peele, for which they won an Emmy for best variety sketch series. The show became such a breakout cultural phenomenon that Key — who was born in Michigan on March 22, 1971 — even appeared as Luther, Barack Obama’s “anger translator,” at the 2015 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. As Key & Peele ended, he began taking on roles in sitcoms (Playing House and Friends From College) and films like the action comedy Keanu, in which he and Peele play cousins on a mission to rescue the cute kitten of an L.A. drug kingpin. He also became a surprising fixture in family films, voicing a stuffed duck in Toy Story 4, a hyena named Kamari in The Lion King remake and Murray the Mummy in the Hotel Transylvania franchise. In 2017, Key made his Broadway debut in the Steve Martin comedy Meteor Shower, which kicked off a string of theater-adjacent roles, including an appearance in Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of the Broadway musical The Prom in 2020 and a starring role in last year’s Apple TV+ musical Schmigadoon!, a loving send-up of classic Hollywood musicals. This year, Key will be all over your TV and movie screens, with roles in the Judd Apatow pandemic comedy The Bubble, the Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers reboot and Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio (as the voice of the fox Honest John). And he’ll be teaming back up with Peele to play a pair of demon brothers in the stop-motion horror comedy Wendell and Wild, from the director of Coraline. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Bruce Glikas/WireImage
March 21: Rosie O’Donnell, 60
Born into a big Irish family on Long Island, New York, on March 21, 1962, Rosie O’Donnell, 60, got her big break with a 1983 appearance on the TV series Star Search as a stand-up comedian. She used her winnings to move to Los Angeles, where she embarked on an acting career that included performances in such films as A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle and The Flintstones, as Betty Rubble. But it turned out that her best role was as herself: As the host of her namesake daytime talk show (1996 to 2002), O’Donnell earned the nickname the “Queen of Nice” — and 11 Daytime Emmys. Next, as a cohost on The View for one season, she was often a magnet for controversy as she feuded with her fellow panelist Elisabeth Hasselbeck and future president Donald Trump. But she always made for riveting television, and she later returned to the show in 2014 for a second go-around. Over the years, O’Donnell edited her own magazine, hosted radio shows, published multiple memoirs and became an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights, especially regarding adoption rules. In 2017, after a recurring role on The Fosters, she made her return to the small screen as Tutu, a new grandmother dealing with manic depression, on the Showtime dramedy SMILF. It kicked off a mini career renaissance of small but juicy roles on cable dramas, including social worker Lisa Sheffer on the HBO miniseries I Know This Much Is True and public defender Carrie on The L Word: Generation Q. Soon she’ll star as Detective Sunday, opposite The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal, in Showtime’s TV adaptation of American Gigolo. And, in a full circle moment, she’ll appear on Amazon Prime’s A League of Their Own series as a bartender at a local gay watering hole. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jim Spellman/WireImage
March 20: Author Lois Lowry, 85
Born in Honolulu on March 20, 1937, and raised partially in Japan, acclaimed children’s and young adult author Lois Lowry, 85, began writing stories and articles for magazines like Redbook before publishing her first novel, A Summer to Die, at age 40. Following the success of her popular and ahead-of-its-time Anastasia Krupnik series, Lowry went on to win two Newbery Medals: one for 1989’s Number the Stars, a moving story about a Jewish family escaping from Copenhagen during World War II, and a second for 1993’s The Giver, a dystopian novel about a 12-year-old boy who lives in a seemingly perfect world and is selected to receive all of the memories, both beautiful and painful, of the past. The latter novel has become a staple in middle school curricula across the country, and the American Library Association ranked it 11th on its list of the most frequently challenged books of the 1990s. Lowry later published three more books in the Giver universe — Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004) and Son (2012) — and in 2014, The Giver was adapted into a film, starring Jeff Bridges as the titular character. Lowry has continued writing into her 80s, and in 2020, she released a memoir in verse called On the Horizon about her childhood and the twin tragedies of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. She was inspired to write the book after watching an old home movie in which she was playing as a toddler on the beach in front of the USS Arizona. “I began to be haunted … by the juxtaposition of the toddler playing on the beach, laughing, and, in the background, 1,200 young men who very soon will almost all be dead,” she told NPR. During the pandemic, Netflix released an animated version of her book The Willoughbys, and Lowry also wrote a new introduction for her 2011 book Like the Willow Tree, which was suddenly timely once again: It’s about a girl who’s orphaned by the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: ABC via Getty Images)
March 19: Actress Glenn Close, 75
With eight Oscar nominations under her belt and zero wins, Glenn Close, 75, has the dubious distinction of being tied with Peter O’Toole as the most-nominated performer without an Academy Award. Close had a childhood that was almost as dramatic as one of her later film roles: Born in Connecticut on March 19, 1947, she traveled with her surgeon father to the Belgian Congo, where he opened a medical clinic, before she went to boarding school in Switzerland and then toured Europe and the U.S. with the musical group Up With People. After a string of successes on Broadway, Close began her incredible film run in the 1980s with five Oscar-nominated roles in seven years: The World According to Garp, The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons. Particularly iconic was her performance as jilted stalker Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, a role recognized by the American Film Institute as the seventh-best villain in cinema history. In the 1990s, she played another baddie when she starred as Cruella De Vil in Disney’s live-action 101 Dalmatians remake, before appearing in such blockbusters as Air Force One. Onstage, Close followed up her 1984 Tony for Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing with two more best actress wins, one for a play (Death and the Maiden) and one for a musical (Sunset Boulevard). But undoubtedly her juiciest role in years came with the FX series Damages, on which she starred as ruthless attorney Patty Hewes and picked up two Emmys in the process. Back on the big screen, she earned three more Oscar nods for a trio of extremely different roles: as a woman posing as a male butler in 19th-century Ireland in Albert Nobbs, as the underappreciated spouse of a man about to receive the Nobel Prize for literature in The Wife and as the fiercely protective Mamaw in Hillbilly Elegy. Never one to slow down, Close has released two other movies in the past two years, in addition to Hillbilly Elegy: Four Good Days, as a mother helping her daughter recover from substance abuse, and Swan Song, as a doctor who offers a dying man a wild choice: He can replace himself with a clone to protect his family from the heartbreak of losing him. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
March 18: Vanessa Williams, 59
Years before Vanessa Williams, 59, reemerged as a Grammy-nominated pop songstress, she had the distinction of being the first Black woman to be crowned Miss America, in 1983. (African American participants had been barred for the first three decades of the competition.) Born in New York on March 18, 1963, Williams unfortunately saw her reign end in controversy: When nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse, pageant officials forced her to give up her crown. Over the next few years, she rebounded beautifully, starting with her debut album The Right Stuff in 1988, which earned her a best new artist Grammy nomination. Her follow-up, 1991’s The Comfort Zone, yielded the No. 1 single “Save the Best for Last,” which was nominated for song and record of the year, and her pop cover of the Grammy- and Oscar-winning Pocahontas song “Colors of the Wind” is one of the most beloved Disney tunes of the ’90s. Outside of music, Williams has had a robust acting career, winning NAACP Image Awards for the film Soul Food and the TV show Desperate Housewives and earning three Emmy nominations for her role as the fashion magazine creative director Wilhelmina Slater on Ugly Betty. In recent years, following appearances in the horror comedy Bad Hair and on the Tina Fey–produced sitcom Girls5eva, Williams served as a judge on the international drag-singing competition Queen of the Universe, which debuted in December on Paramount+. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
March 17: Former Brat Packer Rob Lowe, 58
As a member of the Brat Pack, Rob Lowe, 58, came to define a generation with roles in such films as The Outsiders, St. Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night. Born March 17, 1964, Lowe was such a bona fide superstar in the ’80s that he was tasked with opening the 1989 Academy Awards ceremony, but his ill-fated musical duet with Snow White (!) is often seen as one of the low points in Oscar history. After a brush with a sex tape scandal and drug and alcohol problems, Lowe began his comeback with appearances in Tommy Boy and the Austin Powers franchise, before taking on his career-redefining (and Emmy-nominated) role as Sam Seaborn, the White House deputy communications director, on The West Wing. He ended up leaving the series after four seasons, reportedly due to a pay dispute, and he tried to recapture the magic with quickly canceled dramas The Lyon’s Den (2003) and Dr. Vegas (2004) before joining the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters for 78 episodes. His most beloved recent role, however, came in 2010 when he joined the sweet-natured NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation as upbeat city manager Chris Traeger. Chris was such a fan favorite that he achieved the highest form of sitcom fame: a catchphrase! He said “literally” more than 30 times, in memorable quotes like, “Biking for charity is literally one of my interests on Facebook.” Following a Golden Globe–nominated run on the short-lived sitcom The Grinder, he’s keeping very busy these days with a starring role on the adrenaline-pumping Fox procedural 9-1-1: Lone Star and two different podcasts: He and writer Alan Yang host the recap podcast Parks and Recollection, on which he welcomes guests like Chris Pratt and Fred Armisen, and he interviews stars like Jennifer Aniston and Magic Johnson on his audio chat show called — what else? — Literally! With Rob Lowe. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage
March 16: Lauren Graham, 55
Born in Honolulu on March 16, 1967, Lauren Graham, 55, spent the better part of the ’90s bouncing around between short-lived sitcoms that you probably don’t remember (Townies? Conrad Bloom? Good Company?) and taking bit parts on bigger shows: She played Seinfeld’s girlfriend Valerie in an episode about the politics of speed dial order. In 2000, she finally got the mother of all roles when she was cast as Lorelai Gilmore on Gilmore Girls, a cozy mom-daughter dramedy set in the quaint town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, where the actress was called upon to speak a mile a minute à la classic Hollywood screwball comedy heroines. The part led to Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and she returned to the role for a 2016 Netflix miniseries, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. TV lightning struck twice with another role as a quirky and supportive mom, Sarah Braverman, on NBC’s Parenthood, one of TV’s all-time great tearjerkers. “I always thought of myself as more of a comedian and a verbal person, but Mae [Whitman] and I can barely get through a scene without crying,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I know it sounds really sentimental and stupid, but there’s a depth to that relationship of struggle and love that is so moving to me.” Next up, in 2020, she costarred on NBC’s musical dramedy Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist as a tech executive, and the show gave her the opportunity to perform covers of hit songs like Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” and Katy Perry’s “Roar.” And last year, she skated over to Disney+ for the new series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, a continuation of the 1990s youth hockey franchise. Of her own skating experience, she told TVLine, “My training was eighth-grade birthday parties in Arlington, Virginia.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Eric McCandless/ABC via Getty Images
March 15: Former Rockstar Dee Snider’s, 67
As the lead singer of Twisted Sister, Dee Snider, 67, changed the face of heavy metal music in the 1970s and ’80s — literally. Born March 15, 1955, on Long Island, New York, Snider developed an outrageous metal-drag persona that included long, curly blond hair (his own, never a wig!), eye shadow, lipstick, painted-on rouge and a fake beauty mark. After he joined the band in 1976, Snider led Twisted Sister to chart-topping success with its third album, 1984’s Stay Hungry, which went triple platinum and spawned the singles “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock.” When “We’re Not Gonna Take It” appeared on the Parents Music Resource Center’s “Filthy 15” list, Snider testified in front of a U.S. Senate committee to fight music censorship. He left Twisted Sister in 1987 and cycled through a series side projects and metal supergroups, but his career continued to shift and grow outside the recording studio. A charismatic figure who loves to talk, he became an in-demand talking head and host across basic cable, starred alongside his family on the A&E reality show Growing Up Twisted, appeared as a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice and even sang on Broadway in Rock of Ages. Last year, Snider released a new solo album called Leave a Scar, led off by the single “I Gotta Rock (Again).” The song, he said in a press release, “is the starting gun for this album and the driving motivation behind me returning to the studio.” He continued, “At the end of 2019, I had felt my recording and live performing was over, but I didn’t announce it to the world. I mentally had decided I was done. But the state of things in 2020 had other plans for me. Between COVID and the political state around the globe, I found myself yearning (yes, I yearn) to get back in the studio. In the immortal words of Ice Cube, ‘I got somethin’ to say!’” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for TCM
March 14: Comedian Billy Crystal, 74
There’s something very Old Hollywood about the multitalented Billy Crystal, 74: A consummate showman, he’s become his generation’s answer to Bob Hope or Dean Martin — he can sing, dance, act, host and, above all, make us laugh. Born March 14, 1948, in New York City, Crystal studied under Martin Scorsese while a student at NYU and got his big break in 1977 on the sitcom Soap, on which he played one of TV’s first openly gay characters. After joining Saturday Night Live in 1984 and cohosting Comic Relief with Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg in 1986, Crystal began picking up hilarious supporting film roles, such as Miracle Max the magician in 1987’s The Princess Bride. Over the years, he successfully brought his wise-guy charm to a number of genres, including rom-coms (When Harry Met Sally…), Westerns (City Slickers), animated family films (as the voice of one-eyed Mike Wazowski in Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.), and even Mafia comedies (Analyze This and Analyze That). Over the years, the recipient of the 2007 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor also became a go-to host for awards shows, like the Grammys and the Oscars, picking up six Emmys for hosting and writing. A 2005 Tony winner for his one-man show 700 Sundays, Crystal is returning to Broadway this season in a musical adaptation of his film Mr. Saturday Night. He recently told Jimmy Kimmel that he’s been thinking about doing a Broadway musical since 2005, when he was finishing up his first run of 700 Sundays and Mel Brooks invited him to join The Producers. “I say, ‘Mel, I love you so much, I’ve been waiting for a call from you for my entire life, it seems like, to work with you. But I really don’t want to be the fifth guy to play Max Bialystock.’ He said, ‘You won’t be! You’ll be the 12th!’” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Rich Fury/Getty Images
March 13: Actor William H. Macy, 72
William H. Macy, 72, came by acting while a student of playwright David Mamet at Goddard College in Vermont, and he was soon originating roles in Mamet’s plays, such as American Buffalo and The Water Engine. Together, they later founded Chicago’s St. Nicholas Theatre Company and New York’s Atlantic Theater Company, where they established a school of acting known as Practical Aesthetics. Developed in response to Method acting, the technique is dedicated to telling a story as simply and truthfully as possible. Born in Miami on March 13, 1950, Macy first rose to prominence as chief of surgery Dr. David Morgenstern on ER, and he was soon bringing his truth-filled acting style to some of the most acclaimed films of the 1990s, including Fargo (for which he received an Oscar nomination), Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Over the years, he picked up 15 Emmy nominations for his work on television, winning two for acting and writing for the 2002 film Door to Door, in which he played a salesman with cerebral palsy. Six of those Emmy nominations came from his role as the drug-addicted dad from hell Frank Gallagher on 11 seasons of Showtime’s Shameless. Frank was one of the most self-destructive and depraved TV characters in recent memory, who slept with his son’s girlfriend, ruined his daughter’s wedding and lost his youngest son in a bet (don’t worry, he gets him back!). “I’m a Lutheran from western Maryland,” he told NPR. “I read these scripts, and I’m horrified. I didn’t know some of this stuff was even possible. But as a matter of pride, I try to do everything they throw at me.” The series ended last spring, but Macy couldn’t stay away from television for long: This month, he started on Hulu’s The Dropout, a series about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, in which he plays Holmes family friend Richard Fuisz, an ex-CIA agent and biomedical inventor who helped take the convicted fraudster down. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
March 12: Performer Liza Minnelli, 76
The definition of Hollywood royalty, Liza Minnelli, 76, was born on March 12, 1946, to Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, and while she originally considered becoming an ice skater, an off-Broadway musical role set her on the path to becoming an entertainment legend. Soon, at the age of 19, she was winning her first Tony for her title role in Flora, the Red Menace, the Broadway debut of John Kander and Fred Ebb. It would be the first of a quartet of Tony wins — the second of which was a special award given simply for “adding luster to the Broadway season.” But Minnelli’s artistic successes extended beyond the New York stage: In fact, she’s part of a small collection of artists who have earned the coveted EGOT, or Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. In 1973, she picked up an Academy Award for her indelible portrayal of Sally Bowles in another Kander and Ebb collaboration, Cabaret, as well as an Emmy for her TV special Liza with a “Z.” She’d complete the achievement with the 1990 Grammy Legend Award (though some sticklers don’t count noncompetitive awards). Following a long hiatus, Liza began popping back up in smaller roles, most notably as Lucille #2 on Arrested Development; she took the role when asked by producer Ron Howard, because she had been his babysitter when she was a teenager! These days Minnelli doesn’t perform live much, but she’s currently partnering with her best friend, Michael Feinstein, to produce a new album of country covers of George and Ira Gershwin songs that will end with the duo’s version of “Embraceable You.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: mpi04/MediaPunch /IPX
March 11: Singer Lisa Loeb, 54
Lisa Loeb will always hold a special place in the hearts of Gen Xers: That’s because her smash hit “Stay (I Missed You)” was the love anthem of the 1994 romance Reality Bites. Loeb, who was born March 11, 1968, in Maryland, got her song into the film after meeting Ethan Hawke, her neighbor across the street in New York, through mutual friends. When the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 charts, Loeb became the first artist to do so without a record contract, and the single went on to be nominated for a Grammy. Her next two albums, 1995’s Tails and 1997’s Firecracker, both went gold, with her song “I Do” cracking the top 10. In addition to making music, Loeb has starred on the Food Network show Dweezil & Lisa with then-boyfriend Dweezil Zappa, appeared in commercials and launched her own line of eyewear, with a special focus on her trademark cat-eye frames. In recent years, the mother of two has also focused on family entertainment, writing the off-Broadway musical Camp Kappawanna (and starting a foundation to help send underserved children to summer camp), penning the tunes for the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie TV show and releasing a series of children’s albums, one of which, Feel What U Feel, finally earned Loeb her first Grammy win in 2018. In 2020, she released her first album of original grownup songs in seven years, called A Simple Trick to Happiness, which is both personal and optimistic, and she’s set to head back out on tour this spring. “I think part of the richness of life is acknowledging all sides of the coin, the downsides, the upsides, the hardships and the successes,” she told Parade. “We shouldn’t downplay our own life experience.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
March 10: Actress Sharon Stone, 64
When Sharon Stone, 64, first started appearing in movies in the 1980s, there was something Old Hollywood about her. Born in a small town in Pennsylvania on March 10, 1958, she seemed like a femme fatale who had just stepped out of a film noir, especially in movies like 1990’s Total Recall and 1992’s Basic Instinct, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination. In 2019, cultural critic Camille Paglia wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, “The last great sex symbol performance was given nearly three decades ago by Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992), where the femme fatale is a scary-smart writer of eerie omniscience. Stone’s Catherine Tramell, first seen communing with crashing waves far below her stone patio, unmans a team of police inquisitors by merely uncrossing her legs.” Next up, she got an Oscar nomination for her performance as call girl Ginger McKenna in Martin Scorsese’s Casino, which she followed up with acclaimed turns in The Mighty and The Muse. A 2004 Emmy winner for her guest performance on The Practice, Stone has found plenty of success on the small screen, earning her best reviews in decades in 2017 for Steven Soderbergh’s innovative and interactive Mosaic, which was released as both a choose-your-own-adventure app and an HBO miniseries. In Ryan Murphy’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest prequel series, Ratched, Stone played a monkey-toting heiress; and she’s next set to appear as Kaley Cuoco’s mother on the second season of the hit HBO Max series The Flight Attendant. While she’s adept at any kind of performance — just check out her appearance on this year’s improvised Netflix comedy Murderville — her biggest achievement in recent years might be her incredibly intimate memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, in which she detailed her stroke, brain hemorrhage and abuse in the film industry. “People have stopped being cold to me and thinking, ‘Oh, she’s just made of ice,’” she told NPR about writing the book. “‘She’s an object to see, but not to touch or feel.’ I think people see me and realize, ‘She’s been through the same s--t I’ve been through, and she sees me and I see her, and we can meet in a place of tenderness.’ And for me, that’s made my world so beautiful, so remarkable, so special. So meaningful.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Aurore Marechal/Abaca/Sipa USA via AP Images
March 9: Actress Juliette Binoche, 58
Born in Paris on March 9, 1964, Juliette Binoche, 58, was barely out of acting school when she started catching the attention of some of France’s most revered auteurs: Jean-Luc Godard, for instance, wrote a part especially for Binoche in his 1985 film, Hail Mary, which she followed up with films directed by André Téchiné and Léos Carax. She first gained international attention with her English-language debut, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, of which Roger Ebert wrote in his four-star review: “Juliette Binoche, as Tereza, is almost ethereal in her beauty and innocence, and her attempt to reconcile her love with her lover’s detachment is probably the heart of the movie.” Following appearances in Wuthering Heights and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Blue, Binoche won the best supporting actress Oscar for Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, delivering a delightfully flustered acceptance speech since she thought Lauren Bacall was going to win. She picked up another nomination for the 2000 romance Chocolat, and then spent the next years showcasing even more artistic skills: In 2008, she teamed up with choreographer Akram Khan for a contemporary dance piece that toured internationally; and she painted large-scale abstract works for the 2014 film Words and Pictures, in which she played an artist dealing with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis. That year she earned raves (and a César Awards nomination) for the movie Clouds of Sils Maria, in which she starred as a film actress who returns to the stage role that launched her career. Last month her latest film, Fire, had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival; it’s her third collaboration with director Claire Denis, after 2017’s Let the Sunshine In and 2018’s High Life. The film, about a romantic relationship falling apart, was shot in Paris during the lockdown, and Binoche said of the emotional subject matter, “We didn’t come out of it unscathed.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via AP Images
March 8: Actress Camryn Manheim, 61
As a young actress in New York City, Camryn Manheim, 61, earned acclaim for her stage roles in plays by writers both contemporary (Tony Kushner) and classic (William Shakespeare), but it was her own one-woman show, Wake Up, I’m Fat!, that set her on a course for stardom. Autobiographical and empowering, it led to her first movie role, in Road to Wellville, and she described her place in Hollywood to The New York Times in 1994 as follows: “I want to create my own type. I’m a 5-foot-10 Amazon who isn’t afraid to be naked or to kiss men or to be sexual anymore. I’m not pathetic, and I’m not self-deprecating. But I am still looking for a boyfriend, so I’d be really grateful if you could slip that in somewhere.” In 1997, Manheim — who was born March 8, 1961 — gained national attention playing Ellenor Frutt on David E. Kelley’s legal drama The Practice for eight seasons. The role earned her a 1998 best supporting actress Emmy, and she famously ended her acceptance speech with “This is for all the fat girls!” She once again earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her performance as Gladys Presley, the King’s mother, in the 2005 miniseries Elvis. Manheim made her Broadway debut in 2015 with Deaf West Theatre’s production of Spring Awakening, in which songs were both sung and signed; it was a perfect role for the actress, who studied American Sign Language at New York University and used to work as a job trainer and an interpreter for deaf mothers and fathers in hospital delivery rooms. In 2019, she put her years of progressive activism to good use when she was elected the secretary-treasurer of the SAG-AFTRA union, and last month the former Practice star traded in the “law” for more “order” in her new role as precinct boss Lieutenant Kate Dixon in NBC’s Law & Order revival. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Bryan Cranston
March 7: Actor Bryan Cranston, 66
Back in the ’90s, fans of Seinfeld might have been surprised to learn that, in the future, the cast member who would go on to have arguably the most celebrated career would be Bryan Cranston, 66, who played Jerry’s dentist, Dr. Tim Whatley. Born March 7, 1956, in Hollywood, California, Cranston started his march to superstardom on Fox’s Emmy-winning sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, on which he played the long-suffering dad Hal Wilkerson. But it was a very different TV dad that proved to be the role of a lifetime: On Breaking Bad, Cranston starred as Walter White, a New Mexico high school chemistry teacher who turns to meth cooking and dealing to pay for his lung cancer treatments. The role — which The Ringer ranked as the second-best TV character of the century after The Office’s Michael Scott — earned him four Emmys for best actor and, after he became a producer, two for best drama. Cranston has also extended his winning streak to film, earning an Oscar nomination for playing blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo, and to Broadway, where he won two Tonys, for All the Way (as LBJ) and for Network (as Howard “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore” Beale). In 2020, he returned to the small screen in Showtime’s Your Honor, about a New Orleans judge whose ethics are tested when his son is involved in a hit-and-run accident. The show is set to return for a second season in 2022. Cranston is also hard at work filming a trio of movies: Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, the spy thriller Argylle and Jerry and Marge Go Large, in which a husband and wife (Annette Bening) win the lottery and use the funds to revive their town. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Sipa USA
March 6: Actress Connie Britton, 55
If you had known Connie Britton, 55, back in the 1980s, you might have been surprised to learn that she would go on to become one of television’s most multitalented actresses. That’s because, at the time, she was an Asian studies major at Dartmouth, learning Mandarin and studying abroad in Beijing, where her roommate was future U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. After college, Britton — who was born on March 6, 1967, in Boston — moved to New York, where she trained with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and she got her first big movie breaks with a pair of Edward Burns–directed indies: The Brothers McMullen in 1995 and No Looking Back in 1998. But where Britton has always shined brightest is on television, and she’s acted steadily as a series regular on shows dating back to 1996, when she played Nikki Faber on the sitcom Spin City. From 2006 to 2011, she may have earned her most adoring fans when she starred as Tami Taylor, the guidance counselor wife of a Texas high school football coach, on Friday Night Lights, a role that led to her first two Emmy nominations. In the decade since, Britton has successfully dipped her toe into every genre imaginable: country musical (Nashville), docudrama (American Crime Story), horror (American Horror Story), true-crime (Dirty John), dramedy (SMILF), and even police and medical procedural (9-1-1). While Tami Taylor and Nashville’s Rayna Jaymes were both lovable and aspirational, Britton has gotten to flex new muscles playing characters with darker sides in films such as Promising Young Woman and Bombshell, in which she appeared as the wife of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. And, most recently, she won raves for her complex portrayal of the tech CFO Nicole Mossbacher on HBO’s Hawaii-set satire The White Lotus, a character Vogue described as a “narcissistic, cancel-culture-decrying girlboss” who tries her hardest but nonetheless clashes with her family and other women. As she told The Independent, “It’s fascinating as a woman in the world in 2021 to take a very good, hard look at the hazards of success.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for (RED)
March 5: Performer Aasif Mandvi, 56
Born in Mumbai on March 5, 1966, Aasif Mandvi, 56, has taken a twist-and-turn-filled journey through the entertainment world that has seen him performing everywhere from Walt Disney World to a murder mystery company with Connie Britton. He really started to pick up steam with his 1998 off-Broadway one-man show Sakina’s Restaurant, which won an Obie Award, and he later appeared on Broadway as Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! In 2006, he auditioned for The Daily Show — it went so well that he was hired on the spot and debuted on the show later that evening! With his trademark blend of sarcasm and smarts, Mandvi appeared as a correspondent for nearly 200 episodes, before leaving in 2015 to join HBO’s political satire The Brink. Since then, he’s appeared on shows such as A Series of Unfortunate Events and the British comedy This Way Up, and you can currently catch him on Paramount+’s supernatural drama Evil, in which he stars as Ben Shakir, part of a trio of investigators who helps the Catholic Church look into claims of demonic possession — though Ben, personally, is an atheist who grew up in a Muslim family. “We are kind of like a trinity, the three of us,” Mandvi told TV Guide, which recently named Evil the best show on television. “David [Mike Colter] feels like he’s always looking to the heavens, Kristen [Katja Herbers] is always looking at the human, and Ben is kind of planted into the earth.” Evil, which recently nabbed five nominations at the Critics Choice Awards, has already been picked up for a third season. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
March 4: Comedian Catherine O’Hara, 68
Comedians may be one of Canada’s biggest exports, and Catherine O’Hara, 68, ranks among the finest to ever cross the border. Born March 4, 1954, in Toronto, O’Hara got her start as a waitress at the Second City Toronto comedy club, and she was so naturally luminescent that, without any training, she stepped in to replace Gilda Radner when she got cast on Saturday Night Live. She soon went on to work for the theater’s spinoff TV series, SCTV, on which she played everyone from Lucille Ball to Tammy Faye Bakker, earning O’Hara her first Emmy (for writing) in 1981. Her penchant for big characters served her well in her film collaborations with Tim Burton (she played the dramatic modern artist Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice) and especially Christopher Guest, who directed her in four hilarious mockumentaries: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration, a satire of movie awards season that nonetheless landed her a slew of nominations for critics awards. In A Mighty Wind, a film about the 1960s folk scene, she and her former Second City costar Eugene Levy memorably dueted on the song “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,” which earned an Academy Award nomination for best song. The pair reunited in 2015 for the sitcom Schitt’s Creek, in which they played a down-on-their-luck couple forced to live in a motel in a small town that they once bought as a joke. In what could be her most beloved role yet, O’Hara went deliciously loony as Moira Rose, a washed-up soap star with a faux-posh accent and countless wigs. While the show started as an under-the-radar cult favorite, it exploded in its later years into a cultural phenomenon: In fact, last year, for the show’s sixth and final season, she became only the fourth person in history to sweep all five major TV awards — including the Emmy and the Golden Globe — in the same season. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Sipa USA
March 3: Actress Julie Bowen, 52
Before she entered the pantheon of great television moms, Julie Bowen, 52, was a Renaissance studies major at Brown University — and she’s even fluent in Italian! Born in Baltimore on March 3, 1970, she later studied at the renowned Actors Studio in New York, and she’s been a TV fixture since the 1990s, when she appeared as Roxanne on ER, before taking on a lead role on Ed as Carol Vessey, Ed’s high school crush. Following stints on Boston Legal and Lost, she became a household name playing Claire Dunphy on ABC’s ratings juggernaut, Modern Family. If the sitcom was an ode to the many different iterations of a contemporary American family, Claire herself was a perfect encapsulation of what a modern mom could be: She was a fiercely smart and funny woman who began the series as a stay-at-home parent and then went on to major career success in the closet and organization business. The part earned her two Emmy wins, though she always approached her acclaim with a refreshing lack of ego. As she said in her second acceptance speech, “My job really amounts to me falling down and making faces while wearing lipstick and nipple covers.” After 250 episodes, the show aired its finale in 2020, and Bowen has since gone on to continue her streak of playing moms in two new movies: as the mother of a school shooting survivor in The Fallout and as the grandmother of a preteen who just lost her parents in the Netflix film Mixtape. Looking ahead, her production company, Bowen & Sons, is going strong, with plans for Bowen to star in and executive produce a new sitcom for NBC. And last month, she took perhaps her most unexpected career move yet: Inspired by the record number of Americans who resigned from the workforce during the pandemic, she’s co-hosting a new podcast, Quitters, where she’ll interview folks who have left behind marriages, jobs, addictions, gender identities and phobias. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jason Kempin/Getty Images for iHeartMedia
March 2: Rocker Jon Bon Jovi, 60
Born in Perth Amboy, N.J., on March 2, 1962, Jon Bon Jovi (aka John Francis Bongiovi Jr.) emerged in the 1980s as a glam-tinged hair metal alternative to Bruce Springsteen, and his eponymous band churned out some of the most radio-friendly anthems of the decade. In fact, to this day, no karaoke bar is safe from his catchy chart-toppers, including number one hits “You Give Love A Bad Name,” “I’ll Be There for You,” “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “Bad Medicine.” Rolling Stone included their 1986 megahit Slippery When Wet at number three on their list of the 50 greatest hair metal albums, with Reed Fischer writing that the album “saw Bon Jovi rise from moderately successful New Jersey hard rockers to one of the world’s biggest acts, inside or outside of spandex.” Despite the band’s commercial success, Bon Jovi often found himself at odds with critics: You might be surprised to hear that they have only one Grammy win (out of nine nominations) for their country duet “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” with Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles. Jon and bandmate Richie Sambora were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009, and in 2018, after nearly a decade of eligibility, they were finally voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Upon the announcement of the band’s induction, he told The New York Times, “Am I relieved? Yeah. Am I pleased? Absolutely. But it’s about time.” (As the reporter noted, he included an expletive before “time.”) In 2020, the band released their 15th studio album, 2020, which included two songs written by Bon Jovi during the pandemic: “Do What You Can,” about helping out in times of need; and “American Reckoning,” a protest song about the killing of George Floyd. “I was moved to write ‘American Reckoning’ as a witness to history,” he said at the time. “I believe the greatest gift of an artist is the ability to use their voice to speak to issues that move us.” If you want to see them play their new songs live, you’re in luck: In January they announced a 15-stop American arena tour, kicking off in April. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for SiriusXM
March 1: Director Ron Howard, 68
Child stardom hasn’t worked out particularly well for many in Hollywood, but Ron Howard, 68, has always managed to buck convention. Born March 1, 1954, Howard would make his first onscreen appearance at just 18 months old in Frontier Woman, but he became a household name at the age of 6 when he co-starred as Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show. Following roles in films like The Music Man and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Howard made his big leap into adult roles with George Lucas’ 1973 coming-of-age drama American Graffiti, followed up with another nostalgia-fest, Happy Days, in 1974. Some 170 episodes later, Howard left behind the Cunningham clan to pursue his dream of directing, kicking off an impressive run of hits that included Night Shift (co-starring his Happy Days pal Henry Winkler), the mermaid rom-com Splash and later the 1995 epic Apollo 13. Arguably his biggest success to date came with 2001’s A Beautiful Mind, the story of brilliant mathematician John Nash, which earned him Oscars for best picture and best director. During his acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, he said, “I am not a good enough actor anymore to be able to stand up here and make you believe that I haven’t imagined this moment in my mind over the years and played it out about a thousand times.” Among his next batch of films were the Oscar-nominated Cinderella Man and Frost/Nixon, plus the crowd-pleasing (if critically panned) The Da Vinci Code trilogy, starring his frequent collaborator Tom Hanks. Following recent stops in a galaxy far, far away (2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Appalachia (2020’s Hillbilly Elegy), Howard is next bringing audiences to Thailand for this November’s Thirteen Lives, about the rescue mission to save a boys’ soccer team and their coach from a flooded cave system. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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