Celebrity Birthdays in February

Feb. 28: Robert Sean Leonard, 54

Born Feb. 28, 1969, in New Jersey, Robert Sean Leonard, 54, first made audiences swoon with his portrayal as the sweet and sensitive boarding school student Neil Perry in 1989’s Dead Poet Society. He and costar Ethan Hawke became such fast friends that they later helped form a theater company called Malaparte, and Leonard emerged as a New York City stage fixture: Since making his Broadway debut in Brighton Beach Memoirs, he has gone on to star in 12 other productions on the Great White Way, taking home a 2001 Tony for Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love and appearing in works by everyone from Eugene O’Neill and George Bernard Shaw to Stephen Sondheim and Meredith Wilson. On the big screen, Leonard appeared in films like Much Ado About Nothing, Swing Kids and The Age of Innocence, but he found his biggest success on TV, with his performance as Dr. James Wilson on eight seasons of House. Since the show ended in 2012, Leonard has recurred on shows like Falling Skies and Law & Order: SVU, even appearing as President Harry S. Truman in Showtime’s The First Lady. Next, he’s teaming up with a troupe of other theater actors for HBO’s The Gilded Age, on which he’ll play the friendly new rector of a church attended by high-society New Yorkers in the 1880s. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 27: Noah Emmerich, 58

Born on Feb. 27, 1965, in New York City to a concert pianist mother and an art dealer father, Noah Emmerich, 58, was always destined to go into the arts, though it didn’t always seem like it would be acting: He played trumpet as a kid and later sang with the college a cappella group the Yale Spizzwinks. In 1996, Emmerich had his first starring film role with the ensemble comedy Beautiful Girls, and he’d go on to appear in movies like The Truman Show, Little Children and Miracle, in which he played the assistant coach of the U.S. men’s hockey team during their fateful appearance at the 1980 Winter Olympics. Ironically, it would be a TV series about another showdown between the Soviets and the Americans that would earn Emmerich his biggest raves to date: From 2013 to 2018, he starred as FBI Agent Stan Beeman on the Reagan-era spy drama The Americans, for which he won a Critics Choice Award for best supporting actor. Emmerich has made a career in recent years of playing authority figures, including a general on Space Force, another FBI agent on Dark Winds and, most recently, a detective investigating an unassuming serial killer in last year’s Netflix drama The Good Nurse. Next up, he’ll appear in the Apple TV+ limited series The Big Cigar, which follows Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton’s escape to Cuba while evading the FBI. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 26: Michael Bolton, 70

Before he became a mainstay on adult contemporary radio, crooner Michael Bolton, 70, lived a whole other musical life, fronting a heavy metal band and even opening for Ozzy Osbourne. Born Feb. 26, 1953, in New Haven, Bolton first began to make waves as a songwriter, penning the 1983 hit “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” for Laura Branigan, but he finally achieved success of his own with the release of 1987’s The Hunger, which went double platinum. The floodgates soon opened, and Bolton proved to be one of the most successful artists of the late 1980s and early ’90s, earning his first Grammy in 1990 for his own take on “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” and seven Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. In recent years, Bolton has shown off an impressive (and previously unexplored) sense of humor that butted against his image as a self-serious balladeer; his 2011 music video with SNL’s The Lonely Island, “Jack Sparrow,” has racked up 230 million YouTube views, and he parlayed his newfound acting fame into appearances on Two and a Half Men, Glee and even the hilarious Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special for Netflix. Following turns on The Masked Singer and even cohosting The Celebrity Dating Game alongside Zooey Deschanel, he represented his home state in last year’s reality singing competition American Song Contest, which is modeled after the popular Eurovision Song Contest. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 25: Bob Schieffer, 86

Born in Austin on Feb. 25, 1937, trusted newsman Bob Schieffer, 86, has been a part of the CBS News family since 1969, joining the broadcasting team after cutting his teeth as a newspaper reporter covering the war in Vietnam. Over the decades, Schieffer became known for his reporting on national politics, and he is one of only a few journalists who have covered the Pentagon, the White House, Congress and the State Department during their career. In addition to being named the network’s chief Washington correspondent in 1982, Schieffer enjoyed an extensive résumé at CBS that showed off his breadth as an interviewer and reporter: He anchored the Saturday edition of the CBS Evening News for 23 years, moderated Face the Nation and interviewed every American president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. Unsurprisingly, the industry has heaped every form of praise on the veteran reporter, including eight Emmys, an Overseas Press Club Award and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Writing, and in 2008, the Library of Congress even named him a living legend. Following his retirement from Face the Nation in 2015, Schieffer remained a CBS News contributor and hosted a podcast called About the News, in which he discussed such topics as election polling and the specter of North Korea. Last year, he brought his more than half-century of political expertise to the CNN docuseries LBJ: Triumph and Tragedy. What makes him such a perfect talking head? For starters, he was actually there! —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 24: Debra Jo Rupp, 72

Petite and perky, actress Debra Jo Rupp, 72, joined the pantheon of sitcom moms with her fan-favorite role as Kitty Forman on That ’70s Show. Born in Glendale, California, on Feb. 24, 1951, she channeled her own youth to bring a touch of authenticity to the long-running, 1970s-set comedy. But she didn’t need to be a series lead to make a big impact: TV fans will also recognize Rupp from her small roles as one of Jerry’s managers on Seinfeld and Phoebe’s half-sister-in-law on Friends. Off-screen, Rupp has had an extensive stage career, since making her Broadway debut in a 1990 revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 2012, she starred in a one-woman show as diminutive sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer in Massachusetts, bringing the role to New York the following year. If Rupp is best known for her ability to subvert classic sitcom tropes, she made for a perfect addition to the Disney+ Marvel series WandaVision, which hopped through decades of TV history, and she’s set to return for the spinoff Agatha: Coven of Chaos. And it won’t be her only trip down memory lane: Last month, she returned to the role of Kitty Forman in Netflix’s That ’90s Show, which follows her granddaughter and her friends as they hang out in the same basement from the original show. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Read our celebrity Q&A with Debra Jo Rupp

Feb. 23: Howard Jones, 68

A leading figure of the 1980s Second British Invasion, Howard Jones, 68, was born in Southampton, England, on Feb. 23, 1955. While in college to study classical piano, he started a late-night radio-hosting gig, from midnight to 6 a.m., and he would often play his own compositions on a synthesizer; funnily enough, when he occasionally sang along to his tunes, the station would receive complaints about his voice. Little did those listeners know, they were hearing an eventual chart-topper. His debut album, 1984’s Human’s Lib, went double-platinum in the U.K., bolstered by the success of singles “New Song” and “What Is Love?” His sophomore effort, Dream Into Action, was the one to finally land him major airplay across the pond, going platinum on the American charts, with the singles “Things Can Only Get Better” and “No One Is to Blame” hitting the Billboard Top 10. Jones has continued to release new music over the decades, but he’s also branched out in surprising ways, including opening a vegetarian restaurant in New York City and competing on the reality singing competition Hit Me, Baby, One More Time. Last summer, Jones released his 15th studio album, Dialogue, for which he embarked on a headlining tour across the United States and Europe, and the ever-prolific songwriter is expected to release a follow-up album, Global Citizen, this year. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 22: Julie Walters, 73

For international audiences, Julie Walters, 73, will perhaps always be best known as Ron’s mother, Molly Weasley, in the blockbuster Harry Potter franchise. But for fans in her home country of England, that role barely scratches the surface of all she can do — in fact, she once ranked fourth in a U.K. television network’s fan poll of TV’s 50 greatest stars, ahead of the likes of Benny Hill, Helen Mirren and Ricky Gervais. Born in the town of Edgbaston on Feb. 22, 1950, Walters made her London theater debut in the play Educating Rita, about a Liverpudlian hairdresser who hopes to improve her lot in life by enrolling in university. When the play was adapted for the screen, Walters earned a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar. In 2001 she’d pick up her second Academy Award nod for playing the demanding ballet teacher in Billy Elliott and begin her decade-long run as Molly Weasley. Walters would go on to appear in beloved films like Mamma Mia!, Brooklyn and Paddington, but she showed off her true range on British television, in many series that have amazingly never crossed the pond. She’s won four British Academy Television Awards for best actress, including three consecutively between 2002 and 2004. That’s more than any other performer. Made a dame in 2017, Walters will return to TV with the darkly comedic miniseries Truelove, about a group of old friends who make a drunken death pact so they can die with dignity rather than face a sad decline. “I had basically withdrawn from acting and wasn’t sure that anything could tempt me back, but then I read Truelove,” Walters says. “I was completely bowled over by the writing — the dark humor, the love story and thriller element set against a backdrop of what happens to us all as we approach our later years.” —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 21: Tyne Daly, 77

Good things come to those who wait: Born in Madison, Wisconsin, on Feb. 21, 1946, actress Tyne Daly, 77, made her Broadway debut in 1967’s That Summer — That Fall, and it would be another 15 years before she hit it big with her celebrated crime drama Cagney & Lacey. The show was such a critical success that Daly and her costar, Sharon Gless, won every best actress Emmy for six years running, with Daly picking up four trophies herself. After the show came to an end in 1988, Daly returned to the Broadway stage for the first time in two decades with a revival of Gypsy that won her a Tony. Over the years, she has bounced back and forth between the small screen and the Broadway stage, earning six consecutive Emmy nominations, and one win, for her performance as Amy’s mother, social worker Maxine Gray, on Judging Amy; her roles on the Great White Way, meanwhile, have included Madame Arkadina in The Seagull and opera diva Maria Callas in Master Class. Following recent appearances in films like Hello, My Name Is Doris and the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Daly joined the cast of the Murphy Brown reboot, stepping behind the bar of the gang’s favorite watering hole as beloved bar owner Phil’s sister Phyllis. During the pandemic, Daly and Gless reunited for an episode of the live-streamed talk show Stars in the House, and they’ve since joined forces for an appearance at the L.A. Times Festival of Books and a staged reading about women’s reproductive rights. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 20: Charles Barkley, 60

One of the most dominant power forwards and all-around popular players in the history of the NBA, Charles Barkley, 60, was born in Leeds, Alabama, on Feb. 20, 1963. Despite his relatively small stature — he’s listed as 6-foot-6, but most pundits think he’s 1 or 2 inches shorter — he was picked fifth overall in the 1984 NBA draft. Over the course of 16 years, he played for the Philadelphia 76ers, the Phoenix Suns and the Houston Rockets, and became known for his skills as a rebounder, earning the nickname “The Round Mound of Rebound.” While he never won a championship, Barkley was named an 11-time NBA All-Star and the league MVP in 1993, and he is one of only seven NBA players ever to have achieved 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists. Barkley proved equally impressive during Team USA’s gold-medal-winning 1992 and 1996 appearances at the Summer Olympics, and he was the team’s leading scorer during the Barcelona games — despite admitting to spending his nights out partying in the Spanish city. In 2006 he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and he’s since become an Emmy-winning commentator during the league’s TNT broadcasts. Barkley remains such a fan favorite that he recently signed a 10-year contract extension with the network that will see him taking home more than $100 million. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 19: Jeff Daniels, 68

Since making his big screen debut in Miloš Forman’s Ragtime, Jeff Daniels, 68, has proven particularly adept at sliding seamlessly from genre to genre. Born in Athens, Georgia, on Feb.19, 1955, he came out of the gate running, with celebrated turns in Terms of Endearment and The Purple Rose of Cairo, in which he played a dashing matinee idol who walks off the screen and into real life. He could go from the darkest war dramas (Gettysburg and Gods and Generals) to the broadest of comedies (Dumb and Dumber) in the blink of an eye, and he maintained a robust presence on the Broadway stage: To wit, he earned Tony nominations for his last three stage roles, including most recently as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. But where Daniels has truly shined in recent years is on the small screen, beginning with his Emmy-winning turn as anchor Will McAvoy in Sorkin’s ripped-from-the-headlines HBO series The Newsroom. He’d continue his impressive run with the Wild West miniseries Godless (yielding Emmy number two), the 9/11 miniseries The Looming Tower and The Comey Rule, in which he played former FBI director James Comey opposite Brendan Gleeson’s Donald Trump. Most recently, he starred as police chief Del Harris in the crime drama American Rust, which was canceled by Showtime after one season — and then revived by Amazon Freevee. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 18: Molly Ringwald, 55

Molly Ringwald’s career was almost over before it started: At the age of 12, she was fired from The Facts of Life after producers decided to change the focus of the sitcom. Born on Feb. 18, 1968, in Roseville, California, she rebounded beautifully, and in 1983, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for new star of the year for appearing with John Cassavetes in the film Tempest. Throughout the next decade, Ringwald served as a muse of sorts for director John Hughes, who cast her in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink. As a founding member of the “Brat Pack,” she came to define an entire generation — so much so that when VH1 released its ranking of the 100 Greatest Teen Stars, she took the top spot! After turning down the lead roles in Ghost and Pretty Woman, Ringwald moved to France, where she worked in French films and plays, and upon returning to the States, she appeared on the Broadway stage in Cabaret and Enchanted April. Back on the small screen, Ringwald has graduated to playing mom roles, first on five seasons of The Secret Life of the American Teenager, then on the Archie-Comics-go-sexy teen drama Riverdale. Last year, she appeared as the titular serial killer’s stepmother in the celebrated Ryan Murphy miniseries Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, and next year, she’ll reteam with the producer for the next season of Feud. The second installment of the series will focus on the many famous friends of Truman Capote, with Ringwald stepping into the role of Joanne Carson, the second wife of Johnny Carson. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 17: Rene Russo, 69

With her elegant beauty and striking blue eyes, Rene Russo, 69, was scouted by a modeling agent while she was attending a Rolling Stones concert at the age of 17, and soon she was gracing the cover of Vogue and other fashion magazines. But she was always more than a pretty face. Born in Burbank, California, on Feb. 17, 1954, Russo made her film debut in Major League. She stole scenes as the internal affairs sergeant Lorna Cole in the Lethal Weapon franchise and earned raves as a B-movie queen in the gangster comedy Get Shorty. But the role that perhaps best defines her unique brand of sexy cool is insurance investigator Catherine Banning in The Thomas Crown Affair. In 2011, after a six-year break from Hollywood, she returned as Thor’s mother, Frigga, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and in 2014, she received the best reviews of her career in Nightcrawler, a tawdry thriller written and directed by her husband, Dan Gilroy. Starring as a Los Angeles news director who craves increasingly salacious content, Russo went deliciously dark, and she earned our AARP Movies for Grownups Award for best supporting actress. She partnered with Gilroy once again for the 2019 art world satire Velvet Buzzsaw, and they’ve raised another generation of filmmakers: Their daughter, Rose Gilroy, is an actress and screenwriter whose upcoming film Project Artemis is set against the space race of the 1960s. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 16: LeVar Burton, 66

Talk about a splashy entrance: Nearly 30 million households tuned into the first episode of the seminal 1977 miniseries Roots, which introduced the world to actor LeVar Burton, 66, who starred as the enslaved African man Kunta Kinte. Born in Landstuhl, West Germany, on Feb. 16, 1957, Burton briefly considered becoming a priest before dropping out of seminary to study acting, and his breakthrough role in Roots earned him his first Emmy nomination. In 1983, he kicked off his 23-year run as the host and producer of Reading Rainbow, which positioned him as something of a latter-day Mr. Rogers, and the gig landed him a Peabody Award and a dozen Daytime Emmys. In 1987, he welcomed a whole new set of fans, Trekkies, when he took on the role of Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and he returned as the VISOR-wearing blind engineer for several films. He’ll reprise the role once again in the spinoff series Star Trek: Picard, which returns for its third season on Paramount+ today. After a much-publicized stint as a guest host on Jeopardy!, Burton is joining the Starz comedy Blindspotting; and for fans who were disappointed he didn’t get hired as the permanent host of the long-running quiz show, you’re in luck: He’s producing and hosting a TV version of Trivial Pursuit that will air this year. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 15: Jane Seymour, 72

Born on Feb. 15, 1951, in Hayes, England, Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg adopted her stage name Jane Seymour, after Henry VIII’s third wife, at the age of 17. After gaining international acclaim as Bond girl Solitaire in 1973’s Live and Let Die, Seymour earned a royal reputation befitting her new name: Queen of the Miniseries. Among the standouts were Captains and the Kings, a generations-spanning tale of a rags-to-riches Irish immigrant family that earned her an Emmy nomination; War and Remembrance, in which she played an American Jew trapped in Europe during the rise of fascism; and East of Eden, for which she won a Golden Globe. In 1993, she took center stage as a Wild West doctor in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and the show was so beloved that when it was canceled after six seasons, fan uproar caused the network to produce two follow-up movies; lately, she’s expressed interest in bringing Michaela Quinn back for a sequel focused on women’s liberation. Seymour has remained a near-constant presence on television over the decades, including sitcoms such as The Kominsky Method and B Positive. Last year, she starred in an Acorn TV show, Harry Wild, in which she plays Dr. Harriet “Harry” Wild, a recently retired professor who becomes a private investigator after getting mugged. “She’s a woman of a certain age — about my age — doing what some think a man’s job,” she told AARP. “And when she wants a man, she just takes him and then disposes him — she doesn’t need him anymore. She sort of calls all the shots.” —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 14: Simon Pegg, 53

Born in Gloucestershire, England, on Feb. 14, 1970, British comedian Simon Pegg, 53, made a splash with the 1999 cult sitcom Spaced, which he cowrote and costarred in with Jessica Hynes. He next teamed up with the show’s director, Edgar Wright, for the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, a series of genre flicks barely linked by passing references to the ice cream cone: the 2004 rom-zom-com (romantic zombie comedy) Shaun of the Dead; the 2007 buddy cop comedy Hot Fuzz; and the 2013 apocalypse comedy The World’s End. He parlayed his cult hit bona fides into supporting gigs in franchises such as Doctor Who and Star Wars, and he even landed the coveted role of Scotty in the Star Trek reboot films — a trio of sci-fi classics that he jokingly dubbed “the ultimate nerd hat trick.” Since 2006, Pegg has appeared as the IMF tech wizard Benji Dunn in the Mission: Impossible franchise, a role he’s set to return to in the two-part sequel Dead Reckoning, which will hit theaters this year and next. As if Star Wars, Star Trek and Doctor Who weren’t enough, Pegg added another obsessive nerd culture to his résumé with the 1890s-set Harry Potter video game Hogwarts Legacy, released this month: He voices the grouchy Phineas Nigellus Black, one of Sirius Black’s ancestors who also happens to be one of the most unpopular headmasters in Hogwarts history. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 13: Stockard Channing, 79

Is there a cooler musical character in the past half-century than Rizzo from Grease? With her sarcastic zings and her tough-girl attitude, the leader of the Pink Ladies defined everything we love about actress Stockard Channing, 79, who was born in New York City on Feb. 13, 1944. (The character was so beloved that she earned a People’s Choice Award for favorite supporting actress.) From early in her career, Channing became a Broadway fixture, winning a 1985 Tony for A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and she received six more nominations over the years, including for her roles as Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter and Ouisa in Six Degrees of Separation. She reprised her role in the latter in the celebrated 1993 film adaptation, for which she earned her only Oscar nomination so far, and by the end of the decade, she made the leap to the small screen as the whip-smart first lady Abigail Bartlet on The West Wing. A Harvard-educated thoracic surgeon and professor, FLOTUS was a feminist icon who was almost as cool as Rizzo. After a recurring turn on The Good Wife as the title character’s mother, Channing returned to the stage in another maternal role in a 2021 London production of the Pulitzer-winning ’night, Mother. She’s staying put in the U.K. for her next gig in the British TV series Maryland, in which she’ll play a spiritual American woman living on the Isle of Man. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 12: Arsenio Hall, 67

How many comedians can claim they changed the face of television? Born in Cleveland on Feb. 12, 1956, Arsenio Hall, 67, was bitten by the entertainment bug at an early age, and as a kid, he performed magic at birthday parties, weddings and bar mitzvahs. After he pivoted to stand-up comedy, Hall was discovered by singer Nancy Wilson, and he went on to open for the likes of Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner. In the late 1980s, he teamed up with Eddie Murphy for Coming to America and Harlem Nights, and he closed out the decade by making history as the first Black late-night show host. With its “Woof! Woof!” chant and frequent appearances by rappers and other young guests, The Arsenio Hall Show looked unlike anything else that had aired on TV — and it will always be remembered as the show on which then-governor Bill Clinton played saxophone while on the presidential campaign trail. Hall ended his show in 1994 but returned to TV with a short-lived sitcom and hosted a revived Star Search, and his victory on The Celebrity Apprentice sparked a bit of an Arsenio-ssance that led to a one-season reboot of his talk show. In 2021, he made a comeback of a different sort when he reprised the role of Semmi (and a slew of other wacky cameos) in Coming 2 America, and last year, he brought his talk show back again for a four-night run at Netflix Is A Joke: The Festival. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 11: Sheryl Crow, 61

Born to a musical Missouri family on Feb. 11, 1962, Sheryl Crow, 61, started playing piano at age 5, kicking off a lifelong love affair with music that later saw her teaching music to kids with special needs, touring with Michael Jackson, and recording backing vocals for the likes of Don Henley and Stevie Wonder. She skyrocketed to radio-friendly superstardom with her 1993 debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club, which earned her three Grammys, including best new artist and record of the year for “All I Wanna Do.” Her crowd-pleasing rock sound made her a fixture on the charts and the Grammy stage, and her next two releases, 1996’s Sheryl Crow and 1998’s The Globe Sessions, both picked up trophies for best rock album. Over the years, she has continued to expand her sound, veering from Cali pop on C’mon, C’mon toward straight-up country on Feels Like Home, which she recorded in Nashville after battling breast cancer. Crow’s most recent studio album was 2019’s Threads, on which she collaborated with a who’s who of music legends past and present, including Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, James Taylor, Willie Nelson and Brandi Carlile. Last year, director Amy Scott assembled a similarly star-studded collection of fans, such as Keith Richards and Laura Dern, to serve as talking heads for the documentary Sheryl, which premiered at SXSW and is now available to stream on Showtime. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 10: Roberta Flack, 86

Renowned songstress Roberta Flack, 86, has been dazzling listeners for decades. Born in a small town in North Carolina on Feb. 10, 1937, Flack started playing classical piano as a child and received a music scholarship to Howard University when she was just 15 years old. After being discovered while performing in a D.C. nightclub, Flack would go on to become a powerful force in an R&B subgenre known as “quiet storm.” In the 1970s, she became the first solo artist to win consecutive Grammys for record of the year: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” in 1973, and “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” in 1974. Those two hits were among six Flack singles to make it into the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, a group that included a pair of duets with her former Howard classmate Donny Hathaway: “Where Is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You.” A 2020 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Flack has retired from touring, and last year, she announced she could no longer sing due to an ALS diagnosis. But that hasn’t stopped her from continuing to make an impact. Last month saw the premiere of her PBS American Masters documentary, in which the likes of Rev. Jesse Jackson and Clint Eastwood sing her praises, and the autobiographical picture book The Green Piano, in which she recounts how her father found and repaired a junkyard piano when she was a little girl, instilling in her a lifelong love of music. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 9: Judith Light, 74

Leave it to a pro like Judith Light, 74, to turn even a daytime soap opera into high art. Born in New Jersey on Feb. 9, 1949, she got her start on One Life to Live, and the infamous 1979 courtroom scene in which her character, Karen Wolek, admitted to a secret life as a prostitute was so powerfully acted that TV Guide once ranked it the fifth-best soap scene of all time. Critics agreed, and Light picked up back-to-back Daytime Emmys for outstanding actress. In 1984, she made the transition to prime-time TV, starring as the advertising executive Angela Bower in the groundbreaking role-reversal sitcom Who’s the Boss? Following recurring roles on Law & Order: SVU and Ugly Betty, Light returned to the Broadway stage after three decades away, earning a Tony nomination for her role as Marie Lombardi in the 2010 football biopic Lombardi. She became something of a New York stage regular, winning consecutive featured actress Tonys for Other Desert Cities and The Assembled Parties. On the small screen, she had a critical resurgence with Amazon Prime’s Transparent, playing a Jewish mother whose spouse comes out as transgender, and she soon became a go-to in such Ryan Murphy–produced projects as American Crime Story and The Politician. Most recently, she costarred as a one percenter dining at a remote island restaurant that’s more than it seems in the horror comedy The Menu, a deliciously devilish satire about fine-dining pretensions. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 8: John Grisham, 68

The undisputed champion of the legal thriller genre, John Grisham, 68, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, on Feb. 8, 1955, and before he ever began putting pen to paper, he learned the ropes of the legal profession from the inside. He graduated from law school in 1981, worked in criminal defense, and later served in the Mississippi state legislature for much of the ’80s. In 1989, he published his first novel, A Time to Kill, which earned solid reviews and middling sales, but it was his sophomore effort that changed his life. The Firm became the top-selling book of the year and was adapted into an Oscar-nominated 1993 film starring Tom Cruise as a young lawyer who discovers that the firm he just joined has mob ties. Soon Grisham was selling film rights to his subsequent novels for millions of dollars, yielding an impressive collection of movie adaptations that included The Pelican Brief, The Client and The Rainmaker. And not all of his books were legal thrillers. Did you know, for instance, that he wrote the novel that became the family holiday comedy Christmas With the Kranks? While Grisham has continued to churn out an impressively robust lineup of novels, short stories, nonfiction books and young-adult novels, he also works as a Little League commissioner and serves on the boards of directors of the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries — organizations that work to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. In October, Grisham published his latest novel, The Boys From Biloxi, and even though he’s been at it for nearly 35 years, he’s lost none of his magic: The book was an instant New York Times best-seller. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 7: Eddie Izzard, 61

Born Feb. 7, 1962, in Yemen to English parents who were in the country working for BP, Eddie Izzard, 61, got started as a street performer and stand-up comedian in the late 1980s. Izzard — who has used she/her pronouns since 2020 — soon developed a rambling, stream-of-consciousness storytelling style, which she displayed in a series of highly successful comedy tours. She first made a splash in the States with 1998’s Dress to Kill, a televised version of which went on to win two Emmys. After a Tony-nominated turn in Broadway’s A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, she starred in the FX crime comedy The Riches, about a family of con artists in the Deep South. As more TV and film roles followed, Izzard began pushing her comedy in daring ways. In 2014, she began performing stand-up in non-English languages (most of which she didn’t even speak!), including French, German, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. She also got very into long-distance running and began to complete back-to-back-to-back marathons for charity, most recently finishing 32 marathons and performing 31 comedy gigs during the 31 days of January 2021 — raising more than £275,000 along the way. Following the success of her 2022 comedy show Wunderbar, Izzard is set to appear in the heist comedy thriller series Culprits, which is expected to premiere on Disney+ sometime this year. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 6: Tom Brokaw, 83

Though he’s been out of the anchor chair for nearly two decades, Tom Brokaw, 83, is still the first name that comes to mind for many Americans when they think about trusted news figures. Born in South Dakota on Feb. 6, 1940, Brokaw got his start working his way up the local news ladder before landing in Atlanta in the 1960s to report on the civil rights movement. Following a stint as an anchor in Los Angeles, he decamped to D.C., where he served as NBC’s White House correspondent during Watergate. National audiences first got a daily taste of his down-home charisma in 1976, when he took over hosting duties on the network’s Today show, and before long he transitioned from the morning shift to the evening as the host of Nightly News. During his 22 years behind the anchor desk, he reported on such history-changing events as the fall of the Soviet Union and the Gulf War, and his 2001 book, An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation, forever changed the way we talk and think about World War II veterans. A 2014 winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he left Nightly News in 2004, but he remained a fixture at NBC until his official retirement in 2021. This June, Brokaw is releasing his newest book, Never Give Up: A Prairie Family’s Story, about the struggles his parents faced as they built a life in South Dakota during the Great Depression and World War II. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 5: Michael Sheen, 54

Born in Wales on Feb. 5, 1969, Michael Sheen took the U.K. theater world by storm with his turns as Romeo and Henry V, though he first came to prominence on American shores with the 1999 Broadway revival of Amadeus. His celebrated performance as the musical prodigy kicked off a string of roles in which he played real-life historical and contemporary figures, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair three times, in The Deal, The Queen and The Special Relationship, and talk show host David Frost, in the stage and film versions of Frost/Nixon. In 2013, he earned a Golden Globe nomination for starring as William Masters, the pioneering sex researcher, in Showtime’s Masters of Sex. More recently, he’s been stretching his acting muscles at the extremes of good and evil. On the bad side, he played a sociopathic serial killer in the series Prodigal Son and voiced Lucifer in the Sandman podcast. On the good side, he plays the angel Aziraphale, who’s working with a demon named Crowley (David Tennant) to stop Armageddon in the Amazon Prime series Good Omens, which returns this summer. During the pandemic, Sheen and Tennant teamed back up as fictionalized versions of themselves rehearsing a play via videoconference in the BBC comedy series Staged, which returned for its third season last fall. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 4: Oscar De La Hoya, 50

Born in East L.A. on Feb. 4, 1973, Mexican American boxer Oscar De La Hoya, 50, had just graduated from high school when he was thrust into the spotlight at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. His gold medal in the lightweight division quickly earned him the nickname “The Golden Boy,” and in the decades that followed, he won 11 world titles in six different weight classes, before packing up his gloves in 2008. Over the years, De La Hoya’s fame began to transcend the sport, and he became something of a pop culture icon — the Tiger Woods of the boxing world — with side hustles that included writing a children’s book and an autobiography, launching an activewear line, hosting a boxing reality show and even recording a Grammy-nominated Latin pop album. These days, he runs a successful promotional company for fighters, and in 2020, he even toyed with a presidential run. Recently, he competed in a horse race of a different strip, when he competed on The Masked Singer as the Zebra. After placing fourth, he called the show the most fun he’s ever had, and he told HollywoodLife that the rigorous training regimen inspired him to get back into the boxing gym. “I’m starting to get that itch,” he said. “Maybe we’ll see the Zebra up in the ring.” —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 3: Maura Tierney, 58

A versatile TV actress who can transition seamlessly between comedies and dramas, Maura Tierney, 58, was born in Boston on Feb. 3, 1965. She broke out with the role of producer Lisa Miller on the workplace sitcom NewsRadio before making the leap to dramas as ER’s beloved Dr. Abby Lockhart. Tierney originated the role as a one-off guest stint, and she had such a spark that producers quickly upped her to series regular. She remained with the show until 2008, as Abby matured from a medical student to a physician while battling such personal and professional issues as alcohol abuse, a bipolar mother, hijackings and an ambulance bombing. Her big-screen roles, meanwhile, have run the gamut from light comedies (Liar Liar) to dark thrillers (Primal Fear) to wrenching family dramas (Beautiful Boy). Tierney was all set to return to TV on Parenthood, but she had to bow out after filming the pilot to get treatment for breast cancer. In 2014, Tierney staged an impressive comeback with Showtime’s The Affair, a Rashomon-like, multi-POV drama about an extramarital relationship that won her a Golden Globe for best supporting actress. Following recent gigs on American Rust and Your Honor, she’s poised to enter the ring with the indie sports biopic The Iron Claw, in which she’ll play the matriarch of the Von Erich wrestling clan. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 2: Brent Spiner, 74

There’s some cosmic coincidence that Star Trek standout Brent Spiner, 74, was born in Space City (a.k.a. Houston) on Feb. 2, 1949. After appearing in a number of plays and films, Spiner blasted off into nerd superstardom in 1987 when he was cast as Lieutenant Commander Data — the most lovable android this side of C-3PO — on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He’d go on to appear in the role for seven seasons and four films, and Data became so much a part of his identity that the contact lenses needed to get into character even inspired the title of his 1991 album of standards, Ol’ Yellow Eyes Is Back. Over the years, he kept coming back to the New York City stage, earning a Drama Desk nomination for his portrayal of John Adams in the revival of 1776, and in 2021, he flexed his creative muscles when he released his first book, Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events, which NPR described as “a novel that’s also part memoir, part noir pastiche, an insider(ish) look behind the scenes at Star Trek and the life of a working actor, completely made-up and also maybe a little bit true.” Data, of course, continues to loom large, and in 2020, he returned to the Star Trek franchise in Picard, a Paramount Plus spinoff series in which he plays not only the android, but also Data’s secret human brother Altan Inigo Soong, Soong’s 21st-century ancestor and the evil android Lore. —Nicholas DeRenzo

Feb. 1: Garrett Morris, 86

One of the founding members of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, Saturday Night Live legend Garrett Morris, 86, was born in New Orleans on Feb. 1, 1937. Before getting into comedy, Morris had a surprisingly robust career as a musician, training in voice at Juilliard, singing alongside Harry Belafonte and appearing in Broadway musicals like Hallelujah, Baby! When he was cast on SNL in 1975, Morris quickly became known for characters like Dominican baseball player Chico Escuela and Weekend Update’s News for the Hard of Hearing translator, which saw him simply repeat the news of the week at a much louder volume. Morris would later say that he often felt typecast on the show, and he left the sketch giant in 1980, later going on to appear in recurring roles on The Jeffersons and Martin. In 1996, he landed his biggest role to date as Uncle Junior King on The Jamie Foxx Show, and he’d later return as a series regular on CBS’s 2 Broke Girls, on which he played the feisty diner cashier Earl. After recent turns on This Is Us and the Madam C.J. Walker miniseries Self Made, Morris returns to his musical roots with a part as the Broadway orchestrator Harold Wheeler in the upcoming short film “Introducing Billy Bradley.” —Nicholas DeRenzo