10 Milestone Celebrity Birthdays in November
Ethan Hawke, Amy Grant and Robin Roberts are among those with big ones this month
by Susan Wloszczyna, AARP, October 30, 2020
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PHOTO BY: Dominique Charriau/Getty Images
Nov. 5: Tilda Swinton, 60
The willowy Scottish actress has played everything from the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia film series to the Ancient One, a Celtic sorcerer, in such Marvel blockbusters as Doctor Strange and Avengers: Endgame. She also won a supporting-actress Oscar as a ruthless corporate lawyer who faces off against George Clooney in 2007's Michael Clayton. Next you can catch her as part of the ensemble cast of The French Dispatch, filmmaker Wes Anderson's upcoming ode to journalism.
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PHOTO BY: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Nov. 6: Ethan Hawke, 50
Many Gen X moviegoers fell for this Texan-born actor in 1994's Reality Bites, where he played Winona Ryder's frustrating heartbreaker Troy Dyer. Hawke also starred in Before Sunrise and its sequels, opposite Julie Delpy, and 2014's epic Boyhood, and has received dazzling reviews for his role as abolitionist John Brown on Showtime's miniseries The Good Lord Bird. His son with ex-wife Uma Thurman, Levon, 18, is reportedly joining his sister Maya, 22, in the Stranger Things 4 cast.
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PHOTO BY: Leon Bennett/Getty Images
Nov. 10: Warren G, 50
The hip-hop artist and producer (the G stands for Griffin) — and stepbrother of Dr. Dre of N.W.A. — helped create the gangsta-funk sound that defined West Coast rap, in collaboration with Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg. His 1994 debut LP, Regulate … G Funk Era, sold a million copies in three days and rose to number 2 on the charts. Warren G's most recent enterprise? Sniffin Griffins BBQ, a line of sauces and rubs.
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PHOTO BY: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for AFI
Nov. 15: Sam Waterston, 80
Waterston earned acclaim for his Oscar-nominated role in the 1984 war film The Killing Fields, but he's most famous for his longtime role as the ruthless District Attorney Jack McCoy on NBC's Law & Order. He's now Lily Tomlin's gay ex-hubby on the Netflix comedy Grace and Frankie, and was proudly arrested this year at a climate change protest alongside Jane Fonda, his other female costar on G&F (the pair also costarred on the HBO series The Newsroom).
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PHOTO BY: David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Nov. 17: RuPaul, 60
This drag queen, actor, model, TV personality and singer's 1993 debut single “Supermodel” caught on with its catchy slogan, “You better work!” The next year, he became the spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics, the first drag queen to do so, and a talk show on VH1 soon followed. His most successful project is RuPaul's Drag Race, a reality competition show that has earned its host five Emmys. His philosophy: “We're all born naked, and the rest is drag."
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PHOTO BY: Lorne Thomson/Redferns
Nov. 18: Graham Parker, 70
A pioneer of the London new wave scene, along with Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, Parker was the gritty-voiced lead singer and front man of Graham Parker and the Rumour. Their breakout album, 1979's Squeezing Out Sparks, put them on the map with hits like the jaunty “Discovering Japan” and moving “Nobody Hurts You.” In 2018, Parker — who still tours — told the Boston Globe he'd always eschewed slick production values on his albums. Instead, “I was looking for that human soul."
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PHOTO BY: Jordi Vidal/Redferns
Nov. 22: Steven Van Zandt, 70
This musician and actor was lucky enough to be a participant in two major cultural enterprises — his pal Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and HBO's The Sopranos, as mobster Silvio Dante. Little Steven also played singer Jerry Vale in Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. In a recent interview, he called boomers the “luckiest generation,” for having experienced the music created in the ‘60s in real time.
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PHOTO BY: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Nov. 23: Robin Roberts, 60
This Good Morning America host, who was a star basketball player in college, joined ESPN's SportsCenter as a broadcaster in 1990. Her catchphrase: “Go on with your bad self!” At age 46, Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was followed by a bone marrow disease called myelodysplastic syndrome that required a transplant in 2012. The Mississippi-born newswoman later told AARP: “I don't try to be like people who have had life-threatening illnesses and say, ‘Every day is a gift.’ But everything that happens from now on is lagniappe, as we say in the Gulf.” ("Lagniappe” is a Cajun-French word meaning “small gift.")
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PHOTO BY: Rick Kern/WireImage
Nov. 25: Amy Grant, 60
The Queen of Christian Pop is a six-time Grammy winner whose hits include “Baby Baby” and “Every Heartbeat.” Her life changed in 2019 when her husband, singer-songwriter Vince Gill, was checked by a cardiologist, who then offered to examine her and found that she had a rare heart condition. Grant shared details of her June heart procedure on social media, writing under a photo of her surgical scar: “My recovery has honestly felt miraculous."
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PHOTO BY: Samuel de Roman/Getty Images
Nov. 28: Ed Harris, 70
He's the Man in Black on HBO's hit series Westworld, has played an astronaut in The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, and was an alcoholic painter in the biopic Pollock — but his favorite project might just be the 1984 Depression-era tale Places in the Heart, where he and Amy Madigan met and played lovers. She's now his wife of 37 years. Harris took on Atticus Finch in a Broadway revival of To Kill a Mockingbird early this year, but it shut down in March due to the pandemic.