10 Milestone Celebrity Birthdays in June
Paul McCartney, Paula Abdul among those celebrating
by Nicholas DeRenzo, AARP, May 31, 2022
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PHOTO BY: Presley Ann/Getty Images
June 4: Parker Stevenson, 70
The prep school and Princeton grad got his first big break in Hollywood by playing what he knew: He starred as boarding school student Gene Forrester in the 1972 cinematic adaptation of A Separate Peace. Following roles on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and Baywatch, he most recently appeared on the Netflix teen drama Greenhouse Academy as the founder of the titular school for gifted future leaders. Sound familiar?
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PHOTO BY: Bruce Glikas/Getty Images
June 6: Harvey Fierstein, 70
Known for his distinctively gravelly voice, Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein is a Tony Awards magnet, having picked up wins for writing and starring in Torch Song Trilogy, writing the book to La Cage aux Folles and dressing in drag as the lovable Hairspray matriarch Edna Turnblad. This year he returned to the Great White Way with a revised script for the first revival of Funny Girl, and he released a joyful and poignant new memoir, I Was Better Last Night, in which he discusses everything from his love of quilting to his days as an early gay rights activist.
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PHOTO BY: Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
June 7: Liam Neeson, 70
An Oscar nominee for Schindler’s List, the acclaimed Irish actor has racked up an impressive dramatic résumé, but his career took a surprise 180-degree turn in his 60s: Following the success of the Taken franchise, he’s emerged as a bona fide, bankable action star. This year has already seen the release of Blacklight and Memory, in which he played an assassin dealing with severe memory loss, and he’s currently filming Marlowe, a neo-noir thriller in which he stars as Raymond Chandler’s famed private detective Philip Marlowe.
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PHOTO BY: Arturo Holmes/WireImage
June 13: Ally Sheedy, 60
A former Brat Packer who starred in classic ’80s films like The Breakfast Club (as “the basket case”) and St. Elmo’s Fire, Sheedy later won the Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a lesbian photographer in High Art, which New York Times critic Janet Maslin called “a fierce, tricky performance.” This year she had one of her highest-profile roles in a decade on the critically acclaimed comedy series Single Drunk Female, as the mother of a young woman trying to maintain her sobriety.
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PHOTO BY: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
June 18: Isabella Rosellini, 70
The actress daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rosellini has always skirted the line between highbrow and low, from her roles in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet to delicious comedic turns in projects like Death Becomes Her and 30 Rock. And sometimes she tackled both at the same time: For her ongoing art project, Green Porno, she reenacted the mating habits of animals while dressed in elaborate paper and foam costumes. This month she’s set to star in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, in which she voices the tiny shell grandmother of a tiny shell protagonist who ventures out on a journey to find the rest of his tiny shell family.
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PHOTO BY: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
June 18: Paul McCartney, 80
We still needed the legendary Liverpudlian when he was 64, and now that he’s turning 80, the ex-Beatle is as vital than ever. This month he finished up his “Got Back” tour: “I said at the end of the last tour that I’d see you next time. I said I was going to get back to you. Well, I got back!” And on June 25, exactly a week after he turns 80, Macca co-headlines the Glastonbury Festival with Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar; for those keeping score, McCartney is the oldest-ever headliner, and Eilish is the youngest.
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PHOTO BY: Sthanlee B. Mirador/Sipa USA/Sipa via AP Images
June 19: Paula Abdul, 60
A pop radio fixture in the late 1980s and early ’90s, the Emmy-winning singer/dancer/cheerleader/choreographer reemerged in 2002 as a lovable judge on the first season of American Idol, and she’s parlayed that new skill set into turns on The X Factor, So You Think You Can Dance and, most recently, The Masked Dancer. This spring she guest starred as Anydoors, an AI hologram assistant, on the HBO Max dark dramedy Made for Love and reunited with an old friend, MC Skat Kat, in the Disney+ film Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers.
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PHOTO BY: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
June 20: John Goodman, 70
One of the most underrated actors of his generation, Goodman has garnered near-constant raves for his film roles, especially for his collaborations with the Coen Brothers, despite never earning an Oscar nomination. In 2018, he returned to his sitcom roots in the rebooted Roseanne; when his TV wife was killed off, Dan Conner took the helm of the newly reimagined The Conners. It’s one of a quartet of recent shows in which he’s starred, including The Freak Brothers, an animated adaptation of an underground comic; Disney+’s Monsters at Work, in which he voices the blue-furred Sulley; and HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, starring as megachurch pastor Eli Gemstone.
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PHOTO BY: Al Pereira/Getty Images
June 20: Brian Wilson, 80
The musical genius behind the Beach Boys’ transcendent pop hits has been keeping extremely busy during the pandemic: Last November he released At My Piano, on which he plays stripped-down solo instrumental covers of some of his most famous songs, and the soundtrack to the documentary Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, which features previously unreleased recordings and a new song cowritten with My Morning Jacket front man Jim James. This summer he’s co-headlining a 25-city tour with Chicago — an especially impressive feat considering his recent back surgeries have left him using a walker.
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PHOTO BY: Amy Sussman/Getty Images for The Hollywood Reporter
June 23: Selma Blair, 50
A former teen star known for roles in films like Cruel Intentions and Legally Blonde, Selma Blair entered a new stage in her career when she revealed in 2018 that she’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She’s emerged as a fierce advocate for on-screen disability representation and last year was the subject of a revealing documentary called Introducing, Selma Blair, which chronicles the recent stem cell transplant she underwent to treat her MS. Last month she published Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up, which takes its title from her childhood penchant for biting her three older sisters.
Nicholas DeRenzo is a contributing writer who covers entertainment and travel. Previously he was executive editor of United Airlines’ Hemispheres magazine, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Sunset and New York magazine.
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