Happy January Birthday to ...

50: Nicolas Cage

En español | JAN. 7: The prolific actor has been in movies good (Moonstruck, Adaptation) and bad (Knowing, The Wicker Man), and will star in at least two thrillers next year. In a recent interview he compared his considerable energy to a dog’s: "[If] you don't let the dog work, it's going to get a little … hyperactive.”

50: Jeff Bezos

JAN. 12: Now a mega-media mogul, Bezos is founder of Amazon.com, the world’s biggest online purveyor of often ridiculously low-priced merchandise (and indie bookstores’ b ê te noire). Bezos caused a stir last month when he told 60 Minutes that Amazon would one day deliver packages via drone.  

50: Penelope Ann Miller

JAN. 13:  The versatile actress has been in big films such as Awakenings (1990), Carlito’s Way (1993) and 2011’s The Artist, but says she can often go unnoticed when out in public. “I’ve done so many different genres, looks and characters,” she told a Herald-Tribune reporter, “I’m just not that recognizable.”  

50: Michelle Obama

JAN. 17:  The hugely popular first lady and Harvard Law School grad joins husband Barack in the 50-plus club and celebrates her big day by proudly displaying her new AARP membership card. The president calls her “the love of my life and my best friend.”  

50: Bridget Fonda

JAN. 27: The daughter of Peter and niece of Jane, Fonda faced down the roommate from hell (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in 1992’s Single White Female. She later starred in movies such as A Simple Plan (1998) and Kiss of the Dragon (2001), but quit acting after marrying composer Danny Elfman in 2003.  

60: Howard Stern

JAN. 12: The prototypical “shock jock,” Stern has left no gross subject untouched or rude joke unsaid on his longtime radio show, now aired via Sirius XM Radio (which is conveniently free from FCC oversight). Also a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent, Stern is said to rake in $100 million a year. 

60: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

JAN. 17: Scion of America’s most famous political family, Kennedy, son of Robert and Ethel, is a lawyer and vocal environmental activist with a political talk-radio show called Ring of Fire. He’s had his own share of tragedy, including the suicide of his wife, Mary, in 2012 during their difficult divorce.

60: Rick Warren

JAN. 28: The evangelical pastor and author of the mega- bestselling The Purpose Driven Life (2002) has said his goal is to bring the Gospel to the world’s “2,900 unreached tribes and people groups” by 2020. He had a heartbreaking year in 2013: In April his 27-year-old son committed suicide.  

Vote: Leo January 2014 Horoscope
 

60: Oprah Winfrey

JAN. 29:  Entertainment mogul, big-league philanthropist and, as NPR once put it, “billionaire everywoman,” Oprah — aren’t we all on a first name basis with her? — costarred as the wife of the lead character in The Butler last year. Fans hope she’ll be on the list of Oscar nominees announced this month.

Video: Taurus January 2014 Horoscope

70: Nina Totenberg

JAN. 14: NPR’s legal affairs reporter manages to make interesting and digestible what easily could be boring and opaque: the goings-on at the Supreme Court. She’s broken big stories, including Anita Hill’s assertions about then-nominee Clarence Thomas, thanks to her countless contacts in Washington.

Video: Gemini January 2014 Horoscope
 

70: Shelley Fabares

JAN. 19: She was the super-wholesome Mary Stone on The Donna Reed Show, singer of “Johnny Angel” and costar on the ’90s sitcom Coach. In 2000, she underwent a live-saving liver transplant, then battled depression; these days, still lovely, she’s taken to wearing her hair spiky with streaks of bright pink.

70: Angela Davis

JAN. 26: Davis is a legendary civil rights activist and scholar, jailed in 1970 on controversial charges that spurred an energetic “Free Angela Davis” movement, then acquitted in 1972. She’s now a professor of feminist studies at the University of California and a vocal critic of the “prison industrial complex.”  

80: Marilyn Horne

JAN. 16: Igor Stravinsky discovered the mezzo-soprano opera singer in the 1950s, and helped spark Horne’s remarkable career, for which she received the National Medal of Arts in 1992, many Grammys and a bazillion other accolades. Opera News said that talent like Horne’s “happens only once in a century.”
 

Boomers@50+

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• Baby Boomer Generation turns 50!