10 Milestone Celebrity Birthdays in September
Raquel Welch, Bill Murray and other well-known people celebrate
by Susan Wloszczyna, AARP, August 31, 2020
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PHOTO BY: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for AHA
Sept. 1: Padma Lakshmi, 50
En español | The India-born cookbook author and longtime judge on Bravo's reality cooking competition Top Chef recently introduced a new food series, Taste the Nation, streaming on Hulu. A glamorous host, Lakshmi takes viewers to authentic eateries across the country to dissect different foods, such as the burrito in El Paso, Texas. She admits that her favorite midnight snack is cheesy nachos, which she shares with her tween daughter, Krishna.
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PHOTO BY: FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
Sept. 4: Damon Wayans, 60
After a short time on Saturday Night Live, this comic and actor earned his breakthrough alongside siblings Keenan Ivory, Shawn, Marlon and Kim in the early ‘90s on the Fox TV sketch show In Living Color, most notably playing Homey the Clown. He later hit the big screen in Beverly Hills Cop, The Last Boy Scout and Major Payne, and just ended a three-season run on the Fox series Lethal Weapon.
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PHOTO BY: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic
Sept. 5: Raquel Welch, 80
This shapely actress found instant fame thanks to posters of her donning a clingy doeskin bikini in the 1966 dinosaur movie One Million Years B.C. As the sex symbol wrote in her 2010 memoir, Beyond the Cleavage: “I am living proof that a picture speaks a thousand words.” She recently told the Sunday Post that everyone asks her whether she still has the bikini, “but there were about six of them, and they're probably in an archive somewhere.”
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PHOTO BY: Katerina Sulova/CTK via AP Images
Sept. 7: Sonny Rollins, 90
The jazz tenor saxophonist, who is renowned for his improvisations, got into trouble in his youth, when he was arrested for armed robbery and heroin use. He was treated for his habit and went on to have a major career, recording 40 or so LPs, and earning a Lifetime Grammy, a National Medal of Arts and a Kennedy Center Honor. He no longer performs in public but did appear on The Simpsons in 2013.
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PHOTO BY: Michael Tran/FilmMagic
Sept 7: Julie Kavner, 70
This relatable actress who found fame as Valerie Harper's younger sister on the CBS sitcom Rhoda is now more famous for her role as the gravelly voiced Marge on Fox's long-running animated series The Simpsons. Woody Allen, who cast Kavner in six of his films including 1986's Hannah and Her Sisters, has praised her as “a naturally funny person.”
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PHOTO BY: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for WarnerMedia
Sept. 9: Hugh Grant, 60
Many filmgoers think of the handsome Brit as the fluttery-eyed, self-deprecating romantic hero in the comedies Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill in the 1990s. But he also has convincingly played a bit of a cad (think Bridget Jones's Diary and About a Boy). Up next? Grant will costar with Nicole Kidman in The Undoing, an HBO limited miniseries that will debut in the fall.
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PHOTO BY: Taylor Hill/Getty Images
Sept. 11: Taraji P. Henson, 50
She has been called the modern-day Bette Davis, dazzling audiences as tough-talking Cookie Lyon on TV's Empire and in acclaimed films such as 2016's Hidden Figures. Henson nearly took a different route, studying electrical engineering in college and working as a receptionist at the Pentagon in her early 20s. Then she began performing on a cruise ship — and has been an entertainer ever since. Empire wrapped in April, but the actress reportedly is working on a spinoff.
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PHOTO BY: Gary Gershoff/WireImage
Sept 14: Melissa Leo, 60
Leo started out on the daytime soap All My Children in the ‘80s and Homicide: Life on the Street in the ‘90s. She later made a splash in the 2008 indie drama Frozen River and won a supporting Academy Award as the mother and manager of two boxers (Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale) in 2010's The Fighter. Her most recent project: playing another mother — this time to twin brothers (both played by Mark Ruffalo) — in the HBO miniseries I Know This Much Is True.
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Sept. 18: Frankie Avalon, 80
Avalon began as a teen singing idol, scoring such No. 1 hits as “Venus” and “Why,” but most boomers remember him for his escapist Beach Party film romps with ex-Mouseketeer Annette Funicello. He later found a new generation of fans crooning “Beauty School Dropout” as Teen Angel in the 1978 film musical Grease. Avalon continues to do live concerts. “They keep asking, and I keep doing it,” he has said.
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PHOTO BY: Giuseppe Maffia/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Sept. 21: Bill Murray, 70
This deadpan comic began on Saturday Night Live in the ‘70s, wailing the Star Wars theme and making Gilda Radner snort-laugh. Murray has since racked up such hits as Stripes, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day, and been in every Wes Anderson film since 1998's Rushmore — including in the upcoming ensemble comedy The French Dispatch. He also reunites this year with his Lost in Translation director Sofia Coppola for a new comedy-drama, On the Rocks, costarring Rashida Jones and Marlon Wayans.