AARP Hearing Center
Feb. 3: Blythe Danner, 80
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A two-time Emmy and one-time Tony winner, Blythe Danner is perhaps just as well known for her real-life role as Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom as she is for her acting roles, which also tend to run maternal these days: She’s played matriarchs in everything from Will & Grace and the Meet the Parents franchise to the 2021 Netflix animated kids’ show Ridley Jones. In November, she revealed that she’s in remission from the same rare form of oral cancer that killed her husband, director Bruce Paltrow, two decades ago. “I remember I looked up at heaven and said to Bruce, ‘Are you lonely up there?’” she recalled to People. “It’s a sneaky disease. But I’m fine and dandy now. And I’m lucky to be alive.”
Feb. 4: Oscar de la Hoya, 50
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After winning a gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics, the Golden Boy of boxing and 11-time world-title holder has written books, released a clothing line and even earned a Grammy nomination for his Latin pop album. His 2021 appearance on The Masked Singer, on which he performed as the Zebra, put him back in the national spotlight. Last year, he was scheduled to return to the ring in a bout against Vitor Belfort, but he had to drop out at the last minute due to a COVID-19 diagnosis. Now, he jokes that he “dodged a bullet” by not fighting the former UFC champion and is instead happy to “sit back and relax and grow some gray hairs promoting fighters.”
Feb. 8: Mary Steenburgen, 70
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An Oscar winner for 1980’s Melvin and Howard, Steenburgen has enjoyed a quite unexpected second act in recent years: She woke up from general anesthesia after minor surgery hearing music all around her, and she’s since become a surprisingly successful songwriter, signing a publishing deal with Universal and writing the Critics’ Choice Movie Award-winning song “Glasgow (No Place Like Home)” from the 2018 film Wild Rose. This May, she returns to the big screen with Book Club: The Next Chapter, which sees her reteaming with Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton and Candice Bergen.
Feb. 9: Joe Pesci, 80
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Few actors can glide as seamlessly between menacing (Goodfellas) and hilarious (My Cousin Vinny) as the Newark-born Oscar winner — and he’s especially in his element when he’s towing the line between both ends of the spectrum in the same role (Home Alone). In 2019, he came out of semi-retirement to collaborate with Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese for the fourth time with The Irishman, landing his third Academy Award nomination in the process, and he’s next set to star opposite Edie Falco and Saturday Night Live (SNL) breakout Pete Davidson in the Peacock sitcom Bupkis, a fictionalized version of Davidson’s life.
Feb. 17: Michael Jordan, 60
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One of the most dominant athletes in the history of American sports, His Airness transcended the game of basketball at every turn, starring in movies (Space Jam), landing a record-breaking endorsement deal with Nike and later earning the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. He leaped back into the spotlight with the Emmy-winning 2020 ESPN Films docuseries The Last Dance, which saw everyone from Larry Byrd and Kobe Bryant to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama waxing poetic about the legend’s impact. Coming up: a movie from Ben Affleck and Matt Damon about Nike’s pursuit of a sneaker deal with the star player that led to the birth of the Air Jordan.
Feb. 18: Yoko Ono, 90
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The Tokyo-born peace activist and avant-garde artist has spent half a century dodging rumors that her relationship with John Lennon broke up the Beatles — a widely held (and problematic) belief challenged in 2021 with the release of the Peter Jackson documentary The Beatles: Get Back. Her work was recently celebrated in a retrospective at the Kunsthaus Zürich called “This Room Moves at the Same Speed as the Clouds,” and artists as diverse as David Byrne, Sharon Van Etten and Yo La Tengo paid tribute to the two-time Grammy winner with last year’s covers album Ocean Child.
