Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday: Geraldine Chaplin

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Geraldine Chaplin.jpgBorn: July 31, 1944 in Santa Monica, California, USA

Married to:
Patricio Castilla (18 August 2006 – present) (1 child)

[on Doctor Zhivago (1965)] Although I went all over the world promoting it, I’d never got to see more than the credits before being whisked away. Finally, at Cannes, I was to sit through the whole thing. When I appeared for the first time, I fainted from the shock – and woke up in the ladies room.

I thought it’d be easy to get into the movies as Charles Chaplin’s daughter. And I suppose it was. Except I wasn’t much good as an actress – really terrible at the beginning.

[on Charles Chaplin] Daddy has never seen anything I’ve done, but he is the best critic I have. He has taught me how to tear down a character. “Slug your guts out” is his philosophy of acting. Never mind the talent, just work hard.

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Happy Birthday: Yul Brynner (1920–1985)

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Yul Brynner (1920–1985)
Date of Birth 11 July 1920, Vladivostok, Primorskaya Oblast, Far Eastern Republic [now Primorsky Krai, Russia]
Date of Death 10 October 1985, New York City, New York, USA (lung cancer)
Birth Name Yuli Borisovich Bryner
Height 5′ 8″ (1.73 m)

[to interviewers] Just call me a nice, clean-cut Mongolian boy.

Girls have an unfair advantage over boys: If they can’t get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb.

[Message recorded in January 1985, after he was diagnosed with lung cancer] Now that I’m gone, I tell you: Don’t smoke, whatever you do, just don’t smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn’t be talking about any cancer. I’m convinced of that.

I’m not of the can-kicking, shovel-carrying, ear-scratching, torn T-shirt school of acting. There are very few real men in the movies these days. Yet being a real man is the most important quality an actor can offer on the screen.
[on his character Chris Adams from The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Return of the Seven (1966)] Well… He’s just a dirty bum. There are only two things clean about him: His gun and his soul.

Happy Birthday: Jessica Simpson

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Jessica Simpson.jpgJessica Simpson

Date of Birth 10 July 1980, Abilene, Texas, USA
Birth Name Jessica Ann Simpson
Nickname Jess
Height 5′ 3½” (1.61 m)

Married to:
Eric Johnson (5 July 2014 – present) (2 children)
Nick Lachey (26 October 2002 – 30 June 2006) (divorced)

[on plastic surgery] I’m not against plastic surgery. I do believe that it becomes an addiction to people. But if you’re doing it for yourself, then you’re doing it for yourself. If you’re doing it to make heads turn when you walk down the street and get noticed, then I think that’s a bunch of BS.

Why go through your life with regrets? Every decision you make determines who you are. If you make a bad one, you fix it. It makes you stronger.

[on the “perils” of being a curvaceous Christian pop star] I had doors slammed in my face as a 14-year-old because my boobs were too big.

I love to hug – fans, friends and family alike – so it hurts when the security guards tell me I can’t do it at record stores during autograph parties… which they often do.

My bra and underwear always have to match. I love that. I’ve collected a whole lot of sets. When a girl has on color-coordinated underpants, she just feels sexy. And I’ve been a cheerleader, so I should know!

Happy Birthday: Fiona Shaw

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Fiona ShawFiona Shaw

Date of Birth 10 July 1958, County Cork, Ireland
Birth Name Fiona Mary Wilson
Height 5′ 8″ (1.73 m)

There is a great relief in experiencing the worst vicariously.

There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing.
I once saw my mother playing Mary Magdalene in a parish event. But she had to put the role aside in order to go and front the choir who were singing at the same occasion. She left the stage halfway through the Crucifixion.

I’m not on the run from anything and I’m not at all clear about what I’m running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I’m totally exhausted.

Happy Birthday: Adrian Grenier

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Adrian GrenierAdrian Grenier

Date of Birth 10 July 1976, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Birth Name Adrian S. Grenier
Nicknames A
Adi
Height 5′ 10½” (1.79 m)

Well, obviously I’m not Mark Wahlberg – I have much better abs and I look much better in a pair of Calvin Kleins but when I saw Mark Wahlberg interacting with the world, I realised that his stardom was sort of a result of the movies he had done and the publicity that he had got and the work that he did.

I think winter wear is communal. You get some gloves and a scarf from a lost-and-found box, wash them, wear them for a while until you lose them. Then somebody else does the same thing.

I think anybody who’s famous has to deal with their fame in their own way, and I dealt with it by making a film about a kid who’s looking out into the world of celebrity obsession.

I have a bunch of concepts and ideas that I want to do but I have also been growing my production company in general and looking to branch out of projects that I am directing and producing.

Happy Birthday: Adam Croasdell

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Adam CroasdellAdam Croasdell

Date of Birth 10 July 1980, Zimbabwe
Height 5′ 10″ (1.78 m)

Adam is also a voice artist, voicing lead characters for major video games such as Dead Island and Middle Earth; Shadow Of Mordor. He has performed the body movements for Daniel Craig in James Bond 007 Bloodstone. Adam was nominated for Best Vocal Ensemble in the BTVA Video Game Voice Acting Awards in 2014 for Middle Earth; Shadow Of Mordor.

Happy Birthday: Robert Pine

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Robert PineRobert Pine

Date of Birth 10 July 1941, New York City, New York, USA
Birth Name Granville Whitelaw Pine
Nickname Buzz
Height 5′ 11″ (1.8 m)

Married to:
Gwynne Gilford (6 September 1969 – present) (2 children)

[about the “No Sweat” nickname for director Earl Bellamy, with whom he worked several times] When you’d blow a line, he’d say, “No sweat. No sweat, let’s take it again”. Earl was a good guy. He was a very workmanlike director.

Happy Birthday: Chiwetel Ejiofor

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Chiwetel EjioforChiwetel Ejiofor

Date of Birth 10 July 1977, Forest Gate, London, England, UK
Height 5′ 10″ (1.78 m)

I remember getting cast in Amistad and getting this very strong feeling that I had overshot myself. It was a great shock. It made me realize that this is not a profession you can predict; that you can have all these ambitions and expectations and that they can all be thrown to the wind. What was peculiar about that situation was that my aspirations were so far below what actually happened.

I like to disappear into a role. I equate the success of it with a feeling of being chemically changed.

I always thought of the play as a sequel to Romeo and Juliet. I think Shakespeare’s so astute in his understanding of people being vulnerable, you know. And that love is so easy to corrupt. I think so many of Shakespeare’s plays are about how fragile love is – how perfect and beautiful it is, but also how terrifying and easy to manipulate it is.

But these are the realities of the artistic idealism and the stock, the commercial/financial realism, and, so, somehow sometimes it is going to work in your favor and sometimes against, and that’s all part and parcel of it. We just, in our end, just carry on trying to sort of produce the work, or the best work we can do, and hope that at their end they find a way of getting that to as many people as possible in the cinema medium.

Happy Birthday: John Simm

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John SimmJohn Simm

Date of Birth 10 July 1970, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, UK
Height 5′ 9″ (1.75 m)

Married to:
Kate Magowan (April 2004 – present) (2 children)

I think I can be closed in. I can close this outer shell, cut myself off and be quite cold. I can cut other people off if I need to. I don’t think I’m angry, though… Maybe my wife would disagree.

I love Manchester. I always have, ever since I was a kid, and I go back as much as I can. Manchester’s my spiritual home. I’ve been in London for 22 years now but Manchester’s the only other place, I think, in the country that I could live.

I can’t watch shows like The X Factor (2004), for instance. I just squirm for the people involved, for the way they’re being used. It’s the cruellest, most ridiculous show on television. It’s ruined music, ruined everything.

You never undertake a project because you think other people will like it – because that way lies madness – but rather because you believe in it.

Happy Birthday: Golshifteh Farahani

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Golshifteh FarahaniGolshifteh Farahani

Born: July 10, 1983 in Tehran, Iran

First Iranian star after the 1979 revolution to play in a major Hollywood production: Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies (2008) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.

After playing in Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies (2008), Golshifteh was banned from leaving her home country Iran in February 2008 on her way to London to make a screen test for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). The role she was set to audition for eventually went to English actress Gemma Arterton. This was only reported 6 months later when she actually could leave the country. She now lives in Paris, France.