During the late 1990s, our two headliners were both starring on NBC sitcoms which most often aired on Monday nights—Lea Thompson on Caroline in the City, Brooke Shields on Suddenly Susan. During the 1998-99 season, the two series aired back-to-back.

Lea Thompson celebrates her 57th birthday today. Thompson, one of three WTHH birthday celebrants in today’s article, studied ballet as a girl and danced professionally until she was about 20, when she decided to go into acting. She made a few Burger King ads, including one with Elisabeth Shue, and made her feature film debut in Jaws 3-D. Later that year, Thompson played Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in All the Right Moves, and the following year she had prominent roles in Red Dawn and Cameron Crowe’s The Wild Life. In 1985, Thompson appeared in the biggest box office hit of her career, playing a 1950s teenager who, through the miracle of time-travel, has an encounter with her own son.

Thompson never became a major film star, although she appeared in a few more starring roles, ranging from the epic bomb known as Howard the Duck to John Hughes’s Some Kind of Wonderful; her WTHH article has plenty of detail about her subsequent film career. She has had some success on television; Caroline in the City, with Thompson as Caroline Duffy, lasted for four seasons, while more recently she was a regular on Freeform’s Switched at Birth. Later this year she will play Marmee March in Clare Niederprum’s modernized adaptation of Little Women.

Brooke Shields is turning 53 today. She was thrust into celebrity as a child, known as a model for work like her famous Calvin Klein ad, and as an actress for her controversial role as a child prostitute in Pretty Baby. As a teenager, Shields starred in films like The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love, and became the youngest ever guest-star on The Muppet Show. She took a few years off from her screen career to attend Princeton; when she returned to the screen in the late 1980s, the dismal failure of Brenda Starr probably ended any chance she had of becoming a major film star.

Up until the mid-nineties, the biggest “honors” Shields had received in her career were a trio of Razzies from the 1980s. However, she made a comeback when she starred on NBC’s Suddenly Susan as Susan Keane. The show ran for four seasons, and during its run Shields received a pair of Golden Globe nominations.

Shields has worked worked steadily for the past two decades, although aside from starring on the single season of NBC’s Lipstick Jungle, she’s been doing guest appearances. She has had notable recurring roles on That ’70s Show and The Middle, and last year began appearing in another on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She has developed a nice stage career, mostly in musical theater: she made her Broadway debut in the mid-1990s revival of Grease, as a replacement in the role of Betty Rizzo, and also appeared as Roxie Hart in Chicago and as Ruth Sherwood in the 2003 revival of Wonderful Town (replacing Donna Murphy).

Tom Berenger, another of our WTHH subjects celebrating today, is 69. He is appearing in a wide variety of indie films being released this year. Sandrine Bonnaire, who turns 51, appeared in two films which screened at Toronto last fall, A Season in France and Catch the Wind. Chris Elliott, who remains a regular on the CBC series Schitt’s Creek, is 58 today. Jonathan Tucker, who celebrates his 36th, starred on the third and final season of Kingdom. Eric Christian Olsen remains a regular on NCIS: Los Angeles as Marty Deeks; he is 41. Novelist John Connolly is turning 50; his latest Charlie Parker novel, The Woman in the Woods, came out in April.

Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, who turns 48, is best known for his 2013 film The Great Beauty, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film along with similar honors at the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards, and Best Film at the European Film Awards. Meredith Hagner, who is 31, is a regular on TBS’s Search Party and was previously a regular on Men at Work. Justine Lupe, who is turning 29, is a regular on the Audience Network’s Mr. Mercedes. Hugh Dillon, who celebrates his 55th, is a familiar face on Canadian TV, best known for starring on the crime drama Flashpoint.

Clint Eastwood and Colin Farrell were our May 31 headliners one year ago. Clint Eastwood is turning 88. His latest film as a director was the recent release The 15:17 to Paris. One aspect of his career not covered in last year’s article was his composing. Known for his love of jazz, Eastwood has composed the scores for several of his films, including Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, and received two Golden Globe nominations for his music for the 2007 film Grace is Gone. Colin Farrell celebrates his 42nd today. The third of our WTHH birthdays, he starred with Denzel Washington in Roman J. Israel, Esq., and will appear in Steve McQueen’s Widows.

Let’s have a musical closer from folkie Peter Yarrow, who turns 80 today.

If today is your birthday, congratulations on sharing your big day with these notable names. Birthday wishes to everyone celebrating a big day today. Come back tomorrow for more celebrity birthdays.

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