We’ve sourced some of the most interesting and thought-provoking Birthday Quotes from Mindy Kaling, Ed Koch, Pamela Druckerman, Akhil Sharma, Jon Scieszka. Each of the following quotes is overflowing with creativity, and knowledge.
Anybody can have a birthday. It requires nothing. Murderers have birthdays. It’s the opposite of anything that I believe in. And I don’t like at work where you stop everything to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to someone. I feel like that’s for children.
Citizens, thank you for all your birthday wishes. I am 88 years old today and still lucky to live in the greatest city in the world.
The question on my husband’s birthday is always, What do you get for the man who has nothing?
Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.
I was born full grown in the middle of a hurricane and an earthquake on 10 September 1954, 12.52 P.M. When I found out that I had missed lunch, I gave such a shout that the Earth stopped and spun backwards two days. That’s why I celebrate my birthday on 8 September.
My mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, so I said I wanted to read poetry with her.
You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘See if you can blow this out.’
Since the day I got married, I never got to plan my birthday.
Love the giver more than the gift.
I quit high school on my birthday. It was my senior year and I didn’t see the point. This was 1962, and I was ready to make music.
I wrapped my Christmas presents early this year, but I used the wrong paper. See, the paper I used said ‘Happy Birthday’ on it. I didn’t want to waste it so I just wrote ‘Jesus’ on it.
For my 9th birthday, my only wish was to eat like a farmer boy. I had devoured ‘The Little House on the Prairie’ book series and wanted to be like Almanzo Wilder, the protagonist of ‘Farmer Boy,’ one of the later installments in the ‘Little House’ series.
About 50 percent of the songs on the radio are like, ‘Live like tomorrow doesn’t exist. Like it’s my birthday. Like it’s the last day of my life’… Such a large percentage of pop music is really about party time.
The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.
I like to keep my birthday very relaxed.
I gave a funny speech at my wife’s birthday party, and I’m thinking, ‘Hey, I’ve still got it.’
When it comes to birthdays, I think there are two camps. There are people like me, who choose to treat it like any other day, and then there are the ‘birthday people.’ You know, those people who claim the full month in which they were born as their own.
It has to do a lot more than just twerking. It’s feel good music; it makes people have a good time. It doesn’t matter what type of situation they’re in, we bounce all around New Orleans. Weddings, birthday parties, funerals. The whole nine yards, and it’s a happy music, it turns people from a frown to a happy smile.
I actually had the pleasure of meeting David Bowie at his 50th birthday party in New York City. I handed him the cassette of ‘Eight Arms to Hold You,’ which I had just got an advance of that day. He very graciously thanked me and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
If you look over the years, the styles have changed – the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it’s really the same.
I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John, for Britney Spears’ 27th birthday and for the ‘Circus’ album she put out – the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry; the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings.
I’d go out with my family and my close ones, who have been by my side through the years, but I am not the one who will throw parties on his birthday.
I received a call for getting selected in ‘Cartel’ on December 4, my birthday. I was on cloud nine and absolutely overjoyed hearing the news.
When I look on my mantelpiece and see these cards wishing me a happy 100th birthday, I can’t believe it.
I don’t know what that is because to me, Feb. 14 is Rob Thomas’ birthday, and that’s only what I acknowledge it as. I just like to celebrate that as Rob Thomas’ birthday.
I get bashful in the spotlight. Even at home or at a birthday party, I hate that stuff.
I would watch ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ and borrow a few lines here and there from guests like Red Buttons and Buddy Hackett to create a routine. Then I started getting invited to do political functions like the governor’s birthday ball or mayor’s dinner.
There’s definitely something special about a working birthday, it’s the perfect way to bring in the new birthday year!
When I was a teenager, the actors I was really into were Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn. I saw ‘Rumble Fish’ on my 16th birthday, and around the same time, it was ‘Falcon and the Snowman’ and ‘Bad Boys’ from Sean Penn.
I started performing non-professionally at birthday parties and family gatherings doing ‘Saturday Night Live’ impressions at four. Then I started for real at seven.
I get asked, on a sort of daily basis, ‘It’s my wife’s 30th birthday, can you set her a task?’
More and more, there are things in my life that I find hard to say. Like, ‘David Bowie and Lorde were at my birthday party.’ She’s a phenomenal spirit.
Most artists don’t get paid for what they do, and they are lucky if they can persuade a friend to let them show something at a kid’s birthday party.
I was born in Korea and left before my first birthday.
With a recent birthday, I’ve been acting now for twenty years.
I wanted Cathy and Irving to actually say ‘I do’ and be pronounced husband and wife on Feb. 5, which is my mom’s birthday.
I threw my 20th birthday party at Brown, and I didn’t even have to say to anyone not to put pictures on Facebook. Not a single picture went up. That was when I knew I’d found a solid group of friends, and I felt like I belonged.
One time, a hedge fund gentleman in Connecticut brought in a bunch of professional wrestlers and myself at a very hefty price for his son’s 11th birthday.
I jumped out of an airplane on my 34th birthday because I promised myself I would. I have an interest in confronting my fears.
I get letters constantly from all over the world, telephone calls from America, Brazil, Australia, all over, especially on my birthday. A family? I have a huge international family. That’s all I need.
It is lovely, when I forget all birthdays, including my own, to find that somebody remembers me.
We Kapoors are very family-minded people. For us only family is important and we make it a point to attend each other’s birthday parties and special occasions.
My 40th birthday I held in an old-age home. My 50th I had at Pravda before it opened in New York. My 60th I had at Pastis. For my 70th, I thought, ‘I don’t need to have a celebrity party this year. I’m going to go take my oldest, closest friends to Paris.’
Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.
When I was younger, I was a rave kid trapped inside a singer/songwriter’s body. But I kind of figured my way out because I started making these really terrible beats on this Yamaha keyboard that my parents got me for my 10th birthday.
Does Martin Luther King really want his birthday commercialized?
I hate birthdays. I hate birthday parties. I hate them. I don’t know what it is, anybody’s only got to come wafting near me with a piece of cake with a candle on and I break out in hives.
I want to feel pampered and special on my birthday.
I never got a chocolate birthday cake; I got a carob one. And when I went to other kids’ houses, I was very covetous of things like Cheez Whiz that I’d find in their refrigerators.
A birthday is just another day where you go to work and people give you love. Age is just a state of mind, and you are as old as you think you are. You have to count your blessings and be happy.
When you’re an expert in a subject, you can retain new factoids on your favorite topic easily. This only works for the subjects you’re truly passionate about, though. Baseball fans can reel off stats for their favorite players, then space out on their own birthday.
I’ll sometimes forget it’s my birthday, but my mom has taken to calling me at the exact time of my birth, so that’ll usually remind me. It was an important moment for me, obviously, but I guess a more memorable one for her.
God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.
For my 11th birthday, I asked to be adopted.
I was hurtling towards 40, and I’d always wanted to write. It does focus your mind, heading towards that big birthday. If there is anything you think you want to do, you think, ‘I probably should have a go now!’
I must have been yearning for some Jewish content beyond my genetic makeup because soon after my 21st birthday, I noticed I was no longer dating WASPs.
My best kiss was on stage. Kelly Rowland from Destiny’s Child gave me a really nice soft kiss on my lips during a performance on my birthday. It was amazing.
I remember I asked my mom for a ukulele, and she said no because she thought I would never play it. So then I got my birthday money up, and I bought my own. It was the most rebellious thing I’ve ever done.
I wasn’t very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children’s birthday party, what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos.
My mom and my father’s birthday are on the same day.
There is still no cure for the common birthday.
Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.
I’m tired of playing people who are complete washouts and bums. I don’t mind waiting for the good ones to come along. It’s like age. It’s never bothered me. I’ve even forgot my birthday. Many times I’ve wondered if I should tell my real age, but now I think it’s an honor, to be doing what I’m doing now at my age.
In 1980, shortly before my 11th birthday, I wrote my first essay in English.
The day before my 16th birthday I got my guitar.
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
I was forced to live far beyond my years when just a child, now I have reversed the order and I intend to remain young indefinitely.
If I could be doing anything, I’d be laying on the floor in my birthday suit eating junk food and watching something dumb on TV.
I don’t really remember, but I’m positive that whenever I cried, my mother gave me something to eat. I’m sure that whenever I had a fight with the little girl next door, or it was raining and I couldn’t go out, or I wasn’t invited to a birthday party, my mother gave me a piece of candy to make me feel better.
I remember going to see ‘Starlight Express’ almost every birthday I had as a treat because I just loved it, and the idea that you could rollerskate in a sort of scary old theatre… It was sort of a novel concept.
I was in my mid-teens when someone gave me a copy of ‘Pears Encyclopaedia of Myth and Legends’ as a birthday present. It sat on my shelves for many months before I looked at it. When I did, I couldn’t stop reading it.
You should feel good about making your home nicer for your family and your friends. You should feel great about cooking a good dinner and making a dress for a granddaughter, creating a beautiful birthday party. It’s all part of life.
I always try to work on my birthday.
I was exceptionally opinionated as a teenager, never afraid to rant and ruin a birthday party or cinema trip.
I’m not big on dark chocolate, but I do have a sweet tooth, so it gets me in trouble. I love warm chocolate chip cookies with ice cream. Then there’s this chocolate pie my mom makes for me every year for my birthday. She’s been making it since I was younger, and there’s nothing like it. It’s really so, so good!
Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.
My mother’s face floated to mind, a pale, reproachful moon, at her last and first visit to the asylum since my twentieth birthday. A daughter in an asylum! I had done that to her. Still, she had obviously decided to forgive me.
I love photography. My boyfriend’s got a great camera, which I bought for his birthday.
I’m an avid shoe fan. I got my first pair of Louboutins as a birthday gift from Jami Gertz.
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
I had a ‘Cats’ phase, where I did lots of overturned furniture and trash cans. I asked for a fog machine for my birthday.
I spent my 18th birthday in jail. Charges were dropped as long as I promised never to return to the state of Kansas. My parents took me home to Louisiana. I lasted there a week. Then I ran away.
In the Mexican culture, we never miss a baptism, a birthday, a baby shower, a wedding shower, a wedding. You must show up. Otherwise, you’ll be in big trouble.
The first posh meal out I had was on my 10th birthday.
When Oscar Niemeyer died on December 5, 2012, ten days before his 105th birthday, he was universally regarded as the very last of the twentieth century’s major architectural masters, an astonishing survivor whose most famous accomplishment, Brasilia, was the climactic episode of utopian High Modern urbanism.
From the age of 17 through my 20s, I was living on my own, so sometimes I wouldn’t even tell anybody it was my birthday. It was not a big thing for me.
The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.
I enjoy the celebration of my birthday as much as anyone else does, but I always remember to start my day thanking my mom because she did most of the work the day I came into the world, not to mention all she has done throughout my life that has contributed so much to the woman I am today.
Most of us can remember a time when a birthday – especially if it was one’s own – brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.
For my 16th birthday, my family took me to L’Auberge de L’Ill, which was family-run but had three Michelin stars. It was a revelation. After that meal, I realised this is what I want to do.
I never missed a birthday. I never missed a school play. We carpooled. And the greatest compliment I can ever get is not about my career or performance or anything; it’s when people say, ‘You know, your girls are great.’ That’s the real thing for me.
We think of the Warped Tour as kind of like everyone’s big birthday party.
My sentence formally was imposed on my mothers 50th Birthday January 24th 1983. The jury recommended it July 1st 1982.
Facebook lets me be lazy the way a man in a stereotypical 1950s office can be lazy. Facebook is the digital equivalent of my secretary, or perhaps my wife, yelling at me not to forget to wish someone a happy birthday or to inform me I have a social engagement this evening.
The way I see it, you should live everyday like its your birthday.
Interventions are really emotionally exhausting and I would never ever want to have one. In the same way, I would never want to have a surprise birthday party. That would be horrible.
They decided as part of my 75th birthday celebrations that I would be entitled to fly first class. I’ll be honest, I’m not good at flying anymore. To my credit, I can stretch out on two coach seats.
My life is better with every year of living it.
I’m not materialistic. I believe in presents from the heart, like a drawing that a child does.
I’ve been singing since I could talk. I started playing the piano when I was about 5 or 6. I picked up the guitar on my 20th birthday.
All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.
With my wife I don’t get no respect. I made a toast on her birthday to ‘the best woman a man ever had.’ The waiter joined me.
I’m a humungous Browns fan. My 30th birthday was actually at the Browns’ stadium.
I’m a Virgo and I’m more – I don’t want to say ‘negative’ – but I’m the girl who thinks no one’s coming to my birthday party, no one’s buying my clothes, no one’s reading my book, no one’s watching my show – that’s just how I think.
I was given this beautiful coffee table book of Soviet architecture for my birthday. It has a lot of holiday camps, swimming pools, theatres, and buildings that were built for leisure activities. Incredible architecture in the most obscure places. It’s a little bit sad, because a lot of it has been left to fall apart.
Plays have a celebratory nature that no other form has. Theater always meant celebration, a birthday, a reward for good grades. I felt at home in a theater. I loved being part of an audience. All the rules – the audience has to see the play on a certain date at a certain time in a certain place in a certain seat.
On my 14th birthday, my grandfather and my grandmother gave me the best birthday present ever: a drafting table that I have worked on ever since.
For my seventh birthday, my parents gave me a plain, unfinished wooden dollhouse. It had six empty rooms, two floors, a staircase, and a door that swung out onto a little front stoop. The windows opened, and the roof retracted on one side, revealing an attic.
To me, full-time mothering felt like way too much and yet not nearly enough. Lost in a landslide of diapers, birthday parties, and others’ needs, I ached to reestablish myself.
And currently, there are four to five new works in the pipeline for upcoming celebrations such as the Sydney 2000 Olympics, Australian Federation, my 50th Birthday, and Sydney Dance Company’s 25th Anniversary.
Our kids will never have to remember things, because it’s all in pictures. Want to remember your fourth birthday? There’ll be video of it on your phone.
To my surprise, my 70s are nicer than my 60s and my 60s than my 50s, and I wouldn’t wish my teens and 20s on my enemies.
As I approach my 88th birthday, it’s become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other appurtenances, aren’t quite what they used to be. The prospect of long flights to wherever in search of whatever are not quite as appealing.
Presents don’t really mean much to me. I don’t want to sound mawkish, but – it was the realization that I have a great many people in my life who really love me, and who I really love.
I saw a man killed in front of my eyes just before my eighth birthday.
When I was 11, I had an Ugly Sister birthday party. All my idea. Most girls want to be a fairy or a princess, but there I am with beauty spots and fur and fluorescent pink kiss-curls.
Reaching F1 was always the ultimate goal, I suppose, ever since driving a go-kart my father had bought me for my fifth birthday.
I am a very private person, so on my birthday too I will spend a cozy time with my family and a few close friends!
When I was eight we went to Las Vegas for my brother Michael’s 21st birthday, and my bedtime was pushed back quite late. I was always waking up as everyone was rolling in from their night out. It was an eye-opener!
Lesley Gore’s part-time field was pop singer, and in her brief but urgent prime, she was the Queen of Teen Angst. She endured heartbreak as a birthday girl betrayed by her beau in ‘It’s My Party,’ savored revenge in the sequel ‘Judy’s Turn to Cry’ and belted the proto-feminist anthem ‘You Don’t Own Me.’
The Queen of Crafts herself, Martha Stewart, and I have the same birthday. I prefer to think it’s the glue-gun wielding, perfect-tart-producing Martha and not the copper pan-throwing, jail-going Martha. But I suppose if I am going to share a calendar square with some of Martha, I have to share it with all of Martha.
For my 23rd birthday I had a house party that was ’90s themed and I dressed up as Alabama whirly from ‘True Romance.’
I’m going to hide – I always do on my birthday, I never celebrate birthdays.
It’s odd the things that people remember. Parents will arrange a birthday party, certain it will stick in your mind forever. You’ll have a nice time, then two years later you’ll be like, ‘There was a pony there? Really? And a clown with one leg?’
My son told me to stop singing ‘Happy Birthday’ when he was 4.
I was at a birthday party and a truck backed up and the wheels ran over my chest. I lost part of my lung and my liver.
I just had my 30th birthday and we went turkey shooting. It’s what I wanted to do, so we went.
My mom and pop took me to the Apollo Theater on my thirteenth birthday to see Heavy D and Keith Sweat. It was late at night, up on 125th Street, and it was crazy!
I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he’s made of sugar.
It is really a great feeling to win a World Cup on your birthday.
Katherine Johnson is a shining example of what you can truly do with hard work and persistence. Under what had to be the most difficult of circumstances she persevered and stuck to her values. She is a real West Virginia and American hero. To honor her legacy every August 26th, on her birthday, is the least we can do.
My great-grandmother lived to be 100 years old, so I got to know her. She always sent us birthday cards that had $2 bills inside – we kept them for good luck.
I like birthday cake. It’s so symbolic. It’s a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just ‘Happy birthday!’ because it’s this emblem of childhood and a happy day.
Having a birthday cake squashed into your face by young kids? Delicious. I always don a Santa suit at Christmas. Remaining childish is a tremendous state of innocence.
I have given myself a Tesla for my 60th birthday.
I’m the type who minds my own business and am not keen on giving interviews on my mom’s birthday, or my dog’s birthday.
I am a big popcorn fanatic. I love popcorn. In fact one year for my birthday, my husband bought me one of those big popcorn machines like they have in movie theaters.
We were probably the last people in the country to get a VCR and we didn’t have cable. There wasn’t any admiration of glamour, no, ‘I want to look like them or have that lifestyle’, because everyone in my town had the same lifestyle. So I didn’t think, ‘Ooh, a movie star’s birthday!’ I just thought, ‘What?’
I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.
Having a birthday around the holidays was never easy and, with every successive year, it felt more and more as if celebrating my birthday got thrown into the December holiday mix as an afterthought.
I’m not a big birthday guy; I never have been.
Having spent half my time at university studying English literature, I know from experience that reading lists often contain more white men than Jacob Rees-Mogg’s last birthday party.
I’ve looked after my money. As I started working around my third birthday, my first check went straight to the bank.
My two sons are more excited about my father’s birthday than him. Baba is a quiet person by nature and feels shy at any kind of celebration.
My earliest memory is my parents forgetting my fourth birthday. My dad looked up from reading the paper and went, ‘Oh my God!’ So we went out, and I chose a red scooter.
My mom kicked me out a couple of weeks before my 18th birthday. I had a job for about six, seven months at a supermarket, and they fired me for being late.
I used to be good with kids, but as I get older, I’m grumpy and terrible with them. As for doing a gig at a 6-year old’s birthday party, you couldn’t pay me enough.
When I retired from the NFL, my son was born on my birthday two weeks later, which is Valentine’s Day. Imagine having a son born on your birthday.
At 91, every day is a birthday.
My mother always bought our birthday gifts.
I got my first tennis racket on my seventh birthday. And because we had a tennis court in our backyard, I played every day. By ten I was playing competitively.
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
The reason I met my husband was because I remembered a friend’s birthday. The moral of the story is: Remember people’s birthdays.
When I was young and it was someone’s birthday, I didn’t have the money to buy nice presents so I would take my mom’s camera and make a movie parody for whoever’s birthday it was. When I’d show it them, they’d die laughing. That reaction was a high for me, and I loved that feeling.
I decided that every year on my birthday, I’m going to release a new clown mask.
I’ve been a Nick Cave fan since the early ’80s when he was part of The Birthday Party thing singing Australian self-destructive rock band and I’ve always followed his work and loved it.
In a bar mitzvah, you do the candle-lighting ceremony with the cake. Every birthday, the cake is the big moment.
There’s video footage of my 10th birthday where I’m wearing, like, a little pink T-shirt. Then my dad comes in brandishing a copy of ‘Eraserhead,’ going, ‘Look what we’ve got for tonight!’
I think the best thing about my job is that I have my life documented, which not many people get to have. They have a photo here and there and maybe some video footage from a birthday. My kids will be able to see me growing up.
For my 10th birthday, what I wanted was Beatle boots and a Beatle wig. My parents couldn’t find Beatle boots, but down at the dime store, Woolworths or someplace, they found a Beatle wig!
I count the weeks and days before my birthday.
We have a host of English teachers in the family. My mum is an English teacher, and so are my dad, my aunt and my uncle. I have grown up with family writing competitions, and I can’t remember a birthday or Christmas present that didn’t include books.
On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.
Jesus’ birthday is commercialized, so of course, Black History Month is commercialized.
When I turned 35, I thought, ‘Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I’m going to start writing a book on my next birthday.’ I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up.
I’m amazed by how angry people get about new art, particularly new sculptures in their town. The people who hate new sculpture usually find their type of art on birthday cards, pictures of a vintage car going round a hairpin bend and suchlike.
By the time of my ninth birthday, I had become a bit of a socialist, as I am said by conservative colleagues to be to this day. I went on within the next few years to volunteer as an envelope stuffer for the American Labor Party, and my political thinking has not shifted measurably since that time.
There was an old acoustic in the house that my mother had given me for my fifth birthday. I took it off the wall and started jamming. I was seven years old at the time.
My mum likes to remind me of the birthday treat I asked for when I was just 13… and that was for them to hire a stretch limo for my birthday when we travelled to L.A.
I never knew anyone who have growing up who had a clown at their birthday party. They are something I think of as being from the past. So I never had strong feelings about them. I do think that they can be creepy, I guess it depends on the clown.
We didn’t have a whole lot of money when I was growing up either. I would always ask for magic books or magic tricks for my birthday or for Christmas and the rest of the year I either had to mow lawns or find part time jobs to help supplement the cost of doing magic.
I’ve died so many times. I’m 65. On my 40th birthday, my girlfriend gave me a reel with ways I had died, whether it was by knife, or electrocution or drowning or being thrown off a building or whatever it might have been. I’ve died a lot of times!
I was put on a pony as a kid at some birthday party when you’re all led around.
I’m really not the party type. I more like to have friends over at the house and chill. I’ve never been the super party type. But for the 18th birthday, you got to party. And then 21 is going to be even bigger.
I started with Katie, a doll I got on eBay on my 10th birthday. I don’t use her anymore. I’ve got a new Katie now, a real ventriloquist’s puppet.
School was a big source of anxiety for me. I hated school. I have social anxiety, and it developed when I was a kid. I had trouble going to birthday parties. It was always there. I begged my mom to let me be home-schooled at one point for a semester because I was so miserable at school.
I was fired by ‘America’s Next Top Model’ on my birthday.
My father was a legendary copywriter. He wrote ‘Timex Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking.’ He named Earth Day ‘Earth Day.’ It falls on his birthday, April 22. Earth Day, birthday. So the idea came easily.
As soon as I became a mom, my birthday stopped having any meaning whatsoever.
I wrote ‘The Room’, ‘The Birthday Party’, and ‘The Dumb Waiter’ in 1957, I was acting all the time in a repertory company, doing all kinds of jobs, traveling to Bournemouth and Torquay and Birmingham.
When I see the kind of passion Sir Alex shows, it is hard to believe he is about to celebrate his 71st birthday.
The only show my mother could afford to take me to when I was growing up was ‘Cats’, for my birthday.
My first paying job might have been doing a play, actually. My mom paid me to dress up as a flounder at my sister’s ‘Little Mermaid’ – themed birthday party when I was little.
Now that I think about it, my 40th birthday was the most anxiety I’ve ever had, and my wedding was also the second time I’ve had that much anxiety. So I’m starting to realize that I can’t be throwing these big bash parties because I need to own that I get anxiety with a lot of people diverting their attention to me.
There weren’t any astronauts until I was about 10. Yuri Gagarin went into space right around my 10th birthday.
My first recognition of age setting in was exactly on my 36th birthday. I have no idea why, on this day of all days, I looked in the mirror and realized my face no longer looked young.
When I was six years old, Mom and Dad gave me a guitar for my birthday, and Daddy taught me the chords to ‘You Are My Sunshine.’
The first comic book I ever read was an issue of ‘Legion of Super-Heroes’ where the earth was surrounded by all of these chains. I remember the cover; I got it at a birthday party.
The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali’s friends had described to me as the ‘myth of Mario’ was on a cold Saturday night in January 2002, when I invited him to a birthday dinner.
When I was 13 or 14, my mother used to gift me books that I was dying to read. Those are my most memorable birthday gifts.
I had been offered a Hollywood contract before my 18th birthday. It gave me the spark I needed.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
For my birthday my husband learned to cook and is cooking one day a week for me. But he only likes to do fancy dishes. So we end up with weird, obscure things in the refrigerator.
A 1920s dress I wore on my 21st birthday… literally disintegrated on me. I had the most wild debauched night. And that disintegrated dress sits in my closet – such a great memory.
I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.
My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 – or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.
I saw Farrah Fawcett originally when she and her boyfriend, Lee Majors, came over to my house for a birthday party that I was having for my ex-wife, Leigh Taylor-Young.
Cryptic messages and abstract statements are littered throughout the music of Happy Birthday, but it hasn’t made the band’s sun-baked pop-rock any less infectious.
I want a chainsaw very badly, because I think cutting down a tree would be unbelievably satisfying. I have asked for a chainsaw for my birthday, but I think I’ll probably be given jewelry instead.
I trained to be a priest – started to. I went to seminary school when I was 11. I wanted to be a priest, but when they told me I could never have sex, not even on my birthday, I changed my mind.
On my fourth or fifth birthday, a guitar was given to me, and I made a new friend. A very loud friend.
I can sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you in twelve different places, but one of them is going to make you feel a certain thing, maybe it’s a vulnerability, maybe an innocence, maybe another way is sexy and soulful or bluesy whatever it is, but with singers, exploring keys, I think, is important.
I play PC and Xbox games at home, and I just got a PSP as a birthday present.
We all have special numbers in our lives, and 4 is that for me. It’s the day I was born. My mother’s birthday, and a lot of my friends’ birthdays, are on the fourth; April 4 is my wedding date.
Every five years, I like to do a big birthday party. I had my 45th birthday with 75 friends in Marrakesh, Morocco.
I have heard of ‘Green Street’-dedicated birthday parties, a website dedicated only to the clothing. It has no end. If you hashtag #greenstreet or #greenstreethooligans, you cannot go a day without people saying it’s their favourite movie. It’s frustrating because it’s a massive hit, but nobody gives it credit.
Mum loves me being famous! She is so excited and proud, as she had me so young and couldn’t support me, so I am living her dream, it’s sweeter for both of us. It’s her 40th birthday soon and I’m going to buy her 40 presents.
You think back and you ask yourself why you became so interested in wolves. I think it was because when I was very small, growing up in a little hamlet near Shap, we would go to Lowther Wildlife Park for birthday parties. Now closed, it was only three miles from my parents’ house.
I was born on Dev Anand’s birthday so I believe… the older I get, the better I become.
It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.’
My brother got a .22 for his 12th birthday; I got a .22. He got a hunting knife; I got a hunting knife.
I celebrated my 18th birthday in Japan, which was quite memorable; I was quite fascinated by the different traditions and the culture; it was so completely different to Australian culture.
You don’t get older, you get better.
I have always told my family that I don’t want my birthday to be celebrated and that they shouldn’t get me anything, even though if they didn’t I’d probably write a standup routine about it.
I think I’ve wanted to be an actress since the day I was born. I even asked my parents for an agent for my seventh birthday!
I was quite a shy child. I would get terribly nervous and throw up before my birthday party. And then I would be fine. I feel the same now. I get nervous, then it’s fine.
I have an ambivalent relationship with Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in May 1979 – a month before my 11th birthday. I was far too young to have developed a great deal of political awareness. I remember it, though – my mother excited at the dinner table because Britain had its first female prime minister.
Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.
For a meal out, my number one restaurant is Peter’s Inn. I first went there when it was an old biker bar. Believe me, when it was Motorcycle Pete’s, that was fun. I had my 30th birthday there.
Having a Mary Poppins-themed birthday party when I was 5 – all my friends went in dresses, and I went as a chimney sweep. I was a real tomboy.
My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school. This teacher took an interest in me. In fact, he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish.
My birthday, I don’t really see it as a special day, to be honest. It’s just another day for me.
I definitely break out karaoke when my friends have birthday parties.
I’m amazed. When I was 40, I thought I’d never make 50. And at 50 I thought the frosting on the cake would be 60. At 60, I was still going strong and enjoying everything.
If I’m about to forget my kid’s birthday, I want the phone to scream at me until I do something about it.
I can still remember the afternoon, on my 15th birthday, when I opened up ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy,’ D.H. Lawrence’s novella, in my tiny cell in boarding school, and whole worlds of possibility opened out that I had never guessed existed. The language was on fire and sang of liberation.
I decided if you’re lucky enough to be alive, you should use each birthday to celebrate what your life is about.
I have got a vintage Omega 1949 watch I love… It was a present that I got for my birthday.
I want to say that probably 24 hours after I told CBS that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday, I was already regretting it. And I regretted it every day since.
Let them eat cake.
Life is all about balance, and there are certain times of the year – birthday, anniversary, holidays – that are meant to be enjoyed without guilt. That being said, Thanksgiving is a meal – it’s not a Thanksgiving day, and it’s not a Thanksgiving week.
The American flag is an enduring symbol of liberty, democracy, and justice. It is fitting that the House act to protect it as we approach our nation’s birthday, and as our men and women in uniform rally behind it in Iraq’s battlefields.
I’ve got more than 600 pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses, from 1950s originals to newer models. I have them on the wall like opticians do so I can pick out a pair that goes with my outfit. I had around 30 pairs, then my husband Rainer started getting them for me as birthday and Christmas gifts.
Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.
I’m not really big on gifts. I like giving back on my birthday.
You know, maybe I was just born in the wrong time, but I love all things romantic. Puffy understands that. For my last birthday, he covered my hotel room floor with rose petals and had flowers and candles all over the room.
I love the Sixties with Julie Christie and Jane Birkin – those natural English beauties. That’s the look that is most me, when I wore the tight-to-the knee dresses. I don’t think I bleached my hair until I was 20. I like experimenting for big occasions, though. You’ve always got to do a bit of a number for the birthday!
I don’t set up screenings. I can barely plan my kid’s birthday party.
I’ve raced on all seven continents at least twice. I’ve probably run thousands of races. But the single race that I’m most proud is a 10K. Yes, a 10K. I ran it with my daughter on her 10th birthday.
People give one another things that can’t be gift wrapped.
My grandma spelled my name wrong until she died. Like literally, birthday cards, mail, everything.
It takes a long time to become young.
I have angel wings and a halo on my wrist, which I got done on my 30th birthday in memory of my brother.
If I go away, I take a little picture of my son. It’s in a frame with a speaker, and he recorded a birthday message for me when he was nine or 10. I can’t listen to it without filling up.
I was fired at the pinnacle of my career, on my 39th birthday. And in the year that followed, I learned that there are many psychological phases of being ‘let go.’
For my 21st birthday, my now-wife, at the time girlfriend, flew across the country and showed up at my house.
I’ve never looked forward to a birthday like I’m looking forward to my new daughter’s birthday, because two days after that is when I can apply for reinstatement.
Prince Philip had formally ‘retired’ in the summer of 2017, a couple of months after his 96th birthday, because the Queen encouraged him to do so. She wanted to stop him ‘pushing himself all the time’. She had become anxious about him.
My 50th birthday approaching felt like a big milestone to me. I’ve lived half a century. If I write about food and use my life as a fulcrum to move the story along, maybe I’ve lived long enough to fashion a narrative that has a happy ending.
Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life’s work.
I always knew that good stuff would come along when I was older. So when I was 18, I longed to be 30; when I was 30, I longed to be 50. I’ve always looked forward to my next birthday.
I believe that at least 70 percent of parenting goes to the mother. In our house, I’m the one who knows about all the school stuff, helps with the homework, organizes the play dates, and remembers the birthday parties.
I’m actually a perpetual 13-year-old. I’ve never advanced beyond 13. Every day, tomorrow is my 14th birthday. That’s my kind of humor.
One thing that was really dope for me was that my dad had a ’78 Corvette, ’78 or ’76 Corvette all my life. It always needed to be fixed up. I remember it’s just been sitting in the driveway for years, and I got it fixed from top to bottom for his birthday.
I often imagine what it would be like if my father were still here to mark his 100th birthday, if Alzheimer’s hadn’t clawed away years, possibilities, hopes. What would he think of all the commemorations and celebrations?
I once attended a birthday party where Danny Kaye dropped in to entertain the birthday boy and his guests; I was sometimes taken for lunch on Saturdays by my father to The Brown Derby; and my favorite meal is still the Cobb salad in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
Why, on my mother’s birthday, am I thinking about ‘Father Knows Best?’ At our house, mother knew best at least as often as father did, but then the title of the old sitcom, a homogenized portrait of American family life, was meant to be slightly sardonic.
I had arranged a birthday party for him and my children, who are all Aquarians. Instead, we got married. I ran out of excuses. It was just us and my children.
It’s kind of ironic that the only Super Bowl I’ve been to as a fan was when the Rams played the Titans. I was at that game. My grandpa, when he was still involved in the NFL, he got me tickets for my birthday.
If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
My mum and dad weren’t wealthy people. We used to have pasta every day, meat once a week, fish was once every two weeks, presents only at Christmas and birthday.
I was a fortnight away from my 16th birthday when the fabled 2005 Ashes series ended. My hero-worship throughout it belonged to Ian Bell – though I don’t think I’ve ever made that abundantly clear to him.
In 1993 my birthday present was a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
I was on the train; I did play, but I also played in bars, in the streets, at birthday parties for people who discovered me on the train.
That’s the great thing about New Year’s, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn’t such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That’s what the trees are all about.
Somewhere it was written that October 18th is my birthday, and some people flew to Georgia to wish me! They came to my college, spoke to my professor, found out where I lived, and they were at my doorstep! I was shocked!
I’m a summer baby, so I usually have my birthday as a good summer memory.
I’m scared of heights, but for my 30th birthday I’m going to try and get someone to kick me out of a plane and do a parachute jump.
On my 50th birthday in 2005, my discount-wielding AARP card came in the mail. I hurled it in the trash, put on something fabulous, and had a decadent meal. Just the thought of putting it in my wallet felt like a concession.
My mom FedExes a red velvet cake she makes from scratch to me every birthday.
The first time I ever heard Airborne Toxic Event, my friend was turning 11 or something. And he had a paintball birthday party where him and me and two of our other friends went out to these paintball courses and I got obliterated. I don’t think I got one hit.
My dad bought me a dartboard for my 11th birthday, and I became intrigued by the game.
Facebook has gone from a nice-and-boring social network to becoming an identity layer of the web. It is where nearly a billion people are depositing the artifacts of civilization in the 21st century – photos, videos, and birthday wishes.
And for the city’s birthday, we will host events in every neighborhood of the city, inviting all of our residents to share in the celebration of Boston’s great epic – the story of neighbors who support one another where it matters most.
I was about to get on a plane and take my husband away for his birthday, I thought oh I have tummy ache. I went into A&E and they said ‘oh, you need surgery,’ it was really weird – it was appendicitis.
I spent my 40th birthday on the stage of the Palladium in ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.’
If you are an actress in L.A., on your 40th birthday they should just hand you the keys to the lunatic asylum.
The Governors Ball is like a big birthday party, and all these stars are like excited kids running around – ‘Oooo, look at my pretty new dress!’ And what’s the best, most fun surprise at a birthday party? When the cake comes out!
When I was little I thought, isn’t it nice that everybody celebrates on my birthday? Because it’s July 4th.
My father was one of the fortunate wartime servicemen: he made a full recovery from his injuries, was promoted to captain, survived the war, had a satisfying career as a colonial officer and, eventually, died in February 2002, a month before his 85th birthday.
The first memory I have in the world is of death and tears. That is how I would mark the beginning of my life: the way people mark the end of one. My family had gathered at Papa Joe’s house because Mam’ Grace was slipping away, only I didn’t register it that way. For some reason I thought that it was her birthday.
On every birthday, I ask my wife, ‘What would you like this year?’ and her instant reply is, ‘Diamonds! Diamonds! Diamonds!’ I’m always living in hope that one day she’ll say she just wants me!
I’m good in summer. My birthday is in summer. I don’t like it when it’s too hot, but, you know, blue skies, I think people genuinely loosen up a bit, and it’s nicer.
Early on, when my wife and I were dating, we went to the grocery store, and I told her that sometimes I just buy birthday cakes, and I eat them. And she said: ‘Really? I do, too.’
My mum’s from a very rural village in Nigeria, she grew up in a war, and for her it was really important that my brothers and I knew how to fend for ourselves. My dad bought me a Swiss army knife for my 13th birthday and we used to go camping and he showed me how to light fires.
I grew up doing all that stuff because I was obsessed with the ’50s. I had sock hops for birthday parties. So I’ve always done The Twist and stuff. It was pretty natural and, with my parents doing it all the time, I’d just copy them. Not very pretty.
The first time I went on a serious run was when I was 21 years old at Stanford University. From 21 to 30, I continued the tradition and ran 10 miles every year on my birthday.
The 20th anniversary of my dad David’s death coincided with my 50th Test cap and for it to be my mum Janet’s birthday, too, made it an emotional few days. It was not an easy week, being the Pink Test and my mum having had breast cancer twice.
For Tim Burton’s birthday I gave him a rainbow beetle. He loved it!
I’m over the moon to be involved in the ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas special. I can’t quite believe it as it’s a part of the family tradition at the Jenkins household. I heard the news that I got the role on my 30th birthday and it was the best birthday present ever.
What makes ‘Maybach Music V’ so special was, of course, I put the album out celebrating my daughter’s birthday as well, and DeJ Loaf is her favorite artist. So ‘Maybach Music V,’ I wanted a real airy type of feel. Just a real slow vibe to it that’s also going to surprise my daughter. So that’s real special.
Everybody should plant a tree on any happy occasion or birthday and celebrate.
My 21st birthday was probably the worst day of my life.
I reflected a lot, I thought a lot on my 50th birthday. It has been one of the most important birthdays in my life, not in terms of celebration but in terms of retrospect.
My mother died on my birthday.
Don’t invite me to a surprise birthday party. I don’t have room for that secret. I’ve got enough real secrets I have to keep: dark, life-destroying secrets.
At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend’s house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It’s like a must.
For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier… I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.
I remember for my 18th birthday, I was going to get a tattoo, and I made the mistake of thinking I was a man and telling my father, and he was like, ‘Oh yeah? You better tattoo a new address on your arm, because you’re not living here!’ And that was the end of that discussion.
If there’s one thing I really want for my birthday, that is for the mining company not to mine my daddy’s reserve.
I dated a guy for over a year who lied about his age the entire time. I found out after the fact and couldn’t believe it! I even threw him a birthday party for the wrong age… I couldn’t get over how hard he had tried to keep it a secret!
If you catch me lying, it’s probably because I’m about to surprise someone for their birthday, or hide away the specific details about a company getaway to a strange but amazing place.
I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services. I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday.
I was a dress-up Spider-Man for kids’ birthday parties for a while.
If someone close to me forgets my birthday, I am heartbroken.
The summer of 2002 at the Wilson birthday party I met Van Dyke again and I made plans to have dinner with him.
I’ve been asking my partner for a dog for a while and she kept saying no. She was obviously keeping it for a birthday surprise, and when I came home from Rotherham, Hugo was sat on the sofa waiting for me. It was a really nice surprise.
When you wake up every day, it’s like a new birthday: it’s a new chance to be great again and make great decisions.
People kept reminding me. They were like, What was I doing on my 21st birthday? I was in Vegas getting drunk. You’re actually walking the red carpet. You’re hanging out with Patrick Stewart. Not everybody does that.’
For my 21st birthday party, I had a ‘Strictly’-themed fancy dress.
Robert Duvall saw me playing at a restaurant in Louisiana and invited me to be an extra in his movie ‘The Apostle.’ He gave me a guitar for my sixth birthday, and I thought that was the coolest thing in the world.
One week before my 17th birthday, I had a blind date with June Rose, a television actress on network soap operas, a model, and a regular on the popular Dick Clark’s Saturday night ‘American Bandstand’ show from New York. We were married five years later, one week after my graduation from Columbia.
I don’t go into a fight mad. I go into a fight like it’s my birthday. I love what I’m doing.
My biggest hero, Gregory Peck, was my birthday present on April 14, 1973. I just sat and stared at him.
You know, we’d just had a birthday, he was… you know, he still had a future out of him, and all I can is he was just one of the most beautiful people in the world… a very gifted man, and it’s a loss to the world, not just for us.
A gift, with a kind countenance, is a double present.
I don’t like my birthday. I don’t like things that are directed towards me. It took me a long time to get over people asking me to write my name in the book.
My mom had me at 16 and took me every place she went. I remember going on peace marches. She tried to take me to Woodstock – it was pouring rain. It was on my birthday, and I was crying so much in the car they turned the car around and dumped me at my grandmother’s house… I had a little attitude.
Prince Charles was once obsessed with a particular beauty, Anna Wallace, and couldn’t understand why she walked out on him after he spent the evening dancing with Camilla at the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday party.
I have a lot of respect for people who really work on their life – they’ve got this great apartment and a good personality, they write the thank-you cards and bake birthday cakes. That’s who I wish I was. When I see people cultivate their own life like that, I admire it.
Success happened little by little for me. I tasted the flavor of fame in small doses: I started at 10 years old when I won a music contest; I was performing at birthday parties, company meetings.
In the world of online invitations, nothing is sacred. People will invite all 500 of their ‘closest’ friends to their birthday party – and 485 of those people will RSVP ‘yes’ without intending to show up.
Every year, I think you earn the right to eat cake on your birthday.
For my 50th birthday, my cousin Helmut gave me the most profound, beautiful, and striking present. He made books out of my dad’s slide photographs, which were stored and forgotten. Looking at those books made me cry.
We’ve all seen those spoiled little brats that end up being given everything and on their 17th birthday get a Ferrari. That whole thing I just can’t bear it.
My father discovered that our family had made long-case clocks in Warwickshire in the early 18th century. He managed to track down a fine example through an English antiquarian and horologist and gifted it to me for my 30th birthday.
In college, I wrote newspaper articles and songs. Then, on my 21st birthday, I sold my first book. It was a nonfiction book about women pirates – ‘Pirates in Petticoats.’ After that, I was a book writer for good.
We have to be able to grow up. Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be.
I binge when I’m happy. When everything is going really well, every day is like I’m at a birthday party.
Ask any teenage girl to describe her perfect bedroom, and you’ll get answers like ‘a room with a private phone line, a place to hang out with friends, and for it to be way-cool and funky.’ Ask parents the same question, and ‘a locked door that opens on their 21st birthday’ might top the list!
My ace in the hole as a human being used to be my capacity for remembering birthdays. I worked at it. Whenever I made a new friend, I made a point of finding out his or her birthday early on, and I would record it in my Filofax calendar.
Less than two weeks before my 34th birthday, I bought pots. Most people were amazed that I did not previously own pots, but that was before I explained that I had never used my oven, and used my stovetop for my dishrack.
It was shortly before my 18th birthday when I came out and admitted that I was gay.
Mattresses! Beautiful! Let’s go buy a couple of mattresses. Give ’em to people for their birthday.
I went by Kyle, and I made friends on the team as Kyle. It went on for a pretty long time, until I went to a birthday party in a dress and all the hockey players were like… ‘Kyle?’
We Indians are musical- and dance-minded people. If a child is born or on a wedding, birthday, we dance. But when a song starts unreasonably, it irritates me.
Yes, I grew up with guns. For my 16th birthday, in fact, I received a .357 instead of a car. But there was nothing playful about them; they were tools. My parents went through a back-to-the-land phase. Most of our vegetables and fruits came from our own garden.
My birthday is always around Thanksgiving, and I always had to have turkey on my birthday. My mom was always, ‘Let’s celebrate your birthday on Thanksgiving.’ My other siblings got to have special dinners they liked. I resented turkey. For a long time, I hated turkey. I’ve kind of gotten over it.
I started running around my 30th birthday. I wanted to lose weight; I didn’t anticipate the serenity. Being in motion, suddenly my body was busy and so my head could work out some issues I had swept under a carpet of wine and cheese. Good therapy, that’s a good run.
I would recommend ‘Lesson Of The Evil’ to be given as a DVD gift on a child’s 15th birthday. In Japan, children under 15 are not allowed to watch it. Plus, ‘Lesson Of The Evil’ is one film where the older you get, the more you will be able to understand and enjoy the film.
My daughter learned to say, ‘They’re not even trying to cover!’ before her second birthday.
I worked at an ice cream parlor called Chadwicks. We wore old-timey outfits and had to bang a drum, play a kazoo, and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to people while giving them free birthday sundaes. Lots of ice cream scooping and $1 tips.
I spent my 21st birthday chatting with my online friends because my husband had little interest in celebrating with me, and there was no other group of people I’d rather spend time with, even if they weren’t there with me in person.
I saw these little trucks that I was obsessed with, and my dad got me one for my eighth birthday. That was the start of my racing career.
I remember it was Dr. Seuss’ birthday, and I got to read to the little ones and that was just an awesome experience. I remember when I was a young knucklehead and having that access to an after-school program in my community. It’s something that hits home to me and something I wanted to always be a part of.
If every year is a marble, how many marbles do you have left? How many sunrises, how many opportunities to rise to the full stature of your being?
I hate birthdays. I thought that I only hated my own birthday, and then I realized that I hate my children’s birthdays too.
My parents screened ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ for my 6th birthday, and I became fascinated by the idea of living in a candy land with chocolate rivers and lollipop trees.
My poor kids have accepted that being dropped off late to birthday parties, practices, and yes, school, is just part of the large family package.
During the summer of 2000, in the run-up to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday, I asked the Duke of Edinburgh if he was hoping to reach 100. ‘Good God, no,’ he spluttered, ‘I can’t imagine anything worse. What a ghastly idea.’
And I was very shy as a kid; if you sang me ‘Happy Birthday,’ I would cry. Quite shy. So the idea of being an actor, much less a model, was just out of this world.
In fact, my mother got a ‘Bigg Boss’ themed cake on my 17th birthday because I was so obsessed with the show. I am one of those obsessed fans who ask everyone to keep quiet when the show comes on TV.
My family’s dog, when I was growing up, was an adopted dog that I got in a shelter for my birthday. I’ve always felt really strongly about adopting animals and trying to save animals’ lives.
You are only part of the film industry if you are doing well, let me tell you. You will be invited to parties and flowers will reach you on your birthday. When you are not doing well, you are really an outcast.
When I was six, my best friend’s parents bought him a piano. My mother noticed that every time I would go to his house, the first thing I would say to him was ‘Levester’ – His name was Levester – I said, ‘Levester, can I go play your piano?’ So, on my 7th birthday, my parents bought me a piano.
Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.
The worst part about celebrating another birthday is the shock that you’re only as well as you are.
I am very shy by nature and I won’t even have told people about my birthday, had I not been an actor.
For my 50th birthday, I got ahold of a new print of ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ I see it much more as a tough coming-of-age movie than as a disco story.
Oh yes, my best birthday gift was when my dad gifted me my first car in college. It was a Maruti Swift. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. It was so much fun, as I could completely show it off to my friends that I have my own car now and not my dad’s car.
There are two great days in a person’s life – the day we are born and the day we discover why.
If you believe in romance, and if you believe in marriage, you also have to believe in divorce. It’s like, with ‘Getting On,’ a lot of people say, ‘I don’t want to watch that. It’s so dark.’ But you can’t just want to go to weddings and children’s birthday parties. You’ve got to witness it all.
If I have one wish for my birthday, it is that 35 is the end of desperation and the beginning of acceptance. Part of that is believing that if I’m meant to give birth, I will.
I had a happy childhood in the suburbs of L.A. My parents instilled in us an appreciation of history, art and, most important, Motown. Jarron and I weren’t allowed to listen to rap until we were 12. After our birthday I dashed to Target and bought DJ Quik’s album ‘Quik Is the Name.’ I memorized every line.
The great children’s author and illustrator Shirley Hughes marks her 90th birthday by appearing as Michael Berkeley’s guest in ‘Private Passions’.
For sheer creativity and totality of involvement, ‘Rolf’s Cartoon Club’ with HTV in Bristol was an amazing show to work on, but I think the ‘Rolf on Art’ series, culminating in the painting of the Queen’s portrait to celebrate her 80th birthday, just nudges into the favourite spot.
My 21st birthday was awesome. I was in L.A., and it was great. I had a bunch of friends that came out. The night ended up in a completely different direction than we thought it was going to go.
When someone asks if you’d like cake or pie, why not say you want cake and pie?
By the time I was seven, I did a sonnet at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre for Shakespeare’s birthday because my dad had been at the first season of the Globe and was friends with the artistic director. Somehow, that lead to me doing a sonnet!
It turns out I share a birthday with Jose Mourinho. He is exactly 10 years older than me.
A family friend was staying with us once and had brought over a ukulele. I just loved the way she played it. I saved up the money from my 11th birthday and went out and bought one for myself.
Nicole Richie invited me to her birthday party, and it was at Michael Jackson’s Neverland!
For me, normal means freedom to live life as we choose, from cramming into packed planes to go on holiday to crowding into pubs for birthday parties.
I like working on my birthday, so I always do.
