Features
Part of August birthdays: how calendar conversion works
Actors with August birthdays from the ground up
August birthdays among actors trace back to studio publicity files, not civil records, so each date needs its source named before it is cited.
What to take away
- Eighteen actors with August birthdays appear below, each with a date, a birth place and the source page checked.
- August 14, 15, 17 and 18 each carry two names.
- Wikipedia biographies and IMDb profiles report dates. Neither registers a birth.
- Every entry is a claim with an attribution, not a civil record.
- A registered birth certificate settles a dispute, and for a living actor it is almost never public.
The August list, day by day
Inclusion criteria: acting is the person's main credited work, and at least one named page states a full date of birth. Days with no such name are skipped. Two entries are Canadian, listed for the second market.
| Day | Actor | Born | Source page |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 1 | Jason Momoa | 1979, Honolulu, Hawaii | Wikipedia biography |
| August 7 | Charlize Theron | 1975, Benoni, South Africa | Wikipedia biography |
| August 8 | Dustin Hoffman | 1937, Los Angeles, California | Wikipedia biography |
| August 9 | Gillian Anderson | 1968, Chicago, Illinois | Wikipedia biography |
| August 11 | Viola Davis | 1965, St. Matthews, South Carolina | Wikipedia biography |
| August 14 | Halle Berry | 1966, Cleveland, Ohio | Wikipedia biography |
| August 14 | Mila Kunis | 1983, Chernivtsi, Ukraine | Wikipedia biography |
| August 15 | Ben Affleck | 1972, Berkeley, California | Wikipedia biography |
| August 15 | Jennifer Lawrence | 1990, Indian Hills, Kentucky | IMDb profile |
| August 17 | Robert De Niro | 1943, New York City | Wikipedia biography |
| August 17 | Sean Penn | 1960, Santa Monica, California | Wikipedia biography |
| August 18 | Robert Redford | 1936, Santa Monica, California | Wikipedia biography |
| August 18 | Edward Norton | 1969, Boston, Massachusetts | IMDb profile |
| August 20 | Amy Adams | 1974, Vicenza, Italy | Wikipedia biography |
| August 21 | Carrie-Anne Moss | 1967, Burnaby, British Columbia | Wikipedia biography |
| August 25 | Sean Connery | 1930, Edinburgh, Scotland | Wikipedia biography |
| August 27 | Sarah Chalke | 1976, Ottawa, Ontario | IMDb profile |
| August 31 | Richard Gere | 1949, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | Wikipedia biography |
The source column names where the date was checked, not who first published it. Both are secondary pages that can be edited, and both can carry an error for years.
Where these dates come from
Every date above travels the same road. A publicist writes it. A casting service copies it into a profile. A volunteer editor types it into a reference page. A reader repeats it.
How a Public Date Travels
- Agency profile copied to casting services
- Early interview number becomes canonical
- Festival note compiled from production material
- Volunteer database entry from the above
- Registered record, when an archivist publishes
A month directory such as August birthdays groups entries by date. That helps navigation and proves nothing about the entries.
Wikipedia's guideline on reliable sources explains why a page that cites nothing carries no weight, and why a page citing a publicity file only repeats an interested claim.
IMDb behaves the same way. The reference overview of IMDb describes a database filled largely by material supplied by productions and users.
Example: walking one August date to the end
August 17 carries two names here, Robert De Niro and Sean Penn. Neither date falls apart under inspection. Neither turns into a record either.
The chain runs like this.
Walking one August date to the end
- The Wikipedia biography states the date and cites a book or a news profile.
- That source repeats the date and cites an agency or festival biography.
- The agency biography was written by or for the subject.
- The next link is a birth certificate held by a city or state health department.
- That link is almost never public while the actor is alive.
A date stops being a claim when someone walks the chain to a registered record. Until then it is a report of a report.
The same method drives the July birthdays by day page, which sorts another month by date and labels its weakest entries.
Why actor ages drift one direction
Casting calls are written as age ranges. A performer outside the range is not seen at all, so a public age works as a business input rather than a neutral fact about the person.
The pressure runs one way. There is money in appearing younger than a range floor and no money in appearing older than a ceiling.
That is why a published date can sit a year away from a registered one without anyone lying. The public number was never built to be a record.
Awards season adds a layer. Program notes get compiled at speed from whatever a production supplies, with no record checked.
None of this needs bad faith. It needs only that nobody in the chain ever asks for the document.
Other professions show the same drift. The musicians with September birthdays list marks which dates rest on an agency profile alone.
How to check a date yourself
A short checklist holds for any entry above.
- Copy the exact claim, the page that carries it and the day you looked.
- Look for a citation on that page. No citation means no source.
- Compare two independent pages. Two copies of one press release are not two sources.
- Order the record. The CDC page on where to write for vital records explains how to request a birth certificate from the state that holds it.
Expect a fee and a wait of days to weeks. Some states refuse requests for records of living people.
