Reviews
Five actors with September birthdays and what their published dates can and cannot prove
Five actors with September birthdays, their published dates and credits, how a birth date gets checked, and why a directory keeps the day field empty.
What to take away
- The five clearest September cases are Keanu Reeves, Salma Hayek, Idris Elba, Taraji P. Henson and Bill Murray, with dates and identifying credits in the table below.
- Their dates are verified only in the weak senseindependent reference works agree on them. No public register of living performers exists against which to check.
- Verification means naming a source and the date you checked it. A figure with no source can be repeated but never tested.
- Federal law bars age discrimination in employment for workers aged 40 and over, and a searchable birth date turns a judgment call into a filter that runs before anyone reads a resume.
The September actors and their published dates
The five performers below are the strongest September cases. Each has a long credit list and a date that major reference works state the same way. Treat every date as a claim about the published record, not as a certified fact.
| Actor | Published birth date | Identifying credit |
|---|---|---|
| Keanu Reeves | September 2, 1964 | The Matrix, John Wick |
| Salma Hayek | September 2, 1966 | Frida, Desperado |
| Idris Elba | September 6, 1972 | The Wire, Luther |
| Taraji P. Henson | September 11, 1970 | Hidden Figures, Empire |
| Bill Murray | September 21, 1950 | Groundhog Day, Lost in Translation |
Two of the five share September 2. That overlap is the useful part of the answer: a month is a filing decision, not a trait. The September birthdays index works through what a month list can assert and what it cannot.
How a birth date gets verified
- Request the primary record. In the United States birth certificates sit with state vital records offices, and the CDC guide on where to write for vital records lists each office and its requirements.
- Collect the secondary sources. Reference works, obituaries, studio biographies and long interviews are the usual substitutes when no certificate is reachable.
- Weigh the conflicts. When two sources disagree, judge them the way Wikipedia's guideline on reliable sources describes, with independence and editorial review counting for more than repetition.
- Log the check. Note the source and the date you looked at it, so the next reader can run the same test.
Steps three and four are the ones most birthday sites skip. A studio biography is not independent of the performer's publicist. A database that copies that biography is a second copy, not a second source.
Example: one wrong date becomes the standard
Take the shape of the problem rather than any single file. A press kit prints a date, a fan wiki copies it, and a data vendor ingests the wiki and sells the field onward. Two years later a dozen sites carry the same figure, and each looks like confirmation of the others.
The actors with late-year birthdays page traces that chain and explains why a correction rarely catches up with the copies. The test for a September list is to find the oldest source, not the most common one.
Why the day field stays empty
Federal law bars age discrimination in employment, and the EEOC publishes what the prohibition covers. A birth date in a structured field is what makes the prohibition easy to route around, because software can apply it before a human reads anything.
The table below sets out why a directory is the worst home for that field.
| Property of a listing | Effect |
|---|---|
| Searchable by name | The number is found before the work is |
| Permanent | It outlasts the page that published it |
| Copied automatically | Removing it from one site removes it from none |
| Stated without a source | It cannot be contested, only repeated |
| Machine readable | It can be applied as a filter at scale |
Why a listing resists correction
Property of a listing
- Searchable by name
- Number found before work
- Permanent
- Outlasts first publisher
- Copied automatically
- Removal from one removes none
- Presented without a source
- Cannot be contested, only repeated
- Machine readable
- Applied as filter at scale
Effect
- Searchable by name
- Permanent
- Copied automatically
- Presented without a source
- Machine readable
Two rows do the damage: the missing source and the machine readable slot. A figure with no stated origin cannot be argued down. A figure in a data field can be applied by software that never has to justify itself.
This site's answer is to leave the field out. Which entries get published, and how a performer asks for one to change, follows the rule that what to expect from January birthdays sets out.
What the entries carry instead
No date, no age and no place of birth. The entries hold the material that survives a career and helps a reader find work:
- A credit list in release order, so a career reads as a sequence.
- Alternate names, and earlier credits filed under a different name.
- A working status line, updated as new credits appear.
- A named source and a check date for anything the entry asserts.
What entries here carry instead
- Works appeared in, with release years
- Span of a career, not a person
- Kinds of production and roles taken
- Links between multiple credited names
A career span extends and never becomes wrong. An age is out of date the moment it is printed.
