Curated playlist

1975 births

Kate WinsletKate Winslet pleaded for the part of Rose in James Cameron's Titanic while he still preferred Claire Danes and Gwyneth Paltrow. She told the director that she was Rose, and she could not see why he was seeing anyone else. The plea worked.…
Fergie (singer)Fergie, born Stacy Ann Ferguson, sang on a song that held the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 straight weeks in 2009. That song, "I Gotta Feeling," stayed at number one longer than any other song that year. By then her records had…
Angelina JolieAngelina Jolie has appeared in films that grossed more than $6.9 billion worldwide, and Hollywood has named her its highest-paid actress several times. As a teenager, though, she took at-home courses on embalming because she hoped to…
Lauryn HillLauryn Hill stood at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards and said, "This is crazy. This is hip-hop!" She had just become the first woman to win five Grammys in a single night. Her wins spanned album, song, vocal performance and best new artist,…
SiaSia Kate Isobelle Furler, the Australian singer and songwriter known simply as Sia, has spent much of her fame facing away from the people who made her famous. In March 2021, a laneway in the centre of Adelaide was renamed Sia Furler Lane.…
M.I.A. (rapper)M.I.A. arrived in London as an eleven-year-old refugee speaking no English. She later became a Grammy and Oscar nominee.
Bradley CooperBradley Cooper was a kid who dreamed of moving to Japan to become a ninja. Later came twelve Academy Award nominations.
Mark RonsonMark Ronson was twelve years old when he pestered Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, until the magazine gave him an internship. By his own description he was a music nerd, and the persistence paid off. Decades later he had won ten…
Jack WhiteJack White, born John Anthony Gillis on the 9th of July 1975, once came close to becoming a Catholic priest. He described the moment to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes in 2005. A seminary in Wisconsin had accepted him. Then, at the last second,…
50 Cent50 Cent was shot nine times in 2000, then blacklisted by the music industry. He built his comeback on mixtapes.
Gareth Edwards (filmmaker)Director Gareth Edwards made Monsters with two lead actors and a crew of five, using off-the-shelf equipment.
Travis BarkerTravis Barker learned a 20-song setlist in 45 minutes. It was early 1998, he had no time to rehearse with the band, and he played every song flawlessly at the first show. The band was Blink-182, and he was only meant to be a stand-in.…
Charlize TheronCharlize Theron landed in Los Angeles in 1994 on a one-way ticket her mother had bought, carrying a budget of $300. She lived in a motel and went from paycheck to paycheck. At one point she took bread from a restaurant basket to get by.…
Enrique IglesiasEnrique Iglesias once went to great lengths to hide the most famous surname in Spanish pop. He was a young man in Miami holding a demo cassette with one Spanish song and two English songs. He had borrowed the money to make it from his…
David HarbourDavid Harbour made his television debut in 1999 on Law & Order, playing a waiter. He was born on the 10th of April 1975, and he is an American actor. A waiter is about as small as a screen part gets. So how does an actor go from that…
Taika WaititiTaika Waititi played a buffoonish imaginary Hitler in Jojo Rabbit and won an Oscar for its screenplay.
Sean LennonSteve Jobs once brought Sean Lennon an early Macintosh for his ninth birthday.
Drew BarrymoreDrew Barrymore was seven years old when she hosted Saturday Night Live on the 20th of November 1982, and nobody has hosted at a younger age since. The American actress went on to build a career that ran from child stardom to her own…
Masayoshi SokenComposer Masayoshi Soken hid his chemotherapy from nearly everyone on the Final Fantasy XIV team in 2020.
Pedro PascalPedro Pascal was nine months old when his family fled Chile, after six months of sheltering inside the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago. Both of his parents had been listed as enemies of the state by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet.…
Terence TaoTerence Tao scored 760 on the math section of the SAT when he was only eight years old. Only two other children in the Johns Hopkins Study of Exceptional Talent program have ever reached 700 or more at that age. That boy grew up to be an…