Anne Rice is turning 79 today. Her unlikely given name is Howard Allen Frances O’Brien; she is apparently named for her father. Rice spent most of her childhood in Louisiana and graduated from high school in Texas. She attended several colleges, and eventually earned an MA in creative writing at San Francisco State.
In the early 1970s, Rice began writing her first novel. It was published in 1976 under the title of Interview With the Vampire. It was very successful, eventually selling over 8 million copies worldwide. In 1994, it was adapted into a feature film starring Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt and Brad Pitt as Louis de Pointe du Lac.
Rice has written a variety of fiction. She wrote historical novels such as The Feast of All Saints and Cry to Heaven. She has written several novels on religious subjects. She has also written supernatural fiction about witches (the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy) and werewolves (The Wolf Gift Chronicles).
However, Rice is best known for her vampire fiction. She is one of the main architects of the modern conception of vampires as sensitive, complex antiheroes and/or tragic heroes. Interview With the Vampire has been followed by over a dozen sequels and related novels. Collectively known as The Vampire Chronicles, the books probably account for the bulk of Rice’s estimated 75-100 million total book sales. Until Stephenie Meyer came along, Rice was almost certainly the best-selling author who primarily wrote vampire fiction.
In addition to the film of Interview With the Vampire, the 2002 feature film Queen of the Damned was adapted from a pair of the Vampire Chronicles novels. Rice has been attempting to develop a television series for much of the past decade; currently the rights are held by AMC. A musical, Lestat, ran very briefly on Broadway in 2006.
Sara Forestier was our headliner for this date last year.
Sara Forestier celebrates her 34th today. The French actress was a Cesar nominee for the fifth time in her career this year, for 2019’s Oh Mercy! Her latest feature, released over this summer, was Working Girls.
Melissa Benoist turns 32. She continues to star on Supergirl and make periodic crossovers to the rest of the Arrowverse. She and her husband, Chris Wood, welcomed a son last month.
It’s Dakota Johnson’s 31st birthday. She starred in the recent release The High Note, and played herself in the mockumentary The Nowhere Inn.
Rachael Leigh Cook, one of our WTHH birthdays, is 41. She produced and starred in the recent release Love, Guaranteed.
Susan Sarandon is celebrating her 74th. Her most recent film appearance was in The Jesus Rolls.
Christoph Waltz turns 64 today. He will voice The Fox and the Cat for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Waltz will also return as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in No Time to Die.
Catriona Balfe, who continues to star on Outlander as Claire Fraser on Outlander, is turning 41. She also costarred in Ford v. Ferrari. Ella Balinska, who is 24, starred as Jane Kano in Charlie’s Angels, and will star in the upcoming Run Sweetheart Run.
Liev Schreiber, who has finished the final season of Ray Donovan, is 53 today. Vicky Krieps, who celebrates her 37th, will star in Barry Levinson’s Harry Haft.
Alicia Silverstone, our second WTHH birthday, turns 44 today. She starred in the recent comedy Bad Therapy, and is a regular on the new Netflix series The Baby-Sitters Club.
On Bernice Johnson Reagon’s 78th birthday, let’s have a musical closer from Sweet Honey in the Rock, the a cappella group she founded, doing a song which she wrote.
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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