Telegraph UK: 28/05/2008

As Kylie Minogue hits the landmark birthday, Jasper Gerard offers some sage advice. ’Kylie!” exclaimed a tabloid newspaper in wonder yesterday. “STILL fabulous at 40.” Well, what did they expect, as the much-loved, heroic chanteuse hits that milestone birthday today? Blue rinse, dentures and a wicker shopping basket? And just look at the others who have turned, or will turn, 40 in 2008: Daniel Craig, Lisa Marie Presley, Céline Dion, Patricia Arquette, Will Smith and Lucy Liu, a Charlie’s Angel celebrated for tight leather hot pants that she’s unlikely to be packing away any time soon.

In fact, none of the aforementioned is an obvious candidate for middle age as we once knew it. Not so long ago, 40-year-olds were thought to be in the grave, or making impressive strides towards it.

Cynthia Nixon gave a very candid interview with the May issue MORE magazine about Sex and the City movie (Yay! Yay! Yay!), her divorce and her current relationship with her live-in girlfriend.

Nixon also revealed to Good Morning America today that she was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago and explained that she didn’t want to make it public then so paparazzi wouldn’t follow her to the hospital.

On turning 40: “Turning 40 was a very real thing for me. I felt it in a way that I didn’t when I turned 30 or 35. Forty was a peak: I could look forward and I could look back. I had to start thinking, the decisions I make count, and what are the thing I want to do? [Singing was something] I was definitely afraid of. It’s incredibly revealing and intense. Part of it was that my mother is a wonderful singer, and she encouraged me as an actress, but with the singing?-not so much.”

Seems like turning 40 is THE thing to do. Here are 40 other people who are doing it this year too!

Cuba Gooding Jr., American actor (January 2)
John Singleton, American film director (January 6)
LL Cool J, American rapper and actor (January 14)
Chad Lowe, American actor (January 15)
Mary Lou Retton, American gymnast (January 24)
Sarah McLachlan, Canadian singer (January 28)
Edward Burns, American actor (January 29)
Lisa Marie Presley, American singer (February 1)
Gary Coleman, American actor (February
Molly Ringwald, American actress (February 18)
Jeri Ryan, American actress (February 22)
Daniel Craig, British actor (March 2)
Mark McGrath, American musician (March 15)
Kenny Chesney, American musician (March 26)
Lucy Lawless, New Zealand actress and singer (March 29)
Céline Dion, Canadian singer (March 30)
Patricia Arquette, American actress (April
Anthony Michael Hall, American actor (April 14)
Ashley Judd, American actress (April 19)
Tony Hawk, American skateboarder (May 12)
Kylie Minogue, Australian singer (May 28)
Jorja Fox, American actress (July 7)
Gillian Anderson, American actress (August 9)
Eric Bana, Australian actor (August 9)
Debra Messing, American actress (August 15)
Rachael Ray, American television chef (August 25)
Will Smith, American rapper and actor (September 25)
James Caviezel, American actor (September 26)
Naomi Watts, English-born actress (September 28)
Jane Krakowski, American actress (October 11)
Hugh Jackman, Australian actor (October 12)
Shaggy, Jamaican singer (October 22)
Vanilla Ice, American rapper (October 31)
Parker Posey, American actress (November
Sammy Sosa, Major League Baseball player (November 12)
Owen Wilson, American actor (November 18)
Jill Hennessy, Canadian actress (November 25)
Lucy Liu, American actress (December 2)
Margaret Cho, Korean-American comedian (December 5)
Rachel Griffiths, Australian actress (December 18)

List compiled by Andi of List-O-Rama

From the Daily Mail 

Lonely Kylie Minogue wasn’t looking forward to waking up this morning.

The unlucky-in-love singer said in an interview published today: “I’m ignoring Valentine’s Day.”

Although sources have linked Kylie to her ex-lover Olivier Martinez again in the last few weeks, it seems the singer is shunning all things romantic as she spends this Valentine’s with her female friends.

Kylie says she’s ignoring Valentine’s Day and will be spending the evening with her friends

Actress MONIQUE loved turning 40 – because the older she is, the better her sex life gets. The larger-than-life star hit the landmark age in December (07), and she is already reaping the benefits. She explains her midlife joy: “I’m experiencing something so different and liberating. “Everybody says 40 is the new 20. But I don’t want it to be the new 20. Everything is so better now. At 20, sexually, you don’t know what you’re doing. You look for it, you find it, you lose it a few times.”

http://www.1monique.com/

Debra Messing’s latest character in The Starter Wife tackles heartache with humour, although she is quick to say that her latest character have little in common. As Molly Kagan, the Emmy award-winning actor is a 40-something Hollywood mogul’s wife whose only goal in life is to look good and make her husband happy — until he dumps her.

But it’s not the differences in life experiences that the happily married Messing wishes to distance herself from; it’s her character’s age.

“Molly is a really funny, smart artistic woman who is a loyal friend and an honest person. Oh, by the way, she’s older,” Messing, 39, says.

Actress Julia Roberts is happy to spend more time with her family than working. But she finds new movie ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ worth it.The sun.co.uk reports that Roberts did not have a problem playing a woman in her 30s though she herself is in her 40s.

She said: ‘I didn’t have any problems. If they asked me to play 30, I would do so without thinking. If anything, I just wanted to look like. She is open about having plastic surgery and so I was trying to do things with my face to make it appear as if I was 50, but had had some work done.

‘I wore tapes under my wig and tried to pull my face in different ways. It was challenging – one of those rare times where you go, ‘My face is just too tight already’.’

She added: ‘Turning 40 was great. I guess I feel relieved because everybody anticipates it so much for you that now we can all just relax – it’s done. I had a lovely party with all my kids and we had a great time. Getting older is nice. You are released from certain concepts as you age.’

Uma Thurman is on the cover of the January issue of Harper’s Bazaar. Here is an excerpt:

On life and turning 40: “‘Watch out, you might not have a career in your 20s’, so you scoot along and have some dark, down years. Suddenly, you get a career back and it’s ‘Watch out, in your 30s it’s going to be over.’ And God forbid you have a child. I remember telling an agent I was going to have a baby, and he said, ‘Oh, that’s great for you, but don’t even think about the business.’ Just so blatant! No one’s brought up the 40 thing with me lately, but I’m sure the prognosis is going to be doom and gloom. But no decade has been disastrous, and I’ve gotten away with murder anyway.”

Actor Josh Brolin says it is good to grow old and he looks forward to turning 40.

Brolin currently stars in film drama “No Country for Old Men” from writers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen. The movie debuted in major cities two weeks ago and begins a nationwide run on Wednesday with hopes of vying for Oscars.

The son of James Brolin — a television actor and husband of Barbra Streisand — Josh turns 40 in February.

Raised outside Hollywood on a California ranch, the younger Brolin has built a varied career on his own, and this fall is commanding attention in dramas “In the Valley of Elah” and “American Gangster.”

Although ‘Casino Royale’ star Daniel Craig dreads turning 40 soon, he has vowed to grow old gracefully and not resort to cosmetic surgery.

Dailysnack.com quoted him as saying: ‘People can improve themselves when they are younger, but when they turn 60 or 70 they start to look like a freak. You end up looking like a lesbian big sister.’

New Zealand Times

Actress Julia Roberts has the birthday blues and is fretting about the horror of turning 40, reveals this week’s Woman’s Weekly.

But luckily the mother-of-three has her family to help her through the stressful time.

“She told one pal, ‘Shoot, I’m almost an old lady. Is there any fun after 40?’,” said a source close to the star.

Apparently Julia doesn’t like to think she’s getting older and starting to show it.

Anuj Saxena is happy to have turned 40 and says life has just begun

You just turned 40… how does it feel?
I feel good. I don’t feel I’m 40. It’s all a perception in the mind. Age and life is what you make of it. Let’s not forget life begins at 40.

They say at 40 men turn naughty…
(Laughs) I’ve always been naughty. So the question of turning naughty doesn’t arise.

Has your idea of love changed compared to earlier?
When I was in my 20s it was more one-night stands and fun! Today the one-night stands are still there, but a meaningful relationship is always appreciated.

Nicole Kidman has a lot to celebrate.It is its fortieth birthday this week, and perhaps in a paramount way, it is its first birthday of marriage with urban the Keith husband.But Nicole almost never did it with this one year old mark. An accident terrifying on the whole of its film, “the invasion,” in January sent to the hospital with serious damage. Nicole was stripping by scene for the account with suspense sci-fi when the car which it was inside suddenly flew out of the order. “I struck in a post,” it explained. “I was concussed and really broke some veins. Something for film! ”But Nicole is cured now and fabulous pretence while it turns 40. “I think that I arranged inside to appreciate my life,” it indicated. It appreciates its marriage with Keith even after the country holds the first role fought to become sober in the rehab.Are they thus the children in the future? Nicole would not say, demanding it could not drop such a bomb on television public, but with a smile, it said “additional expenses” which they are “infinitely in the love.”

Katie Button writes

It seems that if you are an actress in Hollywood (and I suspect most women in la la land would harbour such aspirations), the best place for you is TV. Taking a look at the Emmy nominations, I was interested to note how many of the women nominated had previously been stars of the silver screen. Okay, so this trend for actors to migrate from films to TV is nothing new, but it is seriously all the rage for (how shall we put this?) ‘women of a certain age’.

Yep – if you’re a female over 40 in Hollywood, you’re often shown the door. But now it seems like that door is one to the top TV networks. I don’t know if it was due to the unprecedented success of Sex and the City that suddenly a programme could focus on women and not girls. Proper hair-growing-in-wrong-places, know-how-to-clean-a-toilet women. And not just as an obligatory wife/girlfriend/sister/mother side-show, or as one of many in a mixed sex ensemble – but the main event. Since Carrie and co. invited us into their world of cosmopolitans, Manola Blahniks and modelizers we’ve had Desperate Housewives and Weeds pick up where they left off with women enjoying the limelight. Taking a look at some of the other top US shows at the moment and those soon about to air, middle-aged women seem to have suddenly become in fashion.

Patricia Arquette was probably most famous for her family connections (sister to David and Rosanna, sister-in-law to Courteney Cox, ex-wife to Nicholas Cage and wife to Punisher star Tom Jane), but with Medium she has re-introduced us to her and her acting talents. At 39 she was by no means washed up, but her film roles prior to starring in Medium had become unattractive blots on her CV. Now, she has won an Emmy for playing Allison Dubois in the supernatural crime drama and could be heading for that podium again come September.