Actors Jared Padalecki and Benedict Cumberbatch are celebrating their birthdays today.
Jared Padalecki, 32
image courtesy of Kristin Callahan/ACE/INFphoto.com
Actor Jared Padalecki turns 32 today. Padalecki's first role was a minor part in the 1999 film A Little Inside. From 2000 to 2005, he played Dean Forester on the television series Gilmore Girls. Throughout the early 2000s, he appeared in several made-for-tv films, including Silent Witness, Close to Home and the Disney Channel Original Movie A Ring of Endless Light.
Padalecki had an uncredited role as a high school bully in 2003's comedy Cheaper by the Dozen, which he played after being asked by fellow actor and friend Tom Welling. Padalecki originally auditioned for Welling's role, but gave it up in order to film a pilot titled Young MacGyver which was never picked up.
In 2004, he appeared in the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen comedy, New York Minute as Trey Lipton. He also landed a short role in the thriller Flight of the Phoenix alongside Dennis Quaid and Hugh Laurie. In 2005, Padalecki starred opposite Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray and Paris Hilton in House of Wax. In 2005, he appeared in Cry Wolf.
Also in 2005, Padalecki was cast as Sam Winchester on the CW series, Supernatural alongside Jensen Ackles. He had the lead role in a remake of Friday the 13th as Clay Miller, a character who heads out to Camp Crystal Lake in search of his sister who has gone missing.
Padalecki married his former Supernatural co-star, Genevieve Cortese, in February 2010. They have two children.
Benedict Cumberbatch, 38
image courtesy of Kristin Callahan/ACE/INFphoto.com
Film, television and theater actor, voice artist and producer Benedict Cumberbatch turns 38 today. Cumberbatch's first West End theater performance was as George Tesman in Sir Richard Eyre's revival of Hedda Gabler in 2005. Since then, he has had leading roles in Royal National Theatre productions After the Dance in 2010 and Danny Boyle's Frankenstein in 2011.
His first main part on television was as the title character in Hawking in 2004, followed by notable television portrayals of Sherlock Holmes in the series Sherlock since 2010 and Christopher Tietjens in Sir Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Parade's End in 2012. His first major film role was William Pitt the Younger in Amazing Grace in 2006 and he has since appeared in the films Atonement, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Steven Spielberg's War Horse. Since 2012, he has portrayed the characters of Smaug and the Necromancer through voice and motion capture in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy. In 2013, he featured in the films Star Trek Into Darkness, 12 Years a Slave and August: Osage County.
Cumberbatch has received two Olivier Award nominations, winning one for Best Actor, four BAFTA nominations, three Emmy Award nominations, two SAG Award nominations and a Golden Globe nomination, among several others.