Dope Peddler

| 11 Nov 2014 | 12:54

    Just asking…

    Which married movie actor, best known for his starring roles as a monster-fighter wearing a pith helmet, has been very busily seeking male companionship of late?

    Which former fashion model, the one-time beard of a famous singer is now said to be turning tricks?

    Age-adjusted

    As a new year climbs to its feet, Dope Peddler is reminded of one of the more interesting things about the ages of famous people: their changeable natures.

    Here’s a brief list of some of the ages celebs claim they are, and the more likely realities…

    Mick Jagger says he’s 62. But a London School of Economics classmate has said that Jagger was in the Class of ’62. He would then have been slated to graduate from college at age 19, and while we’re willing to believe Mick was precocious, we suspect that he was merely sexually precocious.

    Playwright Paul Rudnick claims to have been born in December 1957, but he entered Yale in 1973—and he was not 15.

    Likewise, buxom American Pie actress Shannon Elizabeth maintains she was born in 1976. But she graduated high school in 1991. (Wikipedia gives her birthdate as being in 1973, making her 32.) And Halle Berry has claimed to have been born in 1968, although she graduated from high school in 1984. Alternative sources have given her birth date as 1966, which means she’ll turn 40 this year.

    Similarly strange numbers pop up with actor Laurence Fishburne. The Matrix star says that when he acted in Apocalypse Now in 1975, he was 14. So how did he get working papers to go act in a film shot in the Philippines? And why would director Francis Coppola have cast a 14-year old to play a soldier?

    A check of California Driver’s License records reportedly pegs Salma Hayek as 44, not 40.

    Right-wing harpy Ann Coulter, who claims to have been born in 1963, voted in 1980, which would have been a crime. (Other sources give her birthdate as 1961.)

    Foreign-born athletes, of course, have been notorious fibbers regarding their ages. Dope Peddler sources specifically question whether malcontent Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada isn’t older than his supposed 29 years. n