CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS
It’s Shakira and Piqué's birthday today: what other celebrity couples were born on same day?
As former couple Gerard Piqué and Shakira celebrate their birthday today, 2 February, we take a look at other famous pairings who were born on the same day.
Gerard Piqué and Shakira are both a year older today, 2 February: the former couple, who announced their separation last June, share the same birthday. Born 10 years apart - the retired footballer in 1987, the singer in 1977 - it seems unlikely they’ll be rushing to send each other congratulatory hampers.
Birthdays come soon after Shakira’s viral Bizarrap collab
Unless you’ve been residing underneath the remotest of rocks, you’ll be aware why. The animosity stirred up by the pair’s breakup was laid bare last month, when Shakira delivered a stinging takedown of Piqué and his new girlfriend, Clara Chía, in a viral musical collaboration with the Argentinian artist Bizarrap.
The lyrics to Shakira’s BZRP Music Sessions track, which as of Thursday morning had accumulated 251 million YouTube views and 204 million Spotify plays, offered up a rich assortment of zingers. For example, there is this less than complimentary assessment of Chía: “You [Piqué] traded in a Ferrari for a Twingo / You traded in a Rolex for a Casio.”
In response, Piqué was seen driving a Renault Twingo in the days that followed the song’s release, and announced that his new seven-a-side football tournament, the Kings League, had agreed a sponsorship deal with Casio.
Piqué: “36″
While it’s doubtful that Piqué and Shakira will have been scrambling to wish one another a happy birthday, have they been busy marking the day with messages for their millions of social-media followers? Er, not really, no - well, not at the time of writing. Piqué has tweeted the to-the-point message “36″. Shakira, meanwhile, hasn’t posted anything on social media since Tuesday.
Douglas and Zeta-Jones also share birthday
Piqué and Shakira, whose 12-year relationship produced two children - sons Sasha, eight, and Milan, ten - belong to an apparently short list of current or, in their case, recent celebrity couples who share the same birthday. Indeed, at least when it comes to global A-listers, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones appear to be the only other example.
The Oscar-winning Hollywood actors both celebrate their birthday on 25 September, albeit there’s a quarter-of-a-century age difference between them. Douglas was born in 1944; Zeta-Jones, in 1969. Having started dating in 1999, they were married in November the following year, and have two children together: son Dylan Michael, born in August 2000, and daughter Carys Zeta, born in April 2003.
In 2013, Douglas and Zeta-Jones briefly separated, a representative of the couple telling Us Magazine: “Catherine and Michael are taking some time apart to evaluate and work on their marriage.” They reconciled later that year.
JLo and ARod were close...
Piqué/Shakira and Douglas/Zeta-Jones aside, it seems we have to content ourselves with celebrity couples whose birthdays are close, but do not fall on exactly the same date. One notable instance of this: singer and actor Jennifer López was born on 24 July 1969, six years and three days before her former fiancé, retired baseball player Alex Rodríguez. As you may have heard, López has since moved on from Rodríguez to old flame Ben Affleck, whom she married in July. (Unfortunately, at least as far as this article is concerned, Affleck’s birthday is on 15 August.)
We shouldn’t be surprised, though, that the same-birthday pickings are so slim. After all, Scientific American magazine has done the maths for us: there’s a 99.726027% chance - i.e., a spectacularly overwhelming likelihood - that two people will not share the same date of birth.