June 28 is not just another day on the calendar—it's a date that has given the world some of its most intriguing celebrities. From actors, such as John Cusack, and singers, like Seohyun, to influential personalities, like Mel Brooks, this list celebrates those famous faces who share this summer birthday.
Why focus on celebrities and historical figures, such as Henry VIII of England, both living and deceased born on June 28? It's fascinating to see how individuals sharing the same birthday have taken diverse paths to fame and success. This compilation isn't just about recognizing names; it’s about connecting dots between stars born under the Cancer zodiac sign, known for their creativity and emotional depth. Here’s a look at some well-known personalities who light their candles on June 28.
- Danielle Anne Brisebois (born June 28, 1969) is an American producer, singer-songwriter and former child actress. She is best known for her role as Stephanie Mills on the sitcoms All in the Family and its spin-off Archie Bunker's Place (for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award), as well as playing Molly in the original Broadway production of the musical Annie. After she retired from acting in the late 1980s, Brisebois pursued a music career. She was one of the two permanent members of the short-lived rock band New Radicals, along with her longtime songwriting partner Gregg Alexander, and acted as the group's keyboardist, percussionist and backing vocalist. She has also recorded two solo albums, Arrive All Over You and Portable Life, both of which were produced by Alexander. She has written or co-written a number of songs, including Natasha Bedingfield's hit singles "Unwritten", and "Pocketful of Sunshine". In January 2015, Brisebois and Alexander were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song "Lost Stars" from the film Begin Again.
- Hans Folke "Hasse" Alfredson (28 June 1931 – 10 September 2017) was a Swedish actor, film director, writer and comedian. He was born in Malmö, Sweden. He is known for his collaboration with Tage Danielsson as the duo Hasse & Tage and their production company AB Svenska Ord ("Swedish Word Ltd"). His most celebrated contribution to their brand of humorist humanism was his ability to extemporize wildly absurd comic situations, for example in the Lindeman dialogues. Already in 1970 he gave a taste of another and less comedic side in the role as an rather unpleasant civil servant in Grisjakten. As time went by, Alfredsson more or less totally turned around in order to become a serious author and film director. In 1982 he both directed and participated in the film The Simple-Minded Murderer, a motion picture based on his own novel "En ond man" ("An evil man"). Here Alfredsson portrayed a rich and indeed very unpleasant manufacturer and Nazi-supporter who tormented the inhabitants of his native Scanian country-side in the 1930's. With just a brief return to a revue comedy in 1984, he never returned to that genre after the 1985 death of Tage Danielsson. Between 1992 and 1994 he was manager of the cultural museum "Skansen" at Stockholm. In the mid-zeroes he participated in the Danish criminal-odyssey The Eagle, and his last cinematic work came with the 2009 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (film). A film directed by one of his two sons, Daniel Alfredsson. Alfredsson played a hitman. Towards the end of his life, Alfredsson made it clear that he strongly preferred his real name - Hans - not the rather commonly nickname "Hasse".
- Ayelet Zurer (Hebrew: איילת זורר; born 28 June 1969) is an Israeli actress. She was nominated for awards at the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Israeli Academy Awards and the Israeli Television Academy Awards. She won Best Actress awards for her roles in the Israeli film Nina's Tragedies and Betipul.
- Alessandro Antine Nivola (born June 28, 1972) is an American actor and producer who has starred in feature films such as Face/Off, American Hustle, A Most Violent Year, and a brief appearance in Selma.
- Robert Glenn Johnson, Jr. (born June 28, 1931), better known as Junior Johnson, is a former NASCAR driver of the 1950s and 1960s. He won 50 NASCAR races in his career before retiring in 1966. In the 1970s and 1980s, he became a NASCAR racing team owner; he sponsored such NASCAR champions as Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip. He now produces a line of fried pork skins and country ham. He is credited as the first to use the drafting technique in stock car racing. He is nicknamed "The Last American Hero" and his autobiography is of the same name. In May 2007, Johnson teamed with Piedmont Distillers of Madison, North Carolina, to introduce the company's second moonshine product, called "Midnight Moon Moonshine".
- Luigi Pirandello (Italian: [luˈiːdʒi piranˈdɛllo]; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.More Luigi Pirandello
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- Jessica Hecht (born June 28, 1965) is an American actress and singer, who played Gretchen Schwartz on Breaking Bad, and has made numerous Broadway appearances.
- Robert Matthew Hurley (born June 28, 1971) is an American basketball coach, and a former college and professional player. Hurley is the head coach of the Arizona State men's team. He was previously the head coach at Buffalo. Before becoming a head coach, he was an assistant coach for Wagner and an associate head coach for Rhode Island on the staff of his younger brother Dan. As a player, he was an All-American at Duke University, where he won consecutive national championships. He is the all-time leader in assists in NCAA basketball. He played for the Sacramento Kings in the NBA from 1993–1997.More Bobby Hurley
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- Alexis Carrel (French: [alɛksi kaʁɛl]; 28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. Like many intellectuals of his time, he promoted eugenics. He was a regent for the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during Vichy France which implemented the eugenics policies thereof. After returning to his Catholic roots as a result of witnessing Marie Baily miraculously healed from her visit to Lourdes, Dr. Alexis was expelled from his profession in France..A Nobel Prize laureate in 1912, Alexis Carrel was also elected twice, in 1924 and 1927, as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
- Jack Stephen Burton (born June 28, 1970) is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of Jason Morgan on General Hospital from 1991 to 2012 and 2017 to present, and Dylan McAvoy on The Young and the Restless from 2013 to 2017. He also voiced the character Cloud Strife in a wide range of Square Enix products, including Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and the Kingdom Hearts series. In 2017, Burton returned to General Hospital in the role of Jason Morgan, under the alias of "Patient 6." In 2019, he also briefly stepped into the role of Jason's twin Andrew Cain in various flashbacks that Hank "Shiloh" Archer (Coby Ryan McLaughlin) had.
- Brandon Emil Phillips (born June 28, 1981) is an American professional baseball second baseman for the Diablos Rojos del México of the Mexican League. He has played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels and Boston Red Sox. Listed at 6 feet 0 inches (1.83 m) and 211 pounds (96 kg), Phillips both bats and throws right-handed. A native of Raleigh, North Carolina, Phillips was drafted by the Montreal Expos in 1999. In 2002, while in the minor leagues of the Montreal organization, he was traded to the Cleveland Indians. After making his major league debut that same year for the Indians, he spent several years moving back and forth between the Indians' major-league team and the minor leagues. Phillips was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 2006. After joining the Reds, Phillips developed into one of the best second basemen in baseball. During his tenure in Cincinnati, he won four Rawlings Gold Glove Awards, one Silver Slugger Award, and was selected to three National League All-Star teams. He became the first player in MLB history to record two three-run home runs, seven RBIs, and two stolen bases in one game. Following this performance, the uniform and pair of cleats he wore during that game were put on display in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- Rae'Ven Larrymore Kelly (born June 28, 1985) is an American film and television actress.
- Mark Eugene Grace (born June 28, 1964) is a former Major League Baseball (MLB) first baseman who spent 16 seasons with the Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks of the National League (NL). He was a member of the 2001 World Series champion Diamondbacks that beat the New York Yankees. Grace batted and threw left-handed; he wore jersey number 28 and 17 during his rookie season of 1988, and he kept number 17 for the remainder of his career.More Mark Grace
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- Elmer Figueroa Arce (born June 28, 1968), better known under the stage name Chayanne, is a Puerto Rican Latin pop singer and actor. As a solo artist, Chayanne has released 21 solo albums and sold over 15 million albums worldwide.More Chayanne
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Jeff Malone
Jeffrey Nigel Malone (born June 28, 1961) is an American retired professional basketball player. He played college basketball at Mississippi State University, and is mostly known for his time with the Washington Bullets (1983–90) of the NBA, where he was an NBA All-Star twice, playing the shooting guard position. He also played for the Utah Jazz, Philadelphia 76ers, and Miami Heat.More Jeff Malone- #123 of 127 onThe 100+ Best NBA Shooting Guards Ever
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- Lawrence J. Simon (June 28, 1933 – September 1, 1994), better known by the ring name, Boris Malenko (Russian: Бори́с Маленко́, tr. pron, IPA: [bɐˈrʲis mɐlˈɛnko]), was an American professional wrestler and professional wrestling trainer. He is best known for his appearances with Championship Wrestling from Florida and Big Time Wrestling in the 1960s and 1970s as a Russian heel. He is the father of professional wrestlers Joe Malenko and Dean Malenko.
- Benito James Martinez (born June 28, 1971) is an American actor.
- Sergiu Celibidache (Romanian: [ˈserdʒju tʃelibiˈdake]; 11 July [O.S. 28 June] 1912, Roman, Romania – 14 August 1996, La Neuville-sur-Essonne, France) was a Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher. Educated in his native Romania, and later in Paris and Berlin, Celibidache's career in music spanned over five decades, including tenures as principal conductor for the Munich Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Sicilian Symphony Orchestra and several European orchestras. Later in life, he taught at Mainz University in Germany and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Celibidache frequently refused to release his performances on commercial recordings during his lifetime, claiming that a listener could not obtain a "transcendental experience" outside the concert hall. Many of the recordings of his performances were released posthumously. He has nonetheless earned international acclaim for celebrated interpretations of the classical music repertoire and was known for a spirited performance style informed by his study and experiences in Zen Buddhism. He is regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century.
- Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters (born 28 June 1995) is a South African model and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Universe 2017. She previously was crowned Miss South Africa 2017, and is the second Miss Universe winner from South Africa, following Margaret Gardiner who was crowned Miss Universe 1978.
- Laura D'Andrea Tyson (born June 28, 1947) is an American economist and former Chair of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. She also served as Director of the National Economic Council. She is currently a professor at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley.
- Frank Zane (born June 28, 1942) is an American former professional bodybuilder and author. He is a three-time Mr. Olympia, and his physique is considered one of the greatest in the history of bodybuilding due to his meticulous focus on symmetry and proportion.
- Judah Bergman, known as Jack Kid Berg or Jackie Kid Berg (28 June 1909 – 22 April 1991), was an English boxer born in the East End of London, who became the World Light Welterweight Champion in 1930.
- Measha Brueggergosman (born Measha Gosman; June 28, 1977) is a Canadian soprano who performs both as an opera singer and concert artist. She has performed internationally and won numerous awards. Her recordings of both classical and popular music have also received awards.
- Brian Wansink is a former American professor and a discredited researcher who worked in consumer behavior and marketing research. He is the former executive director of the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) (2007–2009) and held the John S. Dyson Endowed Chair in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell University, where he directed the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.Wansink's lab researched people's food choices and ways to improve those choices. Starting in 2017, problems with Wansink's papers and presentations were brought to wider public scrutiny. These problems included conclusions not supported by the data presented, data and figures duplicated across papers, questionable data including impossible values, incorrect and inappropriate statistical analyses, and "p-hacking". The lab had 17 papers retracted (one twice) and had 15 corrections issued. On September 20, 2018, Cornell determined that Wansink had committed scientific misconduct and removed him from research and teaching, limiting his activity to cooperating with further investigation of his papers; he resigned effective June 30, 2019.
- Maria Goeppert Mayer (June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, the first being Marie Curie. A graduate of the University of Göttingen, Goeppert Mayer wrote her doctoral thesis on the theory of possible two-photon absorption by atoms. At the time, the chances of experimentally verifying her thesis seemed remote, but the development of the laser permitted this. Today, the unit for the two-photon absorption cross section is named the Goeppert Mayer (GM) unit. Maria Goeppert married Joseph Edward Mayer and moved to the United States, where he was an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. Strict rules against nepotism prevented Johns Hopkins University from taking her on as a faculty member, but she was given a job as an assistant and published a landmark paper on double beta decay in 1935. In 1937, she moved to Columbia University, where she took an unpaid position. During World War II, she worked for the Manhattan Project at Columbia on isotope separation, and with Edward Teller at the Los Alamos Laboratory on the development of the Teller's "Super" bomb. After the war, Goeppert Mayer became a voluntary associate professor of Physics at the University of Chicago (where Teller and her husband worked) and a senior physicist at the nearby Argonne National Laboratory. She developed a mathematical model for the structure of nuclear shells, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963, which she shared with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner. In 1960, she was appointed full professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego.
- Carl Milton Levin (born June 28, 1934) is an American attorney and retired politician who served as a United States Senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015. He was the chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services and is a member of the Democratic Party. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Levin is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School. He worked as the General Counsel of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission from 1964 to 1967, and as a special assistant attorney general for the Michigan Attorney General's Office. Levin was elected to the Detroit City Council in 1968, serving from 1969 to 1977, and was president of the City Council from 1973 to 1977. In 1978, Levin ran for the United States Senate, defeating Republican incumbent Robert P. Griffin. Levin was re-elected in 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002 and 2008. On March 7, 2013, Levin announced that he would not seek a seventh term to the Senate. On March 9, 2015, Levin announced he was joining the Detroit-based law firm Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP.Levin became Michigan's senior senator in 1995. He is the longest-serving senator in the state's history, and was ultimately the fourth longest-serving incumbent in the U.S. Senate.
- Jon Heidenreich (born June 28, 1972) is an American professional wrestler, better known simply as Heidenreich. He is best known for his tenure with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), where he was a one time WWE Tag Team Champion with Road Warrior Animal as a part of the 2005 version of the Legion of Doom.
- Jasmine Denise Richards (born June 28, 1990) is a Canadian actress and singer. She is best known for portraying of Margaret "Peggy" Dupree in the Camp Rock series, as well as Margaret Browning-Levesque in the Family Channel sitcom Naturally, Sadie and Judge Tara in Overruled!.
- Alexander "Alex" Manoogian (Armenian: Ալեք Մանուկեան; June 28, 1901 – July 10, 1996) was an Armenian-American industrial engineer, businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist who spent most of his career in Detroit, Michigan. He was the founder of the Masco Corporation, which in 1969 was listed on the NYSE (XNYS:MAS). In 1954, he patented and brought to market the first successful washerless ball valve faucet, the Delta faucet, named for the faucet cam shaped like the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.He and his wife Marie donated the Manoogian Mansion to the city of Detroit, which uses it as the official residence of the Mayor of Detroit. In addition to donations to local universities, the Manoogians donated substantial amounts of money to churches, educational institutions and charities of the Armenian Diaspora to preserve and continue their culture.
- Pope Paul IV, C.R. (Latin: Paulus IV; 28 June 1476 – 18 August 1559), born Gian Pietro Carafa, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 23 May 1555 to his death in 1559. While serving as papal nuncio in Spain, he developed an anti-Spanish outlook that later coloured his papacy. A part of the Papal States was invaded by Spain during his papacy and in response to this, he called for a French military intervention. To avoid a conflict at the same time of the Italian War of 1551–1559, the Papacy and Spain reached a compromise with the Treaty of Cave: French and Spanish forces left the Papal States and the Pope adopted a neutral stance between France and Spain.Carafa was appointed bishop of Chieti, but resigned in 1524 in order to found with St. Cajetan the Congregation of Clerics Regular (Theatines). Recalled to Rome, and made Archbishop of Naples, he was instrumental in setting up the Roman Inquisition, and was opposed to any dialogue with the emerging Protestant party in Europe. Carafa was elected pope in 1555 through the influence of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in the face of opposition from Emperor Charles V. His papacy was characterized by strong nationalism in reaction to the influence of Philip II of Spain and the Habsburgs. He compelled the Jews of Rome to wear distinctive clothing and confine themselves to a ghetto. The appointment of Carlo Carafa as Cardinal Nephew damaged the papacy further when Paul was forced to remove him from office following a scandal. He curbed many clerical abuses in Rome, but his methods were seen as harsh.
