Birthday Special: May-born actors and their best movies to watch this month

It’s time for some May-hem this month with movies that feature stellar actors born this month. Be it one of them robbing a casino, saving the day as a secret agent, or an acting legend who redefined the Wild West movie genre, it’s a list that features some of the most charismatic actors we’ve even seen. After all, May certainly doesn’t get any better than the likes of George Clooney, Rami Malek, Robert Pattinson, Cate Blanchett, Pierce Brosnan, and Clint Eastwood being born in it. 

George Clooney (May 6)

Up in the Air (2009)

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a business executive whose job is to travel around the country and fire people. His life undergoes a drastic turn when he meets two women (Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick), the former a love interest and the other Clooney’s younger colleague. With the time he spends introspecting his life, he realises that he hasn't accomplished as much as he would have liked, and begins to reconsider if he wants to tread further on the path that’s gotten him this far. The performance earned Clooney a Best Actor nomination at the Oscars only for Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart) to pip him. 

Michael Clayton (2007)

This performance earned Clooney his first Best Actor nomination. The legal thriller sees him as a shady lawyer for a top law firm in New York who knows how to get his hands dirty and work around the system by finding loopholes wherever present. His luck seems to run out one day as he finds out the hard way that he must now rely on the very legal system that he always got the better off and at the same time bring down an evil business empire. He may be crooked, but Clooney is this role is extremely competent as a lawyer whose only agenda is looking out for himself. 

Ocean’s 11, 12, 13

Who else but George Clooney as the delightful Danny Ocean to rob not one, not two, but three casinos in one night. This heist franchise just kept getting better with every movie as he brought together a group of criminals (a star-studded cast that included Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Andy Garcia, and Carl Reiner amongst others). Ocean was a man, a mastermind, with a whole lot of plans and just as many friends to execute one robbery after another that made cheering on for the bad guys a whole lot of fun.

Rami Malek (May 12)

Buster's Mal Heart (2016)

This film that explores loss, grief, mental illness, and paranoia is one of Malek’s most underrated performances. He plays the role of a Buster, a mountain man who is haunted by visions. With time, we learn about his past as Jonah and view the traumatic events that have wrecked his life forever. The movie is non-linear and scattered across multiple timelines, which shows Buster and Jonah in their highs and lows—he’s cheerful in one scene and creepy in the other. He pours his heart and soul into both of the characters, keeping them consistent despite them being poles apart in demeanour and tone. 

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Playing one of the greatest singers of all time can be a herculean task. But Malek, in this movie, the biopic of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury, rises up to the challenge and aces it right from start to end. We see him emote the confidence and charisma seen in the recreation of some of the singer’s most iconic live shows, while we witness the loneliness that he grapples with. Were you to go through interviews of Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor, you’ll read how and why Malek and the entire cast became the band in an “uncannily real” performance, with Malek winning a well-deserved Oscar for it.

Robert Pattinson (May 13)

The Batman (2022)

Having watched Christian Bale and Ben Affleck in previous Batman films, seeing Pattinson as the caped crusader was a welcome change for a lot of fans. A major reason for this was that audiences, probably for the very first time, felt a sense of fear as they watched him as Batman. He was far from the superhero that jumps from buildings and smashes the bad guy to a pulp. This time, he looks down and thinks twice because he doesn’t know what he’s jumping into (literally), making one connect to this version of Batman more than anything that we’ve seen before. 

Good Time (2016)

Here’s a film that showed just how good Pattinson’s range as an actor is. He plays Connie Nikas, a bank robber who takes his developmentally slow brother out of a therapy session to help him with a bank robbery. With the role being extremely demanding, the actor essayed the role with utmost dedication, heart, and sincerity, showing us nuances in his acting that we’d never seen before. 

Cate Blanchett (May 14)

Tár (2022)

Cate Blanchett hit all the right notes playing Lydia Tár, an accomplished music composer with a mysterious past who is being accused of inappropriate behaviour toward up-and-coming young women in her field. This immensely fascinating story of corruption, power, and art sees her dominate each and every scene as she walks over everyone and everything standing in her way not caring even one about the consequences. Like they say, pride comes before the fall, and what follows is her downfall in both her personal and professional life. 

Blue Jasmine (2013)

For many, this is the Blanchett performance that ranks above everything else. She plays Jasmine, a New York socialite who faces one hardship after another, deals with nervous breakdowns, and is struggling to keep herself sane. The film opens as she moves to stay with her not-so-well-off sister, Ginger, in a working-class neighbourhood of San Francisco. Such is her demeanour that she’s burnt bridges with so many people that nobody wants to help her when she actually wants it. It’s a stunning performance that brought Blanchett her second Academy Award, her third Golden Globe Award, and her third Screen Actors Guild Award. 

Pierce Brosnan (May 16)

Goldeneye (1995)

We know him as 007, and this was the movie that made him the secret agent that we all grew to love in the 90s and 2000s. It was his first as James Bond, and the film also introduced fans to Judi Dench as his boss “M”. The movie featured Bond fighting against Russia after the Soviet Union dissolved while he comes to know what Goldeneye is—a Soviet satellite armed with a nuclear electromagnetic pulse. It’s up to him to save the day and find out the person behind this operation. He wasn’t macho, but the sheer conviction and charisma that Brosnan showed in front of screen was enough to let audiences know that this was a man who’d prevail in the end. 

The Ghost Writer (2010)

Brosnan is more than just James Bond. And here’s a movie that proves it. The film is a political drama about a ghostwriter hired to finish writing the autobiography of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang. The previous ghostwriter, Mike McAra, was found dead, and the new one quickly discovers why when he finds secret letters from him. The current ghostwriter gets wrapped into the investigations as he makes contact with McAra’s people and tries to avoid getting murdered himself. Brosnan as Adam Lang brings his own twists to the possibly corrupt politician. He plays a Tony-Blair-inspired Lang and delivers one of his finest performances in years.

Clint Eastwood (May 31)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Post the resounding success of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, Eastwood and Sergio Leoni teamed up for the third time to give audiences yet another Western to remember. The actor is joined again by Lee Van Cleef along with Eli Wallach as The Rat, a fast-talking Mexican bandit. Eastwood as Blondie is the typical Western antihero—ever present with his cigar, poncho, and six-shooter gun. While one had seen countless Western classics, especially in that decade, nothing comes close to the brutality and inventiveness on display in the film. All that it took was Eastwood staring into the camera to deliver a performance that is legendary and evergreen. 

Million Dollar Baby

This is a film that was all about triumph and tragedy. It sees Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood), a veteran boxer from Los Angeles, who trains Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a young girl who arrives at his gym seeking his expertise to become a professional boxer. While he is initially reluctant to train her, he relents, with the pair forming a close bond that changes them both. It was the most acclaimed movie of 2004 as it won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director for Eastwood, Best Actress for Hilary Swank, and Best Supporting Actor for Morgan Freeman. Eastwood was also nominated as Best Actor but lost to Jamie Foxx in Ray.