It was on this date, June 1, 1937, that American actor, film director, and narrator Morgan Freeman was born. Freeman has earned Academy Award nominations for his performances in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Invictus (2009), as well as winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the 2004 fight film Million […]

"I think of myself as an agnostic, but an agnostic is really a cowardly atheist," said Terkel.

"I'm an atheist, and that's it," said Hepburn. "Our Constitution was not intended to be used by ... any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us."

It was on this date, May 9, 1949, that American singer/songwriter and pianist Billy Joel was born William Martin Joel in the Bronx, New York City, but reared in Hicksville. His father was born in Germany and was a classical pianist, his mother was born in England. His parents, both non-observant Jews, divorced when Joel […]

“I have found some astonishing answers to my questionings as to God and religion in [Flaubert’s] book,” wrote Tchaikovsky. Flaubert was an Atheist.

“For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, as the one dieth, so dieth the other; … so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast,” quoted Brahms.

"I don't believe in Heaven and Hell. I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life – the only thing I know to exist – to be wasted."

It was on this date, April 15, 1959, that British actor, screenwriter and author Emma Thompson was born in Paddington, London, England, into a family of actors. At Newnham College, Cambridge, Thompson she became the first female member of the Footlights troupe. She won her first film role in 1989 in The Tall Guy. That […]

It was on this date, April 8, 1896, that American popular song lyricist Edgar Yipsel “Yip” Harburg was born Isidore Hochberg (Yiddish איסידור הוכברג) on the Lower East Side of New York City—into a Yiddish-speaking, Orthodox Jewish family that had emigrated from Russia. Best known as Edgar “Yip” Harburg, he attended high school and became […]

It was on this date, March 26, 1985, that English actress Keira Knightley was born Keira Christina Knightley in Teddington, London, UK, to an actress-playwright mother and an actor father. Following the family profession wasn’t a natural choice for her: as Knightley said later on, “I’m dyslexic, and at six years old [my parents] realized […]