Rachel Roy, the fashion designer and ex-wife of Damon Dash, turns 36 today. Actor Chad Lowe is turning 42. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is 50. Eddie Cahill of CSI: NY turns 32. Mario Van Peeples is turning 53. Shane McMahon, the wrestler and son of WWE chairman Vince McMahon, is 40. And singer Charo turns 59 today. A few people celebrating birthdays this weekend are below.
Spencer Pratt's hot new rap single drops on iTunes, Britney sports a two-piece, Hayden Panettiere's tattoo artist can't spell and fucked up her new ink, some crazed Idol fan attempted to strangle Simon Cowell's ex-girlfriend outside the show's studio after the finale, and Amy Winehouse in in the hospital AGAIN!
It's been a rough few months for designer Rachel Roy what with her husband Damon Dash's money troubles, but today she really does have a reason to break open the Cristal. It's her 35th birthday. Others blowing out birthday candles today: Actor Chad Lowe is 41. David Zaslav, the CEO of Discovery Communications, is 49. Advertising bigshot Linda Kaplan Thaler is turning 58. And nutty British royal Princess Michael of Kent turns 64 today.
Last November, the currently off-the-radar Hilary Swank appeared on Oprah and proved just how much holier she is than drug-addled Swank’d victim Chad Lowe by cutting off nine inches of her hair for cancer research. Claiming she’d “been growing her locks long so she could donate them to a cancer sufferer, ‘knowing that it would go to a woman in need,’” Swank’s return to the short hair style that won her an Oscar was clearly a charitable and warm-hearted gesture. But after seeing these photos of Swank taken over the weekend, in which the Oprah-styled chin-grazing look has been replaced by a very Brandon Teena-like cropped cut, we realized the sacrificial gesture will also benefit another worthy cause: the Hilary Swank Oscar-Baiting Campaign! How Swank is saving both cancer victims and her career, plus a closer look at her return to he-she hair, after the jump.
PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and tell everyone about the time you spotted Ryan Atwood quietly plotting his next career move at a Venice eatery.
Stunningly, The Other Side of Aspen IV: The Rescue—the seminal male-bonding adventure story and thematic predecessor to reigning Hollywood blockbuster 300—was released way back in 1995, anticipating by over a decade the eerily parallel series of perilous events that would befall several popular actors at the same snowbound locale. Interest in the discontinued title has understandably skyrocketed since word has spread about their rescue by Aspen Ski Patrol's hunky, ripped finest, and so we anticipate it won't be long before a commemorative edition soon hits your local Circus of Books shelves, with newly rechristened stars Chad Blowe, Gusher Stevens, and Rod Burrow.
Above, actors Fisher Stevens (left) and Rob Morrow (right) share a relieved laugh following their rescue by the Aspen Ski Patrol, who safely led the stranded celebrity skiers on a three-hour trip down the unfamiliar mountain after receiving their cell phone distress call. Tragically, the idea to phone the patrol came only after the panicked stars determined that they might be lost for days in the blinding storm that caused them to stray from an approved path, and, after a tense deliberation about the relative health of their careers, decided that the only way they could stay alive long enough to be discovered was to devour the least successful, third member of their party, Chad Lowe, whose picked-over remains were buried under a beautiful tree abutting a spectacular black diamond run by his remorseful, surviving compatriots.
A reader shares this incredible and heartwarming tale from a Saturday night holiday party, which from this late December day forward we fully expect to be passed down through the generations like that story about the virgin, the baby in the manger, and the three rich guys who showed up with some presents (or, at the very least, like the one about the depressed bald kid with the sickly Christmas tree):
Chad Lowe has finally broken his silence about his unceremonious dumping by Hilary Swank in favor of greener, more agenty pastures, an indignity she mitigated by announcing to Vanity Fair that an unspecified "substance abuse problem" played a significant role in the break-up. Says an Extra press release:
Sources close to the couple cited the reason as Chad Lowe being Chad Lowe.
