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Just last month, Robert De Niro turned eighty, a milestone that came and went without much fuss. It may well be that famously private actor didn’t want any. However, this moment reflects another milestone, marking a half century since De Niro broke out as a screen actor with two indelible performances, first in “Bang the Drum Slowly” playing a terminally ill baseball catcher, second as the unhinged Johnny Boy in “Mean Streets.”

I wonder how many people under forty learned of Alan Arkin’s passing last month and thought,  “Oh, that’s sad, it’s that funny old guy from the ‘Kominsky Method’!” Of course, they might also remember him from two hits made in this century: “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006), which brought him a late-career Supporting Actor Oscar, and Ben Affleck’s “Argo” (2012), which also earned him a nomination.

Why were so many of our very best actors born in April? It’s an unanswerable question, of course, but intriguing nonetheless. And in the rarefied world of movie stardom, the concentration of April birthdays is pretty remarkable.

At age 83, Anthony Hopkins became the oldest person ever to win a Best Actor Oscar, for his astonishing portrayal of a proud man struggling with dementia in “The Father” (2020).