Famous Birthdays on September 15

Gaylord Jackson Perry was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB) who played for eight teams from 1962 to 1983, becoming one of the most durable and successful pitchers in history. A five-time All-Star, Perry was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues. He won the American League (AL) award in 1972 after leading the league with 24 wins with a 1.92 earned run average (ERA) for the fifth-place Cleveland Indians and took the National League (NL) award in 1978 with the San Diego Padres after again leading the league with 21 wins; his Cy Young Award announcement just as he turned the age of 40 made him the oldest to win the award, which stood as a record for 26 years until Roger Clemens won the Cy Young in 2004 at 42 years old. He and his older brother Jim Perry, who were Cleveland teammates in 1974–1975, became the first brothers to both win 200 games in the major leagues and remain the only brothers to both win Cy Young Awards.

Jean Renoir was a French filmmaker, actor, producer and author. His La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. In 2002, he was ranked fourth on the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of the greatest directors. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographer Claude Renoir. With Claude, he made The River (1951), the first color film shot in India. A lifelong lover of theater, Renoir turned to the stage for The Golden Coach (1952) and French Cancan (1955). He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an auteur; the critic Penelope Gilliatt said a Renoir shot could be identified "in a thousand miles of film."

Johannes "Macky" Steinhoff was a Luftwaffe fighter ace during World War II, German general, and NATO official. He was one of very few Luftwaffe pilots who survived to fly operationally through the whole of the war period 1939–45 until he was severely burned during a failed take-off. Steinhoff was also one of the highest-scoring pilots with 176 victories, and one of the first to fly the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter in combat as a member of the Jagdverband 44 squadron led by Adolf Galland. Steinhoff was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, and later received the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and several foreign awards including the American Legion of Merit and the French Legion of Honour. He played a role in the so-called Fighter Pilots' Revolt late in the war, when several senior air force officers confronted Hermann Göring.

Patrick Denis Marleau is a Canadian former professional ice hockey forward. With 1,779 NHL games played, he is the all-time leader in regular season games played in league history. He passed the record previously held by Gordie Howe in his 1,768th game on April 19, 2021. Marleau scored 1,197 points during his entire NHL career. The San Jose Sharks drafted Marleau second overall in the 1997 NHL entry draft, and Marleau spent the vast majority of his NHL career with the franchise, becoming its all-time leader in goals, even strength goals, power play goals, points, shots, and games played. Marleau is also the fourth player in National Hockey League history to record 900 consecutive games played, reaching the mark one game after breaking the overall games played record. He was the third-last active player who played in the NHL in the 1990s, with the others being Zdeno Chára and longtime teammate Joe Thornton.

Robert James Gilbert Anderson was an English Olympic fencer and a renowned film fight choreographer, with a cinema career that spanned more than 50 years and included films such as Highlander, The Three Musketeers, Barry Lyndon, The Princess Bride, The Mask of Zorro, the Star Wars film series, The Lord of the Rings film series, the James Bond film series and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. He was regarded as the premier choreographer of Hollywood sword-fighting, and during his career he coached many actors in swordsmanship, including Errol Flynn, Sean Connery, Antonio Banderas, Mark Hamill, Viggo Mortensen, Adrian Paul, and Johnny Depp. He also appeared as a stunt double for Darth Vader's lightsaber battles in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist, and composer. Born in Berlin, he left Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, conducting the premieres of his Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde. He held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others. He is known for making recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century.

Nathan John Astle is a former New Zealand cricketer, who played all formats of the game. A right-handed batsman who played as an opener in One Day Internationals (ODI), while batting in the middle order in Test matches. In a career that spanned 12 years, Astle played 81 Tests and 223 ODIs accumulating 4,702 and 7,090 runs respectively. As of 2022, he is New Zealand's fourth-most prolific run scorer. Astle collected 154 wickets with his medium-paced bowling at the international level. He holds two records – scoring the fastest double century in Test cricket and the second highest individual score in the fourth innings of a Test match. Both the records were achieved when he made 222 against England in Christchurch in 2002. Astle was a member of the New Zealand team that won the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. His innings of 145 not out was the highest individual score by a batsman in the ICC Champions Trophy, which he scored in the 2004 tournament until it was broken by Ben Duckett in 2025 against Australia when he scored 165.

Curtis Piehu Iaukea III was an American professional wrestler better known as King Curtis Iaukea. Iaukea won championships in several of the major regional U.S. promotions, both as a single and in various tag team combinations, during the 1960s. He then competed in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) where he won the WWF Tag Team Championship with Baron Scicluna. He also wrestled Pedro Morales for the WWWF title. He was also later The Master of the Dungeon of Doom in World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Under the name "Iau Kea" he appeared in the film The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze with Moe Howard declaring "That's not a man! That's a committee!".

Richard Brodeur, is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender. He was one of a select group of goaltenders to play in every season of the seven-year existence of the World Hockey Association, doing so with the Quebec Nordiques. Nicknamed "King Richard" and "Kermit", Brodeur was the starting goaltender for each of Quebec's runs to the Avco Cup Final, where they lost in 1975 and won in 1977. He moved over to the National Hockey League in 1979, playing just two games before being moved to the Central Hockey League. He then was moved over to the Vancouver Canucks in 1980, where he played the next eight seasons and led the team to their first ever Stanley Cup Final appearance in 1982. He closed out his career with six games behind the net with the Hartford Whalers in 1987 and play with their American Hockey League affiliate in Binghamton in 1988.

Catherine of Austria was one of the fifteen children of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary. In 1553, she married Polish King and Lithuanian Grand Duke Sigismund II Augustus and became Queen consort of Poland and Grand Duchess consort of Lithuania. Catherine suffered miscarriage or false pregnancy in 1554, and – after no children followed – Sigismund became increasingly distant. He tried but failed to obtain an annulment of the marriage from the pope. In 1565, Catherine returned to Austria and lived in Linz until her death. Sigismund died just a few months after her, bringing the male line of the Jagiellon dynasty to its end. The dynasty would continue, strictly speaking, for one more reign—that of Sigismund Augustus’ sister, Anna Jagiellon, who was crowned with the male title of Rex Poloniae.

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos was a Spanish conductor and composer. Frühbeck was born in Burgos, Spain to a family of German ancestry. He first took up conducting while on military service in the Spanish Army before graduating from the Hochschule für Musik in Munich. Frühbeck was principal conductor of various orchestras around the world, starting with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra from 1958 to 1962, then moving on to the Spanish National Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo and many others. Throughout his career Frühbeck de Burgos recorded on a number of labels. He was a member of the Academy of Fine Arts and History Institución Fernán González. His honours include the 2011 Conductor of the Year award from Musical America.

Brett "Noddy" Kimmorley is an Australian rugby league coach and former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1990s, 2000s, & early 2010s. A New South Wales interstate and Australian international representative halfback, he last played for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs of the NRL. He previously played for five other clubs: Newcastle Knights, Hunter Mariners, Melbourne Storm, Northern Eagles and the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks. Kimmorley also represented Country NSW four times and New South Wales ten times as well as playing 15 times for his country including the 2000 World Cup. He also played two Super League Tests. He retired at the end of the 2010 NRL season.

Carlo Rambaldi was an Italian special effects and makeup effects artist. He was the winner of three Academy Awards: one Special Achievement Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1977 for the 1976 version of King Kong and two Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects in 1980 and 1983 for, respectively, Alien (1979) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). He is most famous for his work in those two last mentioned films, that is for the mechanical head-effects for the creature in Alien and the design of the title character of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In 2017, he was inducted into the Visual Effects Society Hall of Fame.

Ashley John Cooper AO was an Australian tennis player who played between 1953 and 1968. He was ranked as the world's No. 1 amateur player during the years of 1957 and 1958. Cooper won four singles and four doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments. He won three of the four Grand Slam events in 1958. He turned professional in 1959. Cooper won the Slazenger Professional Championships tournament in 1959. He won the Grand Prix de Europe professional tour of Europe in 1960. Cooper won the European Cup professional tour of Europe in 1962. He retired from tennis play at the end of 1962 due to injury.

Jaren Walter Jackson Jr., nicknamed "The Block Panther", and also known by his initials JJJ, is an American professional basketball player for the Utah Jazz of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Michigan State Spartans. Jackson was selected by the Memphis Grizzlies with the fourth overall pick of the 2018 NBA draft. In 2023, he was named to his first NBA All-Star team, later winning Defensive Player of the Year that same season. Jackson is renowned for his defensive dominance, particularly his exceptional rim protection; he led the league in blocks per game for two consecutive seasons in 2021–22 and 2022–23.

Julius "Nipsey" Russell was an American entertainer best known for his appearances as a panelist on game shows from the 1960s through the 1990s, including Match Game, Password, Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and Pyramid. His appearances were often distinguished by short, humorous poems he recited during the broadcast, which led to his nickname "the poet laureate of television". He had one of the leading roles in the film version of The Wiz as the Tin Man. He was a frequent guest on the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast series and often appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien during the program's early years.

Eiður Smári Guðjohnsen is an Icelandic professional football coach and former player who played as a forward. Eiður saw his greatest success in England and Spain with Chelsea and Barcelona respectively, where he won the UEFA Champions League and La Liga with the latter and the League Cup and Premiership twice with the former. Along with two spells at Bolton Wanderers fourteen years apart, he also played in Iceland, the Netherlands, France, Greece, Belgium, China, Norway and India in a club career lasting 23 years. He is regarded by many to be one of the greatest Icelandic footballers of all time.

Edward Alexander Bouchet was an American physicist and educator. He was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in any subject from an American university, completing his dissertation in physics at Yale University in 1876. Bouchet was also among the first 20 Americans to receive a Ph.D. in physics and was the sixth to earn a Ph.D. in physics from Yale. After graduation, he became a physics and chemistry teacher and held various posts throughout his career. The Bouchet Graduate Honor Society was co-founded by Yale University and Howard University on September 15, 2005, in commemoration of Bouchet's birthday.

Angelo Fausto Coppi was an Italian cyclist, the dominant international cyclist of the years after the Second World War. His successes earned him the title Il Campionissimo. He was an all-round racing cyclist: he excelled in both climbing and time trialing, and was also a good sprinter. He won the Giro d'Italia five times, the Tour de France twice, and the World Championship in 1953. Other notable results include winning the Giro di Lombardia five times, the Milan–San Remo three times, as well as wins at Paris–Roubaix and La Flèche Wallonne and setting the hour record (45.798 km) in 1942.