Celebrity Birthday of the Day – August 19

Jonathan Frakes is one of those guys who, regardless of having found success as an actor, director and author, will always be associated with a single, famous character: Commander Will Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Thankfully, Riker is pretty badass as far as characters go – today is also Ahmed Best’s birthday (Ahmed being the voice of the scum that is Jar Jar Binks), so things could have definitely been worse. Beyond playing Riker, that most pimping member of Starfleet, Frakes also narrated a wicked sounding TV series that I need to watch called Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, in which Frakes challenges the viewer to discern whether the story he’s telling is true or not, and did voicework as Xanatos on Gargoyles. Frakes has also directed a few films; some of them noteworthy like Star Trek: First Contact, which I consider to be the best of the series, and some of them bad like Thunderbirds. But to be fair, he did direct Clockstoppers which, while a silly movie, contained a gadget cool enough to make both Robin’s and my favourite movie gizmos lists! But none of that really matters, because Frakes is Riker and always will be. Number One is 59 today.

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