4 April: today's birthdays

• Rosemarie Ackermann - Former German athlete
• Maya Angelou - American author and poet 
• Ezequiel Alejo Carboni - Argentine soccer player
• Paul Constantin Codrea - Romanian soccer player
• Comte de Lautréamont - Pseudonym of French poet Isidore Lucien Ducasse
• Francesco De Gregori - Italian singer-songwriter
• Maurice de Vlaminck - French painter
• Robert Downey Jr. - American actor
• Isidore Lucien Ducasse - French poet best known as Comte de Lautréamont
• Marguerite Duras - French writer and film director born Marguerite Donnadieu in French Indochina (now Vietnam)
• Émerson Ferreira da Rosa - Brazilian soccer player
• Jochen Gerz - German artist
• Aki Kaurismäki - Finnish film director, screenwriter and actor
• Heath Ledger - Australian actor, born Heath Andrew Ledger. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role of Joker in the film The Dark Knight
• Abdullah Öcalan - Former Kurdish politician
• Anthony Perkins - American actor and film director
• Eric Rohmer - French film director and screenwriter
• Alan Sillitoe - English author. He wrote The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
• György Spiró - Hungarian writer and playwright
• Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha - Thai billionaire and businessman, born Vichai Raksriaksorn. He was the owner and chairman of Premier League football club Leicester City 
• Andrej Arsen'evič Tarkovskij (Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky) - Russian film director
• Peter Vaughan - English actor, born Peter Olm