31 December: today's birthdays

• Edward Bunker - American author, screenwriter and actor. He is a Crime fiction author
• Junot Díaz - Dominican-American writer. He wrote the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
• Gong li - Chinese actress. She performed in the film Raise the Red Lantern and Memoirs of a Geisha
• Anthony Hopkins - English actor. He won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1991 with the film The Silence of the Lambs
• Val Kilmer - American actor, born Val Edward Kilmer. He was Iceman in the film Top Gun
• Ben Kingsley - English actor. He won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1982, starring in the film Gandhi
• Henri Matisse - French painter and illustrator. He was a leading figure in the artistic movement of Fauves 
• Bartolomé Esteban Murillo - Spanish Baroque painter, one of the most important in Spain
• Giovanni Pascoli - Italian poet and scholar
• Sándor Petõfi - Hungarian Romantic poet and revolutionary. He is the most important poet in Hungary
• Psy - Stage name of Park Jae-Sang, South Korean singer, rapper and dancer. He is the author of Gangnam Style
• Pete Quaife - English musician. He was the bass guitarist for The Kinks
• Jules Simon - French philosopher and politician. He was the 38th Prime Minister of France
• Nicholas Sparks - American writer. Many of his novels have been adapted to film 
• Edward Wormley - American designer