This week's birthday legends know how to get what they want. Let them inspire you to do the same.
Martha Stewart (8/3/1941) - 68
Martha Helen Stewart is one of the few women in the world to build her own business empire ( Living Omnimedia). Always a high achiever, Stewart originally considered being a chemist but decided her passion was in the arts.
Although she majored in architectural history, Martha went to work as a stockbroker. Destiny would bring her to Westport, Connecticut where she and husband Andy restored an 1805 farmhouse that would later become the model for the set of the Martha Stewart Living TV show.
It was in that restoration that Martha honed her skills in home and hearth and everything crafty. She started a catering business in her basement and wrote the New York Times best seller Entertaining.
Stewart’s stupendous success got more attention that she bargained for when the Securities and Exchange Commission charged her with stock fraud. She spent 5 months in a federal correctional facility and of her 2 years on probation stated that she had a microphone on one ankle and an ankle bracelet on the other, so was well balanced.
Just 3 year prior to her fall, she was named the third most powerful woman in America by Ladies Home Journal. Stewart would launch a very successful come back after her release from prison.
Martha married Andrew Stewart while in college. They divorced after 30 years of marriage and one daughter, Alexis.
Best line: My new motto is: When you're through changing, you're through.
Loni Anderson (8/5/1946) - 63
Loni Kaye Anderson is best known for her beauty, her comedic style and for being the former wife of Burt Reynolds.
Before Reynolds and her claim to fame in popular TV sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati as the sexy Jennifer Marlowe, Anderson had bit parts in other popular shows such as Police Woman, Barnaby Jones, Three's Company and The Bob Newhart Show. She later portrayed Jayne Mansfield in the TV movie and starred with Lynda Carter in the TV series, Partners in Crime.
Before Burt and before her 21st birthday, Anderson had married, divorced and given birth to a daughter, Deidra Hoffman. Six years later she married husband number 2, Ross Bickell, a fellow actor and the couple moved to Hollywood.
Loni and Bert met while making the film Stroker Ace and they married 5 years later. Anderson and Reynolds had a very public and very bitter divorce 5 years after vowing eternal bliss. In their bliss period, the couple adopted a son, Quinton Anderson Reynolds. Fifteen years after her divorce from Burt, Loni married husband number 4, Bob Flick, one of The Brothers Four band members.
Best line: As a brunette, I had previously been this serious actress. Then I became a blonde and got to play a completely different, comic role.
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