American producer and filmmaker Darren Star was BOTD in 1961. Bornb in Potomac, Maryland to a middle-class family, he studied at the University of California Los Angeles. After graduating, he worked as an assistant at a public relations firm, and began writing and pitching television scripts. He rose to fame as the creator of teen TV series Beverly Hills, 90210, loosely based on his own high-school experiences. Premiering in 1990, it became one of the defining television shows of the 1990s, launching its unknown cast to tabloid stardom. He had similar success with the adult-themed Melrose Place, a glossy soap opera about the frequently shirtless residents of a West Hollywood apartment building. In 1998, he adapted Candace Bushnell’s satirical novel Sex and the City into a wildly successful comedy series for cable TV network HBO, following four single women navigating Manhattan’s dating scene. Free from network television content restrictions, the series featured weekly sex scenes and (for the time) daring conversations about blow jobs, anal sex, fake orgasms and funky spunk, making stars of its leads Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall. The series became a cultural phenomenon, popularising Manolo Blahnik high heels, Cosmopolitan cocktails and boosting New York tourism, though some critics queried whether the characters were actually gay men. After six successful series and innumerable industry awards, Star continued to milk the SATC cash cow, producing two terrible but commercially successful films. After an unremarkable decade, he made a respectable comeback with the 2015 cable TV drama Younger, before hitting stratospheric success with the 2020 Netflix hit Emily in Paris. Premiering during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the series offered glamorous Parisian locations, designer couture, teen-movie romance plotting and casual stereotyping of French culture, ready-made for distracted viewers with one eye on their Instagram feeds. Widely loathed by the French and hate-watched by television critics, the series is estimated to have boosted post-COVID tourism to Paris by 30%. Star also produced the ghastly but highly popular Netflix series Uncoupled, starring Neil Patrick Harris as a recently single gay man, navigating the difficulties of being a single white gay man in Manhattan. Openly gay since forever, Star has never commented publicly on his relationship status. Perhaps wisely, he sold his condominium in New York’s Trump Tower in 2012.