A testament to clean living, and - as she told journalists in 2004 - definitely not a plastic surgeon, Sharon Stone reaches her landmark 50th birthday next week looking (almost) as good as she did when she rocketed to fame in Basic Instinct. We salute five other ladies approaching the big five-zero.

Michelle Pfeiffer (April 29) If anyone could take the catsuit to new levels of eroticism it was Californian beauty Michelle Pfeiffer, whose purr-fect turn in Batman Returns (1992) was the stuff of cinematic legend. After a career break of four years from 2003-7, she returned recently to the big screen in Stardust.

Madonna (August 16) Inducted next week into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Madge approaches 50 with a new album, Hard Candy, out next month. Meanwhile her cinematic directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom, received some (gently) glowing reviews at last month’s Berlin film festival.

Jamie Lee Curtis (November 22) There’s many a man who has a soft spot for the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, especially after a scene in True Lies (1994) in which she played a dorky housewife who had to scrub up and do a striptease.

Siobhan Fahey (September 10) Straddling punk and pop with startling ease, Fahey’s old band Bananarama arguably defined the template that helped the Spice Girls make their fortune. Fahey - the fiery, dark-haired one - went on to form Shakespears Sister and then start a solo career.

Holly Hunter (March 20) Southern-fried Hunter shot to fame in the quirky 1987 comedy Raising Arizona, but more recently hit YouTube superstardom after a disastrous TV interview with a shell-shocked blonde named Merry Miller from ABC News (the interviewer appeared terrified and the chat was besieged by technical problems). Hunter spent much of last year playing the title character in Saving Grace, a TV crime drama.