Our Hometown Heros -- Newsday.com

Bayside

Ellen Baker

She has hurtled through outer space and traveled through the Andes mountains. She is an accomplished physician. And her mother is a prominent New York City politician.

Massapequa

Alec Baldwin turned 40 this year, and having played a slew of sexy, edgy leading men -- from Stanley Kowalski in the 1995 Broadway revival of ``A Streetcar Named Desire'' (he was nominated for a Tony) to Anthony Hopkins' nemesis in last year's film thriller ``The Edge'' -- he appears to have fixed his tropical sea-blue eyes on other adventures on the horizon.

Lindenhurst

Pat Benatar

Pat Benatar dominated the pop charts from the late '70s through the early '80s as a petite vixen who dressed in Lycra and spike heels and sounded as tough as any male rocker. ``Hit me with your best shot,'' she taunted in 1980 above thundering drums and snarling guitars. ``Fire away!''

Kings Point

Amy Bloom

"There's a picture of me when I'm about 10 dressed up as a beatnik trick-or-treating for UNICEF," says Amy Bloom. "It's actually very similar to what I looked like when I led the Vietnam Moratorium demonstration in high school."

Great Neck

Mary Cleave

Stolen hours at Jones Beach while cutting class. Hiding out in the gym to escape the pains of adolescence. And an early interest in science.

Merrick

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield run an ice cream manufacturing company in Vermont that has gained worldwide attention, as much for its Cherry Garcia, Chunky Monkey and other premier flavors as for its social conscience.

Commack

Bob Costas

If you compare Bob Costas' odyssey to that of a major-league baseball star, you'd have to call his ``Commack Years'' the equivalent of a low-level minor-league experience.

Long Beach

Billy Crystal

On a recent visit back home to Long Beach, Billy Crystal and his older brother Joel (a city councilman) were walking on the boardwalk when they stumbled across a piece of their past: the remains of a marker at the site of the long-gone municipal pool. The comedian-actor couldn't contain his excitement.

Roosevelt

Chuck D

In the early 1970s, Hofstra and Adelphi Universities hosted a series of summer programs about the African-American experience, many of which were taught by black college students who followed Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.

Elmont

Nelson DeMille

For writer Nelson DeMille, Long Island was the frontier.

Baldwin

Jonathan Demme

Oscar-winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme (``The Silence of the Lambs,'' ``Philadelphia'' and the upcoming ``Beloved'') grew up in cozy Long Island villages whose landscape and values remained largely unaffected by the postwar growth of suburbia.

Flushing

Fran Drescher

`Everyone's coming out of the closet now,'' cackles Fran Drescher in her trademark Queens accent. ``Before `The Nanny,' no one would admit they were from Queens.''

Hempstead, Roosevelt

Julius Erving

Newsday Archives PhotoJulius Erving, front, third from right, with the ABA's New York Nets at the old Island Garden. Ballboy Al Trautwig is at front right. Al Trautwig, at right in front row, was a ballboy for the New York Nets of the American Basketball Association at the old Island Garden. The first significant athletic accomplishment in Julius Erving's life was not recorded in a scorebook or preserved in a newspaper. But it was as personally exhilarating as any of the 40-point games he achieved for the Nets or 76ers.

Long Beach, Syosset

Mike Francesa and Chris Russo

Hearing WFAN's Mike Francesa and Chris Russo argue about baseball or football, listeners can't help but believe that the radio partners have nothing in common except a passion for sports.

North Woodmere

Jeffrey Friedman

When he was growing up in North Woodmere, Jeffrey Friedman recalls, ``I had absolutely no clue that people [could] actually make a living doing what I do now.''

Hicksville

Billy Joel

Behind his family's new house in Hicksville was a potato farm, and laying in bed on fall mornings the little boy could hear the diesel chug of a tractor tilling the soil.

Northport

Patti Lupone

Theater review sight-bites festooned the walls of Broadway's Booth Theater, Newsday critic Linda Winer's comments among them. "She is back where she belongs ... she is wonderful," Winer observed, zeroing in on Patti LuPone's performance in David Mamet's "The Old Neighborhood," which closed earlier this month.

South Huntington

Neal Marlens

The hills behind Neal Marlens' house are high and sere. Just beyond is the fashionable town of Malibu. And beyond that, of course, the wide Pacific. All in all, a long way from the green lawns and tree-shrouded streets of South Huntington, where he was raised.

Bay Shore

Richard Migliore

Growing up in a crowded home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Richard Migliore always looked forward to visiting his grandparents in Bay Shore, where things were wide open and moved more quickly. Long before he established himself as one of North America's leading jockeys, young Richard decided that he was happiest on a fast track.

Plainedge

Eddie Money

Eddie Money, the rough-voiced rocker who sang his way to stardom with ``Two Tickets to Paradise'' and ``Baby, Hold On,'' lived on Long Island only as a teenager. But he considers his five years in Plainedge the most formative of his life.

Roosevelt

Eddie Murphy

The novelist Gustave Flaubert believed that wild, original artists could best be cultivated in safe, bourgeois surroundings. It's hard to know what the author of "Madame Bovary" would make of Eddie Murphy's life (except that it might make a great novel on its own terms), but he would have found easy proof of his thesis in the comedian's pre-adolescence in Roosevelt.

Commack

Rosie O'Donnell

What could anybody possibly learn about Rosie O'Donnell's Commack childhood that she hasn't announced to the world already?

Forest Hills

Ray Romano

Don't even ask Forest Hills native Ray Romano if he used to live close to his parents like his ``Everybody Loves Raymond'' TV character does.

Laurel

Linda Sanford

Twenty-three years ago, Linda Szabat Sanford earned about $300 a week working for International Business Machines Corp. in its sleepy typewriter division in Lexington, Ky.

Massapequa

Jerry Seinfeld

Today he may drive Porsches, but some 30 years ago Jerry Seinfeld's vehicle of choice was the Schwinn Sting-Ray bicycle, which was just about the coolest mode of transportation a guy could have.

Malverne

Al Skinner

Al Skinner was back in town in January, part of the Nets' reunion to honor their glory years with Julius Erving and the 1976 American Basketball Association title.

Baldwin

Dee Snider

In Baldwin High's class of '73, Danny Snider was the quiet, skinny guy with the goofy face. The one who was shunned equally by the rebels and the frat boys. When he asked a pretty girl out, she'd laugh at him, right to his face.

Roosevelt and Rockville Centre

Howard Stern

Howard Stern's journey to fame began with puppet shows he put on in his Roosevelt basement: sailors and pirates and even horses being naughty with the nice little puppet girl.

Garden City

John Tesh

Ask John Tesh about growing up on Long Island. Then try to get him to shut up. "I mean, I remember everything about my childhood" on Seabury Road off Old Country Road in Garden City, he says. "I could just sit here and just list everything I did every day. I don't know why. But I remember it."

Garden City South

Our Hometown Heros