Actor and singer Laura Linney almost missed out on this list because she barely had her son, Bennett Armistead Schauer, inside her forties. She was in fact 49 when he was born, so she'd almost made it into her 50s!
There is a degree of confusion in the public domain in terms of how the baby came to be. No photos exist of Linney with a baby bump, and neither she nor husband Marc Schauer made any reference to expecting a baby until the birth was announced in January 2014. As a result of that, there have been suggestions that the baby may have been adopted as a newborn, or that a surrogate may have been used. Linney is of course under no obligation to tell us, but don't you just hate not knowing the answers to things?