A few days ago I have noticed that Patrick Stewart was celebrating his birthday. By accident I have noticed today that Captain Jean-Luc Picard's birthday is also on 13th July.

Most likely this has been done on purpose, but has it ever been referred who came up with the idea of their common birthday? Or is it just a coincidence?

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    I know that's it's quite common in series to put the same birthday for the character and the actor - hence Grimm with the two main characters sharing their birthdays with their actors. I don't know for sure for Picard though, but I think it's more a nice reference than a coincidence :) – Lyzvaleska Jul 16 '18 at 9:00
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    I agree that the coincidence is unlikely and I am aware of the custom :) I look for information like Patrick Stewart came to me and said that he wishes to have Picard's birthday to be on 13th July or Michael Okuda looked up Patrick Stewart's birthday and put it on the crew manifest database. – Edmund Dantes Jul 16 '18 at 9:02
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    I guess the more important question is: Why isn't Picard's birthday shown as a stardate? – Snow Jul 16 '18 at 9:34
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    @Snow, Because it is still easier to celebrate birthday every calendar year on a specific date than rather every 100 stardate units :) – Edmund Dantes Jul 16 '18 at 9:42
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    I see you there Ensign Ro. (ಠ_ಠ) – Z. Cochrane Jul 16 '18 at 11:27

Their birthdays match intentionally

The source of Picard's birthday is from the episode Conundrum, wherein his date of birth is given as a minor detail of his personnel file. As it so happens, other main characters also have their files and birth dates shown, which means we can compare theirs with their actors to help test the matching theory (matches in bold).

While they don't all match, and the odds of Picard/Stewart alone being a match is within the realm of possibility, the odds of Data and Troi's also matching is significantly low enough that we can confidently say those dates were probably chosen to match their actors' birthdays. I've found no direct confirmation for or against otherwise.

Why they don't all match I'm not sure, but it's always possible either the writers didn't know what the actor's birthday was, the characters birthday was already canonized as something else, or some other reason.

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