My Favorite Actors

1. Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz Austerlitz, a brewer. Fred entered show business at age 5. He was successful both in vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his sister, Adele Astaire. After Adele retired to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. ...

2. James Stewart

Actor | Vertigo

James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Ruth (Johnson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. He was of Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and some English descent. Stewart was educated at a local prep school, Mercersburg Academy, where he ...

3. Charles Farrell

Actor | 7th Heaven

Popular Hollywood leading man of late silents and early talkies. He is best remembered for his teaming with Janet Gaynor in 12 screen romances between 1927 and 1934. He retired from films in the early 1940s, but TV audiences of the 1950s would see him as Gale Storm's widower dad in the popular ...

4. Donald O'Connor

Actor | Singin' in the Rain

Born into a vaudeville family, O'Connor was the youthful figure cutting a rug in several Universal musicals of the 1940s. His best-known musical work is probably Singin' in the Rain (1952), in which he did an impressive dance that culminated in a series of backflips off the wall. O'Connor was also ...

5. Tyrone Power

Actor | Witness for the Prosecution

Tyrone Power was one of the great romantic swashbuckling stars of the mid-twentieth century, and the third Tyrone Power of four in a famed acting dynasty reaching back to the eighteenth century. His great-grandfather was the first Tyrone Power (1795-1841), a famed Irish comedian. His father, known ...

6. Buster Keaton

Actor | The General

Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine ...

7. Rudolph Valentino

Actor | The Eagle

Hollywood's original Latin Lover, a term that was invented for Rudolph Valentino by Hollywood moguls. Alla Nazimova's friend Natacha Rambova (nee Winifred Hudnut) became romantically involved with Rudy and they lived together in her bungalow from 1921 (during the filming of Camille) until they ...

8. Dick Van Dyke

Actor | Mary Poppins

Dick Van Dyke was born Richard Wayne Van Dyke in West Plains, Missouri, to Hazel Victoria (McCord), a stenographer, and Loren Wayne Van Dyke, a salesman. His younger brother was entertainer Jerry Van Dyke. His ancestry includes English, Dutch, Scottish, German and Swiss-German. Although he had ...

9. Gary Cooper

Actor | High Noon

Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a ...

10. Charles 'Buddy' Rogers

Actor | Wings

"America's Boyfriend" Buddy Rogers was born in Olathe Kansas and became a talented musician on several instruments. He began acting in Hollywood in the 1920's and is probably best remembered as Clara Bow's love interest in "Wings". He also made several appearances in the "Mexican Spitfire" series ...

11. Dana Andrews

Actor | Laura

American leading man of the 1940s and 1950s, Dana Andrews was born Carver Dana Andrews on New Years Day 1909 on a farmstead outside Collins, Covington County, Mississippi. One of thirteen children, including fellow actor Steve Forrest, he was a son of Annis (Speed) and Charles Forrest Andrews, a ...

12. Dean Martin

Soundtrack | The Dean Martin Show

Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, to Gaetano Alfonso "Guy" Crocetti, an Italian immigrant and barber, and his Ohio-born wife, Angela (Barra) Crocetti. He spoke only Italian until age five. Martin came up the hard way, with such jobs as a boxer ("Kid Crochet"), a steel mill ...

13. Maurice Chevalier

Actor | Gigi

Maurice Chevalier's first working job was as an acrobat, until a serious accident ended that career. He turned his talents to singing and acting, and made several short films in France. During World War I he enlisted in the French army. He was wounded in battle, captured and placed in a POW camp by...

14. George Murphy

Actor | This Is the Army

After giving up college, George Murphy decided to become a dancer. Starting in 1927, he worked with his wife and partner Julie Johnson on Broadway. In 1934, after his wife retired from show business, he worked with Shirley Temple, in Hollywood, as well as Eleanor Powell, Fred Astaire, and Ronald ...

15. James MacArthur

Actor | Hang 'Em High

In a career spanning more than four decades, James MacArthur developed a body of work which is wonderfully dynamic in both scope and range. Portraying everything from crazed killer to stalwart defender of law and order, frustrated teenager to cynical senior supervisor, he has appeared in numerous ...

16. Gene Kelly

Soundtrack | Singin' in the Rain

Eugene Curran Kelly was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the third son of Harriet Catherine (Curran) and James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman. His father was of Irish descent and his mother was of Irish and German ancestry.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the largest and most powerful studio in...

17. Bobby Darin

Soundtrack | Come September

Walden Robert Cassotto, nicknamed "Bobby", was born in The Bronx, New York, in 1936. Severe rheumatic fever as a child scarred his heart and led to an overprotected and pampered childhood. He was the focal point of a family that fostered and encouraged his love of music. His music career started ...

18. Ronald Colman

Actor | A Double Life

British leading man of primarily American films, one of the great stars of the Golden Age. Raised in Ealing, the son of a successful silk merchant, he attended boarding school in Sussex, where he discovered amateur theatre. He intended to attend Cambridge and become an engineer, but his father's ...

19. Robert Taylor

Actor | The Bribe

Born Spangler Arlington Brugh, Robert Taylor began displaying a diversity of talents in his youth on the plains of Nebraska. At Beatrice High School, he was a standout track athlete, but also showed a talent for using his voice, winning several oratory awards. He was a musician and played the cello...

20. James Cagney

Actor | Angels with Dirty Faces

One of Hollywood's preeminent male stars of all time, James Cagney was also an accomplished dancer and easily played light comedy. James Francis Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, to Carolyn (Nelson) and James Francis Cagney, Sr., who was a bartender and amateur ...

21. Joel McCrea

Actor | Sullivan's Travels

One of the great stars of American Westerns, and a very popular leading man in non-Westerns as well. He was born and raised in the surroundings of Hollywood and as a boy became interested in the movies that were being made all around. He studied acting at Pomona College and got some stage ...

22. Ronald Reagan

Actor | Kings Row

Ronald Reagan had quite a prolific career, having catapulted from a Warner Bros. contract player and television star, into serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, the governorship of California (1967-1975), and lastly, two terms as President of the United States (1981-1989).

Ronald Wilson ...

23. Gregory Peck

Actor | To Kill a Mockingbird

Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child...

24. Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Actor | Little Caesar

Although he appeared in approximately 100 movies or TV shows, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. never really intended to take up acting as a career. However, the environment he was born into and the circumstances naturally led him to be a thespian. Noblesse oblige.

He was born Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr. in ...

25. Andy Griffith

Actor | The Andy Griffith Show

Andy Griffith is best known for his starring roles in two very popular television series, The Andy Griffith Show (1960) and Matlock (1986). Griffith earned a degree in music from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the 1950s, he became a regular on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) and ...

26. Ricardo Montalban

Actor | Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Legendary actor Ricardo Montalban was the epitome of Latin elegance, charm and grace on film and television and in the late 1940s and early 1950s reinvigorated the Rudolph Valentino / Ramon Novarro "Latin Lover" style in Hollywood without achieving top screen stardom. Moreover, unlike most minority...

27. Richard Barthelmess

Actor | Only Angels Have Wings

Richard Barthelmess was born into a theatrical family in which his mother was an actress. While attending Trinity College in Connecticut, he began appearing in stage productions. While on vacation in 1916, a friend of his mother, actress Alla Nazimova, offered him a part in War Brides (1916), and ...

28. Paul Newman

Actor | The Hustler

Screen legend, superstar, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second son of Arthur Sigmund Newman (died 1950) and Theresa Fetsko (died 1982). His elder brother was Arthur S. Newman Jr., named for ...

29. Vittorio De Sica

Director | Ladri di biciclette

Vittorio De Sica grew up in Naples, and started out as an office clerk in order to raise money to support his poor family. He was increasingly drawn towards acting, and made his screen debut while still in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee ...

30. Henri Garat

Soundtrack | Chocolat

Henri Garat was born on April 3, 1902 in Paris, France. He was an actor and producer, known for Chocolat (2000), Les dieux s'amusent (1935) and The Congress Dances (1932). He was married to Anna Luginbühl, Jacqueline Nigon, Ila Mecséry and Betty Rowe. He died on August 13, 1959 in Hyères, Var, ...

31. Steve McQueen

Actor | The Great Escape

He was the ultra-cool male film star of the 1960s, and rose from a troubled youth spent in reform schools to being the world's most popular actor. Over 40 years after his untimely death from mesothelioma in 1980, Steve McQueen is still considered hip and cool, and he endures as an icon of popular ...

32. Desi Arnaz

Producer | I Love Lucy

Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was born in Santiago, Cuba on March 2, 1917. His father was the mayor of Santiago. The 1933 revolution led by Fulgencio Batista had landed his father in jail and stripped the family of its wealth, property and power. His father was released because of the ...

33. Ramon Novarro

Actor | Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ

Ramon Novarro was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego on February 6, 1899 in Durango, Mexico, to Leonor (Gavilan) and Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego Siqueiros, a prosperous dentist. Ramon and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1913, as refugees from the Mexican Revolution. After stints as a ballet dancer, ...

34. Vic Damone

Soundtrack | Payback

At fourteen he worked as an usher at the NYC Paramount Theatre. His father was an electrician who played guitar and his mother taught piano. Damone attended PS 163 and sang in St. Finbar's choir and later attended the Alexander Hamilton Vocational High School and then Lafayette High School in ...

35. Errol Flynn

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Errol Flynn was born to parents Theodore Flynn, a respected biologist, and Marrelle Young, an adventurous young woman. Young Flynn was a rambunctious child who could be counted on to find trouble. Errol managed to have himself thrown out of every school in which he was enrolled. In his late teens ...

36. Louis Jourdan

Actor | Gigi

Louis Jourdan was born Louis Robert Gendre in Marseille, France to Yvonne (née Jourdan) and hotel owner Henry Gendre. He was educated in France, Britain, and Turkey. He trained as an actor with René Simon at the École Dramatique. He debuted on screen in 1939, going on to play cultivated, polished, ...

37. Lew Ayres

Actor | Holiday

Lew Ayres was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raised in San Diego, California. A college dropout, he was found by a talent scout in the Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles and entered Hollywood as a bit player. He was leading man to Greta Garbo in The Kiss (1929), but it was the role of Paul ...

38. Cary Grant

Actor | North by Northwest

Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."

Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in ...

39. Tim Holt

Actor | The Magnificent Ambersons

As they say, like father, like son. Cowboy hero Tim Holt avidly followed in the boots of his famous character-actor dad, the granite-jawed Jack Holt (b. Charles John Holt), who appeared in hundreds of silents and talkies (many of them westerns) over the years. The two actually appeared together as ...

40. Phillips Holmes

Actor | Men Must Fight

A future in movies for this fair-haired, fresh-faced young adult of the 1930s was by no means certain at the time of his untimely death in a mid-air plane collision. Hints of the All-American leading man promise Phillips Holmes managed to convey during the early to mid decade, particularly in the ...

41. Randolph Scott

Actor | Roberta

Handsome American leading man who developed into one of Hollywood's greatest and most popular Western stars. Born to George and Lucy Crane Scott during a visit to Virginia, Scott was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina in a wealthy family. After service with the U.S. Army in France in World War I, ...

42. Dick Powell

Actor | Murder, My Sweet

Few actors ever managed a complete image transition as thoroughly as did Dick Powell: in his case, from the boyish, wavy-haired crooner in musicals to rugged crime fighters in film noirs. Powell grew up in the town of Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three brothers (one of them, Howard, ended up as ...

43. Charles Chaplin

Writer | The Great Dictator

Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the ...

44. Raymond Rouleau

Director | Les Amants de Teruel

Raymond Rouleau was born on June 14, 1904 in Brussels, Belgium. He was an actor and director, known for Les Amants de Teruel (1962), The Messenger (1937) and Paris Frills (1945). He was married to Françoise Rouleau, Françoise Lugagne and Tania Balachova. He died on December 11, 1981 in Paris, ...

45. William Powell

Actor | The Thin Man

William Powell was on the New York stage by 1912, but it would be ten years before his film career would begin. In 1924 he went to Paramount Pictures, where he was employed for the next seven years. During that time, he played in a number of interesting films, but stardom was elusive. He did ...

46. Danny Kaye

Soundtrack | The Danny Kaye Show

Danny Kaye left school at the age of 13 to work in the so-called Borscht Belt of Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains. It was there he learned the basics of show biz. From there he went through a series of jobs in and out of the business. In 1939, he made his Broadway debut in "Straw Hat Revue,...

47. Marcello Mastroianni

Actor | La dolce vita

Marcello Mastroianni was born in Fontana Liri, Italy in 1924, but soon his family moved to Turin and then Rome. During WW2 he was sent to a German prison camp, but he managed to escape and hide in Venice. He debuted in films as an extra in Marionette (1939), then started working for the Italian ...

48. Russ Tamblyn

Actor | West Side Story

Russ wasn't discovered, he discovered show business at the age of 5 when, with other youngsters at Inglewood, California, he went to Saturday matinees at the Granada Theatre. One afternoon while waiting for the show to start he got on the stage and did an impromptu dance which the kids loved. He ...

49. Don Ameche

Actor | Cocoon

Don Ameche was a versatile and popular American film actor in the 1930s and '40s, usually as the dapper, mustached leading man. He was also popular as a radio master of ceremonies during this time. As his film popularity waned in the 1950s, he continued working in theater and some TV. His film ...

50. Harold Lloyd

Actor | Safety Last!

Born in Burchard, Nebraska, USA to Elizabeth Fraser and J. Darcie 'Foxy' Lloyd who fought constantly and soon divorced (at the time a rare event), Harold Clayton Lloyd was nominally educated in Denver and San Diego high schools and received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art (San ...

51. Leslie Howard

Actor | Pygmalion

Leslie Howard Steiner was born in London to Lilian (Blumberg) and Ferdinand "Frank" Steiner. His father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and his English mother was of German Jewish and mostly English descent. Leslie went to Dulwich College, then worked as a bank clerk until the outbreak of World ...