GLBTQ Women and Men in Entertainment
by grw9952 | created - 10 Apr 2015 | updated - 10 Apr 2015 | Public1. Cherry Jones
Actress | The Village
Cherry Jones was born on November 21, 1956 in Paris, Tennessee, USA. She is an actress, known for The Village (2004), Signs (2002) and The Perfect Storm (2000). She has been married to Sophie Huber since 2015.
2. Jane Lynch
Actress | Wreck-It Ralph
Jane Marie Lynch is an American actress, comedian and author. She is known for starring as Sue Sylvester in the musical comedy series Glee (2009-2015), which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award. Lynch also gained recognition for her roles in Christopher Guest's mockumentary films, such as Best in ...
3. Jodie Foster
Actress | The Silence of the Lambs
Jodie Foster started her career at the age of two. For four years she made commercials and finally gave her debut as an actress in the TV series Mayberry R.F.D. (1968). In 1975 Jodie was offered the role of prostitute Iris Steensma in the movie Taxi Driver (1976). This role, for which she received ...
4. Joan Crawford
Actress | What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; ...
5. Cole Porter
Soundtrack | At Long Last Love
Cole Porter was born June 9, 1891, at Peru, Indiana, the son of pharmacist Samuel Fenwick Porter and Kate Cole. Cole was raised on a 750-acre fruit ranch. Kate Cole married Samuel Porter in 1884 and had two children, Louis and Rachel, who both died in infancy. Porter's grandfather, J.G. Cole, was a...
6. George Cukor
Director | My Fair Lady
George Cukor was an American film director of Hungarian-Jewish descent, better known for directing comedies and literary adaptations. He once won the Academy Award for Best Director, and was nominated other four times for the same Award.
In 1899, George Dewey Cukor was born on the Lower East Side of...
7. Linda Hunt
Actress | The Year of Living Dangerously
Linda Hunt is a veteran character actress who had only just begun acting in motion pictures when director Peter Weir required her peculiarities to animate one of cinema's most esoteric characters, Billy Kwan, the intellectual and virtuous Chinese-Australian dwarf and photographer, in the Australian...
8. Harvey Fierstein
Actor | Mrs. Doubtfire
Harvey Fierstein is an American actor, screenwriter and playwright who has been in several stage productions, films, shows and games. He voiced Yao in Mulan and Huaca in Kingdom of the Sun (prototype for The Emperor's New Groove). He also acted in Hairspray, Independence Day, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bros, ...
9. Nathan Lane
Actor | The Producers
Nathan Lane is an American actor and singer from New Jersey who is known for playing Timon from The Lion King, Spot Helperman/Scott Leadready II from Teacher's Pet, Max Bialystock from The Producers, Snowball from Stuart Little, Hamegg from Astro Boy and Ernie Smuntz from Mouse Hunt. He is married ...
10. Heather Matarazzo
Actress | Welcome to the Dollhouse
Heather Matarazzo was born November 10, 1982, in Oyster Bay, New York. She was adopted by Camille and Ray Matarazzo, an Italian-American couple although she is of Irish descent biologically. Heather attended both Oyster Bay High School and Long Island High School for the Arts. In 1997, she made her...
11. Sandra Bernhard
Actress | The King of Comedy
Performer, actress, singer and author Sandra Bernhard appeared as a series regular in season three of the immensely popular FX Television/Ryan Murphy show "POSE" reprising her role as brassy but caring Nurse Judy Kubrack, who works with H.I.V. / AIDS patients, following a memorable season one guest...
12. Alla Nazimova
Actress | Salomé
The grand, highly flamboyant Russian star Alla Nazimova of Hollywood silent films lived an equally grand, flamboyant life off-camera, though her legendary status has not held up as firmly as that of a Rudolph Valentino today.
Alla Nazimova was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon in 1879, in Yalta, ...
13. Barbara Stanwyck
Actress | Double Indemnity
Today Barbara Stanwyck is remembered primarily as the matriarch of the family known as the Barkleys on the TV western The Big Valley (1965), wherein she played Victoria, and from the hit drama The Colbys (1985). But she was known to millions of other fans for her movie career, which spanned the ...
14. Sandy Dennis
Actress | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
It would not be easy for anyone to out-do one of American theater's finest thespians, but somehow actress Sandy Dennis managed to even out-quirk the legendary Geraldine Page when it came to affecting nervous tics and offbeat mannerisms on stage and in film. She and Page had few peers when it came ...
15. Portia de Rossi
Actress | Arrested Development
Portia de Rossi was born and raised in Geelong, Australia. Originally born Amanda Rogers, at 15 she changed her name to Portia, saying that it was the most daring thing she had ever done up until that point. After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Melbourne, and studied ...
16. Wanda Sykes
Actress | Monster-in-Law
Wanda Sykes has been called one of the funniest stand-up comics by her peers and ranks among Entertainment Weekly's 25 Funniest People in America. Her smart-witted stand-up has sent her career in many different areas.
She was previously seen in Comedy Central's Wanda Does It (2004), where she tried ...
17. Judy Gold
Actress | The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
Two-time 'Emmy Award' winner Judy Gold is a veteran of stand-up comedy, known for her edgy wit, sharp timing, and infamous crowd work. Consistently appealing to all generations and backgrounds, Judy can be found throughout most mediums of entertainment: TV; Film; Web-Series'; Stage; Storytelling; ...
18. Margaret Cho
Producer | Margaret Cho: PsyCHO
Margaret Cho was born on December 5, 1968 in San Francisco. Her grandfather was a Methodist minister who ran an orphanage in Seoul during the Korean War. Ignoring the traditions of her patriarchal culture, her mother bravely resisted an arranged marriage in Korea & married Margaret's father, who ...
19. Joel Grey
Actor | Cabaret
Joel Grey's father, Mickey Katz, created "Borscht Capades" in the early 1950s. Mickey Katz was a musician -- a clarinetist and a saxophone player -- in bands around the east. Mickey was performing, playing in a band in Cleveland, Ohio, which is where Joel Grey was born. Musician and bandleader ...
20. Kristy McNichol
Actress | The Pirate Movie
Actor Kristy McNichol is best known for her role as "Buddy" in the Spelling/Goldberg hit TV series Family (1976), where she won 2 Emmy awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe. McNichol began her career with guest appearances on such popular TV series as Starsky and Hutch, The Bionic Woman, Love...
21. Rosie O'Donnell
Actress | A League of Their Own
Rosie O'Donnell was born into an Irish-American family in Commack, Long Island. She is the third of five children born to Roseann Teresa (Murtha) and Edward Joseph O'Donnell, an electrical engineer for the defense industry. Her mother died when she was 10. She said that she watched TV nearly 24 ...
22. Cheyenne Jackson
Actor | American Horror Story
Cheyenne David Jackson is an American actor and singer. His credits include leading roles in Broadway musicals and other stage roles, as well as film and television roles, concert singing, and music recordings.
After beginning his acting career in regional theatre in Seattle, Washington, Jackson ...
23. Allison Case
Actress | The Young Pope
Allison Case is known for The Young Pope (2016), Nurse Jackie (2009) and Life of an Actress: The Musical (2014).
24. Gavin Creel
Soundtrack | Submissions Only
Gavin Creel was born on April 18, 1976 in Findlay, Ohio, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Submissions Only (2010), The Ceiling Fan (2016) and She Loves Me (2016).
25. John Gielgud
Actor | Arthur
Born in London, England, John Gielgud trained at Lady Benson's Acting School and RADA, London. Best known for his Shakespearean roles in the theater, he first played Hamlet at the age of 26. He worked under the tutelage of Lilian Bayliss with friend and fellow performer Laurence Olivier and other ...
26. Anthony Perkins
Actor | Psycho
Anthony Perkins was born April 4, 1932 in New York City, to Janet Esselstyn (Rane) and Osgood Perkins, an actor of both stage and film. His father died when he was five. Anthony's paternal great-grandfather was engraver Andrew Varick Stout Anthony. Perkins attended the Brooks School, the Browne & ...
27. 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 ...
28. Laurence Olivier
Actor | Sleuth
Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High ...
29. Marlon Brando
Actor | Apocalypse Now
Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in ...
30. Jamie Babbit
Director | But I'm a Cheerleader
Jamie Babbit was born on November 16, 1970 in Shaker Heights, Ohio, USA. She is a director and producer, known for But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), Silicon Valley (2014) and Girls (2012). She was previously married to Karey Dornetto.
31. John Waters
Writer | Pecker
Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-'60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore ...
32. Divine
Actor | Pink Flamingos
Originally born Harris Glen Milstead just after the end of WWII, Baltimore's most outrageous resident eventually became the international icon of bad taste cinema, as the always shocking and highly entertaining transvestite performer, Divine.
Milstead met maverick film director & good friend, John ...
33. Anna Paquin
Actress | The Piano
Anna Paquin is the first millennial to have received an Academy Award nomination for acting, and the first to win.
She was born on July 24, 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Mary (Brophy), an English teacher from Wellington, New Zealand, and Brian Paquin, a Canadian phys-ed teacher. Anna moved ...
34. Evan Rachel Wood
Actress | Thirteen
Evan Rachel Wood was born September 7, 1987, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her father, Ira David Wood III, is a theatre actor, writer and director, and her mother, Sara Wood, is an actress and acting coach. She has two older brothers--Dana Wood, a musician, and Ira David Wood IV, who has also acted. ...
35. Amanda Bearse
Actress | Fright Night
Amanda Bearse was born on August 9, 1958 in Winter Park, Florida, USA. She is an actress and director, known for Fright Night (1985), Married... with Children (1987) and Bros (2022). She has been married to Carrie Schenken since 2010. They have two children.
36. Lily Tomlin
Actress | Nashville
Lily Tomlin was born September 1, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, to Lillie Mae (Ford) and Guy Tomlin, who moved to Michigan from Paducah, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. Her mother was a nurse's aide and her father was a factory worker. She graduated from Cass Technical High School in 1957, and ...
37. Cher
Actress | Moonstruck
The beat goes on ... and on ... and as strong as ever for this superstar entertainer who has well surpassed the half-century mark while improbably transforming herself from an artificial, glossy "flashionplate" singer into a serious, Oscar-worthy, dramatic actress ... and back again! With more ups ...
38. Pedro Almodóvar
Writer | Hable con ella
The most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel was born in a small town (Calzada de Calatrava) in the impoverished Spanish region of La Mancha. He arrived in Madrid in 1968, and survived by selling used items in the flea-market called El Rastro. Almodóvar couldn't study ...
39. Mel B
Actress | Spice World
Born on May 29, 1975 in Leeds, England, Melanie Brown became a member of Spice Girls in 1994. Their three albums sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and they had nine singles at number 1 in the UK.
"Hot" was her first solo album, released on 9th October 2000. It entered the UK charts at #28. ...
40. Andy Warhol
Director | Blue Movie
Andrew Warhol's father, Ondrej, came from the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia) in 1912, and sent for his mother, Julia Zavackyová Warholová, in 1921. His father worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. Around some time, the family moved to Pittsburgh. During his teenage years...
41. Jonathan Groff
Writer | Black·ish
Jonathan Groff is known for Black-ish (2014), Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993) and Happy Endings (2011). He has been married to Martha Chowning since April 13, 1996.
42. Zachary Quinto
Actor | Star Trek
Zachary Quinto was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Margaret J. (McArdle), an Irish-American office worker, and Joseph John Quinto, an Italian-American barber. Zachary graduated from Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, with the class of 1995, where he won Pittsburgh's Gene Kelly Award ...
43. Alan Cumming
Actor | The Anniversary Party
Alan Cumming was born on January 27, 1965, in Aberfeldy, Scotland, to Mary (Darling), an insurance company secretary, and Alex Cumming. His family lived nearby in Dunkeld, where his father was a forester for Atholl Estate. The family (including his brother, Tom) moved to Fassfern near Fort William,...
44. Jesse Tyler Ferguson
Actor | Cocaine Bear
Jesse Tyler Ferguson was born on October 22, 1975 in Missoula, Montana, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Cocaine Bear (2023), Modern Family (2009) and Ice Age: Collision Course (2016). He has been married to Justin Mikita since July 20, 2013. They have one child.
45. David Burtka
Actor | A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
David Burtka was born on May 29, 1975 in Dearborn, Michigan, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011), Neil's Puppet Dreams (2012) and CSI: NY (2004). He has been married to Neil Patrick Harris since September 6, 2014. They have two children.
46. Neil Patrick Harris
Actor | How I Met Your Mother
Neil Patrick Harris was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on June 15, 1973. His parents, Sheila Gail (Scott) and Ronald Gene Harris, were lawyers and ran a restaurant. He grew up in Ruidoso, New Mexico, a small town 120 miles south of Albuquerque, where he first took up acting in the fourth grade. ...
47. Sean Hayes
Actor | Will & Grace
Sean Patrick Hayes was born and raised in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, Illinois. His father, Ronald, a lithographer, left the family when Sean was a young child. His mother, Mary, works at a food bank, and raised Sean and his four siblings on her own. Sean supported himself as a classical ...
48. Jim Parsons
Actor | The Big Bang Theory
Having grown up in Houston, and its northern suburb of Spring, he made his first stage appearance in a school play at the age of 6. Parsons then went on to study theater at the University of Houston. From there he won a place on a two-year Masters course in classical theater at the University of ...
49. Paul Lynde
Actor | Bye Bye Birdie
Paul Lynde was born in 1926 in Mount Vernon, Ohio (one of six children and the middle of four boys). His father was a local police officer and the sheriff of the Mount Vernon Jail for two years. Lynde got his inspiration to become an actor at the age of four or five after his mother took him to see...
50. Alexis Arquette
Actress | Pulp Fiction
Alexis Arquette (born Robert Arquette) (death: September 11, 2016) was an American actress. Arquette was born in Los Angeles, the fourth of five children of Lewis Arquette, an actor and director, and Brenda Olivia "Mardi" (Nowak), a Jewish actress, poet, theater operator, activist, acting teacher, ...
51. Jack Plotnick
Actor | Girls Will Be Girls
Jack Plotnick was born in Columbus, Ohio, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Girls Will Be Girls (2003), Gods and Monsters (1998) and Space Station 76 (2014).
52. Jaye Davidson
Actor | The Crying Game
Jaye was born in Riverside, California in 1968, the son of a Ghanaian father and English mother. The family left for England when Jaye was two and a half. Jaye left school at 16 and had been alternately unemployed and doing odd jobs (running for a production company, working in a factory) ever ...
53. RuPaul
Soundtrack | RuPaul's Drag Race
RuPaul Andre Charles is an American actor, model, singer, songwriter, television personality, and author. As executive producer and host of the reality competition TV series RuPaul's Drag Race, RuPaul has received fourteen Primetime Emmy Awards - the most wins for outstanding host of a reality or ...
54. John Epperson
Actor | Another Gay Movie
John Epperson was born in 1955 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Another Gay Movie (2006), Kinsey (2004) and Black Swan (2010).
55. Charles Busch
Actor | Die, Mommie, Die!
Charles Busch is a writer in theater and writer of the film Psycho Beach Party (2000). He is famous for crossdressing in his films he appears in and theatrical presentations he does. Busch got a lot of attention in film and television work playing a prisoner named Nat Ginsberg for two seasons on ...
56. Edward Albee
Soundtrack | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee was born on March 12, 1928 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He was a writer, known for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), A Delicate Balance (1973) and Qui a peur de Virginia Woolf? d'Edward Albee (2011). He died on September 16, 2016 in Montauk, New York, USA.
57. Terrence McNally
Writer | American Playhouse
Terrence McNally was born on November 3, 1938 in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for American Playhouse (1980), Frankie and Johnny (1991) and The Ritz (1976). He was married to Thomas Kirdahy. He died on March 24, 2020 in Sarasota, Florida, USA.
58. Thornton Wilder
Writer | Shadow of a Doubt
Thornton Niven Wilder was the second of five children in the family of a newspaper editor and a U.S. diplomat, Amos Parker Wilder, and Isabella Niven Wilder. He spent part of his childhood with his father, who was a Consul General in Hong Kong and China between 1906 and 1914. Wilder finished high ...
59. William Inge
Writer | Splendor in the Grass
William (Motter) Inge brought small-town life in the American Midwest to Broadway with four successive dramatic triumphs: "Come Back Little Sheba" (1950), "Picnic" (1953; Pulitzer Prize), "Bus Stop" (1955) and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1957). With the exception of his Academy ...
60. Tennessee Williams
Writer | A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams met long-term partner Frank Merlo in the summer of 1948 (Merlo died of lung cancer in the fall of 1963). Though separated briefly in 1961 and again in 1962, the two were partners for 15 years. Merlo acted as his personal manager/secretary.
Williams spent much of his most prolific ...
61. Robert Joy
Actor | Land of the Dead
Robert Joy was born on August 17, 1951 in Montréal, Québec, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for Land of the Dead (2005), The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007).
62. Barry Manilow
Soundtrack | Thumbelina
Barry Manilow was born on June 17, 1943 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a music artist and actor, known for Thumbelina (1994), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) and Transsiberian (2008). He has been married to Garry Kief since April 2014. He was previously married to Susan Deixler.
63. David Hyde Pierce
Actor | Frasier
David Hyde Pierce was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA. He is the youngest child of George and Laura Pierce (both deceased) and has two older sisters (Barbara and Nancy) and an older brother (Thomas). As a child, he was very interested in music (particularly piano) and regularly played the ...
64. BD Wong
Actor | Jurassic Park
BD Wong was born and raised in San Francisco, California. He made his Broadway debut in "M. Butterfly." He is the only actor to be honored with the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Clarence Derwent Award, and Theater World Award for the same performance. He starred in the ...
65. Tony Kushner
Writer | West Side Story
Tony Kushner's play "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" earned him the Pulitzer Prize, among many other awards. His other acclaimed plays include "Slavs", "Homebody/Kabul" and "Caroline, or Change". He has collaborated with children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak on ...
66. Alvin Ailey
Ailey was born in the rural town of Rogers, Texas, USA. His childhood memories and experiences often informed his choreography; the most notable of his works was "Blues Suite", "Cry" (choreographed for Judith Jamison), and "Revelations", a ballet based on Ailey's observations and experiences in ...
67. Stephen Spinella
Actor | Ravenous
Stephen Spinella was born on October 11, 1956 in Naples, Campania, Italy. He is an actor, known for Ravenous (1999), Virtuosity (1995) and Rubber (2010).
68. Gus Van Sant
Director | Elephant
Gus Green Van Sant Jr. is an American filmmaker, painter, screenwriter, photographer and musician from Louisville, Kentucky who is known for directing films such as Good Will Hunting, the 1998 remake of Psycho, Gerry, Elephant, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Milk, Last Days, Finding Forrester, ...
69. Laverne Cox
Actress | Promising Young Woman
Laverne Cox is a three time Emmy-nominated actress, Emmy winning documentary film producer and a prominent equal rights advocate. Laverne's role of Sophia Burset in the critically acclaimed Netflix original series "Orange is The New Black" brought her to the attention of diverse audiences all over ...
70. Joe Mantello
Actor | The Normal Heart
Born December 27, 1962 in Rockford, Illinois, US as Joseph Mantello, he is an American actor, director, and producer, best known for his work in Broadway theatre. His mother Judy was of half Italian descent and his father Richard Mantello, an accountant, was of Italian descent. He graduated the ...
71. Jon Robin Baitz
Writer | Brothers & Sisters
Mr. Baitz was born in 1961 in Los Angeles, and grew up there, in Brazil and South Africa. Plays include: "Other Desert Cities", "The Substance of Fire", "A Fair Country", and "Ten Unknowns", (All produced at Lincoln Center), The Paris Letter", "The Film Society", "Mizlansky/Zilinsky" and "Three ...
72. Miriam Margolyes
Actress | The Age of Innocence
A veteran of stage and screen, award-winning actress Miriam Margolyes has achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic. Winner of the BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award in 1993 for The Age of Innocence (1993), she received Best Supporting Actress at the 1989 LA Critics Circle Awards for her role...
73. Fiona Shaw
Actress | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1
Shaw was already an accomplished theater actress when director Jim Sheridan awarded her a role in his film, My Left Foot (1989). The film is a telling of Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis), an Irishman disgruntled with his confinement to a body horribly crippled by cerebral palsy but who found ...
74. Bruce Vilanch
Actor | You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Bruce Vilanch was born on November 23, 1948 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a writer and actor, known for You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008), The Ice Pirates (1984) and The 64th Annual Academy Awards (1992).
75. Pier Paolo Pasolini
Writer | Il Decameron
Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life ...
76. Leonard Frey
Actor | Fiddler on the Roof
Leonard Frey originally wanted to become an artist, but in college he became interested in acting. He made his stage debut in an off-Broadway production of "Little Mary Sunshine" and his film debut as a celebrant in Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1966), but he first rose to prominence ...
77. Rock Hudson
Actor | Giant
Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, to Katherine (Wood), a telephone operator, and Roy Harold Scherer, an auto mechanic. He was of German, Swiss-German, English, and Irish descent. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. He failed to obtain parts in school ...
78. James Dean
Actor | East of Eden
James Byron Dean was born February 8, 1931 in Marion, Indiana, to Mildred Marie (Wilson) and Winton A. Dean, a farmer turned dental technician. His mother died when Dean was nine, and he was subsequently raised on a farm by his aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana. After grade school, he moved to ...
79. George Chakiris
Actor | West Side Story
George Chakiris made his film debut at the age of 12 singing in the chorus of Song of Love (1947). Following his graduation from high school, he supported his night-time dancing, singing and dramatic lessons with a daytime job clerking in a Los Angeles department store. Later he started his acting/...
80. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Writer | Faustrecht der Freiheit
Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and...
81. Kenneth Anger
Director | Fireworks
Kenneth Anger grew up in Hollywood and started out as a child actor, but his interest in filmmaking was evident at an early age: he made his first film, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat (1941) , at age 14.
Anger developed into one of the pioneers of the American underground film movement. His ...
82. Charles Nelson Reilly
Actor | Millennium
Charles Nelson Reilly was born to Charles Joseph Reilly and Signe Elvera Nelson. His father was Irish-American and Catholic, his mother was Swedish-American and Lutheran. As a child he amused himself with improvised puppet theater performances.
He had a traumatic experience in 1944, when present for...
83. James Ivory
Writer | Call Me by Your Name
The main part of his few movies were filmed in the quarter of a century in which he worked closely together with the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the German writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. His first films are all set in India and are very much influenced by the style of Satyajit Ray and Jean ...
84. Ismail Merchant
Producer | Howards End
Ismail Merchant was born on December 25, 1936 in Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India [now Mumbai, Maharashtra, India]. He was a producer and director, known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Remains of the Day (1993). He died on May 25, 2005 in London, England, UK.
85. 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, ...
86. 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 ...
87. Nancy Kulp
Actress | The Beverly Hillbillies
Nancy Kulp wore many hats: Publicity person, actress, linguist, would-be politician, and teacher. Originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Kulp attended college in Florida, then headed for Hollywood to work in publicity for the movies, not star in them. Soon after arriving in Hollywood, Kulp was ...
88. Marjorie Main
Actress | The Egg and I
Her father was a minister, and when she joined a local stock company as a youngster she changed her name to avoid embarrassing her family. She worked in vaudeville and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her film debut was in A House Divided (1931). She repeated her stage role in Dead End (1937) as Baby ...
89. Alan Bates
Actor | Gosford Park
Alan Bates decided to be an actor at age 11. After grammar school in Derbyshire, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Following two years in the Royal Air Force, he joined the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre. His West End debut in 1956, at 22...
90. Franco Zeffirelli
Director | Romeo and Juliet
Franco Zeffirelli is an Italian director and producer of operas, films and television. He was also a senator from 1994 until 2001 for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party. Some of his operatic designs and productions have become worldwide classics.
He was known for several of the movies he ...
91. David Bowie
Soundtrack | Labyrinth
David Bowie was one of the most influential and prolific writers and performers of popular music, but he was much more than that; he was also an accomplished actor, a mime and an intellectual, as well as an art lover whose appreciation and knowledge of it had led to him amassing one of the biggest ...
92. Mick Jagger
Soundtrack | Alfie
Michael Philip Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent on 26th July 1943. When he was 4 he met Keith Richards until they went into secondary schools and lost touch. But one day in 1960 they accidentally met on the Dartford train line and both realized that they had an interest in rock n roll combined ...
93. Megan Fox
Actress | Transformers
Megan Denise Fox was born on May 16, 1986 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and raised in Rockwood, Tennessee to Gloria Darlene Tonachio (née Cisson), a real estate manager & Franklin Thomas Fox, a parole officer. She began her drama and dance training at age 5 and at age 10, she moved to Port St. Lucie, ...
94. Kathy Najimy
Actress | Hocus Pocus
Kathy Najimy was born and raised in San Diego, California. She is the daughter of Samia (Massery) and Fred Najimy, a postal worker, both of Lebanese ancestry. Kathy attended Crawford High School, and began her film career in the early 1990s, with several minor roles. Kathy got her breakthrough ...
95. Kelly McGillis
Actress | Top Gun
Kelly Ann McGillis was born in Newport Beach, California, to Virginia Joan (Snell), a homemaker, and Donald Manson McGillis, a general practitioner of medicine. She has English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German ancestry. McGillis dropped out of high school to pursue a career as an actress, and ...
96. Michael Urie
Actor | Ugly Betty
Michael Urie is a native Texan who was active in Speech and Drama all through high school at Plano Senior High School. He trained in theater studies at Collin County Community College in Plano before going to The Juilliard School where he was recipient of the John Houseman prize for excellence in ...
97. Kurt Cobain
Soundtrack | The Batman
Kurt Cobain was born on February 20 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington. Kurt and his family lived in Hoquiam for the first few months of his life then later moved back to Aberdeen, where he had a happy childhood until his parents divorced. The divorce left Kurt's outlook on the world forever scarred. He...
98. Dorothy Arzner
Director | Christopher Strong
Dorothy Arzner, the only woman director during the "Golden Age" of Hollywood's studio system--from the 1920s to the early 1940s and the woman director with the largest oeuvre in Hollywood to this day--was born January 3, 1897 (some sources put the year as 1900), in San Francisco, California, to a ...
99. Raúl Esparza
Actor | Ferdinand
Raúl Eduardo Esparza is an American stage, screen, and voice actor. Considered one of Broadway's leading men since the 2000s, he is best known for his Tony Award-nominated performance as Bobby in the 2006 Broadway revival of Company and for his television role as New York Assistant District ...
100. Russell Tovey
Actor | The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
Russell Tovey was born on November 14, 1981 in Billericay Essex, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012), The Good Liar (2019) and Grabbers (2012).
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