Favorites

1. Chow Yun-Fat

Chow Yun Fat is a charismatic, athletically built and energetic Asian-born film star who first came to the attention of western audiences via his roles in the high-octane/blazing guns action films of maverick HK director John Woo.

Chow was born in 1955 on the quiet island of Lamma, part of the ...

2. Jet Li

Actor | Huo Yuan Jia

Jet Li born Li Lian Jie in Beijing, China. He started training at the Beijing wushu academy (wushu is China's national sport, largely a performance version of various martial art styles) at age eight. He won five gold medals in the Chinese championships, his first when he was only 11. In his teens,...

3. Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy

Actor | Gamlet

Innokenti Smoktunovsky (birth name Smoktunovich) was born in Siberian village of Tatianovka near Tomsk in 1925. There were some speculations that his ancestors were of Polish nobility or of Jewish ethnicity and that they were exiled to Siberia for participating in the January Uprising of 1863. But,...

4. Oleg Efremov

Actor | Voyna i mir

Oleg Efremov was born on October 1, 1927 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]. He was an actor and director, known for War and Peace (1965), Stroitsya most (1966) and Aybolit-66 (1967). He was married to Alla Pokrovskaya, Irina Mazuruk and Liliya Tolmacheva. He died on May 24, 2000 in Moscow, Russia.

5. Oleg Menshikov

Actor | Prityazhenie

Born 8 November 1960 as Oleg Evgenyevich Menshikov in Serpukhov, USSR (now in Russia). His father was a military engineer and his mother was a doctor. During his childhood he attended music school where he learned to play piano and violin. Later he studied in the Mikhail Shchepkin Higher Theatre ...

6. Andrey Mironov

Actor | Chelovek s bulvara Kaputsinov

Andrei Mironov was a Soviet comedian known for The Diamond Arm (1969)

He was born Andrei Aleksandrovich Menaker on March 8, 1941, in Moscow. His father, Aleksandr Semenovich Menaker, and his mother, Mariya Mironova, were famous actors in the Soviet Union. From 1958-1962 he studied acting at the ...

7. Bruno Ganz

Actor | Der Untergang

Bruno Ganz was an acclaimed Swiss actor who was a prominent figure in German language film and television for over fifty years. He is internationally renowned for portraying Adolf Hitler in the Academy Award-nominated film Downfall (2004).

Ganz was born in Zürich, to a Swiss mechanic father and a ...

8. Otto Sander

Actor | Der Himmel über Berlin

Sander spent his childhood and youth in Hanover and Kassel. He also went to school there and graduated from high school in 1962. After his military service in the navy, he studied theater studies, German, literature, art history and philosophy until 1967. Sander made his theater debut in 1965 at ...

9. Marlene Dietrich

Soundtrack | Witness for the Prosecution

Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator ...

10. Jane Russell

Actress | Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe. Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in ...

11. Katharine Hepburn

Actress | The Lion in Winter

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist, Katharine Martha (Houghton), and a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn, who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a ...

12. Emil Jannings

Actor | The Last Command

His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company. Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last ...

13. Toshirô Mifune

Actor | Yôjinbô

Toshiro Mifune achieved more worldwide fame than any other Japanese actor of his century. He was born in Tsingtao, China, to Japanese parents and grew up in Dalian. He did not set foot in Japan until he was 21. His father was an importer and a commercial photographer, and young Toshiro worked in ...

14. Alec Guinness

Actor | Star Wars

Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence...

15. Jack Hawkins

Actor | Ben-Hur

In Britain, special Christmas plays called pantomimes are produced for children. Jack Hawkins made his London theatrical debut at age 12, playing the elf king in "Where The Rainbow Ends". At 17, he got the lead role of St. George in the same play. At 18, he made his debut on Broadway in "Journey's ...

16. Dirk Bogarde

Actor | The Servant

Sir Dirk Bogarde, distinguished film actor and writer, was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde on March 28, 1921, to Ulric van den Bogaerde, the art editor of "The Times" (London) newspaper, and actress Margaret Niven in the London suburb of Hampstead. He was one of three children...

17. Robert Mitchum

Actor | Out of the Past

Robert Mitchum was an underrated American leading man of enormous ability, who sublimated his talents beneath an air of disinterest. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Ann Harriet (Gunderson), a Norwegian immigrant, and James Thomas Mitchum, a shipyard/railroad worker. His father died in a ...

18. 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 ...

19. Lauren Bacall

Actress | To Have and Have Not

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in New York City. She was the daughter of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, and William Perske, who was born in New Jersey, to Polish Jewish parents. Her family was middle-class, with her father working as a ...

20. Aleksey Batalov

Actor | Dama s sobachkoy

Aleksei Vladimirovich Batalov was born on November 20, 1928, into the family of famous Russian theatrical actor Vladimir Batalov. He was born in the city of Vladimir, near Moscow, where his grandmother was the Doctor General at the Vladimir city hospital. His parents, Vladimir Petrovich Batalov and...

21. Daniel Olbrychski

Actor | Salt

Daniel Olbrychski is a renowned Polish movie and theatre actor, considered one of the greatest of his generation. He has appeared in about 180 movies and TV productions. His career took off with his role in Janusz Nasfeter's movie Ranny w lesie (1964). He has worked with popular Polish directors ...

22. Wojciech Pszoniak

Actor | Danton

Wojciech Pszoniak was born on May 2, 1942 in Lwów, Lwowskie, Poland [now Lviv, Ukraine]. He was an actor and director, known for Danton (1983), The Promised Land (1975) and Korczak (1990). He was married to Barbara. He died on October 19, 2020 in Warsaw, Poland.

23. Konstantin Khabenskiy

Actor | Wanted

Konstantin Khabenskiy is a Russian actor known in the West for his working the horror flicks Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006). He is also co-starring opposite Angelina Jolie in Wanted (2008).

He was born Konstantin Yurevich Khabenskiy on January 11, 1972, in Leningrad, USSR (now St. ...

24. Tom Hardy

Actor | Inception

With his breakthrough performance as Eames in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi thriller Inception (2010), English actor Tom Hardy has been brought to the attention of mainstream audiences worldwide. However, the versatile actor has been steadily working on both stage and screen since his television debut...

25. Ben Whishaw

Actor | Skyfall

Proclaimed by many critics as one of the best young actors of his generation, Benjamin John Whishaw was born in Clifton, Bedfordshire, to Linda (Hope), who works in cosmetics, and Jose Whishaw, who works in information technology. He has a twin brother, James. He is of French, German, Russian (...

26. Ian McKellen

Actor | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Widely regarded as one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native Great Britain and internationally, twice nominated for the Oscar and recipient of every major theatrical award in the UK and US, Ian Murray McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, to Margery ...

27. Tom Courtenay

Actor | 45 Years

Acting chameleon Sir Tom Courtenay, along with Sir Alan Bates and Albert Finney, became a front-runner in an up-and-coming company of rebel upstarts who created quite a stir in British "kitchen sink" cinema during the early '60s. An undying love for the theatre, however, had Courtenay channeling a ...

28. Charlotte Rampling

Actress | 45 Years

Tessa Charlotte Rampling was born 5 February 1946 in Sturmer, England, to Isabel Anne (Gurteen), a painter, and Godfrey Lionel Rampling, an Olympic gold medalist, army officer, and colonel, who became a NATO commander. She was educated at Jeanne d'Arc Académie pour Jeunes Filles in Versailles, ...

29. Eva Green

Actress | Casino Royale

French actress and model Eva Gaëlle Green was born on July 6, 1980, in Paris, France. Her father, Walter Green, is a dentist who appeared in the 1966 film Au hasard Balthazar (1966). Her mother, Marlène Jobert, is an actress turned children's book writer. Eva's mother was born in Algeria, of French...

30. Mia Wasikowska

Actress | Alice in Wonderland

Mia is an Australian actress, born and raised in the country's capital, Canberra. She is the daughter of photographers Marzena Wasikowska and John Reid. Her mother is Polish and her father is an Australian of British ancestry. She has an older sister, Jess, and a younger brother, Kai. At age eight,...

31. Emily Browning

Actress | A Series of Unfortunate Events

Australian actress Emily Browning was born in 1988 in Melbourne, Australia, to Shelley and Andrew Browning. She has two younger brothers. Her start in acting came after a classmate's father, involved in the acting business, noticed her "acting all ditsy" in a school play. Emily found an agent and ...

32. Roger Livesey

Actor | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

The son of Joseph Livesey and Mary Catherine (nee Edwards), Roger was educated at Westminster City School, London. His first stage appearance was the office boy in Loyalties at St. James' theatre in 1917. Subsequently, he played in everything from Shakespeare to modern comedies. He played various ...

33. Yan Jin

Actor | Dalu

Yan Jin was born on April 8, 1910 in Seoul, Korea. He was an actor, known for The Big Road (1935), Tao hua qi xue ji (1931) and Ren dao (1932). He was married to Yi Qin and Renmei Wang. He died on December 27, 1983.

34. Peter Lorre

Actor | M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder

Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in Rózsahegy in the Slovak area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Hungarian Jewish parents. He learned both Hungarian and German languages from birth, and was educated in elementary and secondary schools in the Austria-Hungary capitol Vienna, but did ...

35. Vincent Price

Actor | The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Actor, raconteur, art collector and connoisseur of haute cuisine are just some of the attributes associated with Vincent Price. He was born Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, to Marguerite Cobb "Daisy" (Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, who was President of the National Candy ...

36. Lino Ventura

Actor | Ascenseur pour l'échafaud

One of France's most beloved character stars from the 1950s through and including the 1980s was the Italian-born Lino Ventura. Born Angiolino Joseph Pascal Ventura to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, on July 14, 1919, in Parma (northern) Italy, young Lino moved with his family at a young age to ...

37. Yves Montand

Actor | Jean de Florette

Yves Montand was born on October 13, 1921 in Monsummano Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was an actor, known for Jean de Florette (1986), Z (1969) and The Wages of Fear (1953). He was married to Simone Signoret. He died on November 9, 1991 in Senlis, Oise, France.

38. Paul Meurisse

Actor | Les diaboliques

Paul Meurisse was the son of a bank manager and it first looked as if he would follow in his father's footsteps when he became a solicitor's clerk in Aix-en-Provence. But his passion was elsewhere and he soon did the splits appearing as a chorus boy in music-hall revues. Leaving Aix for Paris, with...

39. Anton Walbrook

Actor | The Red Shoes

This dark, debonair, dashing and extremely distinguished Austrian actor was christened Adolf Wohlbrück in Vienna, the scion of a family of circus clowns. He broke away easily from generations of tradition as the circus life had no appeal whatsoever to Walbrook.

Trained by the legendary director Max ...

40. Jean Simmons

Actress | Guys and Dolls

Demure British beauty Jean Simmons was born January 31, 1929, in Crouch End, London. As a 14-year-old dance student, she was plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in Give Us the Moon (1944). She had a small part as a harpist in the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra (...

41. 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 ...

42. Mads Mikkelsen

Actor | Hannibal

Mads Mikkelsen's great successes parallel those achieved by the Danish film industry since the mid-1990s. He was born in Østerbro, Copenhagen, to Bente Christiansen, a nurse, and Henning Mikkelsen, a banker.

Starting out as a low-life pusher/junkie in the 1996 success Pusher (1996), he slowly grew ...

43. Shirley MacLaine

Actress | Terms of Endearment

Shirley MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (MacLean), was a drama teacher from Nova Scotia, Canada, and her father, Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology and real estate agent, was from Virginia. Her brother, Warren Beatty, was born on ...

44. Ralph Fiennes

Actor | The Constant Gardener

Actor Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes was born on December 22, 1962 in Suffolk, England, to Jennifer Anne Mary Alleyne (Lash), a novelist, and Mark Fiennes, a photographer. He is the eldest of six children. Four of his siblings are also in the arts: Martha Fiennes, a director; Magnus ...

45. Liam Neeson

Actor | Kinsey

Liam Neeson was born on June 7, 1952 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, to Katherine (Brown), a cook, and Bernard Neeson, a school caretaker. He was raised in a Catholic household. During his early years, Liam worked as a forklift operator for Guinness, a truck driver, an assistant architect and an ...

46. Feng Hsu

Producer | Ba wang bie ji

At the 13th Film Festival of Three Continents in Nantes, France held a special exhibition on "A Retrospect of HSU Feng ", and set up a "Hsu Feng Award" to encourage aspiring talents and new waves in the film industry in Asia.

In late summer of 1992, "Warrior Woman: The Films of Hsu Feng" was held by...

47. Janet Gaynor

Actress | A Star Is Born

Janet Gaynor was born Laura Gainor on October 6, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child, she & her parents moved to San Francisco, California, where she graduated from high school in 1923. She then moved to Los Angeles where she enrolled in a secretarial school. She got a job at a shoe ...

48. Julie Andrews

Actress | The Sound of Music

Julia Elizabeth Wells was born on October 1, 1935, in England. Her mother, Barbara Ward (Morris), and stepfather, both vaudeville performers, discovered her freakish but undeniably lovely four-octave singing voice and immediately got her a singing career. She performed in music halls throughout her...

49. Tilda Swinton

Actress | We Need to Talk About Kevin

The iconoclastic gifts of the highly striking and ferociously talented actress Tilda Swinton have been appreciated by art house crowds and international audiences alike. After her stunning Oscar-winning turn as a high-powered corporate attorney in the George Clooney starring and critically-lauded ...

50. Catherine Deneuve

Actress | 8 femmes

Catherine Fabienne Deneuve was born October 22, 1943 in Paris, France, to actor parents Renée Simonot and Maurice Dorléac. She made her movie debut in 1957, when she was barely a teenager and continued with small parts in minor films, until Roger Vadim gave her a meatier role in Vice and Virtue (...

51. Betty Gilpin

Actress | The Hunt

Elizabeth Folan Gilpin is an American actress. She is best known for portraying Debbie "Liberty Belle" Eagan in the Netflix comedy series GLOW (2017-2019), for which she was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She also starred as Dr. ...

52. Anna May Wong

Actress | The Toll of the Sea

Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California, to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy. A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the ...

53. Greta Garbo

Actress | Ninotchka

Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and ...

54. Veronica Lake

Actress | Sullivan's Travels

Veronica Lake was born as Constance Frances Marie Ockleman on November 14, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Constance Charlotta (Trimble) and Harry Eugene Ockelman, who worked for an oil company as a ship employee. Her father was of half German and half Irish descent, and her ...

55. Teresa Wright

Actress | Shadow of a Doubt

A natural and lovely talent who was discovered for films by Samuel Goldwyn, the always likable Teresa Wright distinguished herself early on in high-caliber, Oscar-worthy form -- the only performer ever to be nominated for Oscars for her first three films. Always true to herself, she was able to ...

56. Cyd Charisse

Actress | Silk Stockings

Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1922, in Amarillo, Texas. Born to be a dancer, she spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at age 13. In 1939, she married Nico Charisse, her former dance teacher. In 1943, she appeared in her first film, ...

57. Fred Astaire

Actor | The Towering Inferno

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. ...

58. Edward G. Robinson

Actor | Double Indemnity

Emanuel Goldenberg arrived in the United States from Romania at age ten, and his family moved into New York's Lower East Side. He took up acting while attending City College, abandoning plans to become a rabbi or lawyer. The American Academy of Dramatic Arts awarded him a scholarship, and he began ...

59. Qiong Liu

Director | Li Huiniang

Qiong Liu was born on October 16, 1913 in Beijing, China. He was an actor and director, known for Li Huiniang's Revenge (1981), Master Qiao Mounts the Sedan (1959) and Si shen yu shao nu (1987). He died on April 29, 2002 in Shanghai, China.

60. Pei-Pei Cheng

Actress | Wo hu cang long

Pei-Pei Cheng was born on December 4, 1946 in Shanghai, China. She is an actress and producer, known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Lilting (2014) and Mulan (2020). She was previously married to Wen-Tung Yuan.