Actors Who I Admire

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, as son of Nick Clooney, a TV newscaster of many years, who hosted a talk show at Cincinnati and often invited George into the studios already at the age of 5. Avoiding competition with his father, he quit his job as broadcast journalist after a short time. George studied for a few years at Northern Kentucky University...

Actor and musician Bruce Willis is well known for his film appearances as wisecracking or hard-edged characters, often in spectacular action films. Collectively, he has appeared in films that have grossed in excess of $2.5 billion USD placing him in the top ten stars in terms of box office receipts...

With an authoritative voice and calm demeanor, this ever popular American actor has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern US cinema. Born in June 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, the young Freeman attended Los Angeles Community College before serving several years in the US Air Force as a mechanic between 1955 and 1959...

Actor and musician Bruce Willis is well known for his film appearances as wisecracking or hard-edged characters, often in spectacular action films. Collectively, he has appeared in films that have grossed in excess of $2.5 billion USD placing him in the top ten stars in terms of box office receipts...

Born on June 7, 1952 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, UK, Liam Neeson worked as a forklift operator for Guinness, truck driver, assistant architect and an amateur boxer. He had originally sought a career as a teacher by attending St Mary's Teaching College, Newcastle upon Tyne. However, in 1976, Neeson...

Johnny Depp is perhaps one of the most versatile actors of his day and age in Hollywood, who has recuperated his image greatly since his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow in the acclaimed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, with a supporting cast of Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, and Geoffrey Rush. Though highly successful now...

Dolph Lundgren was born in Stockholm and lived there until the age of 13, when he moved to his grandparents in Nyland, Ångermanland, Sweden. Despite an early interest in music and the fine arts, Dolph decided to follow in his father's footsteps and pursue an Engineering degree. After having completed his military service, he enrolled at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm...

If you had told 14 year old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be considered one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to become a priest. Nonetheless, this sensitive...

Steven Seagal is a striking and somewhat boyishly handsome looking (often with ponytail) and usually impeccably dressed action star who burst onto the martial arts film scene in 1988 in the fast-paced Warner Bros. film Above the Law. The enigmatic Seagal commenced his martial arts training at the age of seven under the tutelage of well-known karate instructor and author Fumio Demura...

Jeremy Lee Renner, son of Valerie and Lee, was born in Modesto, California. After a tumultuous yet happy childhood with four younger siblings, Renner graduated from Beyer High School and attended Modesto Junior College. He explored several areas of study, including computer science, criminology, and psychology, before the theater department, with its freedom of emotional expression, drew him in...

Orlando Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, England on January 13, 1977. The man he briefly knew as his father, Harry Bloom, was a legendary political activist who fought for civil rights in South Africa. But Harry died of a stroke when Orlando was only four years old. After that, Orlando and his older sister...

Amazingly versatile stage & screen actor with sandy colored hair, pale complexion and a somewhat nervous disposition. Has a reputation for playing mentally unbalanced characters on-screen, however that generalisation would not do justice to Walken's depth and breadth of performances. He learnt his stage craft...

Born in Sydney of English parentage, and the youngest of five children, Jackman has a communications degree with a journalism major from the University of Technology Sydney. After graduating, he pursued drama at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, immediately after which he was offered a starring role in the ABC-TV prison drama Correlli...

Daniel Craig, one of British theatre's most famous faces who was waiting tables as a struggling teenage actor with the NYT, went on to star as "James Bond" in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. He was born Daniel Wroughton Craig on March 2, 1968, at 41 Liverpool Road, Chester, Cheshire...

One of the greatest actors in all of film history, Al Pacino established himself during one of film's greatest decades, the 1970s, and has become an enduring and iconic figure in the world of American movies. Born on April 25, 1940, in the Bronx, New York, Pacino's parents (Salvatore and Rose) divorced when he was young...

Born in Casablanca, Morocco, to Spanish parents (from Andalucía) who moved to North Africa to seek work, Jean Reno settled in France at 17. He began studying drama and has credits in French television and theater as well as films. His first two marriages both ended in divorce, and he had two children with each of them. He keeps homes in Paris and Los Angeles.

Hong Kong's cheeky, lovable and best known film star, Jackie Chan endured many years of long, hard work and multiple injuries to establish international success via his early beginnings in Hong Kong's manic martial arts cinema industry. Jackie was born "Kong-sang Chan" on Hong Kong's famous Victoria Peak on April 7...

The youngest of four children born to Percy (an accountant and aspiring jazz saxophonist) and Kathleen, Jim Carrey was an incurable extrovert from day one. As a child he performed constantly, for anyone who would watch, and even mailed his résumé to The Carol Burnett Show at age 10. In junior high he was granted...

Rowan Sebastian Atkinson was born on the 6th January, 1955, in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, to Ella May and Eric Atkinson. His father owned a farm where he grew up with his two older brothers, Rupert and Rodney. He attended Newcastle University and Oxford University where he earned degrees in electrical engineering...