Most Beautiful Movie Actresses through the years

1. Loretta Young

Sweet, sweeter, sweetest. No combination of terms better describes the screen persona of lovely Loretta Young. A&E's Biography (1987) has stated that Young "remains a symbol of beauty, serenity, and grace. But behind the glamour and stardom is a woman of substance whose true beauty lies in her ...

The Doctor Takes a Wife, The Stranger, The Farmer's Daughter, Come to The Stable, Cause for Alarm

2. Sophia Loren

Actress | La ciociara

Sophia Loren was born as Sofia Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome on September 20, 1934. Her father Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry her mother Romilda Villani, despite the fact that she was the mother of his two children (Sophia and her younger sister ...

Houseboat, Black Orchid, The Millionairess, Two Women, A Special Day.

3. Grace Kelly

Actress | Dial M for Murder

On November 12, 1929, Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to wealthy parents. Her girlhood was uneventful for the most part, but one of the things she desired was to become an actress which she had decided on at an early age. After her high school graduation in 1947, Grace ...

Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, High Society

4. Jean Arthur

Actress | You Can't Take It with You

This marvelous screen comedienne's best asset was only muffled during her seven years' stint in silent films. That asset? It was, of course, her squeaky, frog-like voice, which silent-era cinema audiences had simply no way of perceiving, much less appreciating. Jean Arthur, born Gladys Georgianna ...

Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Too Many Husbands, A Lady Takes a Chance.

5. Rachel McAdams

Actress | The Notebook

Rachel Anne McAdams was born on November 17, 1978 in London, Ontario, Canada, to Sandra Kay (Gale), a nurse, and Lance Frederick McAdams, a truck driver and furniture mover. She is of English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish descent. Rachel became involved with acting as a teenager and by the age of 13 ...

Mean Girls, Red Eye, The Wedding Crashers.

6. Natalie Wood

Actress | Rebel Without a Cause

Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.

Wood was born July 20, 1938 in ...

Splendour in The Grass, This Property is Condemned, Penelope.

7. Gene Tierney

Actress | Laura

With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting ...

Heaven Can Wait, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

8. Thandiwe Newton

Actress | Crash

Thandiwe Newton was born in London. She is the daughter of Zimbabwean mother Nyasha, a health-care worker from the Shona tribe, and British father Nick Newton, who worked as a lab technician. She lived in Zambia until political unrest caused her family to move back to the UK, where she lived in ...

Flirting, Mission Impossible 2.

9. Lucy Liu

Actress | Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Born to immigrants in New York City, Lucy Liu has always tried to balance an interest in her cultural heritage with a desire to move beyond a strictly Asian-American experience. Her mother, Cecilia, a biochemist, is from Beijing & her father, Tom Liu, a civil engineer, is from Shanghai. Once ...

Charlie's Angels.

10. Jennifer Jones

Actress | The Towering Inferno

One of the world's most underrated Academy Award-winning actresses, Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on 2 March 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Flora Mae (Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley, who ran a travelling stage show. As a young aspiring actress, she met and fell for young, handsome, aspiring ...

11. Susan Penhaligon

Actress | A Fine Romance

Susan Penhaligon was born on July 3, 1949 in Manila, Philippines. She is an actress, known for A Fine Romance (1981), Count Dracula (1977) and Patrick (1978). She was previously married to Duncan Preston, David Munro and Nicholas Loukes.

12. Katharine Ross

Actress | The Graduate

Katharine Juliet Ross was born January 29, 1940, in Hollywood, CA, to Katherine (née Mullen) and Dudley Tying Ross. Her father, who had also worked as a reporter for the Associated Press, was a commander in the US Navy when she was born. His navy career shuttled the family around to Virginia, then ...

13. Faye Dunaway

Actress | Bonnie and Clyde

An icy, elegant blonde with a knack for playing complex and strong-willed female leads, enormously popular actress Faye Dunaway starred in several films which defined what many would come to call Hollywood's "second Golden Age." During her tenure at the top of the box office, she was a more than ...

14. Ashley Judd

Actress | Double Jeopardy

American actress and political activist Ashley Judd was born Ashley Tyler Ciminella on April 19, 1968, in Granada Hills, California. She grew up in a family of successful performing artists as the daughter of country music singer Naomi Judd and the sister of Wynonna Judd. While she is best known ...

seems a deeply silly person, though

15. Elizabeth Taylor

Actress | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early in her youth and kept the world hooked ...

16. Goldie Hawn

Actress | Private Benjamin

Goldie Jeanne Hawn was born November 21, 1945 in Washington, D.C. to Laura Hawn, who owned a dance school, and Rut Hawn, a band musician. She has one sister, entertainment publicist Patti Hawn; a brother, Edward, died in infancy before her birth. She was raised in the Jewish religion. Her mother ...

17. Sophie Marceau

Actress | La boum

Sophie Marceau was born Sophie Danièle Sylvie Maupu in Paris, France, to Simone (Morisset), a shop assistant, and Benoît Maupu, a truck driver. She grew up far from the studio spotlights. When she was 14 she was living in the Paris suburb of Gentilly with her father. She learned from friends that ...

18. Audrey Hepburn

Actress | Breakfast at Tiffany's

Audrey Hepburn was born as Audrey Kathleen Ruston on May 4, 1929 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium. Her mother, Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman, while her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was born in Úzice, Bohemia, to English and Austrian parents.

After her parents' divorce, ...

may win the inner beauty award

19. Angie Dickinson

Actress | Rio Bravo

Angie Dickinson was born in Kulm, North Dakota, in 1931, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. L. H. Brown. Mr. Brown was the publisher of The Kulm Messenger. The family left North Dakota in 1942 when Angie was 11 years old, moving to Burbank, California. In December of 1946, when she was a senior at ...

20. Elizabeth McGovern

Actress | Ordinary People

Daughter of a law professor at Northwestern University, she moved with her family to Los Angeles when he transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.). She began acting in school plays at North Hollywood High, graduated from The Oakwood School and then continued her stage ...

21. Olivia de Havilland

Actress | Gone with the Wind

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her ...

22. Stella Stevens

Actress | The Poseidon Adventure

The early film career of Stella Stevens could be said to mirror that of Marilyn Monroe. She began by playing a succession of sensuous, blond glamour girls, from naïve virgins and funny coquettes to precocious or briny-tongued floozies. Her early maturity on screen may have reflected her own ...

23. Sandra Dee

Actress | Gidget

Sandra Dee was born Alexandria Zuck on April 23, 1942 in Bayonne, New Jersey, to Mary (Cymboliak) and John Zuck. She was of Carpatho-Rusyn descent. Her mother envisioned a show business career for her daughter and would often lie about her age in order to get Sandy where she wanted to go. For ...

24. Ida Lupino

Actress | High Sierra

Ida was born in London to a show business family. In 1932, her mother took Ida with her to an audition and Ida got the part her mother wanted. The picture was Her First Affaire (1932). Ida, a bleached blonde, went to Hollywood in 1934 playing small, insignificant parts. Peter Ibbetson (1935) was ...

25. Raquel Welch

Actress | The Three Musketeers

A new reigning 1960s international sex symbol took to the cinematic throne as soon as Raquel Welch emerged from the sea in her purposely depleted, furry prehistoric bikini. Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, ...

26. Judy Geeson

Actress | To Sir, with Love

Born in Arundel, Sussex, in 1948, Judy's father moved the family to London when she was 10 years old and enrolled her and sister Sally Geeson into the Corona Academy, Chiswick. Judy initially wanted to be a ballet dancer but had to change course when she suffered from terrible headaches as a result...

27. Samantha Mathis

Actress | Broken Arrow

Samantha Mathis was born in 1970 in New York, to Donald Mathis and Austrian-born Bibi Besch, an aspiring actress at the time. Her maternal grandmother was actress Gusti Huber. Her first acting job was in a commercial for baby products with her mother. Since her parents divorced when she was only ...

28. Uma Thurman

Actress | Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Uma Karuna Thurman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a highly unorthodox and internationally-minded family. She is the daughter of Nena Thurman (née Birgitte Caroline von Schlebrügge), a fashion model and socialite who now runs a mountain retreat, and of Robert Thurman (Robert Alexander ...

29. Gina Lollobrigida

Actress | Notre-Dame de Paris

Gina Lollobrigida was born on July 4, 1927 in Subiaco, Italy. Destined to be called "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World", Gina possibly had St. Brigid as part of her surname. She was the daughter of a furniture manufacturer, and grew up in the pictorial mountain village. The young Gina did some ...

Come September, Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell.

30. Lee Remick

Actress | The Omen

Lee Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Gertrude Margaret (Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin Remick, a department store owner. She had Irish and English ancestry. Remick was educated at Barnard College, studied dance and worked on stage and TV, before making her film debut as a sexy ...

31. Ursula Andress

Actress | Dr. No

The quintessential jet-set Euro starlet, Ursula Andress was born in the Swiss canton of Berne on March 19, 1936, one of six children in a strict German Protestant family. Although often seeming icily aloof, a restless streak early demonstrated itself in her personality, and she had an impetuous ...

32. Claudia Cardinale

Actress | C'era una volta il West

Like many other female Italian film stars, Claudia Cardinale's entry into the business was by way of a beauty pageant. She was 17 years old and studying at the Centro Sperimentale in Rome when she entered a beauty contest, which resulted in her getting a succession of small film roles. Her earthy ...

33. Lizabeth Scott

Actress | Too Late for Tears

Lizabeth Scott was born Emma Matzo on September 29, 1922 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the oldest of six children of Mary (Pennock) and John Matzo, who were Slovak immigrants. Scott attended Marywood Seminary and the Alvienne School of the Theatre in New York City, where she adopted the stage name of ...

34. Monica Bellucci

Actress | Malèna

Monica Anna Maria Bellucci was born on September 30, 1964 in the Italian village of Città di Castello, Umbria, the only child of Brunella Briganti and Pasquale Bellucci. She originally pursued a career in the legal profession. While attending the University of Perugia, she modeled on the side to ...

35. Heather Locklear

Actress | Melrose Place

Heather Locklear was born on September 25, 1961 in Westwood, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Melrose Place (1992), The Perfect Man (2005) and The Return of Swamp Thing (1989). She was previously married to Richie Sambora and Tommy Lee.

36. Salma Hayek

Actress | Frida

Salma Hayek was born on September 2, 1966 in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Her father is of Lebanese descent and her mother is of Mexican/Spanish ancestry. After having seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) in a local movie theater, she decided she wanted to become an actress. At age 12, she...

37. Liv Tyler

Actress | Armageddon

Liv Tyler is an actress of international renown and has been a familiar face on our screens for over two decades and counting. She began modelling at the age of fourteen before pursuing a career in acting. After making her film debut in Bruce Beresford's Silent Fall, she was cast by fledgling ...

38. Penélope Cruz

Actress | Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Known outside her native country as the "Spanish enchantress," Penélope Cruz Sánchez was born in Madrid to Eduardo Cruz, a retailer, and Encarna Sánchez, a hairdresser. As a toddler, she was already a compulsive performer, re-enacting TV commercials for her family's amusement, but she decided to ...

39. Halle Berry

Actress | Catwoman

Halle Maria Berry was born Maria Halle Berry on August 14, 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Oakwood, Ohio to Judith Ann Berry (née Hawkins), a psychiatric nurse & Jerome Jesse Berry, a hospital attendant. Her father was African-American and her mother is of mostly English and German descent. ...

40. Natalie Portman

Actress | Black Swan

Natalie Portman is the first person born in the 1980s to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (for Black Swan (2010)).

Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an ...

41. Diane Kruger

Actress | Inglourious Basterds

Diane Kruger was born Diane Heidkrüger in Algermissen, near Hildesheim, Germany, to Maria-Theresa, a bank employee, and Hans-Heinrich Heidkrüger, a computer specialist. She studied ballet with the Royal Ballet in London before an injury ended her career. She returned to Germany and became a top ...

42. 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...

43. Eva Mendes

Actress | The Other Guys

Eva Mendes is an American actress, model and businesswoman. She began acting in the late 1990s. After a series of roles in B movies such as Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998) and Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000), she made a career-changing appearance in Training Day (2001). Since then, ...

44. Barbara Parkins

Actress | Valley of the Dolls

Barbara Parkins is best remembered as an icon of the Sixties who had starring roles in two of the era's more notorious productions, Peyton Place (1964) and Valley of the Dolls (1967). After arriving in Hollywood as a teenager, Parkins soon began appearing on episodic television programs such as ...

45. Keira Knightley

Actress | Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Keira Christina Knightley was born March 26, 1985 in the South West Greater London suburb of Richmond. She is the daughter of actor Will Knightley and actress turned playwright Sharman Macdonald. An older brother, Caleb Knightley, was born in 1979. Her father is English, while her Scottish-born ...

46. Sylvia Syms

Actress | The Queen

London-born Sylvia May Laura Syms hit major film appeal at a relatively young age. Born on January 6, 1934, she was educated at convent schools before receiving dramatic training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She made her stage debut in a production of "The Apple Cart" in 1954.

A repertory ...

47. 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 (...

48. Claire Bloom

Actress | Clash of the Titans

Age has not taken the flower off this Bloom. The well-known and highly respected stage, screen and television actress Claire Bloom continues to be in demand as an octogenarian actress and looks as beautiful as ever.

She was born Patricia Claire Blume on February 15, 1931, in Finchley, North London, ...

49. Maria Bello

Actress | A History of Violence

Maria Bello was born on 18 April, 1967 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, to Kathy, a nurse and teacher, and Joe Bello, a contractor. She is of Italian and Polish descent. Maria went to Villanova University, majoring in political science. She had every intention of becoming a lawyer, but she took an ...

50. Britt Ekland

Actress | The Man with the Golden Gun

Britt Ekland was born in Sweden and grew up to be the poster girl for beautiful, big-eyed Scandinavian blondes. She attended a drama school and then joined a traveling theater group. With her looks as her passport, Britt entered films and became a star in Italy. When Peter Sellers met her in a ...

51. Jennifer Grey

Actress | Dirty Dancing

Jennifer Grey is an American actress who starred in the film Dirty Dancing (1987) opposite Patrick Swayze, a sleeper hit that would become one of the biggest films of the 1980s. She had previously appeared with Patrick Swayze in John Milius's cold war drama Red Dawn (1984) as 'Toni,' one of the '...

52. 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, ...