Acting

1. Barbara Stanwyck

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 ...

2. Thierry Neuvic

Actor | Hereafter

Thierry Neuvic was born on August 3, 1970 in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, France. He is an actor, known for Hereafter (2010), Tell No One (2006) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).

3. Charles Morton

Actor | Arms and the Man

Handsome, athletic actor whose career started in the late silent era as a leading man and continued into sound features and finally television. Born in Illinois, Morton spent his adolescence in Madison, Wisconsin; receiving his education at Madison High School and the University of Wisconsin. He ...

4. 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 ...

5. Busby Berkeley

Director | Gold Diggers of 1935

Busby Berkeley was one of the greatest choreographers of the US movie musical. He started his career in the US Army in 1918, as a lieutenant in the artillery conducting and directing parades. After the World War I cease-fire he was ordered to stage camp shows for the soldiers. Back in the US he ...

6. Ann Sothern

Actress | Lady Be Good

Ann Sothern's film career started as an extra in 1927. Originally a redhead, she began to bleach her hair blonde for comedy roles. After working at MGM and on Broadway, Ann was signed by Columbia Pictures for Let's Fall in Love (1933). The next year she would work with Eddie Cantor in his hit Kid ...

7. 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 ...

8. Gale Sondergaard

Actress | The Mark of Zorro

Sly, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister were the key words that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion pictures, making her one of the most talented character actresses ever seen on the screen. She was educated at the University of Minnesota and later married ...

9. Hedy Lamarr

Actress | Samson and Delilah

Hedy Lamarr, the woman many critics and fans alike regard as the most beautiful ever to appear in films, was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of Gertrud (Lichtwitz), from Budapest, and Emil Kiesler, a banker from Lemberg (now known as Lviv). Her parents were ...

10. Brea Grant

Director | 12 Hour Shift

Brea Grant was born in Marshall, Texas and attended high school at Marshall Public High School. She earned an MA at the University of Texas in Austin. Her first television acting job was on Friday Night Lights. She went on to play characters on Dexter and Heroes. She now resides in Los Angeles.

11. Cheryl Smith

Actress | Cinderella

Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith is an actress quite familiar to genre film fans. With leads in "B" pictures and meaty smaller parts in more major ones, her career showed great promise in the 1970s. Alas, it was not meant to be . . . the lure of hard drugs was to bring tragedy to the lovely and talented "...

12. 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 ...

13. Gloria Grahame

Actress | In a Lonely Place

Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944)...

14. Jane Greer

Actress | Out of the Past

As a baby, she was winning beauty contests; as a teenager, with good looks and an attractive contralto voice, she was singing with big bands (most notably Enric Madriguera's orchestra in Latin Club Del Rio in Washington, D.C.. She met Rudy Vallee, her first husband, on the radio where she also ...

15. 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 ...

16. Tina Aumont

Actress | Texas Across the River

Tina Aumont was born on February 14, 1946 in Hollywood, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Texas Across the River (1966), Man, Pride & Vengeance (1967) and Satyricon (1969). She was married to Jean-François Ferriol and Christian Marquand. She died on October 28, 2006 in Port-Vendres...

17. Billy Drago

Actor | The Untouchables

Drago was well known for his villainous parts (leading or supporting), and his rugged yet scary looks and evil smile. He was born William Eugene Burrows in Hugoton, Kansas. He became interested in acting and took his mother's maiden name "Drago" as a stage name. At first he worked as a stuntman in ...

18. Carole Landis

Actress | I Wake Up Screaming

Carole Landis was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in Fairchild, Wisconsin, as Frances Lillian Mary Ridste. Her father, a railroad mechanic, was of Norwegian descent and her mother was Polish. Her father walked out, leaving Carole, her mother and an older brother and sister to fend for themselves.

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19. Robert Walker

Actor | Strangers on a Train

He possessed the same special brand of rebel/misfit sensitivity and charm that made superstars out of John Garfield and (later) James Dean and Montgomery Clift. In the war-torn 1940s, Robert Walker represented MGM's fresh, instinctive breed of up-and-coming talent. His boyish good looks combined ...

20. Joey Arias

Actor | To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

Joey Arias was born on October 3, 1949 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) and Flawless (1999).

21. Geoffrey Lewis

Actor | The Way of the Gun

Talented and highly capable character actor Geoffrey Lewis, with rustic (sometimes sour-faced) looks, grew up in Rhode Island but was moved out to California at the age of ten. Lewis was very keen on the dramatic arts at high school, but often preferred to put on his own one-man shows rather than ...

22. Eleanor Parker

Actress | The Sound of Music

Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the last of three children born to a mathematics teacher and his wife. Eleanor caught the acting bug early and began performing in school plays. She was was so serious about becoming an actor, that she attended the Rice Summer ...

23. Rosalind Russell

Actress | Auntie Mame

The middle of seven children, she was named, not for the heroine of "As You Like It" but for the S.S. Rosalind on which her parents had sailed, at the suggestion of her father, a successful lawyer.

After receiving a Catholic school education, she went to the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New ...

24. Tab Hunter

Actor | Damn Yankees

Dreamy Tab Hunter stood out in film history as one of the hottest teen idols of the 1950s era. With blond, tanned, surfer-boy good looks, he was artificially groomed and nicknamed "The Sigh Guy" by the Hollywood studio system, yet managed to continue his career long after his "golden boy" prime.

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25. Nick Mancuso

Actor | Under Siege

Darkly handsome Nick Mancuso, born Nicodemo Antonio Massimo Mancuso, was born in 1948 in Mammola, Italy but raised as a child in Canada (from age 8). During his over four decade career, films claimed him as the Antichrist (Franco Macalousso) in the Apocalypse trilogy produced by Cloud Ten Pictures (...

26. Michele Placido

Actor | La piovra

Michele Placido was born on May 19, 1946 in Ascoli Satriano, Puglia, Italy. He is an actor and writer, known for La piovra (1984), Romanzo Criminale (2005) and Un eroe borghese (1995). He has been married to Federica Vincenti since August 14, 2012. They have one child. He was previously married to ...

27. John Vernon

Actor | National Lampoon's Animal House

John Vernon was a prolific stage-trained Canadian character player who made a career out of convincingly playing crafty villains, morally-bankrupt officials and heartless authority figures in American films and television since the 1960s. Vernon was directed by some stellar filmmakers, including ...

28. Karen Black

Actress | Five Easy Pieces

Karen entered Northwestern University at 18 and left two years later. She studied under Lee Strasberg in New York and worked in a number of off-Broadway roles. She made a critically acclaimed debut on Broadway in 1965 in "The Playroom". Her first big film role was in You're a Big Boy Now (1966), ...

29. 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 ...

30. Anne Revere

Actress | Gentleman's Agreement

Veteran character actress Anne Revere became another in the long line of talented artists whose careers would crash under the weight of the "Red Scare" hysteria that tore through Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Born in Manhattan and a direct descendant of Revolutionary War figure Paul Revere, ...

31. Elizabeth Russell

Actress | The Corpse Vanishes

Elizabeth Russell was born on August 2, 1916 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for The Corpse Vanishes (1942), So's Your Aunt Emma! (1942) and Bedlam (1946). She died on May 4, 2002 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

32. John Lodge

Actor | Bulldog Drummond at Bay

John Davis Lodge was the grandson of Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge ) and the brother of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

There was a saying in Boston, portraying the capital of the Bay State as "the land of the bean & the cod/Where the Lodges talk only to the Cabots/And the Cabots talk only to God." ...

33. Carroll Baker

Actress | Baby Doll

Carroll Baker was born on May 28, 1931 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a traveling salesman, William W. Baker. She attended community college for a year and then worked as a dancer and magician's assistant. After a brief marriage, she had a small part in Easy to Love (1953), did TV ...

34. Brian Donlevy

Actor | Beau Geste

It seems that Brian Donlevy started out life as colorfully as any character he ever played on the stage or screen. He lied about his age (he was actually 14) in 1916 so he could join the army. When Gen. John J. Pershing sent American troops to invade Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa--Mexican ...

35. Edward Arnold

Actor | You Can't Take It with You

Edward Arnold was born as Gunther Edward Arnold Schneider in 1890, on the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of German immigrants, Elizabeth (Ohse) and Carl Schneider. Arnold began his acting career on the New York stage and became a film actor in 1916. A burly man with a commanding style ...

36. Lucille Bremer

Actress | Meet Me in St. Louis

Arthur Freed discovered Lucille when she was working in a nightclub doing a specialty dance act, and decided to cast her as Rose Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis, and began building up her career which never really took off despite being put in 3 big musical productions at MGM. When she married, she ...

37. Kinuyo Tanaka

Actress | Joyû Sumako no koi

Tanaka Kinuyo was a highly regarded and prolific actress best known for her films with director Mizoguchi Kenji. She was immersed in the world of film having received her start in the world of entertainment at age fourteen, being a filmmaker herself, being the cousin of director Kobayashi Masaki ...

38. Dee Wallace

Actress | E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

This attractive, happy go lucky blonde actress, educated at the University of Kansas and a former ballet soloist, first broke into both TV and cinema screens in the mid 1970s and through her appearances in several well remembered horror and sci-fi films, and Dee quickly gained a cult following ...