Swashbuckling Actors
by janusminoa | created - 29 May 2020 | updated - 9 months ago | Publicpeople who have been handy with a blade....
1. Antonio Banderas
Actor | The Mask of Zorro
Antonio Banderas, one of Spain's most famous faces, was a soccer player until breaking his foot at the age of fourteen; he is now an international movie star known for playing Zorro in the eponymous movie series.
He was born José Antonio Domínguez Banderas on August 10, 1960, in Málaga, Andalusia, ...
The Mask of Zorro
2. Basil Rathbone
Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood
Basil Rathbone was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1892, but three years later his family was forced to flee the country because his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy at a time when Dutch-British conflicts were leading to the Boer War. The Rathbones escaped to England, ...
The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, The Mark of Zorro, The Court Jester
3. Burt Lancaster
Actor | From Here to Eternity
Burt Lancaster, one of five children, was born in Manhattan, to Elizabeth (Roberts) and James Henry Lancaster, a postal worker. All his grandparents were immigrants from the north of Ireland. He was a tough street kid who took an early interest in gymnastics. He joined the circus as an acrobat and ...
The Crimson Pirate, His Majesty O'Keefe, The Flame and the Arrow
4. Cornel Wilde
Actor | The Greatest Show on Earth
Cornel Wilde was born Kornel Lajos Weisz on October 13, 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary (now part of Slovakia) to a Jewish family. In 1920, he immigrated to New York City with his parents, Rayna (Vid) and Vojtech Béla Weisz, and elder sister, Edith. His family Anglicized their names. Kornel took the ...
The Bandit of Sherwood Forest
5. Douglas Fairbanks
Actor | The Thief of Bagdad
Douglas Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado, to Ella Adelaide (nee Marsh) and Hezekiah Charles Ullman, an attorney and native of Pennsylvania, who was a captain for the Union forces during the Civil War. Fairbanks' paternal grandparents were German Jewish immigrants, ...
The Mark of Zorro, The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, Don Q Son of Zorro, The Black Pirate
6. Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Actor | The Rise of Catherine the Great
Although he appeared in approximately 100 movies or TV shows, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. never really intended to take up acting as a career. However, the environment he was born into and the circumstances naturally led him to be a thespian. Noblesse oblige.
He was born Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr. in ...
Sinbad the Sailor
7. Errol Flynn
Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood
Errol Flynn was born to parents Theodore Flynn, a respected biologist, and Marrelle Young, an adventurous young woman. Young Flynn was a rambunctious child who could be counted on to find trouble. Errol managed to have himself thrown out of every school in which he was enrolled. In his late teens ...
The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, The Adventures of Don Juan, The Sea Hawk
8. Geena Davis
Actress | Thelma & Louise
As a child, Geena dreamed of being an actress. While in high school, she felt left out and had low self-esteem because, at 6 feet, she was the tallest girl in school. After high school graduation, Geena entered New England College in New Hampshire and then transferred the next year to Boston ...
Cutthroat Island
9. Geoffrey Rush
Actor | The King's Speech
Geoffrey Roy Rush was born on July 6, 1951, in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, to Merle (Bischof), a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. His mother was of German descent and his father had English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. ...
Pirates of the Caribbean
10. Harvey Keitel
Actor | Reservoir Dogs
American actor and producer Harvey Keitel was born on May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Miriam (Klein) and Harry Keitel. An Oscar and Golden Globe Award nominee, he has appeared in films such as Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), Ridley Scott's The Duellists (...
The Duellists
11. Jean Marais
Actor | La Belle et la Bête
Jean Marais was a popular French cinema actor and director who played over 100 roles in film and on television, and was also known for his many talents as a writer, painter and sculptor.
He was born Jean Alfred Villain-Marais on December 11, 1913, in Cherbourg, France. His father practiced ...
Le Bossu, Captain Blood, The Iron Mask
12. Jean Peters
Actress | Pickup on South Street
Green-eyed beauty Jean Elizabeth Peters flashed across the screen as a bright star during her relatively brief tenure in Hollywood. After just seven years under contract to 20th Century-Fox (1947-54), she joined in the reclusive lifestyle of her eccentric billionaire husband, Howard Hughes, and all...
Anne of the Indies
13. Johnny Depp
Actor | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II was born on June 9, 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky, to Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. He was raised in Florida. He dropped out of school when he was 15, and fronted a series of music-garage bands, including one ...
Pirates of the Caribbean
14. Keith Carradine
Actor | Nashville
It seems the second generation of acting Carradines -- David, Keith and Robert -- are proudly continuing the family tradition and begetting a third generation of talent. The dynasty began with veteran Hollywood patriarch John Carradine, the son of a surgeon and a correspondent for the Associated ...
The Duellists
15. Louis Hayward
Actor | And Then There Were None
From his birthplace in South Africa, Louis Charles Hayward was brought to England and was educated there and on the Continent. He spent a short time managing a London nightclub, displayed some acting talent and decided on acting, and was quickly tapped by playwright Noël Coward, who became his ...
The Man in the Iron Mask
16. Maureen O'Hara
Actress | The Quiet Man
In America, the early performing arts accomplishments of young Maureen FitzSimons (who we know as Maureen O'Hara) would definitely have put her in the child prodigy category. However, for a child of Irish heritage surrounded by gifted parents and family, these were very natural traits. Maureen made...
Against all Flags
17. Paul Henreid
Actor | Casablanca
Paul Henreid was born Paul Georg Julius Freiherr von Hernreid Ritter von Wasel-Waldingau in Trieste, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the son of Marie Luise Heilig (Lendecke) and Baron Karl Alphons Hernreid. His father was an aristocratic banker, who was born to a Jewish family whose surname ...
The Spanish Main
18. Richard Greene
Actor | The Hound of the Baskervilles
Before achieving his greatest fame in the 1950s as television's "Robin Hood", handsome Richard Greene had a significant if largely unremarkable film career, turning in several skillful leading man performances in the late 1930s before becoming type-cast in routine costume adventures. Like his ...
The Adventures of Robin Hood (TV)
19. Robert Taylor
Actor | The Bribe
Born Spangler Arlington Brugh, Robert Taylor began displaying a diversity of talents in his youth on the plains of Nebraska. At Beatrice High School, he was a standout track athlete, but also showed a talent for using his voice, winning several oratory awards. He was a musician and played the cello...
Ivanhoe
20. Ronald Colman
Actor | A Double Life
British leading man of primarily American films, one of the great stars of the Golden Age. Raised in Ealing, the son of a successful silk merchant, he attended boarding school in Sussex, where he discovered amateur theatre. He intended to attend Cambridge and become an engineer, but his father's ...
The Prisoner of Zenda
21. Sean Connery
Actor | The Rock
The tall, handsome and muscular Scottish actor Sean Connery is best known as the original actor to portray James Bond in the hugely successful movie franchise, starring in seven films between 1962 and 1983. Some believed that such a career-defining role might leave him unable to escape it, but he ...
Robin and Marian
22. Stewart Granger
Actor | King Solomon's Mines
Stewart Granger was born James Lablache Stewart in London, the great grandson of the opera singer Luigi Lablache. He attended Epsom College but left after deciding not to pursue a medical degree. He decided to try acting and attended Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art, London. By 1935, he made ...
Scaramouche
23. Toby Stephens
Actor | Die Another Day
Toby Stephens began his acting career while a stagehand at the Chichester Festival Theatre, in end-of-season productions mounted by the crew. In his brief professional career, he has already won the Sir John Gielgud Prize for Best Actor and the Ian Charleson Award for his performance in the title ...
Black Sails (TV)
24. Tyrone Power
Actor | Witness for the Prosecution
Tyrone Power was one of the great romantic swashbuckling stars of the mid-twentieth century, and the third Tyrone Power of four in a famed acting dynasty reaching back to the eighteenth century. His great-grandfather was the first Tyrone Power (1795-1841), a famed Irish comedian. His father, known ...
The Mark of Zorro, The Black Swan
25. Yul Brynner
Actor | The King and I
Exotic leading man of American films, famed as much for his completely bald head as for his performances, Yul Brynner masked much of his life in mystery and outright lies designed to tease people he considered gullible. It was not until the publication of the books "Yul: The Man Who Would Be King" ...
The Buccaneer
26. Frank Langella
Actor | Frost/Nixon
Frank Langella was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, to Angelina and Frank A. Langella, a business executive. He is of Italian descent.
A stage and screen actor of extreme versatility, Frank Langella won acclaim on the New York stage in "Seascape" and followed it up with the title role in the Edward Gorey...
Cutthroat Island
27. Orlando Bloom
Actor | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Copeland Bloom was born on January 13, 1977 in Canterbury, Kent, England. His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine Bloom (née Copeland), was born in Kolkata, India, to an English family then-resident there. The man he first knew as his father, Harry Bloom, was a legendary ...
Pirates of the Caribbean
28. Bill Nighy
Actor | Love Actually
Bill Nighy is an award-winning British character actor. He was born William Francis Nighy on December 12, 1949 in Caterham, Surrey, England, to Catherine Josephine (Whittaker), a psychiatric nurse from Glasgow, and Alfred Martin Nighy, who was English-born and managed a garage in Croydon.
At school,...
Pirates of the Caribbean
29. Steve Reeves
Actor | Le fatiche di Ercole
Handsome bodybuilder Steve Reeves certainly had an enviable Herculean physique, and made plenty good use of it in Europe during the late 1950s and early 1960s portraying some of filmdom's most famous bronzed gods. Reeves was originally a Montana boy born on a cattle ranch in 1926. His destiny was ...
Morgan the Pirate
30. Zach McGowan
Actor | Dracula Untold
Zach McGowan was born and raised in New York City, where he started acting at an early age in school productions. His passion for the stage followed him through his high school and college years and landed him on the New York City stage in 2003, where he honed his craft in numerous off-Broadway ...
Black Sails (TV)
31. Robert Newton
Actor | Around the World in Eighty Days
Robert Newton was one of the great character actors -- and great characters -- of the British cinema, best remembered today for playing Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1950) and its sequel in 1954. His portrayal of Long John Silver and of Blackbeard, the Pirate (1952) created a persona that ...
Treasure Island (1950) and Blackbeard the Pirate
32. Kevin McNally
Actor | Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Kevin McNally was born on April 27, 1956, in Bristol, England. He grew up in Birmingham where he attended Redhill and Mapledene Junior schools and Central Grammar School for Boys. At the age of 16, he got his first job at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. A year later he received a scholarship to the ...
Pirates of the Caribbean
33. Christopher Lee
Actor | Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was perhaps the only actor of his generation to have starred in so many films and cult saga. Although most notable for personifying bloodsucking vampire, Dracula, on screen, he portrayed other varied characters on screen, most of which were villains, whether it ...
The Pirates of Blood River
34. Tom Wu
Actor | Marco Polo: One Hundred Eyes
Tom Wu was born on May 15, 1972 in Hong Kong, China. He is an actor, known for Marco Polo: One Hundred Eyes (2015), The Gentlemen (2019) and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019).
Hundred Eyes in Marco Polo (TV)
35. Santiago Cabrera
Actor | Big Little Lies
Santiago Cabrera was born in Caracas, Venezuela, to Chilean parents, and grew up in London, Romania, Toronto, and Madrid. Although he considers Santiago, Chile, his hometown, he splits his time between London and Los Angeles.
Cabrera is a classically trained actor, having studied at London's ...
as Aramis in The Musketeers
36. Travis Fimmel
Actor | Warcraft
Travis Fimmel was born near Echuca, Victoria, Australia, to Jennie, a recreation officer for the disabled, and Chris, a cattle farmer. He was raised on a 5500-acre farm located between Melbourne and Sydney. Until the age of seventeen, his life was spent at school and working on the family farm, ...
as Ragnar Lothbrok in Vikings
37. Katheryn Winnick
Actress | Vikings
Award-winning actress, director, producer, Katheryn Winnick, is best known for starring and directing the critically acclaimed, Emmy award-winning television series "Vikings." Winnick made her directorial debut in sixth and final season which earned her "Best Director" at the 2020 WIN Awards. She ...
as Lagertha in Vikings
38. Clive Standen
Actor | Vikings
Clive Standen is a British actor, he was born on a British Army base in Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland, and grew up in the East Midlands in England. He went to school at King Edward VII School (Melton Mowbray) followed by a performing arts course at Melton Mowbray College. In his late ...
as Rollo in Vikings
39. Viggo Mortensen
Actor | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Since his screen debut as a young Amish farmer in Peter Weir's Witness (1985), Viggo Mortensen's career has been marked by a steady string of well-rounded performances.
Mortensen was born in New York City, to Grace Gamble (Atkinson) and Viggo Peter Mortensen, Sr. His father was Danish, his mother ...
as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy
40. Mel Ferrer
Actor | Lili
Actor/director/producer Mel Ferrer was born Melchor Gaston Ferrer on August 25, 1917, in Elberon, New Jersey. The son of a Cuban-born surgeon and a Manhattan socialite, he went to prep school and attended Princeton University. From the age of 15 he worked in summer stock. After Princeton he became ...
the Marquis de Maynes in Scaramouche
41. Charlton Heston
Actor | Ben-Hur
With features chiseled in stone, and renowned for playing a long list of historical figures, particularly in Biblical epics, the tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome Charlton Heston was one of Hollywood's top leading men of his prime and remained active in front of movie cameras for over sixty ...
El Cid, Ben Hur
42. Ray Stevenson
Actor | The Three Musketeers
An imposing figure (standing at 6'3") with intense, penetrating eyes and possessed of a larger-than-life personality, the actor George Raymond Stevenson began life as one of three sons, born in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, to a British pilot in the Royal Air Force. Raised near Newcastle in ...
Blackbeard in Black Sails and Porthos in The Three Musketeers
43. Dustin Clare
Actor | Pacific Rim Uprising
Dustin Clare is an award winning Australian actor. He made his feature debut in Fred Schepisi's The Eye of the Storm (2011), which premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival and screened in Special Presentation at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.
Dustin played 'Gannicus' ...
as Gannicus in Spartacus
44. Manu Bennett
Actor | 30 Days of Night
"Shall We Begin!", the battlecry of The undefeated Gaul Crixus first bought Manu Bennett's voice & acting career to international attention. Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011) spoke a universal language that slowly but surely captured a massive audience. The the show lost lead actor Andy Whitfield...
as Crixus in Spartacus
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