Male actors
by joel-73725 | created - 7 months ago | updated - 7 months ago | PublicActors I've seen!
1. 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...
2. Kenneth More
Actor | The Longest Day
Kenneth Gilbert More C.B.E. (20 September 1914 - 12 July 1982) was one of Britain's most successful and highest paid actors of his generation, with a multi award-winning career in theatre, film and television spanning over 4 decades.
At the height of his fame during the 1950's More appeared in some ...
3. Robert Donat
Actor | The 39 Steps
Robert Donat's pleasant voice and somewhat neutral English accent were carefully honed as a boy because he had a stammer and took elocution lessons starting at age 11 to overcome the impediment. It was not too surprising that freedom from such a vocal embarrassment was encouragement to act. His ...
4. Peter Sellers
Actor | Being There
Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born Richard Henry Sellers to a well-off acting family in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the son of Agnes Doreen "Peg" (Marks) and William "Bill" Sellers. His parents worked in an acting company run by his ...
5. 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 ...
6. Paul Muni
Actor | Scarface
Paul Muni was born Sept. 22, 1895, in Lemberg, Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Salli and Phillip Weisenfreund, who were both professionals. His family was Jewish, and spoke Yiddish. Paul was educated in New York and Cleveland public schools. He was described as 5 feet 10 inches, with black hair and ...
7. Spencer Tracy
Actor | Judgment at Nuremberg
Spencer Tracy was the second son born on April 5, 1900, to truck salesman John Edward and Caroline Brown Tracy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While attending Marquette Academy, he and classmate Pat O'Brien quit school to enlist in the Navy at the start of World War I. Tracy was still at Norfolk Navy Yard...
8. George Sanders
Actor | All About Eve
George Sanders was born of English parents in St. Petersburg, Russia. He worked in a Birmingham textile mill, in the tobacco business and as a writer in advertising. He entered show business in London as a chorus boy, going from there to cabaret, radio and theatrical understudy. His film debut, in ...
9. Herbert Marshall
Actor | Foreign Correspondent
Herbert Marshall had trained to become a certified accountant, but his interest turned to the stage. He lost a leg while serving in World War I and was rehabilitated with a wooden leg. This did not stop him from making good his decision to make the stage his vocation. He used a very deliberate ...
10. Albert Bassermann
Actor | Foreign Correspondent
Classically-trained actor, former chemist, whose formative years on the stage were spent in Bern (Switzerland) and, from 1909, the Deutsches Theater Berlin under Max Reinhardt's direction. Specialised in Shakespearean roles ('Richard III', 'Hamlet') and was a famous interpreter of the plays of ...
11. Maximilian Schell
Actor | Judgment at Nuremberg
Maximilian Schell was the most successful German-speaking actor in English-language films since Emil Jannings, the winner of the first Best Actor Academy Award. Like Jannings, Schell won the Oscar, but unlike him, he was a dedicated anti-Nazi. Indeed, with the exception of Maurice Chevalier and ...
12. Orson Welles
Actor | Citizen Kane
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...
13. Joseph Cotten
Actor | The Third Man
Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Jr. was born in Petersburg, Virginia, into a well-to-do Southern family. He was the eldest of three sons born to Sally Whitworth (Willson) and Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Sr., an assistant postmaster.
Jo (as he was known) and his brothers Whit and Sam spent their summers at their...
14. Ray Collins
Actor | Citizen Kane
Ray Bidwell Collins was an American actor in film, stage, radio and television. One of his best remembered roles was that of Lt. Arthur Tragg in the long-running series Perry Mason (1957). Collins was born in Sacramento, California, to Lillie Bidwell and William C. Collins, a newspaper drama editor...
15. George Coulouris
Actor | Citizen Kane
The son of a Greek immigrant father (merchant) and an English mother, George Coulouris was educated at England's Manchester Grammar School. As an actor he was quite adept at playing villains, particularly wealthy businessmen, but he was just as suitable at playing nobler roles. A member of Orson ...
16. Gary Cooper
Actor | High Noon
Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a ...
17. Walter Brennan
Actor | The Westerner
In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and ...
18. Dan Duryea
Actor | Too Late for Tears
Dan Duryea was educated at Cornell University and worked in the advertising business before pursuing his career as an actor. Duryea made his Broadway debut in the play "Dead End." The critical acclaim he won for his performance as Leo Hubbard in the Broadway production of "The Little Foxes" led to ...
19. Rock Hudson
Actor | Giant
Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, to Katherine (Wood), a telephone operator, and Roy Harold Scherer, an auto mechanic. He was of German, Swiss-German, English, and Irish descent. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. He failed to obtain parts in school ...
20. Otto Kruger
Actor | Saboteur
The grandnephew of South African pioneer and former president Paul Krüger, Otto Kruger trained for a musical career from childhood, but after enrolling in Columbia University he switched his career choice to acting. Making his Broadway debut in 1915, at 30, he shortly became a matinée idol of the ...
21. Peter Ustinov
Actor | Spartacus
Peter Ustinov was a two-time Academy Award-winning film actor, director, writer, journalist and raconteur. He wrote and directed many acclaimed stage plays and led numerous international theatrical productions.
He was born Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinow on April 16, 1921 in Swiss Cottage, ...
22. George Kennedy
Actor | Cool Hand Luke
George Harris Kennedy, Jr. was born on February 18, 1925 in New York City, to Helen (Kieselbach), a ballet dancer, and George Harris Kennedy, an orchestra leader and musician. Following high school graduation, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army in 1943 with the hope to become a fighter ...
23. David Niven
Actor | Murder by Death
His mother was the French Lady Comynyplatt Henrietta de Gacher, his father was the British Lieutenant William Graham Niven, who died in the war when David was six years old. Niven was considered a difficult child to educate and had to change schools often until he finally went to Sandhurst Military...
24. Jack Warden
Actor | 12 Angry Men
Jack Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter, Jr. on September 18, 1920 in Newark, New Jersey, to Laura M. (Costello) and John Warden Lebzelter. His father was of German and Irish descent, and his mother was of Irish ancestry. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, at the age of seventeen, young Jack ...
25. F. Murray Abraham
Actor | The Grand Budapest Hotel
Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham was born on October 24, 1939 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in El Paso, Texas. His father, Fred Abraham, was a Syrian (Antiochian Orthodox Christian) immigrant. His mother, Josephine (Stello) Abraham, was the daughter of Italian immigrants. Born...
26. Ben Kingsley
Actor | Sexy Beast
Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. His father, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, was a Kenyan-born medical doctor, of Gujarati Indian descent, and his mother, Anna Lyna Mary (Goodman), was an English actress. Ben began to act in stage plays during ...
27. John Gielgud
Actor | Arthur
Born in London, England, John Gielgud trained at Lady Benson's Acting School and RADA, London. Best known for his Shakespearean roles in the theater, he first played Hamlet at the age of 26. He worked under the tutelage of Lilian Bayliss with friend and fellow performer Laurence Olivier and other ...
28. Trevor Howard
Actor | The Third Man
The son of an insurance underwriter who represented Lloyd's of London in Ceylon, Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith was born in Margate, Kent. He spent his early childhood globetrotting with his mother, frequently left in the care of strangers. After attending private school he went on to study drama at ...
29. John Mills
Actor | Great Expectations
Sir John Mills, one of the most popular and beloved English actors, was born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills on February 22, 1908, at the Watts Naval Training College in North Elmham, Norfolk, England. The young Mills grew up in Felixstowe, Suffolk, where his father was a mathematics teacher and his ...
30. Martin Sheen
Actor | The Departed
Multiple Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner Martin Sheen is one of America's most celebrated, colorful, and accomplished actors. Moving flawlessly between artistic mediums, Sheen's acting range is striking.
Sheen was born Ramón Antonio Gerard Estevez in Dayton, Ohio, to Mary-Ann (Phelan), an Irish ...
31. 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 ...
32. 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 ...
33. Charles Laughton
Actor | Witness for the Prosecution
Charles Laughton was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, to Eliza (Conlon) and Robert Laughton, hotel keepers of Irish and English descent, respectively. He was educated at Stonyhurst (a highly esteemed Jesuit college in England) and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (received gold medal). ...
34. 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 ...
35. John Williams
Actor | Dial M for Murder
John Williams was a tall, urbane Anglo-American actor best known for his role as Chief Inspector Hubbard in Dial M for Murder (1954), a role he played on Broadway, in Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1954 film, and on television in 1958. Playing Hubbard on the Great White Way brought him the 1953 Tony ...
36. Simon Oakland
Actor | Psycho
One of the movies' most memorable tough guys, Simon Oakland actually began his career as a concert violinist, turning to acting in the late 1940s. After a long string of roles in Broadway hits, including "Light Up the Sky," "The Shrike" and "Inherit the Wind," Oakland made his film debut as the ...
37. George Chakiris
Actor | West Side Story
George Chakiris made his film debut at the age of 12 singing in the chorus of Song of Love (1947). Following his graduation from high school, he supported his night-time dancing, singing and dramatic lessons with a daytime job clerking in a Los Angeles department store. Later he started his acting/...
38. John Payne
Actor | Miracle on 34th Street
Perhaps not so surprisingly, John Payne maintained that his favorite movie of all time was one of his own -- Miracle on 34th Street (1947) -- simply because it reflected his own strong and spiritual belief system. Today, of course, the film, which co-stars beautiful Maureen O'Hara, Oscar-winning ...
39. Edmund Gwenn
Actor | Miracle on 34th Street
There are very few character actors from the 1930s, '40s or '50s who rose to the rank of stardom. Only a rare man or woman reached the level of renown and admiration, and had enough audience appeal, to be the first name in a cast's billing, a name that got marquee posting. Charles Coburn comes to ...
40. Gene Lockhart
Actor | His Girl Friday
Gene Lockhart was born on July 18, 1891, in London, Ontario, Canada, the son of John Coates Lockhart and Ellen Mary (Delany) Lockhart. His father had studied singing and young Gene displayed an early interest in drama and music. Shortly after the 7-year-old danced a Highland fling in a concert ...
41. William Frawley
Actor | I Love Lucy
William Frawley was born in Burlington, Iowa. As a boy he sang at St. Paul's Catholic Church and played at the Burlington Opera House. His first job was as a stenographer for the Union Pacific Railroad. He did vaudeville with his brother Paul, then joined pianist Franz Rath in an act they took to ...
42. Jerome Cowan
Actor | Miracle on 34th Street
Jerome Cowan was one of Hollywood's most prolific and instantly recognizable character actors. His trademark pencil-thin mustache and slicked back hair, immaculate suits and sophisticated manner were his stock-in-trade for impersonating an assortment of rejected husbands, shifty politicians, ...
43. Jack Albertson
Actor | Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
A former song-and-dance man and veteran of vaudeville, burlesque and Broadway, Jack Albertson is best known to audiences as "The Man" in the TV series Chico and the Man (1974), for which he won an Emmy. In 1968 Albertson, the brother of actress Mabel Albertson, won the Oscar for Best Supporting ...
44. George Burns
Actor | Oh, God!
George Burns was an American actor, comedian, singer, and published author. He formed a comedy duo with his wife Gracie Allen (1895-1964), and typically played the straight man to her zany roles. Following her death, Burns started appearing as a solo performer. He once won an Academy Award for Best...
45. Jack Benny
Actor | The Jack Benny Program
The son of a saloon keeper, Jack Benny (born Benny Kubelsky) began to study the violin at the age six, and his "ineptness" at it, would later become his trademark (in reality, he was a very accomplished player). When given the opportunity to play in live theatre professionally, Benny quit school ...
46. Jackie Gleason
Actor | The Hustler
Comedian, actor, composer and conductor, educated in New York public schools. He was a master of ceremonies in amateur shows, a carnival barker, daredevil driver and a disc jockey, and later a comedian in night clubs. By the mid-1950s he had turned to writing original music and recording a series ...
47. Rodney Dangerfield
Actor | Back to School
Rodney Dangerfield was born Jacob Cohen on November 22, 1921 in Deer Park, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. He was the son of Dorothy "Dotty" (Teitelbaum) and Phillip Cohen, who performed in vaudeville under the name Phil Roy. His father was born in New York, to Russian Jewish parents, and ...
48. Mel Brooks
Actor | Spaceballs
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in WWII, and afterwards got a job playing the drums at nightclubs in the Catskills. Brooks eventually started a comedy act and also worked in radio and as Master Entertainer at Grossinger's Resort before going to ...
49. Zero Mostel
Actor | The Producers
Zero Mostel was born Samuel Joel Mostel on February 28, 1915 in Brooklyn, New York, one of eight children of an Orthodox Jewish family. Raised in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the young Zero, known as Sammy, developed his talent for painting and drawing at art classes provided by the ...
50. Gene Wilder
Actor | Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
When he was 11, he wanted to be a comedian like Sid Caesar. Then, when he was 15 and saw Lee J. Cobb in 'Death of a Salesman,' he decided he would be a comedy actor and found that Mel Brooks was a great influence on his screen writing. He combined both talents with directing in The World's Greatest...
51. Dick Shawn
Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
One-of-a-kind comedian Dick Shawn was as intriguingly clever and off-the-wall as they came. As such, he proved to be rather an acquired taste on film and TV. A counterculture favorite far ahead of his time, it became a hit-and-miss effort in proper vehicles for this man's eccentric genius. He ...
52. Christopher Hewett
Actor | The Producers
Christopher Hewett was born on April 5, 1921 in Worthing, Sussex, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Producers (1967), Mr. Belvedere (1985) and Fantasy Island (1977). He died on August 3, 2001 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
53. Clifton Webb
Actor | Laura
Already trained in dance and theater, he quit school at age 13 to study music and painting. By 19 he was a professional ballroom dancer in New York, and by his mid-twenties he was performing in musicals, dramas on Broadway and in London, and in silent movies. His first real success in film came in ...
54. Alan Young
Actor | Mister Ed
Alan Young was born in Northern England in 1919, but his Scots father moved the family to Edinburgh, Scotland, when Young was a toddler and then to Canada when Young was about 6 years old. As a boy, he suffered from severe asthma, which kept him bedridden for long periods of time but encouraged his...
55. Dick Van Patten
Actor | Spaceballs
Dick Van Patten began acting as a child. He made his first of 27 Broadway appearances at age seven in "Tapestry in Grey." After, he appeared in numerous films, including Freaky Friday (1976), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), and Spaceballs (1987). His television credits include his best-known role...
56. Rex Harrison
Actor | My Fair Lady
Rex Harrison was born Reginald Carey Harrison in Huyton, Lancashire, England, to Edith Mary (Carey) and William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker. He changed his name to Rex as a young boy, knowing it was the Latin word for "King". Starting out on his theater career at age 18, his first job at the ...
57. Wilfrid Hyde-White
Actor | My Fair Lady
British character actor of wry charm, equally at home in amused or strait-laced characters. A native of Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, he attended Marlborough College and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. His stage debut came in 1922, and by 1925 he was a busy London actor. He married ...
58. Lionel Barrymore
Actor | You Can't Take It with You
Famed actor, composer, artist, author and director. His talents extended to the authoring of the novel "Mr. Cartonwine: A Moral Tale" as well as his autobiography. In 1944, he joined ASCAP, and composed "Russian Dances", "Partita", "Ballet Viennois", "The Woodman and the Elves", "Behind the Horizon...
59. Lew Ayres
Actor | Holiday
Lew Ayres was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raised in San Diego, California. A college dropout, he was found by a talent scout in the Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles and entered Hollywood as a bit player. He was leading man to Greta Garbo in The Kiss (1929), but it was the role of Paul ...
60. Billy Gilbert
Actor | His Girl Friday
The son of singers in the Metropolitan Opera, Billy Gilbert began performing in vaudeville at age 12. He developed a drawn-out, explosive sneezing routine that became his trademark (he was the model for, and voice of, Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)). Gilbert's exquisite comic ...
61. 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 ...
62. Mischa Auer
Actor | My Man Godfrey
Mischa Auer, the American screen's supreme exponent of the "Mad Russian" stereotype so dear to Yankee hearts before and after World War II, was born Mischa Ounskowsky on November 17, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia, the grandson of violinist Leopold Auer, whose surname he took when he became a ...
63. William Powell
Actor | The Thin Man
William Powell was on the New York stage by 1912, but it would be ten years before his film career would begin. In 1924 he went to Paramount Pictures, where he was employed for the next seven years. During that time, he played in a number of interesting films, but stardom was elusive. He did ...
64. Cesar Romero
Actor | Batman: The Movie
Tall, suave and sophisticated Cesar Romero actually had two claims to fame in Hollywood. To one generation, he was the distinguished Latin lover of numerous musicals and romantic comedies, and the rogue bandit The Cisco Kid in a string of low-budget westerns. However, to a younger generation weaned...
65. Lee J. Cobb
Actor | 12 Angry Men
Lee J. Cobb, one of the premier character actors in American film for three decades in the post-World War II period, was born Leo Jacoby in New York City's Lower East Side on December 8, 1911. The son of a Jewish newspaper editor, young Leo was a child prodigy in music, mastering the violin and the...
66. Alan Mowbray
Actor | My Darling Clementine
Alan Mowbray, the American film actor who was one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild, was born Ernest Allen on August 18, 1896, in London, England, to a non-theatrical family. He served in the British army during World War I and received the Military Medal and the French Croix De ...
67. Harry Carey
Actor | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Born in New York City to a Judge of Special Sessions who was also president of a sewing machine company. Grew up on City Island, New York. Attended Hamilton Military Academy and turned down an appointment to West Point to attend New York Law School, where his law school classmates included future ...
68. Harry Carey Jr.
Actor | Tombstone
Harry Carey, Jr., had been reliable character actor for decades, mostly in Westerns, before he retired. He is the son of the actor Harry Carey and the actress Olive Carey. He was born on his parents' 1000-acre ranch near Saugus, in the northwestern part of Los Angeles County, which is now next door...
69. John Wayne
Actor | True Grit
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Iowa, to Mary Alberta (Brown) and Clyde Leonard Morrison, a pharmacist. He was of English, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and Irish ancestry.
Clyde developed a lung condition that required him to move his family from Iowa to the warmer climate of southern ...
70. John Nettles
Actor | Midsomer Murders
John Nettles has been a familiar face on British and International television screens for over 30 years.
From his early beginnings in the UK hit comedy The Liver Birds (1969), he became a household name overnight playing the Jersey detective Jim Bergerac. The series, Bergerac (1981), was a huge hit ...
71. Anthony Hopkins
Actor | The Silence of the Lambs
Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, ...
72. 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, ...
73. Leslie Howard
Actor | Pygmalion
Leslie Howard Steiner was born in London to Lilian (Blumberg) and Ferdinand "Frank" Steiner. His father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and his English mother was of German Jewish and mostly English descent. Leslie went to Dulwich College, then worked as a bank clerk until the outbreak of World ...
74. Raymond Massey
Actor | Arsenic and Old Lace
Educated at the University of Toronto & Balliol College, Oxford, he joined the Canadian Field Artillery in World War I, served in France & was wounded. His first appearance was in a stage production in Siberia, during the multi-nation intervention of 1918 - 1919. Raymond returned to Canada & his ...
75. Dennis Hoey
Actor | Sherlock Holmes Faces Death
Dennis Hoey was born on March 30, 1893 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943), Terror by Night (1946) and The Spider Woman (1943). He was married to Josephine Marta Ricca and Sarah Pearl Lyons (known as Cissie). He died on July 25, 1960 in Palm Beach, ...
76. C. Aubrey Smith
Actor | Rebecca
Movie roles are sometimes based upon what the audience expects to see. If the role called for the tall stereotypical Englishmen with the stiff upper lip and stern determination, that man would be C. Aubrey Smith, graduate of Cambridge University, a leading Freemason and a test cricketer for England...
77. Milburn Stone
Actor | Gunsmoke
Character actor Milburn Stone, the beloved "Doc Adams" on TV's long-running western classic Gunsmoke (1955), was born in Kansas on July 5, 1904. Acting must have been in his blood as the nephew of Broadway comedian Fred Stone for Milburn left home as a teenager to find work with touring repertory ...
78. Ray Milland
Actor | The Lost Weekend
Ray Milland became one of Paramount's most bankable and durable stars, under contract from 1934 to 1948, yet little in his early life suggested a career as a motion picture actor.
Milland was born Alfred Reginald Jones in the Welsh town of Neath, Glamorgan, to Elizabeth Annie (Truscott) and Alfred ...
79. Robert Preston
Actor | The Music Man
American leading man of vast charisma, Robert Preston was the son of a garment worker and a record store clerk and grew up in Los Angeles. He was a trained musician, playing several instruments, and in high school became interested in theatre. He joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse, taking ...
80. 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 ...
81. J. Carrol Naish
Actor | Sahara
One of the most versatile character actors in the business, Joseph Patrick Carrol Naish (pronounced Nash) was born of Irish descent in New York City. His illustrious ancestors hailed from county Limerick and were listed in Burke's Peerage. He had a Catholic education at St. Cecilia's Academy, but ...
82. Albert Dekker
Actor | The Wild Bunch
A stage actor from 1927, Albert Dekker was an established Broadway star when he made his film debut ten years later. Tall and with rugged good looks, he often played aggressive character roles, a prime example being his double-crossing gang leader in the classic The Killers (1946). From 1944-46 he ...
83. Broderick Crawford
Actor | All the King's Men
Broderick Crawford is best remembered for two roles: his Oscar-winning turn as Willie Stark in All the King's Men (1949) and as Chief Dan Mathews on the syndicated TV series Highway Patrol (1955). He was also memorable as Judy Holliday's vulgar partner in Born Yesterday (1950), roles both actors ...
84. Lloyd Bridges
Actor | Hot Shots! Part Deux
The star of many land and underwater adventures, Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. was born on January 15, 1913 in San Leandro, California, to Harriet Evelyn (Brown) and Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Sr., who owned a movie theater and also worked in the hotel business. He grew up in various Northern California ...
85. Rex Ingram
Actor | God's Little Acre
A Corsicana native, Rex (Clifford) Ingram was the son of Mack and Mamie Ingram. He graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in medicine before launching a brilliant acting career which spanned 50 years. Ingram made his screen debut during the silent era in Tarzan of the Apes (1918). He ...
86. Conrad Veidt
Actor | Casablanca
Conrad Veidt attended the Sophiengymnasium (secondary school) in the Schoeneberg district of Berlin, and graduated without a diploma in 1912, last in his class of 13. Conrad liked animals, theater, cinema, fast cars, pastries, thunderstorms, gardening, swimming and golfing. He disliked heights, ...
87. 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 ...
88. Richard Attenborough
Actor | Jurassic Park
Richard Attenborough, Baron Attenborough of Richmond-upon-Thames, was born in Cambridge, England, the son of Mary (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College and wrote a ...
89. Desmond Llewelyn
Actor | GoldenEye
Desmond Llewelyn was born in South Wales in 1914, the son of a coal mining engineer. In high school, he worked as a stagehand in the school's productions and then picked up sporadic small parts. His family would not give up their effort to prevent him from a life on stage, so an uncle who was a ...
90. Sam Jaffe
Actor | The Asphalt Jungle
Originally named Shalom Jaffe, he became known to the world as Sam Jaffe. He was born in New York City, to Heida (Ada) and Barnett Jaffe, who were Russian Jewish immigrants. As a child, he appeared in Yiddish theatre productions with his mother, a prominent regional stage actress. He graduated from...
91. James Gleason
Actor | The Night of the Hunter
James Gleason was born in New York City to William Gleason and Mina Crolius, who were both in the theatre. He was married to Lucile Gleason (born Lucile Webster), and had a son, Russell Gleason. As a young man James fought in the Spanish-American War. After the war he joined the stock company at ...
92. Danny Thomas
Actor | Make Room for Daddy
Known primarily as a TV actor, he starred as a nightclub singer on the popular The Danny Thomas Show (1953).
He also served TV behind the cameras partnering with Sheldon Leonard and Aaron Spelling to create such shows as Dick Van Dyke's show, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), The Andy Griffith Show (...
93. Frank Lovejoy
Actor | In a Lonely Place
Square-jawed, intense, no-nonsense Frank Lovejoy played a succession of detectives, street cops, reporters, soldiers and such over his career. Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1912, he worked on Wall Street as a teenager, but the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 cost him his job, and to make ends ...
94. Jim Backus
Actor | Rebel Without a Cause
Jim Backus was born James Gilmore Backus on February 25, 1913 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was one of the few actors to do it all: radio, Broadway, movies, television and cartoons. After attending preparatory school in his hometown Cleveland, Backus enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, to ...
95. 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" ...
96. Eli Wallach
Actor | Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo
One of Hollywood's finest character / "Method" actors, Eli Wallach was in demand for over 60 years (first film/TV role was 1949) on stage and screen, and has worked alongside the world's biggest stars, including Clark Gable, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, Peter O'Toole,...
97. Steve McQueen
Actor | The Great Escape
He was the ultra-cool male film star of the 1960s, and rose from a troubled youth spent in reform schools to being the world's most popular actor. Over 40 years after his untimely death from mesothelioma in 1980, Steve McQueen is still considered hip and cool, and he endures as an icon of popular ...
98. Horst Buchholz
Actor | La vita è bella
On the cast list of The Magnificent Seven (1960), you will find several names that doubtless you know well: Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, and Yul Brynner. But there is one name that you will have difficulty pronouncing, let alone identifying as an actor you have seen before. That man is Horst ...
99. Charles Bronson
Actor | Death Wish
The archetypal screen tough guy with weatherbeaten features--one film critic described his rugged looks as "a Clark Gable who had been left out in the sun too long"--Charles Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky, one of 15 children of struggling parents in Pennsylvania. His mother, Mary (Valinsky), ...
100. Robert Vaughn
Actor | The Magnificent Seven
Robert Francis Vaughn was born on November 22, 1932 at Charity Hospital in New York City, the son of show business parents, Marcella Frances (Gaudel) and Gerald Walter Vaughn. His father was a radio actor and his mother starred on stage. Robert came to the public's attention first with his ...
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