Long lived actors

1. William Powell

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 ...

2. Clint Eastwood

Actor | Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in ...

3. Betty White

Actress | The Proposal

Betty White was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Christine Tess (Cachikis), a homemaker, and Horace Logan White, a lighting company executive for the Crouse-Hinds Electric Company. She was of Danish, Greek, English, and Welsh descent.

Although she was best known as the devious Sue Ann Nivens on the ...

4. Angela Lansbury

Actress | The Manchurian Candidate

Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 into a prominent family of the upper middle class living in the Regent's Park neighborhood of London. Her father was socialist politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a member of both the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party. Edgar ...

5. Dick Van Dyke

Actor | Mary Poppins

Dick Van Dyke was born Richard Wayne Van Dyke in West Plains, Missouri, to Hazel Victoria (McCord), a stenographer, and Loren Wayne Van Dyke, a salesman. His younger brother was entertainer Jerry Van Dyke. His ancestry includes English, Dutch, Scottish, German and Swiss-German. Although he had ...

6. Patricia Hitchcock

Actress | Strangers on a Train

Patricia Alma Hitchcock was the only child of Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville. Her upbringing was 'English' and strict. Two years of boarding school from the age of eight was followed by relocation to the U.S. a year later when Hitch was contracted by David O. Selznick to direct Rebecca ...

7. Norman Lloyd

Actor | Dead Poets Society

Norman Lloyd was born Norman Perlmutter in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Sadie (Horowitz), a housewife and singer, and Max Perlmutter, a furniture store manager. His family was Jewish (from Hungary and Russia). He began his acting career in the theater, first "treading the boards" at Eva Le Gallienne...

8. Christopher Plummer

Actor | Beginners

Legendary actor Christopher Plummer, perhaps Canada's greatest thespian, delivered outstanding performances as Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), the chilling villain in The Silent Partner (1978), the iconoclastic Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), the empathetic psychiatrist in A ...

9. Edward Asner

Actor | Up

Edward Asner was born of Russian Jewish parentage in Kansas City, to Morris David Asner (founder and owner of the Kansas City-based Asner Iron & Metal Company) and his wife Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Seliger). After attending college, Ed worked various jobs, including in a steel mill, as a door-to-door ...

10. Buddy Ebsen

Actor | The Beverly Hillbillies

Buddy Ebsen began his career as a dancer in the late 1920s in a Broadway chorus. He later formed a vaudeville act with his sister Vilma Ebsen, which also appeared on Broadway. In 1935 he and his sister went to Hollywood, where they were signed for the first of MGM's Eleanor Powell movies, Broadway ...

11. 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...

12. Bob Hope

Actor | The Ghost Breakers

Comedian Bob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons of Avis (Townes), light opera singer, and William Henry Hope, a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. His maternal grandmother was Welsh. Hope moved to Bristol before emigrating with his parents...

13. Mike Connors

Actor | Mannix

He once jokingly described himself as 'a frustrated song-and-dance man' who wound up typecast as a TV crime fighter. Tall, handsome Armenian-American Mike Connors had a minor career in the movies before becoming a star on the small screen as the impeccably dressed macho sleuth Joe Mannix. Towards ...

14. 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 ...

15. Joan Fontaine

Actress | Suspicion

Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo, Japan, in what was known as the International Settlement, to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her paternal grandfather's family was ...

16. Sidney Poitier

Actor | In the Heat of the Night

Sidney Poitier was a native of Cat Island, Bahamas, although born, two months prematurely, in Miami during a visit by his parents, Evelyn (Outten) and Reginald James Poitier. He grew up in poverty as the son of farmers, with his father also driving a cab in Nassau. Sidney had little formal ...

17. 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...

18. 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 ...

19. 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 ...

20. Ian Wolfe

Actor | Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Respected character actor whose on-screen work included everything from Shakespeare to Dick Tracy (1990) (his last film). After a long apprenticeship in the theatre, the 38-year-old Wolfe finally debuted in films in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), recreating his Broadway role. He then toiled...

21. Judith Anderson

Actress | Rebecca

Dame Judith Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia. She began her acting career in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. There she established herself as one of the greatest theatrical actresses and was a major star on Broadway ...

22. 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 ...

23. 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 ...

24. Irene Dunne

Actress | The Awful Truth

Irene Marie Dunne was born on December 20, 1898, in Louisville, Kentucky. She was the daughter of Joseph Dunne, who inspected steamships, and Adelaide Henry, a musician who prompted Irene in the arts. Her first production was in Louisville when she appeared in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the age...

25. Elisha Cook Jr.

Actor | House on Haunted Hill

Although this pint-sized actor started out in films often in innocuous college-student roles in mid-30s rah-rahs, playing alongside the likes of a pretty Gloria Stuart or a young, pre-"Oz" Judy Garland, casting directors would soon enough discover his flair for portraying intense neurotics or ...

26. Claudette Colbert

Actress | It Happened One Night

One of the brightest film stars to grace the screen was born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin on September 13, 1903, in Saint Mandé, France where her father owned a bakery at 57, rue de la République (now Avenue Général de Gaulle). The family moved to the United States when she was three. As Claudette ...

27. Marlene Dietrich

Soundtrack | Witness for the Prosecution

Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator ...

28. Eddie Albert

Actor | Roman Holiday

A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Eddie Albert was a circus trapeze flier before becoming a stage and radio actor. He made his film debut in 1938 and has worked steadily since, often cast as the friendly, good-natured buddy of the hero but occasionally being cast as a villain; one of his ...

29. Katharine Hepburn

Actress | The Lion in Winter

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist, Katharine Martha (Houghton), and a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn, who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a ...

30. Lena Horne

Soundtrack | Cabin in the Sky

Lena Calhoun Horne was born June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York. In her biography she stated that, on the day she was born, her father was in the midst of a card game trying to get money to pay the hospital costs. Her parents divorced while she was still a toddler. Her mother left later in order ...

31. Fay Wray

Actress | King Kong

Canadian-born Fay Wray was brought up in Los Angeles and entered films at an early age. She was barely in her teens when she started working as an extra. She began her career as a heroine in westerns at Universal during the silent era. In 1926 the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers ...

32. Simone Simon

Actress | Cat People

Diminutive, fiery-tempered Simone Simon was born in France, but spent much of her early childhood in Madagascar, where her father managed a graphite mine. Her schooling was somewhat unsettled, her family moving from city to city (Berlin, Budapest, Turin) before finally establishing themselves in ...

33. Ronald Reagan

Actor | Kings Row

Ronald Reagan had quite a prolific career, having catapulted from a Warner Bros. contract player and television star, into serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, the governorship of California (1967-1975), and lastly, two terms as President of the United States (1981-1989).

Ronald Wilson ...

34. Hume Cronyn

Actor | Cocoon

Hume Cronyn was a Canadian actor with a lengthy career. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in "The Seventh Cross" (1944).

Cronyn was born to a prominent family. His father was politician Hume Blake Cronyn (1864-1933), Member of Parliament for London, ...

35. Karl Malden

Actor | A Streetcar Named Desire

Born to a Czech mother and a Serbian father in Chicago as Mladen Sekulovich, on March 22, 1912, Karl Malden did not speak English until he was in kindergarten. After graduating from high school in the nearby steel town of Gary, Indiana, Malden worked in the industry for three years until 1934, when...

36. Kevin McCarthy

Actor | Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Handsome, chisel-jawed character actor Kevin McCarthy appeared in nearly 100 movies in a career that spanned seven decades. He also had some starring roles, most notably the horror cult classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). He played the disillusioned son Biff Loman in the 1951 screen ...

37. 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,...

38. Kirk Douglas

Actor | The Final Countdown

Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. ...

39. Evelyn Keyes

Actress | The Seven Year Itch

No shrinking violet this one, but despite her talent, vivacity and sheer drive, lovely and alluring blonde Evelyn Keyes would remain for the most part typed as a "B" girl on the silver screen. In spite of her ripe contributions to such superior pictures as Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), The Jolson ...

40. Nehemiah Persoff

Actor | An American Tail

Born in 1919 in Jerusalem, Nehemiah Persoff emigrated with his family to America in 1929.

Following schooling at the Hebrew Technical Institute of New York, he found a job as a subway electrician doing signal maintenance until an interest in the theater altered the direction of his life.

He joined ...

41. 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 ...

42. 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 ...

43. Dina Merrill

Actress | BUtterfield 8

It would have been pretty difficult for willowy actress/model Dina Merrill to have pulled off playing a commoner on stage, film or TV in her day. She reeked of elegance and class. The epitome of style, poise and glamour, the New York-born socialite and celebrity was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton on ...

44. Mickey Rooney

Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He first took the stage as a toddler in his parents vaudeville act at 17 months old. He made his first film appearance in 1926. The following year, he played the lead character in the first Mickey McGuire short film. ...

45. Doris Day

Soundtrack | Love Me or Leave Me

One of America's most loved actresses was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choir master. Her grandparents were all German immigrants. She had two brothers, Richard, who died ...

46. 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 ...

47. Honor Blackman

Actress | Goldfinger

One of four children, Blackman was born in London's East End, to Edith Eliza (Stokes), a homemaker, and Frederick Thomas Blackman, a statistician employed with the Civil Service. She received elocution lessons for her 16th birthday (at her own request), and later attended the Guildhall School of ...

48. Cloris Leachman

Actress | The Last Picture Show

The legendary actress set a record when at age 82, she appeared on Dancing with the Stars (2005). Cloris Leachman was born on April 30, 1926 in Des Moines, Iowa to Berkeley Claiborne "Buck" Leachman and the former Cloris Wallace. Her father's family owned a lumber company, Leachman Lumber Co. She ...

49. Tony Bennett

Actor | Muppets Most Wanted

Tony Bennett, one of the legends of jazz and popular music who served during the Second World War and then developed a career spanning over half a century, is now giving another concert tour across the United States and Europe.

He was born Anthony (Antonio) Dominick Benedetto on August 3, 1926, in ...

50. Julie Adams

Actress | Creature from the Black Lagoon

Betty May Adams was the daughter of a travelling Iowa cotton buyer with a penchant for alcohol. Growing up in Arkansas, Betty expressed an early interest in acting and made her performing debut in a third grade play of "Hansel and Gretel." Beautiful, talented and determined, the freshly minted '...

51. Zsa Zsa Gabor

Actress | A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.

Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on ...

52. Jane Wyman

Actress | Falcon Crest

Jane Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield on January 5, 1917, in St. Joseph, Missouri (she was also known later as Sarah Jane Fulks). When she was only eight years old, and after her parents filed for divorce, she lost her father prematurely. After graduating high school she attempted, with the help ...

53. Gene Hackman

Actor | The French Connection

Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Anna Lyda Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After ...

54. Abe Vigoda

Actor | The Godfather

Tall, dour-faced and slouch-shouldered character actor Abe Vigoda proved himself in both gritty dramatic roles and as an actor with wonderful comedic timing.

Vigoda was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Lena (Moses) and Samuel Vigoda, a tailor -- both Russian Jewish immigrants. His father was a tailor ...

55. Robert Duvall

Actor | The Apostle

Veteran actor and director Robert Selden Duvall was born on January 5, 1931, in San Diego, CA, to Mildred Virginia (Hart), an amateur actress, and William Howard Duvall, a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, IL), then served a ...

56. James Earl Jones

Actor | Rogue One

Widely regarded as the one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native USA and internationally, James Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931 in Arkabutla, Mississippi. At an early age, he started to take dramatic lessons to calm himself down. It appeared to work as he has since starred ...

57. William Shatner

Actor | Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

William Shatner has notched up an impressive 70-plus years in front of the camera, displaying heady comedic talent and being instantly recognizable to several generations of cult television fans as the square-jawed Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise.

Shatner was born ...

58. Harry Belafonte

Actor | Bobby

Harold George Belafonte was born on March 1, 1927 in New York City. He was educated at the New York Dramatic Workshop. He grew up in Jamaica, British West Indies, and did folk-singing in nightclubs and theaters, and on television and records. His debut was at the Village Vanguard in New York. Also,...

59. Nancy Reagan

Actress | Hellcats of the Navy

Nancy Reagan was born on July 6, 1921 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Hellcats of the Navy (1957), Night Into Morning (1951) and Donovan's Brain (1953). She was married to Ronald Reagan. She died on March 6, 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

60. Bob Newhart

Actor | Elf

Bob Newhart is an American actor and stand-up comedian. His comedic style involves deadpan delivery of dialogue, a slight stammer when talking, and comedic monologues. He has cited earlier comedians George Gobel (1919-1991), Ray Goulding (1922-1990), and Bob Elliott (1923-2016) as his main ...

61. Joyce Randolph

Actress | The Honeymooners

Lovely, sweet-natured Joyce Randolph will forever be etched in the minds of "Golden Age" television viewers as the Bowery-like fourth party of the classic husband/wife quartet on the enduring TV family comedy The Honeymooners (1955) starring Jackie Gleason as the irrepressible hothead bus driver ...

62. Tippi Hedren

Actress | The Birds

From working for the exacting Alfred Hitchcock to a film written by Edward D. Wood Jr., Tippi Hedren, the Minnesota blonde, has had a distinctive career. She was born Nathalie Kay Hedren in New Ulm, MN, to Dorothea (née Eckhardt) and Bernard Hedren, who ran a general store, and is of Swedish, ...

63. Vera Miles

Actress | The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Born in Boise City, Oklahoma, Vera Miles attended school in Pratt, Kansas and Wichita, Kansas. The patrician beauty of Miss Miles won her the title of "Miss Kansas" in 1948, leading soon to small roles in Hollywood films and television series. Fame came to the forthright, spirited Miles when she ...

64. Herbert Lom

Actor | The Pink Panther Strikes Again

Herbert Lom was born on September 11, 1917 as Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru into an aristocratic family living in genteel poverty. His incredibly long surnames led him to select the shortest surname he could find extant ("Lom") and adopt it as his own, professionally. He ...

65. Jerry Lewis

Actor | The Nutty Professor

Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926 - August 20, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team ...

66. Milton Berle

Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Milton Berle was an American comedian and actor.

Berle's career as an entertainer spanned over 80 years, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and television. As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre (1948-55), he was the first major American television star and ...

67. Don Rickles

Actor | Kelly's Heroes

Donald Jay Rickles was born May 8, 1926 in New York. Following the Golden Era of Hollywood, he remained active until early 2017. He got his start in night clubs, toiling for over 20 years, until 1958, when he made his film debut in Run Silent Run Deep (1958). The movie was a big hit. Afterward, ...

68. Stan Lee

Producer | Black Panther

Stan Lee was an American comic-book writer, editor, and publisher, who was executive vice president and publisher of Marvel Comics.

Stan was born in New York City, to Celia (Solomon) and Jack Lieber, a dress cutter. His parents were Romanian Jewish immigrants. Lee co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, ...

69. Eunice Gayson

Actress | Dr. No

Eunice Gayson was an English actress best known for playing Sylvia Trench, James Bond's girlfriend in the first two Bond films (Dr. No and From Russia with Love). Originally, Gayson was to be cast as Miss Moneypenny, but that part went to Lois Maxwell instead.

Gayson was originally to have been a ...

70. Cicely Tyson

Actress | The Help

Cicely Tyson was born in Harlem, New York City, where she was raised by her devoutly religious parents, who had come from the Caribbean island of Nevis. Her mother Theodosia was a domestic worker and her her father William was a carpenter and painter. Tyson was discovered by a fashion editor at ...

71. Mildred Dunnock

Actress | The Trouble with Harry

Petite American character actress who was celebrated for her definitive portrayal of long-suffering Linda Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman", a part she played opposite Lee J. Cobb at the Morosco Theatre for 742 consecutive performances between 1949 and 1950. Mildred recreated her role ...

72. Geraldine Fitzgerald

Actress | Dark Victory

Geraldine Fitzgerald was the only actress to appear as both Laurence Olivier's wife and Rodney Dangerfield's mother-in-law, which surely qualifies her as running the gamut (if not the gauntlet, in the latter case) of A to Z for co-starring with cinema immortals. The Irish lass appeared in many ...

73. Joseph Wiseman

Actor | Dr. No

Joseph Wiseman was born on May 15, 1918 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He came to Broadway in the 1930s, where he was critically hailed for performances in Shakespeare's "King Lear", Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" and Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya". Motion pictures in which Wiseman has been seen include ...

74. John Forsythe

Actor | Dynasty

John Forysthe was born Jacob Lincoln Freund in Penns Grove, New Jersey, the son of Blanche Materson (Blohm) and Samuel Jeremiah Freund, a Wall Street businessman. He chose to pursue acting over the objections of his father. He did some work in radio soaps and on Broadway before signing a movie ...

75. Henry Travers

Actor | It's a Wonderful Life

British-born Henry Travers was a veteran of the English stage before emigrating to the U.S. in 1917. He gained more stage experience there on Broadway working with the Theatre Guild, and began his long film career with Reunion in Vienna (1933). Travers' kindly, grandfatherly demeanor became ...

76. Rita Moreno

Actress | West Side Story

Rita Moreno is one of the very few performers to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy, thus becoming an EGOT. She was born Rosita Dolores Alverío in the hospital in Humacao, Puerto Rico on December 11, 1931 (but raised in nearby, smaller Juncos, which had no hospital), to seamstress Rosa ...

77. Barbara Eden

Actress | I Dream of Jeannie

Barbara Eden, born Barbara Jean Morehead in Tucson, Arizona, became one of America's most endearing and enduring actresses. A graduate of Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco, California, Eden would go on to study at San Francisco's City College as well as the San Francisco Conservatory of ...

78. John Astin

Actor | The Frighteners

Dark-haired, usually-mustachioed American actor with a cheeky grin, who achieved pop culture status through his portrayal of the kooky patriarch "Gomez Addams" in the hit TV series The Addams Family (1964), John Astin was born on March 30, 1930 in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied mathematics at ...

79. Joanne Woodward

Actress | Rachel, Rachel

Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward was born on February 27, 1930, in Thomasville, Georgia, to Wade Woodward and Elinor Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward in a modest household. Her one older brother, Wade Jr., who was the favorite of her father, eventually became an architect. Elinor Woodward was a ...

80. Jack Klugman

Actor | 12 Angry Men

As a film character actor, Klugman was the epitome of the everyman. He was one of the pioneers of television acting in the 1950s, and is best remembered for his 1970s TV work as Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple (1970) and as the medical examiner on Quincy M.E. (1976).

81. Gavin MacLeod

Actor | Mary Tyler Moore

Gavin MacLeod's pleasing, agreeable manner on two hit TV series in the 1970s and '80s belied a number of shady villains he portrayed in his early career. Born Allan George See in Mt. Kisco, New York, on February 28, 1931, and raised in Pleasantville, he was the son of Margaret (Shea) and George See...

82. Natalie Schafer

Actress | Gilligan's Island

Natalie Schafer got her start doing Broadway plays then making the move to the big screen. Even before Gilligan's Island (1964), she was typecast in roles as society women, or elegant, fashionable ladies. It was her role as "Eunice 'Lovey' Wentworth Howell" wife of multi-millionaire Thurston Howell...

83. Penny Singleton

Actress | After the Thin Man

Her father was Irish Philadelphian newspaperman, Benny McNulty. He was related to Jim Farley, Roosevelt's campaign manager and later U.S. Postmaster General. As a child, she sang songs at a silent movie theater. After the sixth grade she joined a touring vaudeville act called "The Kiddie Kabaret." ...

84. Luise Rainer

Actress | The Great Ziegfeld

Luise Rainer, the first thespian to win back-to-back Oscars, was born on January 12, 1910 in Dusseldorf, Germany, into a prosperous Jewish family. Her parents were Emilie (Königsberger) and Heinrich Rainer, a businessman. She took to the stage, and plied her craft on the boards in Germany. As a ...

85. Phyllis Thaxter

Actress | Superman

This warm and winning, very non-theatrical brunette was born Phyllis St. Felix Thaxter in Portland, Maine, on November 20, 1919. The daughter of Maine Supreme Court Justice Sidney Thaxter, her acting talent came from her mother's side, who was a one-time Shakespearean actress. Phyllis was educated ...

86. June Foray

Actress | Mulan

Legendary voice actress June Foray was born June Lucille Forer on September 18, 1917 in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Maurice Forer and Ida Edith Robinson, who wed in Hampden, Massachusetts. Her father, who was Jewish, emigrated from Novgorod, Imperial Russia, while her Massachusetts-born mother ...

87. Rose Marie

Actress | The Dick Van Dyke Show

Rose Marie was a legend of show business, with a career stretching 90 years, since her debut as her self in a Vitaphone musical short that appeared on the bill with The Jazz Singer (1927) at its premiere in 1927. According to Rose Marie, when she approached Al Jolson at the Winter Garden Theater in...

88. Kathleen Harrison

Actress | Scrooge

Although British actress Kathleen Harrison was born in 1892 in the Lancashire town of Blackburn, she was fondly known for her cockney characters throughout her career. Trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art she first married and lived overseas in Argentina for nearly eight years...

89. Ernest Borgnine

Actor | Marty

Ernest Borgnine was born Ermes Effron Borgnino on January 24, 1917 in Hamden, Connecticut. His parents were Anna (Boselli), who had emigrated from Carpi (MO), Italy, and Camillo Borgnino, who had emigrated from Ottiglio (AL), Italy. As an only child, Ernest enjoyed most sports, especially boxing, ...

90. Ruth Hussey

Actress | The Philadelphia Story

A graduate of the University of Michigan School of Drama, Ruth Hussey's first show-business job was as a fashion commentator on a local radio station. She journeyed to New York City, where she was signed as a model by the world-famous Powers agency. She obtained some stage roles with touring ...

91. Noel Neill

Actress | Superman Returns

Minnesota-born Noel Neill's ambition was to be a journalist like her father, the editor of a Minneapolis newspaper. However, she was hired by Bing Crosby to sing at the Turf Club at the race track in Del Mar, California (Crosby was one of the owners). Shortly thereafter, in 1941, she was signed to ...

92. Robert Morse

Actor | How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

With that impish, gap-toothed grin, nervous bundle of energy, Robert Morse could never be contained long enough to become a film star. The live stage would be his calling.

He was born Robert Allen Morse on May 18, 1931, in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of May (Silver) and Charles Morse, who worked ...

93. Rhonda Fleming

Actress | Out of the Past

A native-born Californian, Rhonda Fleming attended Beverly Hills public and private schools. Her father was Harold Cheverton Louis (1896-1951). Her mother, Effie Olivia Graham (1891-1985), was a famous model and actress in New York. She has a son (Kent Lane), two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly)...

94. Elaine May

Actress | Small Time Crooks

Elaine May (born under the name Elaine Iva Berlin) is an American actress, comedian, film director, playwright, and screenwriter from Philadelphia. Her professional career started in the 1950s and is still ongoing. She has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. She ...

95. June Lockhart

Actress | Lost in Space

Born in New York City on June 25, 1925, the daughter of actors Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Lockhart, June Lockhart made her professional debut at age eight in a Metropolitan Opera production of "Peter Ibbetson", playing Mimsey in the dream sequence. In the mid-1930s, the Lockharts relocated to ...

96. Roger Corman

Actor | The Silence of the Lambs

Roger William Corman was born April 5, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan. Initially following in his father's footsteps, Corman studied engineering at Stanford University but while in school, he began to lose interest in the profession and developed a growing passion for film. Upon graduation, he worked a...

97. Dabney Coleman

Actor | WarGames

For decades, Dabney Coleman has often appeared as a smarmy, selfish, nervous person, often with money, who is mostly out for himself. He did such a good job in this type of part that he's made a career of it in film.

Dabney Wharton Coleman was born in Austin, Texas, to Mary Wharton (Johns) and ...

98. Neile Adams

Actress | Fuzz

Neile Adams was born in Manila, the Philippine Islands on July 10, 1932 as María Ruby Neilam Arrastia y Salvador of Eurasian descent as her DNA attests. Her bloodline, to clarify erroneous reports, consists of 26% mixture of Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian, 7% Polynesian and 67% Spanish Basque and ...

99. Bill Daily

Actor | The Bob Newhart Show

Congenial, unassuming and always ingratiating comic actor Bill Daily came to fame as the bumbling, jittery playboy astronaut Roger Healy, best buddy and sidekick to Larry Hagman's accident-prone Tony Nelson in the perennial sitcom favourite I Dream of Jeannie (1965). Though his role had initially ...

100. Kim Novak

Actress | Vertigo

Kim Novak was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 13, 1933 with the birth name of Marilyn Pauline Novak. She was the daughter of a former teacher turned transit clerk and his wife, also a former teacher. Throughout elementary and high school, Kim did not get along well with teachers. She even ...