Venezia: Volpi Cup

101. Annie Girardot

Over the course of a five-decade career, she starred in nearly 150 films. She is a three-time César Award winner (1977, 1996, 2002), a two-time Molière Award winner, a BAFTA nominee, and a recipient of several international prizes including the Volpi Cup (Best actress) at the 1965 Venice Film ...

1965: Trois chambres à Manhattan

102. Toshirô Mifune

Actor | Yôjinbô

Toshiro Mifune achieved more worldwide fame than any other Japanese actor of his century. He was born in Tsingtao, China, to Japanese parents and grew up in Dalian. He did not set foot in Japan until he was 21. His father was an importer and a commercial photographer, and young Toshiro worked in ...

X2 1965: Akahige (Red Beard) 1961: Yojimbo

103. Harriet Andersson

Actress | Viskningar och rop

Discovered at age 20 by celebrated director Ingmar Bergman, she became part of Bergman's regular stable of performers; in fact, he wrote Summer with Monika (1953) especially for her breakthrough. Extraordinary and versatile as an actress, her roles have ranged from the naive young wife in Sawdust ...

1964: Att älska (To love)

104. Tom Courtenay

Actor | 45 Years

Acting chameleon Sir Tom Courtenay, along with Sir Alan Bates and Albert Finney, became a front-runner in an up-and-coming company of rebel upstarts who created quite a stir in British "kitchen sink" cinema during the early '60s. An undying love for the theatre, however, had Courtenay channeling a ...

1964: For King and Country

105. Albert Finney

Actor | Murder on the Orient Express

The son of a Lancashire bookmaker, Albert Finney came to motion pictures via the theatre. In 1956, he won a scholarship to RADA where his fellow alumni included Peter O'Toole and Alan Bates. He joined the Birmingham Repertory where he excelled in plays by William Shakespeare. A member of the Royal ...

1963: Tom Jones

106. Delphine Seyrig

Actress | The Day of the Jackal

Delphine was born in Beirut on the 10th April 1932 into an intellectual Protestant family. Her Alsatian father, Henri Seyrig, was the director of the Archaeological Institute and later France's cultural attaché in New York during World War Two. Her Swiss mother, Hermine De Saussure, was an adept of...

1963: Muriel

107. 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 ...

1962: Birdman of Alcatraz

108. Emmanuelle Riva

Actress | Hiroshima mon amour

An only child, Emmanuelle was born Paulette Germaine Riva in Cheniménil, but eventually grew up in Remiremont. Her mother, Jeanne Fernande Nourdin, was a seamstress. Her father, René Alfred "Alfredo" Riva, was a sign writer. Her paternal grandfather was Italian. She dreamed of becoming an actress ...

1962: Thérèse Desquéyroux

109. Suzanne Flon

Actress | Moulin Rouge

Opulent French actress Suzanne Flon, who came from humble beginnings, evolved into a luminous stage and film star whose career lasted five decades. She was born near Paris, the daughter of a railway worker and a seamstress and at school developed an interest in writing poetry. Following high school...

1961: Tu ne tueras point (Thou shalt not kill)

110. 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 ...

1960: Whisky and Glory

111. Madeleine Robinson

Actress | À double tour

Madeleine Robinson grew up in a struggling working class background but found her métier as an actress after attending the theater school run by Charles Dullin, six years that she considered the happiest of her life. The stage would stay her main love even though she would lend her striking ...

1959: A double Tour

112. 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 ...

1959: Anatomy of a murder

113. Alec Guinness

Actor | Star Wars

Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence...

1958: The horse's mouth

114. Sophia Loren

Actress | La ciociara

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

1958: The black orchid

115. Anthony Franciosa

Actor | Tenebre

Franciosa was born Anthony Papaleo on October 25, 1928, in New York City. The son of a construction worker and seamstress who divorced when he was a year old, he seldom saw his father after this and never man really got to know the other. After graduating high school, during a visit to a YMCA to ...

1957: A hatful of rain

116. Dzidra Ritenberga

Actress | Malwa

Dzidra Ritenberga was born on August 29, 1928 in Mezildzere, Dundaga, Latvia. She was an actress and director, known for Malwa (1957), Crime and Punishment (1970) and Pats garakais salmins (1982). She was married to Evgeniy Urbanskiy. She died on March 9, 2003 in Riga, Latvia.

1957: Malva

117. Bourvil

Actor | The Longest Day

At the age of three, André Zacharie Raimbourg and his family moved to a town in the region of Normandy called Bourville. He finished school at the age of 15 and began to work as a baker. He was already playing harmonica, mandoline and cornet when he engaged himself in a village band. In the ...

1956: La traversée de Paris

118. Maria Schell

Actress | Superman

Maria Schell studied in a religious institution in Colmar (Haut-Rhin, France). She received a dramatic training in Zurich, Switzerland. To pay her studies, she was a secretary there. Besides being a film star; Maria appeared in plays in Zurich, Basel, in Vienna (Josefstad Theater), Berlin, Munich (...

1956: Gervaise

119. Curd Jürgens

Actor | The Spy Who Loved Me

Curd Jürgens (commonly billed as "Curt Jurgens" in anglophone countries) was one of the most successful European film actors of the 20th Century. He was born Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens on December 13, 1915, in Solln, Bavaria, in Hohenzollern Imperial Germany, a subject of Kaiser ...

1955: Les héros sont fatigués and The devil's General

120. 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 ...

1955: The Deep Blue Sea

121. Jean Gabin

Actor | La grande illusion

Jean-Alexis Moncorgé started his career with 15 years at the theatre and debuted at the "Moulin Rouge" in Paris in 1929. Despite of his rude aspect he knew to be the gentleman of the French cinema in the time between the two World Wars. One of his most popular personalities was inspector Maigret. ...

X2 1954: Hands off the loot and Air of Paris 1951: La nuit est mon royaume

122. Lilli Palmer

Actress | Anastasia - Die letzte Zarentochter

A charming, elegant, and exceedingly popular international film star with a gentle, understated beauty, actress Lilli Palmer was born as Lilli Marie Peiser on May 24, 1914, in Posen, Prussia. She was the daughter of Rose Lissman, an Austrian Jewish actress, and Alfred Peiser, a German Jewish ...

1953: The four poster bed

123. Henri Vilbert

Actor | Ali Baba et les 40 voleurs

Henri Vilbert was born on April 6, 1904 in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was an actor, known for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1954), Le bon Dieu sans confession (1953) and Madame Bovary (1934). He died on April 20, 1997 in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Alpes-Maritimes, France.

1953: Le bon Dieu sans confession

124. Fredric March

Actor | Inherit the Wind

Fredric March began a career in banking but in 1920 found himself cast as an extra in films being produced in New York. He starred on the Broadway stage first in 1926 and would return there between screen appearances later on. He won plaudits (and an Academy Award nomination) for his send-up of ...

1952: Death of a Salesman

125. Vivien Leigh

Actress | A Streetcar Named Desire

If a film were made of the life of Vivien Leigh, it would open in India just before World War I, where a successful British businessman could live like a prince. In the mountains above Calcutta, a little princess is born. Because of the outbreak of World War I, she is six years old the first time ...

1951: A streetcar named Desire

126. 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...

1950: Asphalt jungle

127. 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 ...

1950: Caged

128. 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...

1949: Portrait of Jennie

129. 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 ...

1949: The snake pit

130. Ernst Deutsch

Actor | The Third Man

Ernst Deutsch was born on September 16, 1890 in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]. He was an actor, known for The Third Man (1949), Der Prozeß (1948) and Isle of the Dead (1945). He was married to Anuschka Fuchs. He died on March 22, 1969 in West Berlin, West Germany.

1948: The Trial

131. Jean Simmons

Actress | Guys and Dolls

Demure British beauty Jean Simmons was born January 31, 1929, in Crouch End, London. As a 14-year-old dance student, she was plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in Give Us the Moon (1944). She had a small part as a harpist in the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra (...

1948: Hamlet

132. Pierre Fresnay

Actor | La grande illusion

Pierre Fresnay was born on April 4, 1897 in Paris, France. He was an actor and writer, known for The Grand Illusion (1937), The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942) and Monsieur Vincent (1947). He was married to Berthe Bovy and Rachel Bérendt. He died on January 9, 1975 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, ...

1947: Monsieur Vincent

133. Anna Magnani

Actress | Roma città aperta

Anna Magnani was born in Rome, Italy (not in Egypt, as some biographies claim), on March 7, 1908. She was the child of Marina Magnani and an unknown father often said to be from Alexandria, Egypt, but whom Anna herself claimed was from the Calabria region of Italy although she never knew his name. ...

1947: L'Onorevole Angelina

134. Fosco Giachetti

Actor | Bengasi

Fosco Giachetti was born on March 28, 1900 in Sesto Fiorentino, Tuscany, Italy. He was an actor, known for Bengasi (1942), We the Living (1942) and The Conformist (1970). He died on December 22, 1974 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

1942: Bengazi

135. Kristina Söderbaum

Actress | Kolberg

Kristina Söderbaum was born on 5 October 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a professor's daughter from Djursholm, Stockholm, Sweden. After graduation she went to Paris to learn French and by chance got a role in the short film Hur behandlar du din hund? (1934). In 1935, she studied history of art ...

1942: The golden city

136. Luise Ullrich

Actress | Annelie

Louise Ullrich was born in Vienna, the daughter of a major in the Austro/Hungarian Army. She studied at the Kunstakademie, and, while still a teenager, was contracted for two years by the Wiener Volkstheater where she enjoyed her first success on the stage. In late 1932, Louise received an ...

1941: Annelie

137. Ermete Zacconi

Actor | Don Buonaparte

Ermete Zacconi was born on September 14, 1857 in Montecchio Emilia, Italy. He was an actor, known for Don Buonaparte (1941), Processo e morte di Socrate (1939) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1943). He was married to Ines Zacconi. He died on October 14, 1948 in Viareggio, Italy.

1941: Don Buonaparte

138. 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 ...

1938: Pygmalion

139. Norma Shearer

Actress | The Divorcee

She won a beauty contest at age fourteen. In 1920 her mother, Edith Shearer, took Norma and her sister Athole Shearer (Mrs. Howard Hawks) to New York. Ziegfeld rejected her for his "Follies," but she got work as an extra in several movies. She spent much money on eye doctor's services trying to ...

1938: Marie Antoinette

140. Bette Davis

Actress | All About Eve

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but...

1937: Marked woman

141. Emil Jannings

Actor | The Last Command

His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company. Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last ...

1937: Der Herrscher

142. Annabella

Actress | Le million

At age 16, Annabella was chosen by Abel Gance to appear in Napoleon (1927). In the 30s, she became a star of French movies. She made movies in numerous other countries, before being called to Hollywood in 1938, where she met and married Tyrone Power. She remained in the USA until 1947. Then she ...

1936: Veille d'armes

143. 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 ...

1936: The story of Louis Pasteur

144. Pierre Blanchar

Actor | Crime et châtiment

Pierre Blanchar was born on June 30, 1892 in Philippeville, Constantine, France [now Skikda, Algeria]. He was an actor and director, known for Crime and Punishment (1935), The Man from Nowhere (1937) and Life Dances On (1937). He was married to Marthe Vinot. He died on November 21, 1963 in Suresnes...

1935: Crime et châtiment

145. Paula Wessely

Actress | Episode

Paula Wessely was born on January 20, 1907 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. She was an actress and producer, known for Episode (1935), Masquerade in Vienna (1934) and Maria Theresia (1951). She was married to Attila Hörbiger. She died on May 11, 2000 in Vienna, Austria.

1935: Episode