Favourite Actors

by barbaricavatar | created - 02 Dec 2018 | updated - 2 months ago | Public

Actors whose character portrayals I usually enjoy (In a vague order)

See also: Favourite Actresses And: The Worst Actors/Actresses The Hot List

1. Denzel Washington

Actor | Fences

Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. was born on December 28, 1954 in Mount Vernon, New York. He is the middle of three children of a beautician mother, Lennis, from Georgia, and a Pentecostal minister father, Denzel Washington, Sr., from Virginia. After graduating from high school, Denzel enrolled at ...

2. Gregory Peck

Actor | To Kill a Mockingbird

Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child...

3. Dwayne Johnson

Actor | Black Adam

Dwayne Douglas Johnson, also known as The Rock, was born on May 2, 1972 in Hayward, California. He is the son of Ata Johnson (born Feagaimaleata Fitisemanu) and professional wrestler Rocky Johnson (born Wayde Douglas Bowles). His father, from Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada, is black (of Black Nova ...

4. Matthew McConaughey

Actor | Interstellar

American actor and producer Matthew David McConaughey was born in Uvalde, Texas. His mother, Mary Kathleen (McCabe), is a substitute school teacher originally from New Jersey. His father, James Donald McConaughey, was a Mississippi-born gas station owner who ran an oil pipe supply business. He is ...

5. Harrison Ford

Actor | Raiders of the Lost Ark

Harrison Ford was born on July 13, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, to Dorothy (Nidelman), a radio actress, and Christopher Ford (born John William Ford), an actor turned advertising executive. His father was of Irish and German ancestry, while his maternal grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Minsk, ...

6. Tom Hanks

Producer | Cast Away

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born in Concord, California, to Janet Marylyn (Frager), a hospital worker, and Amos Mefford Hanks, an itinerant cook. His mother's family, originally surnamed "Fraga", was entirely Portuguese, while his father was of mostly English ancestry. Tom grew up in what he has ...

7. Tom Cruise

Actor | Top Gun

In 1976, if you had told fourteen-year-old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be Tom Cruise, one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to join the priesthood. ...

8. Chris Hemsworth

Actor | Snow White and the Huntsman

Christopher "Chris" Hemsworth was born on August 11, 1983 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia to Leonie Hemsworth (née van Os), an English teacher & Craig Hemsworth, a social-services counselor. His brothers are actors, Liam Hemsworth & Luke Hemsworth; he is of Dutch (from his immigrant maternal ...

9. Jeff Bridges

Actor | The Big Lebowski

Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born on December 4, 1949 in Los Angeles, California, the son of well-known film and TV star Lloyd Bridges and his long-time wife Dorothy Dean Bridges (née Simpson). He grew up amid the happening Hollywood scene with big brother Beau Bridges. Both boys popped up, without ...

10. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Actor | Terminator 2: Judgment Day

With an almost unpronounceable surname and a thick Austrian accent, who would have ever believed that a brash, quick talking bodybuilder from a small European village would become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, marry into the prestigious Kennedy family, amass a fortune via shrewd investments and...

11. Timothy Dalton

Actor | The Living Daylights

At a consistently lean 6' 2", green-eyed Timothy Dalton may very well be one of the last of the dying breed of swashbuckling, classically trained Shakespearean actors who have forged simultaneous successful careers in theater, television and film. He has been comparison-shopped roundly for stepping...

12. 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 ...

13. Alan Tudyk

Actor | Rogue One

Alan Tudyk was born in El Paso, Texas, but grew up in Plano, where he attended Plano Sr. High. In 1990, he went on to study drama at Lon Morris Jr. College. While there, he was awarded the Academic Excellence Award for Drama. He was also named Most Likely to Succeed and Sophomore Beau. During this ...

14. 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 ...

15. Steve Carell

Actor | The Office

Steve Carell, one of America's most versatile comics, was born Steven John Carell on August 16, 1962, in Concord, Massachusetts. He is the son of Harriet Theresa (Koch), a psychiatric nurse, and Edwin A. Carell, an electrical engineer. His mother was of Polish descent and his father of Italian and ...

16. Michael McKean

Actor | This Is Spinal Tap

McKean was born in New York City at Manhattan Women's Hospital, now part of the Mt. Sinai St. Luke's complex on Amsterdam Avenue. He is the son of Ruth Stewart McKean, a librarian, and Gilbert S. McKean, one of the founders of Decca Records, and was raised in Sea Cliff, New York, on Long Island. ...

17. Rowan Atkinson

Actor | Johnny English

Rowan Sebastian Atkinson was born on 6 January, 1955, in Consett, Co. Durham, UK, to Ella May (Bainbridge) and Eric Atkinson. His father owned a farm, where Rowan grew up with his two older brothers, Rupert and Rodney. He attended Newcastle University and Oxford University where he earned degrees ...

18. 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,...

19. Leonardo DiCaprio

Actor | Inception

Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s,...

20. Sharlto Copley

Actor | District 9

Sharlto Copley was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Linda Stocks and Bruce Copley, a former university professor. His childhood dreams of acting were put on hold for many years when his television production company was one of few in his native South Africa granted licensing to create content...

21. 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 ...

22. Nathan Fillion

Actor | Castle

Nathan Fillion was born on 27 March 1971 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is the son of Cookie (Early) and Bob Fillion, both retired English teachers, and has an older brother, Jeff. His father is of French-Canadian descent, and his mother is of English, German, Finnish, and Norwegian ancestry. In ...

23. Colin Firth

Actor | A Single Man

Colin Andrew Firth was born into an academic family in Grayshott, Hampshire, England. His mother, Shirley Jean (Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at the Open University, and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, lectured on history at Winchester University College (formerly King Alfred's...

24. Sam Rockwell

Actor | Moon

Sam Rockwell was born on November 5, 1968, in San Mateo, California, the only child of two actors, Pete Rockwell and Penny Hess. The family moved to New York when he was two years old, living first in the Bronx and later in Manhattan. When Sam was five years old, his parents separated, at which ...

25. Eric Close

Actor | American Sniper

Eric was born in Staten Island, New York, May 24. His father is an orthopedic surgeon and his mother is an artist. Eric is the eldest of three brothers. He graduated with a B.A. in communications from the University of Southern California in 1989. He married Keri Moyers in 1995 and they have two ...

26. Michael York

Actor | Logan's Run

Michael York was born in Fulmer, England, 27 March 1942. He performed on stage with the National Youth Theatre in London's East End and on international tour. Other early acting experience came through the Oxford University Dramatic Society (he graduated from Oxford in1964), the Dundee Repertory, ...

27. Samuel L. Jackson

Actor | Pulp Fiction

Samuel L. Jackson is an American producer and highly prolific actor, having appeared in over 100 films, including Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Unbreakable (2000), Shaft (2000), Formula 51 (2001), Black Snake Moan (2006), Snakes on a Plane (2006), and the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999-2005), ...

28. Keanu Reeves

Actor | The Matrix

Keanu Charles Reeves, whose first name means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian, was born September 2, 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon. He is the son of Patric Reeves, a showgirl and costume designer, and Samuel Nowlin Reeves, a geologist. Keanu's father was born in Hawaii, of British, Portuguese...

29. Chris Pratt

Actor | Guardians of the Galaxy

Christopher Michael "Chris" Pratt was born on June 21, 1979 in Virginia, Minnesota and raised in Lake Stevens, Washington, to Kathleen Louise (Indahl), who worked at a supermarket, and Daniel Clifton Pratt, who remodeled houses. He is of mostly Norwegian descent. He graduated from Lake Stevens High...

30. Stephen Merchant

Producer | Extras

Stephen James Merchant is an English actor, comedian, director, presenter and writer.

Alongside Ricky Gervais, Merchant was the co-writer and co-director of the British TV comedy series The Office (2001-2003), and co-writer, co-director, and co-star of both Extras (2005-2007) and Life's Too Short (...

31. Idris Elba

Actor | Beasts of No Nation

An only child, Idrissa Akuna Elba was born and raised in London, England. His father, Winston, is from Sierra Leone and worked at Ford Dagenham; his mother, Eve, is from Ghana and had a clerical duty. Idris attended school in Canning Town, where he first became involved in acting, before he dropped...

32. Daniel Craig

Actor | Casino Royale

One of the British theatre's most famous faces, Daniel Craig, who waited tables as a struggling teenage actor with the National Youth Theatre, has gone on to star as James Bond in Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021).

He was born ...

33. Matt Damon

Actor | Good Will Hunting

Matthew Paige Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Kent Damon, a stockbroker, realtor and tax preparer, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Matt has an older brother, Kyle, a sculptor. His father was of English and ...

34. Henry Cavill

Actor | Man of Steel

Henry William Dalgliesh Cavill was born on the Bailiwick of Jersey, a British Crown dependency in the Channel Islands. His mother, Marianne (Dalgliesh), a housewife, was also born on Jersey, and is of Irish, Scottish and English ancestry. Henry's father, Colin Richard Cavill, a stockbroker, is of ...

35. Robert Redford

Actor | The Natural

Born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, to Charles Robert Redford, an accountant for Standard Oil, and Martha Redford, Charles Robert Redford, Jr. was a scrappy kid who stole hubcaps in high school and lost his college baseball scholarship at the University of Colorado because of ...

36. Peter Cushing

Actor | Star Wars

Peter Wilton Cushing was born on May 26, 1913 in Kenley, Surrey, England, to Nellie Maria (King) and George Edward Cushing, a quantity surveyor. He and his older brother David were raised first in Dulwich Village, a south London suburb, and then later back in Surrey. At an early age, Cushing was ...

37. Simon Pegg

Actor | The World's End

English actor, writer, and comedian Simon Pegg was born Simon John Beckingham in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, to Gillian Rosemary (Smith), a civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician. His parents divorced when he was seven. He later took his stepfather's surname "Pegg." He was ...

38. Kevin Hart

Actor | Ride Along

Kevin Darnell Hart is an African-American comedian and actor who is known for his roles in the Jumanji sequels including Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019), Undeclared (2001), Scary Movie 3 (2003), Think Like a Man (2012), Ride Along (2014), The Secret Life of ...

39. Frank Finlay

Actor | Lifeforce

One of Britain's finest products of the stage, film and TV, actor Frank Finlay, he with the dark and handsomely serious-to-mordant looks, was born on August 6, 1926, in Farnworth, England, the son of Josiah, a butcher, and Margaret Finlay. Of English, Irish and Scottish descent, Frank attended St. ...

40. Chris O'Dowd

Actor | Bridesmaids

Christopher "Chris" O'Dowd (born 9 October, 1979) is an Irish actor and comedian best known for his role as Roy Trenneman in the Channel 4 comedy The IT Crowd (2006). O'Dowd created and is starring in the Sky 1 television series Moone Boy (2012). He had a recurring role on the drama series Girls (...

41. 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 ...

42. Daniel Brühl

Actor | Rush

Daniel Brühl was born in Barcelona, Spain. His father was German TV director Hanno Brühl (1937-2010), who was born in São Paulo, Brazil. His Spanish mother was a teacher. He also has a brother and a sister, Oliver and Miriam. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Cologne, Germany, where he ...

43. Bruce Campbell

Actor | Bubba Ho-Tep

In 1979 with his Detroit friends, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell raised $350,000 for a low-budget film, The Evil Dead (1981), in which he starred and co-executive produced. Completed piecemeal over four years, the film first gained notoriety in England where it became the best-selling ...

44. Al Pacino

Actor | Serpico

Alfredo James "Al" 'Pacino established himself as a film actor during one of cinema's most vibrant decades, the 1970s, and has become an enduring and iconic figure in the world of American movies.

He was born April 25, 1940 in Manhattan, New York City, to Italian-American parents, Rose (nee Gerardi)...

45. Clint Eastwood

Actor | Million Dollar Baby

Clinton Eastwood Jr. 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 Margaret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took ...

46. Michael Palin

Writer | Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Michael Palin is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter. He was one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python.

After the Monty Python television series ended in 1974, the Palin/Jones team worked on Ripping Yarns, an intermittent television comedy series broadcast over ...

47. Bill Hader

Actor | The Skeleton Twins

Bill Hader is an American comedian and actor who is known for playing in Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2013. He created and starred in the HBO show Barry. He also played Flint Lockwood from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Colonel Custer from Night at the Museum 2, Fear from Inside Out and ...

48. James Marsden

Actor | Hairspray

James Paul Marsden, or better known as just James Marsden, was born on September 18, 1973, in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to Kathleen (Scholz) and James Luther Marsden. His father, a distinguished Professor of Animal Sciences & Industry at Kansas State University, and his mother, a nutritionist, divorced...

49. Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Actor | Watchmen

Jeffrey Dean Morgan endeared himself to audiences with his recurring role on ABC's smash hit series Grey's Anatomy (2005). His dramatic arc as heart patient Denny Duquette, who wins the heart of intern Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) in a star-crossed romance, made him a universal fan favorite. He ...

50. Peter Stormare

Actor | Fargo

Peter Stormare was born in Arbrå, Gävleborgs län, Sweden, to Gunhild (Holm) and Karl Ingvar Storm. He began his acting career at the Royal National Theatre of Sweden, performing for eleven years. In 1990 he became the Associate Artistic Director at the Tokyo Globe Theatre and directed productions ...

51. Fred Willard

Actor | Best in Show

Fred Willard radiated a unique charm that established him as one of the industry's most gifted comic actors, first coming to prominence as ambitious but dimwitted sidekick Jerry Hubbard to Martin Mull's smarmy talk-show host Barth Gimble in the devastating satirical series Fernwood Tonight (1977). ...

52. Mark Ruffalo

Actor | Spotlight

Award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo was born on November 22, 1967, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, of humble means to father Frank Lawrence Ruffalo, a construction painter and Marie Rose (Hebert), a stylist and hairdresser; his father's ancestry is Italian and his mother is of half French-Canadian and half ...

53. Ryan Reynolds

Actor | Deadpool 2

Ryan Rodney Reynolds was born on October 23, 1976 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the youngest of four children. His father, James Chester Reynolds, was a food wholesaler, and his mother, Tamara Lee "Tammy" (Stewart), worked as a retail-store saleswoman. He has Irish and Scottish ancestry. ...

54. Will Ferrell

Producer | Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

John William Ferrell was born in Irvine, California, to Betty Kay (Overman), a teacher, and Roy Lee Ferrell, Jr., a musician. His parents were originally from Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.

A graduate of the University of Southern California, Ferrell became interested in performing while a student ...

55. Ed Helms

Actor | The Hangover

Edward Parker Helms is an American actor, comedian, writer and singer from Atlanta, Georgia who is known for playing the preppy Cornell alumni Andy "Nard Dog" Bernard from The Office and Stuart Price from The Hangover trilogy. He also acted in Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, The Lorax, ...

56. George Clooney

Actor | The Ides of March

George Timothy Clooney was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky, to Nina Bruce (née Warren), a former beauty pageant queen, and Nick Clooney, a former anchorman and television host (who was also the brother of singer Rosemary Clooney). He has Irish, English, and German ancestry. Clooney ...

57. Gary Cole

Actor | Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Gary Michael Cole is an American television, film and voice actor. Cole began his professional acting career on stage at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1985. On television, he has had starring roles in the TV series Midnight Caller, American Gothic, The West Wing, Crusade, The Good Wife, ...

58. Misha Collins

Actor | Supernatural

Misha Collins is an actor, director, producer, writer, and activist dedicated to inspiring cultural and civic engagement through works that "game-ify" philanthropy, inspire creativity, and promote social good.

For 12 years, Collins co-starred in Supernatural (2005), the longest running American ...

59. Leslie Nielsen

Actor | Airplane!

Leslie William Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, and raised in Tulita (formerly Fort Norman), Northwest Territories. His mother, Mabel Elizabeth (Davies), was Welsh. His father, Ingvard Eversen Nielsen, was a Danish-born Mountie and a strict disciplinarian. Leslie studied at the Academy of ...

60. Jason Statham

Actor | Crank

Jason Statham was born in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, to Eileen (Yates), a dancer, and Barry Statham, a street merchant and lounge singer. He was a Diver on the British National Diving Team and finished twelfth in the World Championships in 1992. He has also been a fashion model, black market salesman ...

61. Clancy Brown

Actor | The Shawshank Redemption

A tall, wavy-haired US actor with a deep, resonant voice, Clancy Brown has proven himself a versatile performer with first-class contributions to theatre, feature films, television series and even animation.

Clarence J. Brown III was born in 1959 in Urbana, Ohio, to Joyce Helen (Eldridge), a concert...

62. Martin Landau

Actor | Ed Wood

Oscar-winning character actor Martin Landau was born on June 20, 1928, in Brooklyn, New York. At age 17, he was hired by the New York Daily News to work in the promotions department before he became a staff cartoonist and illustrator. In his five years on the paper, he served as the illustrator for ...

63. Leland Orser

Actor | Taken

Leland Orser was born on August 6, 1960 in San Francisco, California, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Taken (2008), Se7en (1995) and Alien: Resurrection (1997). He has been married to Jeanne Tripplehorn since October 14, 2000. They have one child. He was previously married to Roma Downey...

64. Greg Kinnear

Actor | As Good as It Gets

Greg Kinnear was born on June 17, 1963, in Logansport, Indiana, USA to Edward Kinnear, a career diplomat with the US State Department, and Suzanne (nee Buck) Kinnear, a homemaker. He has two brothers -- James, vice president-investments at Wachovia Securities in Arizona who was born in 1957, and ...

65. Scott Bakula

Actor | Quantum Leap

Scott Stewart Bakula was born on October 9, 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, to Sally (Zumwinkel) and J. Stewart Bakula, a lawyer. He is of German, as well as Czech, Austrian, Scottish and English ancestry. He comes from a musical family. In the fourth grade, he started a rock band and wrote songs for ...

66. Aaron Eckhart

Actor | The Dark Knight

Aaron Edward Eckhart is an American actor. Born in Cupertino, California, Eckhart moved to the United Kingdom at an early age, when his father relocated the family. Several years later, he began his acting career by performing in school plays, before moving to Australia for his high school senior ...

67. Keith David

Actor | The Princess and the Frog

Keith David is a classically trained actor, winning 3 Emmys out of 6 nominations as well as being nominated for a Tony award. He starred in the recently concluded TV series "Greenleaf" for Oprah Winfrey's OWN network. Upcoming films include "Horizon Line" with Allison Williams ("Get Out") and "...

68. J.K. Simmons

Actor | Whiplash

J.K. Simmons is an American actor.

He was born Jonathan Kimble Simmons in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, to Patricia (Kimble), an administrator, and Donald William Simmons, a music teacher. He attended the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; University of Montana, Missoula, MT (BA in Music).

He had ...

69. John David Washington

Actor | Tenet

John David Washington is an American actor, producer, and former professional football player. He played college football at Morehouse College and signed with the St. Louis Rams as an Undrafted free agent in 2006. Professionally, Washington spent four years as the running back for the United ...



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