SCENE STEALERS

1. Bill Nunn

Commanding performer Bill Nunn made his feature debut in fellow Morehouse College graduate Spike Lee's School Daze (1988), but really etched himself into moviegoers' minds as a formidable screen presence in his second film with Lee, Do the Right Thing (1989), playing Radio Raheem, whose ...

2. Maggie Smith

Actress | Gosford Park

One of the world's most famous and distinguished actresses, Dame Maggie Smith was born Margaret Natalie Smith in Essex. Her Scottish mother, Margaret (Hutton), worked as a secretary, and her English father, Nathaniel Smith, was a teacher at Oxford University. Smith has been married twice: to actor ...

3. Joe Pesci

Actor | Goodfellas

Compact Italian-American actor Joe Pesci was born February 9, 1943 in Newark, New Jersey, to Mary (Mesce), a part-time barber, and Angelo Pesci, a bartender and forklift driver. Pesci first broke into entertainment as a child actor, and by the mid-1950s, was starring on the series "Star Time Kids"....

4. Beah Richards

Actress | Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Beah Richards left her native Vicksburg, Mississippi, for New York City in 1950. She would not acquire a significant role on stage until 1955,when she appeared in the off-Broadway show "Take a Giant Step" convincingly portraying an 84-year-old grandmother without using theatrical makeup. In 1962 ...

5. Owen Wilson

Actor | The Royal Tenenbaums

Self-proclaimed troublemaker Owen Cunningham Wilson was born in Dallas, to Irish-American parents originally from Massachusetts. He grew up in Texas with his mother, Laura (Cunningham), a photographer; his father, Robert Andrew Wilson, an ad exec; and his brothers, Andrew Wilson (the eldest) and ...

6. Maggie Cheung

Actress | Fa yeung nin wah

Maggie Cheung was born on September 20, 1964, in Hong Kong, and moved at the age of eight with her family to England. After finishing secondary school, she returned to Hong Kong, where she began modeling and appearing in commercials. In 1983 she participated in the Ms. Hong Kong pageant, winning ...

7. Dennis Hopper

Actor | Easy Rider

Multi-talented and unconventional actor/director regarded by many as one of the true "enfant terribles" of Hollywood who led an amazing cinematic career for more than five decades, Dennis Hopper was born on May 17, 1936, in Dodge City, Kansas. The young Hopper expressed interest in acting from a ...

8. Emily Blunt

Actress | Edge of Tomorrow

Emily Olivia Leah Blunt is a British actress known for her roles in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Young Victoria (2009), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and The Girl on the Train (2016), among many others.

Blunt was born on February 23, 1983, in Roehampton, South West London, England, the second of ...

9. Harvey Keitel

Actor | Reservoir Dogs

American actor and producer Harvey Keitel was born on May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Miriam (Klein) and Harry Keitel. An Oscar and Golden Globe Award nominee, he has appeared in films such as Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), Ridley Scott's The Duellists (...

10. Loretta Devine

Actress | Crash

Equally at home on stage and on screen, award-winning actress Loretta Devine has created some of the most memorable roles in theatre, film and television.

Devine first captured national attention in the role of Lorrell, one of the three original "Dreamgirls" in Michael Bennett's classic ...

11. Tim Curry

Actor | Congo

Timothy James Curry was born on April 19, 1946 in Grappenhall, Cheshire, England. His mother, Maura Patricia (Langmead), was a school secretary, and his father, James Curry, was a Methodist Royal Navy chaplain. Curry studied Drama and English at Birmingham University, from which he graduated with ...

12. Holland Taylor

Actress | Legally Blonde

Holland Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the third-born (and last) daughter of her mother, Virginia (Davis), a painter, and the only child of her father, C. Tracy Taylor, an attorney. She spent her teen years in nearby Allentown, PA, where Holland got the nickname, "Penny Taylor" ...

13. Chris Cooper

Actor | Adaptation.

Christopher Walton Cooper was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to Mary Ann (Walton), a homemaker, and Charles Sherwood Cooper, a cattleman and internist who served as a doctor in the US Air Force. His parents were from Texas, where Cooper was raised.

Educated at the University of Missouri school of ...

14. Harriet Sansom Harris

Actress | Licorice Pizza

Born in Texas, Harriet Sansom Harris got involved in acting as a youngster. At seventeen, Harris was accepted at New York's famed Juilliard School. Upon graduation, Harris joined The Acting Company, a repertory group formed by the first alumni of John Houseman's Drama Division of The Juilliard ...

15. Leslie Jordan

Actor | The Help

For such a diminutive (4' 11") frame, character actor Leslie (Allen) Jordan had a tall talent for scene-stealing. Hailing from the South, as his dead-giveaway drawl quickly exposed, he was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 29, 1955, and raised in a highly conservative, deeply religious ...

16. Faith Prince

Actress | The Last Dragon

For the past four decades, Faith Prince has dazzled audiences on both stage and screen in a variety of memorable comedic and dramatic roles. She quickly rose to Broadway fame after winning a Tony Award, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance as Miss Adelaide in Guys and ...

17. Dylan Baker

Actor | Happiness

Dylan Baker was born on October 7, 1959 in Syracuse, New York, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Happiness (1998), Revolutionary Road (2008) and Selma (2014). He has been married to Becky Ann Baker since September 6, 1987. They have one child.

18. Isla Fisher

Actress | Wedding Crashers

Isla Lang Fisher was born on February 3, 1976 in Muscat, Oman, to Scottish parents Elspeth Reid and Brian Fisher, who worked as a banker for the U.N. She spent her early childhood in Bathgate, Scotland, before moving to Perth, Australia with her family in the early 1980s. From a young age, Isla ...

19. Gabriel Mann

Actor | What/If

Gabriel Mann was born in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. He is an actor, known for What/If (2019), The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and Revenge (2011).

20. Marcia DeBonis

Actress | 13 Going on 30

Marcia DeBonis was born on June 4, 1960 in the USA. She is an actress and casting director, known for 13 Going on 30 (2004), Whatever Works (2009) and Letters to Juliet (2010).

21. Ray McKinnon

Writer | Rectify

Ray McKinnon is a writer, actor, director and producer. He served from 2012 through 2016 as creator, showrunner, writer and director of the Peabody Award winning, Sundance TV series, "Rectify."

As an actor, McKinnon has created a canon of unforgettable, offbeat and richly textured characters. In a ...

22. Sylvia Miles

Actress | Midnight Cowboy

Sylvia Miles was an American actress, born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York City. She was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, without ever winning the Award.

Miles was born under the name "Sylvia Scheinwald". Her parents were furniture maker Reuben Scheinwald ...

23. Philip Baker Hall

Actor | Magnolia

Philip Baker Hall was born in Toledo, Ohio, to Berdene (McDonald) and William Alexander Hall, a factory worker who was originally from Montgomery, Alabama. He did not start acting until he was 30 years old. Known to film fans for his turn as Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's one-man show film Secret...

24. Birdie M. Hale

Actress | Coming to America

Birdie M. Hale was born on April 7, 1912 in the USA. She was an actress, known for Coming to America (1988), Juice (1992) and Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). She died on June 4, 2009 in New York City, New York, USA.

25. Lou Jacobi

Actor | I.Q.

Lou Jacobi was born on December 28, 1913 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor, known for I.Q. (1994), Irma la Douce (1963) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972). He was married to Ruth Ludwin. He died on October 23, 2009 in Manhattan, New York ...

26. Helen Hanft

Actress | Arthur

Helen Hanft was born in The Bronx in New York City in 1934. She began her career on the stage in the late 1950s in theatre productions after studying drama at The Performing Arts High School. She transferred to Off-Off-Broadway productions, starring in a series of plays written by Tom Eyen. One of ...

27. Stan Shaw

Actor | The Monster Squad

Stan Shaw was born on July 14, 1952 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for The Monster Squad (1987), Cutthroat Island (1995) and Daylight (1996). He has been married to Dr. Zoe Shaw since June 30, 1994. They have four children.

28. Jennifer Coolidge

Actress | A Mighty Wind

Jennifer Coolidge is a versatile character actress and experimental comedienne, best known for playing Stifler's mom in American Pie (1999).

She was born on August 28, 1961, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, to Gretchen (Knauff) and Paul Constant Coolidge, a plastics manufacturer. Young Coolidge was ...

29. Giancarlo Esposito

Actor | Breaking Bad

Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to an Italian carpenter/stagehand father from Naples, Italy, and an African-American opera singer mother from Alabama. His parents, working in Europe at the time of his birth, settled in Manhattan by the time he was 6, and ...

30. Phyllis Somerville

Actress | Little Children

Phyllis Somerville was born on December 12, 1943 in Iowa City, Iowa, USA. She was an actress, known for Little Children (2006), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Stoker (2013). She died on July 16, 2020 in New York City, New York, USA.

31. Denholm Elliott

Actor | A Room with a View

Denholm entered RADA at the age of 17, but dropped out after a year having hated every minute being there. He joined the RAF in 1940, trained as a gunner/radio operator, and was shot down over Germany in 1942. In the POW camp he and his fellow prisoners staged various productions in a theatre ...

32. Margo Martindale

Actress | August: Osage County

Margo Martindale was born July 18, 1951 in Jacksonville, Texas, to Margaret (Pruitt) and William Everett Martindale, a lumber company owner and dog handler. She is the youngest of three children, and the only daughter. Margo attended Lon Marris College, and later transferred to University of ...

33. Mildred Natwick

Actress | The Trouble with Harry

A disarming character lady quite capable of scene-stealing, Mildred Natwick was a well-rounded talent with distinctively dowdy features and idiosyncratic tendencies who, over a six-decade period, assembled together a number of unforgettable matrons on stage and (eventually) film and TV. Whimsical, ...

34. Mark Margolis

Actor | Pi

Mark Margolis was an American actor who is well-known for his collaborations with film director Darren Aronofsky, particularly Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), Noah (2014), Black Swan (2010), and The Fountain (2006). Margolis also gained notoriety for his portrayal of "Tio" Hector Salamanca ...

35. Melissa McCarthy

Actress | The Heat

Melissa McCarthy was born in Plainfield, Illinois, to Sandra and Michael McCarthy, and was raised on her family's corn and soybean farm. She began her performing career as a stand-up comedian in New York where she appeared at the famous clubs, Stand Up New York and The Improv. She worked on her ...

36. Brad Dourif

Actor | The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Gaunt character actor Brad Dourif was born Bradford Claude Dourif on March 18, 1950 in Huntington, West Virginia. He is the son of Joan Mavis Felton (Bradford) and Jean Henri Dourif, a French-born art collector who owned and operated a dye factory. His father died when Dourif was three years old, ...

37. Anika Noni Rose

Actress | The Princess and the Frog

Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose recently finished filming the lead role of the pilot episode Beast Mode (TBS / Macro), which is based on life of legendary boxing trainer Ann Wolfe. Anika is also serving as Co-Executive Producer.

In 2018, Anika starred in the title role of 'Carmen Jones' in John ...

38. John Turturro

Actor | Fading Gigolo

Highly talented, lightly built American actor who always looks unsettled and jumpy has become a favourite of cult/arthouse film aficionados with his compelling performances in a broad range of cinematic vehicles.

Turturro was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian-American parents, Katherine (...

39. Bea Arthur

Actress | The Golden Girls

Actress-comedienne Bea Arthur was born Bernice Frankel on May 13, 1922 in New York City to a Jewish family. She grew up in Maryland, where her parents ran a dress shop. At 12 years old, she was the tallest girl in her school at 5'9".

She earned the title of "Wittiest Girl" in her school, and her ...

40. John Heard

Actor | The Guardian

John Heard was a very talented actor who established himself as a respected thespian in the late 1970s and early '80s, though he is perhaps better known for his turn as Peter McCallister, Kevin McCallister's (Macaulay Culkin) father in the Home Alone (1990) movies.

John was born in Washington, D.C.,...

41. Melissa Leo

Actress | The Fighter

Melissa Leo is an American actress. She is known for her Academy Award-winning performance in the 2010 film The Fighter (2010). She was born on September 14, 1960, in New York City. Leo starred as the mother of boxer Micky Ward in the 2010 film The Fighter, also starring Mark Wahlberg. The role ...

42. Andre Braugher

Actor | Homicide: Life on the Street

Many actors have attempted to crack both genres of drama and comedy. Few have succeeded, among them the genial Andre Braugher (pronounced 'Ahn-drey Braw-ger'). A two-time Emmy Award winner, he is especially remembered for two seminal roles: as the intense, often explosive Detective Frank Pembleton ...

43. Glenne Headly

Actress | Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

For fourteen years, she said that family was the most important thing to her and she set most of her time aside to be a "present" mother to her son. Movies, plays and television were chosen, for the most part, when they occurred in town or on a school break. She took one year to homeschool her son ...

44. Vince Vaughn

Producer | The Break-Up

Vincent Anthony Vaughn was born on March 28, 1970, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, and was raised in Lake Forest, Illinois. His parents, Vernon Vaughn (a salesman and character actor), and Sharon Vaughn, née Sharon Eileen DePalmo (a real-estate agent and stockbroker) divorced in 1991. He has two ...

45. Lake Bell

Actress | In a World...

Lake Siegel Bell is an American actress, screenwriter and director. She has starred in various television series, including Boston Legal (2004-2006), Surface (2005-2006), How to Make It in America (2010-2011), Childrens Hospital (2008-2016), and Bless This Mess (2019-2020) and in films including ...

46. Irrfan Khan

Actor | The Lunchbox

Born Sahabzade Irfan Ali Khan, in Jaipur, Rajasthan (NW India) January 7, 1967 to a Pashto-speaking Muslim family. Khan's mother, Begum Khan, was from the Tonk Hakim family and his father, Jagirdar Khan, from the Khajuriya village near the Tonk district, ran a tire business.

The Khan family name ...

47. Rutina Wesley

Actress | True Blood

Rutina Wesley is known for the character Tara Thorton, on the gritty Southern vampire drama, True Blood (2008). She was born in the city most renowned for glitz and glamour, Las Vegas, Nevada and was exposed to the arts at a very early age; in fact entertainment runs through her veins. Her father, ...

48. 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,...

49. Laurie Metcalf

Actress | Lady Bird

Laurie Metcalf was born June 16, 1955 in Carbondale, Illinois, the oldest of three children of Libby (Mars), a librarian, and James Metcalf, a budget director. She was raised in Edwardsville, Illinois. Laurie attended Illinois State University, where she obtained her bachelor of arts in theater in ...

50. John Hurt

Actor | Nineteen Eighty-Four

One of stage, screen and TV's finest transatlantic talents, slight, gravel-voiced, pasty-looking John Vincent Hurt was born on January 22, 1940, in Shirebrook, a coal mining village, in Derbyshire, England. The youngest child of Phyllis (Massey), an engineer and one-time actress, and Reverend ...

51. Alfre Woodard

Actress | Star Trek: First Contact

Alfre Woodard was born on November 8, 1952 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the youngest of three children of Constance, a homemaker, and Marion H. Woodard, an interior designer. She was named by her godmother, who claimed she saw a vision of Alfre's name written out in gold letters. A former high school ...

52. Katherine LaNasa

Actress | The Campaign

Actress, former ballet dancer and choreographer Katherine LaNasa was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and originally trained as a ballet dancer, but had attended the North Carolina School of Arts, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as well as the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York. In 1989, she ...

53. Philip Seymour Hoffman

Actor | The Master

Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport to Marilyn (Loucks), a lawyer and judge, and Gordon Stowell Hoffman, a Xerox employee, and was mostly of German, Irish, English and Dutch ancestry. After becoming involved in ...

54. Chris Messina

Actor | Argo

Chris Messina was born on August 11, 1974 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Argo (2012), Away We Go (2009) and Devil (2010). He is married to Jennifer Todd. They have two children. He was previously married to Rosemarie DeWitt.

55. Mary Pat Gleason

Actress | Intolerable Cruelty

Mary Pat Gleason was born on February 23, 1950 in Lake City, Minnesota, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for Intolerable Cruelty (2003), The Crucible (1996) and A Cinderella Story (2004). She died on June 2, 2020 in Burbank, California, USA.