The Commonwealth Family

1. Kenneth More

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 ...

2. Keira Knightley

Actress | Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Keira Christina Knightley was born March 26, 1985 in the South West Greater London suburb of Richmond. She is the daughter of actor Will Knightley and actress turned playwright Sharman Macdonald. An older brother, Caleb Knightley, was born in 1979. Her father is English, while her Scottish-born ...

3. 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 ...

4. Gerard Butler

Actor | 300

Gerard James Butler was born in Paisley, Scotland, to Margaret and Edward Butler, a bookmaker. His family is of Irish origin. Gerard spent some of his very early childhood in Montreal, Quebec, but was mostly raised, along with his older brother and sister, in his hometown of Paisley. His parents ...

5. Richard Burton

Actor | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Probably best-remembered for his turbulent personal life with Elizabeth Taylor (whom he married twice), Richard Burton was nonetheless also regarded as an often brilliant British actor of the post-WWII period.

Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in 1925 into a Welsh (Cymraeg)-speaking family in ...

6. Donald Houston

Actor | Clash of the Titans

Sandy-haired Welsh actor who served in the RAF during World War II and hit paydirt and stardom with his first two British films, The Blue Lagoon (1949) with Jean Simmons, and A Run for Your Money (1949) with Sir Alec Guinness, maintaining his career with lesser distinction in bawdy comedies and ...

7. Liam Neeson

Actor | Kinsey

Liam Neeson was born on June 7, 1952 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, to Katherine (Brown), a cook, and Bernard Neeson, a school caretaker. He was raised in a Catholic household. During his early years, Liam worked as a forklift operator for Guinness, a truck driver, an assistant architect and an ...

8. Claude Rains

Actor | Casablanca

William Claude Rains, born in the Clapham area of London, was the son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains. The younger Rains followed, making his stage debut at the age of eleven in "Nell of Old Drury." Growing up in the world of theater, he saw not only acting up close but the down-to-earth...

9. Heath Ledger

Actor | Brokeback Mountain

When hunky, twenty-year-old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of little depth. He spent several years trying desperately to sway this image, but this was a double-edged sword. His work comprised ...

10. Mel Gibson

Actor | Braveheart

Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson was born January 3, 1956 in Peekskill, New York, USA, as the sixth of eleven children of Hutton Gibson, a railroad brakeman, and Anne Patricia (Reilly) Gibson (who died in December of 1990). His mother was Irish, from County Longford, while his American-born father is ...

11. Kylie Minogue

Soundtrack | Moulin Rouge!

Kylie Ann Minogue was born on 28 May, 1968. The eldest of three children, Kylie's acting career began early, but it was her role as "Charlene" in the Australian soap, Neighbours (1985), which established Kylie as an international star. Her singing career began, purely by accident, when a record ...

12. Nicole Kidman

Actress | Moulin Rouge!

Elegant Nicole Kidman, known as one of Hollywood's top Australian imports, was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were there on educational visas.

Kidman is the daughter of Janelle Ann (Glenny), a nursing instructor, and Antony David Kidman, a biochemist and clinical ...

13. Geoffrey Rush

Actor | The King's Speech

Geoffrey Roy Rush was born on July 6, 1951, in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, to Merle (Bischof), a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. His mother was of German descent and his father had English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. ...

14. Jai Courtney

Actor | Terminator Genisys

Jai Courtney is an Australian actor. He started his career with small roles in films and television series before being cast as Charlie in the action film Jack Reacher (2012). He has gone on to star in A Good Day to Die Hard (2013), I, Frankenstein (2014) and The Exception (2016).

Courtney had a ...

15. 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 ...

16. Rihanna

Actress | Battleship

Rihanna was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988 in Bridgetown, St. Michael, Barbados to Monica Braithwaite, an accountant & Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor. Her mother is Afro-Guyanese and her father is of Afro-Barbadian and British Isles ancestry. Rihanna lived the life of a normal ...

17. Eric Bana

Actor | Dirty John

Eric Bana was born Eric Banadinovic on August 9, 1968, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He is the younger of two brothers. His father, named Ivan Banadinovic, came from Zagreb, Croatia, and worked as a manager for Caterpillar Inc. His mother, named Eleanor Banadinovic, came from a German family ...

18. Percy Herbert

Actor | The Guns of Navarone

The massive brooding face and nose of British actor Percy Herbert is familiar to movie goers and TV audiences alike. A seemingly unlikely stage discovery by no one less than the great Dame Sybil Thorndike of British theater, Herbert moved into movie roles by the early 1950s. Initially fitting in as...

19. Ryan Gosling

Actor | Blue Valentine

Born Ryan Thomas Gosling on November 12, 1980, in London, Ontario, Canada, he is the son of Donna (Wilson), a secretary, and Thomas Ray Gosling, a traveling salesman. Ryan was the second of their two children, with an older sister, Mandi. His ancestry is French-Canadian, as well as English, ...

20. Walter Huston

Actor | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

For many years Walter Huston had two passions: his career as an engineer and his vocation for the stage. In 1909 he dedicated himself to the theatre, and made his debut on Broadway in 1924. In 1929 he journeyed to Hollywood, where his talent and ability made him one of the most respected actors in ...

21. Deanna Durbin

Actress | It Started with Eve

The girl who one day would be known as "Winnipeg's Sweetheart" was born at Grace Hospital on December 4, 1921, as Edna Mae Durbin. In her early childhood there were no obvious signs that one day she would be a bigger box office attraction than Shirley Temple. Renamed Deanna Durbin for show business...

22. Ann Rutherford

Actress | Gone with the Wind

Ann Rutherford was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The daughter of a former Metropolitan Opera singer, John Rutherford, and her actress mother, Lillian Mansfield, was destined for show business.

Not long after her birth, her family moved to California, where she made her stage debut in ...

23. 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 ...

24. 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 ...

25. Henry Wilcoxon

Actor | The Ten Commandments

Henry Wilcoxon was given the lead role of Marc Antony in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934). It would prove to be the beginning of a long relationship with DeMille he would become a familiar DeMille character actor and DeMille's associate producer in the later years of DeMille's career. However, ...

26. Boris Karloff

Actor | Bride of Frankenstein

Along with fellow actors Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, Boris Karloff is recognized as one of the true icons of horror cinema, and the actor most closely identified with the general public's perception of the "monster" from the classic Mary Shelley book, "Frankenstein". William Henry ...

27. 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 ...

28. Margaret Lockwood

Actress | The Lady Vanishes

Karachi-born Margaret Lockwood, daughter of a British colonial railway clerk, was educated in London and studied to be an actress at the Italia Conti Drama School. Her first moment on stage came at the age of 12, when she played a fairy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1928. She had a bit part in ...

29. Googie Withers

Actress | One of Our Aircraft Is Missing

Googie Withers began her acting career at the age of 12. She was dancing in the chorus in a West End revue when she was spotted by a Warner Brothers casting director. She went to do a screen test for them at the Riverside Studios and was invited to become an extra. On her first day at the filming of...

30. 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 ...

31. Merle Oberon

Actress | Wuthering Heights

Estelle Merle Thompson was born in India on February 19, 1911 of Welsh and Ceylonese (now Sri Lankan) descent. She was educated in that country until the age of 17, when she left for London. She began her career in British films with mostly forgettable roles or bit parts. She appeared in an ...

32. Cliff Richard

Soundtrack | Rocketman

Cliff Richard burst onto the rock'n'roll world in 1958 with his hit single 'Move It'. He was then known as Britain's answer to Elvis Presley. His first film was Serious Charge (1959) followed by Expresso Bongo (1959), Wonderful to Be Young! (1961) and Summer Holiday (1963).

The latter two films were...

33. Bob Marley

Soundtrack | I Am Legend

Bob Marley was born on February 6, 1945, in Nine Miles, Saint Ann, Jamaica, to Norval Marley and Cedella Booker. His father was a Jamaican of English descent. His mother was a black teenager. The couple were married in 1944 but Norval left for Kingston immediately after. Norval died in 1957, seeing...

34. Grace Jones

Actress | A View to a Kill

Grace Jones was born on May 19, 1948 in Spanish Town, St Catherine, Jamaica to Marjorie Jones (née Williams) and Reverend Robert W. Jones. When she was 12 she moved to Syracuse, New York, joining her family who had already moved there. She studied acting at Syracuse University and appeared in her ...

35. Michael Gough

Actor | Batman Forever

Tony Award-winning English actor Michael Gough, best known for playing the butler Alfred Pennyworth in the first four Batman (1989, 1992, 1995 & 1997) movies and for playing the arch-criminal Dr. Clement Armstrong in The Avengers (1961) episode "The Cybernauts", was an accomplished performer on ...

36. Michelle Yeoh

Actress | Everything Everywhere All at Once

Michelle Yeoh was born in Ipoh, Malaysia. She's the daughter of Janet Yeoh & Kian Teik Yeoh. She's of Hokkien descent, speaking English and Malay before Chinese. A ballet dancer since 4, she moved to London to study at the Royal Academy as a teen. After a brief dance career, she won the Miss ...

37. Joseph Calleia

Actor | Touch of Evil

His full name was Joseph Alexander Caesar Herstall Vincent Calleja - but he was better known as Joseph or Joe Calleia, one of Hollywood's most recognized bad guys. But Calleia's roots and talents ran much deeper than character actor. He was Maltese, born on that barren but historically important ...

38. Terry Camilleri

Actor | Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Terry Camilleri was born on November 7, 1949 in Malta. He is an actor, known for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), The Truman Show (1998) and Knowing (2009).

39. Melody Anderson

Actress | Flash Gordon

Melody Anderson was born on December 3, 1955 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is an actress, known for Flash Gordon (1980), Speed Zone (1989) and Dead & Buried (1981).

40. Ben Kingsley

Actor | Sexy Beast

Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. His father, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, was a Kenyan-born medical doctor, of Gujarati Indian descent, and his mother, Anna Lyna Mary (Goodman), was an English actress. Ben began to act in stage plays during ...

41. Russell Crowe

Actor | Les Misérables

Russell Ira Crowe was born in Wellington, New Zealand, to Jocelyn Yvonne (Wemyss) and John Alexander Crowe, both of whom catered movie sets. His maternal grandfather, Stanley Wemyss, was a cinematographer. Crowe's recent ancestry includes Welsh (where his paternal grandfather was born, in Wrexham),...

42. Anna Paquin

Actress | The Piano

Anna Paquin is the first millennial to have received an Academy Award nomination for acting, and the first to win.

She was born on July 24, 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Mary (Brophy), an English teacher from Wellington, New Zealand, and Brian Paquin, a Canadian phys-ed teacher. Anna moved ...

43. Sam Neill

Actor | Jurassic Park

Sam Neill was born in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland, to army parents, an English-born mother, Priscilla Beatrice (Ingham), and a New Zealand-born father, Dermot Neill. His family moved to the South Island of New Zealand in 1954. He went to boarding schools and then attended the universities ...

44. Naomi Watts

Actress | Mulholland Dr.

Naomi Ellen Watts was born on September 28, 1968 in Shoreham, England to Myfanwy Edwards "Miv" (Roberts), an antiques dealer and costume/set designer, and Peter Watts (Peter Anthony Watts), Pink Floyd's road manager. Her maternal grandfather was Welsh. Her father died when she was seven and she ...

45. Hugo Weaving

Actor | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Hugo Wallace Weaving was born on April 4, 1960 in Nigeria, to English parents Anne (Lennard), a tour guide and teacher, and Wallace Weaving, a seismologist. Hugo has an older brother, Simon, and a younger sister, Anna, who both also live and work in Australia. During his early childhood, the ...

46. Jet Li

Actor | Huo Yuan Jia

Jet Li born Li Lian Jie in Beijing, China. He started training at the Beijing wushu academy (wushu is China's national sport, largely a performance version of various martial art styles) at age eight. He won five gold medals in the Chinese championships, his first when he was only 11. In his teens,...

47. Julia Nickson

Actress | China Cry: A True Story

Julia Nickson was born on the beautiful island city of Singapore. Her early years were spent in the vales of Wiltshire, England, followed by the red rock canyons of the Zambezi river in Africa, but she returned to Singapore after her father's death, when she was six. From the age of seven to ...

48. 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 ...

49. Rhona Mitra

Actress | Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Mitra was born in Paddington, London, England, the daughter of Nora Downey and Anthony Mitra, a cosmetic surgeon. She has an older and a younger brother. Her father is of Bengali Indian and English descent, and her mother is Irish. In 1984, when Mitra was eight, her parents divorced, and she was ...

50. Basil Rathbone

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Basil Rathbone was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1892, but three years later his family was forced to flee the country because his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy at a time when Dutch-British conflicts were leading to the Boer War. The Rathbones escaped to England, ...

51. Charlize Theron

Producer | Monster

Charlize Theron was born in Benoni, a city in the greater Johannesburg area, in South Africa, the only child of Gerda Theron (née Maritz) and Charles Theron. She was raised on a farm outside the city. Theron is of Afrikaner (Dutch, with some French Huguenot and German) descent, and Afrikaner ...

52. Sidney James

Actor | Carry on Cleo

The star of the Carry On series of films, Sid James originally came to prominence as sidekick to the ground breaking British comedy actor Tony Hancock, on both radio and then television. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa and named Solomon Joel Cohen, James arrived in England in 1946, second wife ...

53. Alice Krige

Actress | Star Trek: First Contact

Alice Maud Krige was born on June 28, 1954 in Upington, South Africa where her father, Dr. Louis Krige, worked as a young physician. The Kriges later moved to Port Elizabeth where Alice grew up in what she describes as a "very happy family", a family that also included two brothers (both of whom ...

54. Juliet Prowse

Actress | Can-Can

Born in India to South African parents, Juliet studied to be a dancer from the age of 4. Attending the Royal Academy of Dance, by the time Juliet was 14, she was deemed too tall to enter the world of ballet. She signed as a chorus dancer with the London Palladium and then pursued a career as a ...

55. Richard E. Grant

Actor | Gosford Park

Richard E. Grant is an actor and presenter. He made his film debut as Withnail in the comedy Withnail and I (1987). Grant received critical acclaim for his role as Jack Hock in Marielle Heller's drama film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), winning various awards including the Independent Spirit ...

56. Marin Hinkle

Actress | The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Marin's parents met while serving in the Peace Corps. She was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, but her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, when she was four months old. Two years later, her brother Mark was born. Her father, Rodney, is a retired school teacher. Her mother, Margaret, is a judge ...

57. Freddie Mercury

Soundtrack | Flash Gordon

Freddie Mercury was born on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. His parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara, sent him off to a private school in India, from 1955 til 1963. In 1964, he and his family flew to England. In 1966 he started his education at the Ealing College of Art, where he graduated in 1969. He ...

58. Orlando Bloom

Actor | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Copeland Bloom was born on January 13, 1977 in Canterbury, Kent, England. His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine Bloom (née Copeland), was born in Kolkata, India, to an English family then-resident there. The man he first knew as his father, Harry Bloom, was a legendary ...

59. Donald Pleasence

Actor | Halloween II

Balding, quietly spoken, of slight build and possessed of piercing blue eyes -- often peering out from behind round, steel-rimmed glasses -- Donald Pleasence had the essential physical attributes which make a great screen villain. In the course of his lengthy career, he relished playing the ...

60. Stewart Granger

Actor | King Solomon's Mines

Stewart Granger was born James Lablache Stewart in London, the great grandson of the opera singer Luigi Lablache. He attended Epsom College but left after deciding not to pursue a medical degree. He decided to try acting and attended Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art, London. By 1935, he made ...

61. Peter O'Toole

Actor | Lawrence of Arabia

A leading man of prodigious talents, Peter O'Toole was born and raised in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, the son of Constance Jane Eliot (Ferguson), a Scottish nurse, and Patrick Joseph O'Toole, an Irish metal plater, football player and racecourse bookmaker. Upon leaving school, he decided to become a...

62. 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...

63. Richard Todd

Actor | The Hasty Heart

British leading man who achieved some success in American films, as well. Born in Ireland as the son of a British officer, Todd grew up in Devon and (for a brief time) in India and attended Shrewsbury Public School. His interest in theatre led him to small roles in stock in England and Scotland and...

64. Maureen O'Sullivan

Actress | The Thin Man

Of Irish, English, and Scottish descent, Maureen Paula O'Sullivan was born on May 17, 1911 in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland. Her father was Charles Joseph O'Sullivan, an officer in the Connaught Rangers, and his wife, the former Mary Fraser (or Frazer). She was educated at Catholic schools in ...

65. Lena Headey

Actress | 300

Lena Headey is a Bermudian-British actress. Headey is best known for her role as "Cersei Lannister" in Game of Thrones (2011) (2011-2019) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), Possession (2002), and The Remains of the Day (1993). Headey stars as "Queen Gorgo", a heroic Spartan woman in the period film, 300...

66. Robert Morley

Actor | The African Queen

Bushy-browed, triple-chinned and plummy-voiced English actor and raconteur of wide girth and larger-than-life personality. The son of a career army officer, Morley was expected to join the diplomatic corps. As a 'compromise', he tried his hand as a beer salesman. However, bitten by the acting bug ...

67. Status Quo

Soundtrack | Men in Black³

Status Quo is known for Men in Black³ (2012), Dead Fish (2005) and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019).

68. Temuera Morrison

Self | Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett

Temuera Derek Morrison is a New Zealand actor.

After training in drama under the New Zealand Special Performing Arts Training Scheme. One of his earliest starring roles was in the 1988 film Never Say Die, opposite Lisa Eilbacher. In 1994, he received attention for his role as the violent and abusive...

69. Mary Morris

Actress | The Prisoner

Mary first appeared on stage aged just 10. She received her formal training at the royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and went on to a long and distinguished career in film, television and the theatre. She toured Britain with her own theatrical touring company.

70. Errol Flynn

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Errol Flynn was born to parents Theodore Flynn, a respected biologist, and Marrelle Young, an adventurous young woman. Young Flynn was a rambunctious child who could be counted on to find trouble. Errol managed to have himself thrown out of every school in which he was enrolled. In his late teens ...

71. Arlen Escarpeta

Actor | The Oath

Arlen Escarpeta was born in Belize, Central America as Arlen Alexander Escarpeta. He is known for his work on Whitney (TV Movie) (2015), Final Destination 5 (2011), Into the Storm (2014) and Friday the 13th (2009). He currently resides in Los Angeles, California and has been able to make a name for...

72. Harry H. Corbett

Actor | Carry on Screaming!

Harry H Corbett (he added the "H" to avoid being confused with Sooty's friend) was born in Burma in 1925. His father was an officer in the army. His mother died when he was very young and he moved to England as a child and was brought up in Manchester by an aunt.

After his war service, he joined a ...

73. Kate Winslet

Actress | Titanic

Ask Kate Winslet what she likes about any of her characters, and the word "ballsy" is bound to pop up at least once. The British actress has made a point of eschewing straightforward pretty-girl parts in favor of more devilish damsels; as a result, she's built an eclectic resume that runs the gamut...

74. Omar Sharif

Actor | Lawrence of Arabia

Omar Sharif, the Egyptian actor best known for playing Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and the title role in Doctor Zhivago (1965), was born Michel Demitri Shalhoub on April 10, 1932 in Alexandria, Egypt to Joseph Shalhoub, a lumber merchant, and his wife, Claire (Saada). Of Lebanese and ...

75. Jackie Chan

Actor | Ngo si seoi

Hong Kong's cheeky, lovable and best-known film star, Jackie Chan endured many years of long, hard work and multiple injuries to establish international success after his start in Hong Kong's manic martial arts cinema industry.

Jackie was born Kong-sang Chan on April 7, 1954, on Hong Kong's famous ...

76. Chow Yun-Fat

Actor | Wo hu cang long

Chow Yun Fat is a charismatic, athletically built and energetic Asian-born film star who first came to the attention of western audiences via his roles in the high-octane/blazing guns action films of maverick HK director John Woo.

Chow was born in 1955 on the quiet island of Lamma, part of the ...

77. Arnold Vosloo

Actor | The Mummy

Arnold Vosloo was born in Pretoria, South Africa, to stage actor parents, Johanna Petronella Vorster and Johannes J. Daniel Vosloo. He is an Afrikaaner (of mostly Dutch, as well as German, Swiss-German, Danish, and French, descent).

Vosloo quickly established a fine reputation as an actor in his ...

78. Natalie Portman

Actress | Black Swan

Natalie Portman is the first person born in the 1980s to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (for Black Swan (2010)).

Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an ...

79. Alona Tal

Actress | Broken City

Alona Tal, an Israeli-American singer and actress, was born in Herzliya, Israel. She began her career after serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. Her big break came in 2003 starring in an Israeli film. At the time she also starred in two television series in the country, and also dabbled in music,...

80. Audrey Dalton

Actress | My Cousin Rachel

Dublin-born Audrey Dalton knew right from childhood that she wanted to be an actress: She appeared in school plays and (after the family's move to London) applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. While Dalton was at RADA, a London-based Paramount executive saw her in a play and asked her to ...

81. 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 ...

82. Alexander Siddig

Actor | Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Born in Sudan, Siddig was raised in Britain and attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA) where he studied acting and theater. Immediately after leaving LAMDA, Sid did a season of theater in Manchester, in addition to performing in various shows in pubs and small theaters. ...

83. Eddie Izzard

Actor | Ocean's Thirteen

Best-known for her surreal and digressive stand-up, British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard was born on February 7, 1962, in Aden, Yemen, where her English parents -- Dorothy Ella, a nurse and midwife, and Harold John Izzard, an accountant -- worked for British Petroleum.

Izzard worked as a street ...

84. 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 ...

85. Elizabeth Taylor

Actress | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early in her youth and kept the world hooked ...

86. Catherine Bell

Actress | Bruce Almighty

Catherine was born in London, but she moved to California with her Iranian mother at the age of two. Her mother still acts as her personal assistant. As a girl, she acted in various TV advertisements. She went to UCLA to study biology/ pre-medicine, but she dropped out to become a model in Japan. ...

87. Dennis Price

Actor | Kind Hearts and Coronets

This urbane, sourly handsome British actor was born to privilege and most of his roles would follow suit. Born Dennistoun John Franklyn Rose-Price in Berkshire in 1915, Dennis Price, the son of a brigadier-general, was expected to abide by his family wishes and make a career for himself in the army...

88. Cary Grant

Actor | North by Northwest

Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."

Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in ...

89. Roger Whittaker

Soundtrack | Calvary

Roger Whittaker came to renown as a guitarist, singer and songwriter, as well as possibly the best whistler in the business. His music, a mix of folk and pop songs, has sometimes been described as 'middle of the road'. Whittaker was at his peak in the late 1960s and 70s, his record sales eventually...

90. David McCallum

Actor | The Great Escape

Since David McCallum's father, David McCallum Sr., was first violinist for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and his mother, Dorothy Dorman, was a cellist, it's not surprising that David was originally headed for a career in music, playing oboe. He studied briefly at the Royal Academy of Music. He ...

91. Emily Watson

Actress | Gosford Park

Emily Watson was born and raised in London, the daughter of Katharine (Venables), an English teacher, and Richard Watson, an architect. After a self-described sheltered upbringing, Watson attended university for three years in Bristol, studying English literature. She applied to drama school and ...

92. Richard Attenborough

Actor | Jurassic Park

Richard Attenborough, Baron Attenborough of Richmond-upon-Thames, was born in Cambridge, England, the son of Mary (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College and wrote a ...

93. 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...

94. 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 ...

95. Hugh Jackman

Actor | Les Misérables

Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor, singer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer and producer. Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as superhero, period, and romance characters. He is best known for his long-running role as Wolverine in the X-Men film ...