Great TV Sitcom (& Britcom) Actors
by jeffhchambers | created - 01 Feb 2014 | updated - 9 months ago | PublicAll-Time Personal Favorites From American And British Television
1. Lucille Ball
Actress | I Love Lucy
The woman who will always be remembered as the crazy, accident-prone, lovable Lucy Ricardo was born Lucille Desiree Ball on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York, the daughter of Desiree Evelyn "DeDe" (Hunt) and Henry Durrell "Had" Ball. Her father died before she was four, and her mother worked ...
2. Jackie Gleason
Actor | The Hustler
Comedian, actor, composer and conductor, educated in New York public schools. He was a master of ceremonies in amateur shows, a carnival barker, daredevil driver and a disc jockey, and later a comedian in night clubs. By the mid-1950s he had turned to writing original music and recording a series ...
3. Art Carney
Actor | Harry and Tonto
Art Carney was an American actor with a lengthy career but is primarily remembered for two roles. In television, Carney played municipal sewer worker Ed Norton in the influential sitcom "The Honeymooners" (1955-1956). In film, Carney played senior citizen Harry Coombes in the road movie "Harry and ...
4. Audrey Meadows
Actress | The Honeymooners
Audrey Meadows was born in New York City as Audrey Cotter, the youngest of four children. After she was born, her family returned to Wu'chang, China, where they worked as missionaries. Her family returned to the US and settled in New England when Audrey was age 6, and she and sister Jayne Meadows ...
5. Ken Osmond
Actor | Leave It to Beaver
Forever tagged as the unctuous, trouble-making truant Eddie Haskell on the quintessential 50s family show Leave It to Beaver (1957), actor Ken Osmond did not manage much of a career after the stereotype. So inextricably typed was he that he gave up on any semblance of a career within a short time ...
6. Don Knotts
Actor | The Andy Griffith Show
Don Knotts, the legendary television character actor, was born Jesse Donald Knotts on July 21, 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia, to William Jesse Knotts and the former Elsie Luzetta Moore. He was the youngest of four sons in a family that had been in America since the 17th century.
His first stint ...
7. 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 ...
8. Mary Tyler Moore
Actress | Ordinary People
Mary Tyler Moore was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on December 29, 1936. Moore's family relocated to California when she was eight. Her childhood was troubled, due in part to her mother's alcoholism. The eldest of three siblings, she attended a Catholic high school and married upon her graduation, in...
9. Richard Deacon
Actor | The Birds
Richard Deacon was the bald, bespectacled character actor most famous for playing television producer Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) from 1961 to 1966. In the first season of that show he also continued to appear on the series he was already appearing on, Leave It to Beaver (1957), ...
10. Morey Amsterdam
Actor | The Dick Van Dyke Show
Born in Chicago, Morey Amsterdam started in Vaudeville at the age of 14, as a straight man for his piano-playing brother. His father, a concert violinist who worked with the Chicago Opera and the San Francisco Symphony, wanted Morey to pursue a career in classical music however Morey had other ...
11. 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...
12. Max Baer Jr.
Actor | The Beverly Hillbillies
The son of former heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer, Max Baer Jr. is a classic (except probably to him) example of Hollywood typecasting. Known around the world as "Jethro Bodine" in the smash TV series The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), Baer did not find work as an actor in Hollywood for three ...
13. Nancy Kulp
Actress | The Beverly Hillbillies
Nancy Kulp wore many hats: Publicity person, actress, linguist, would-be politician, and teacher. Originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Kulp attended college in Florida, then headed for Hollywood to work in publicity for the movies, not star in them. Soon after arriving in Hollywood, Kulp was ...
14. Tim Conway
Actor | The Carol Burnett Show
Funny man Tim Conway was born on December 15th, 1933 in Willoughby, Ohio, to Sophia (Murgoiu) and Daniel Conway, a pony groomer. He was a fraternity man at Bowling Green State University, served in the army, and started his career working for a radio station.
Conway got into comedy when he started ...
15. Joe Flynn
Actor | The Rescuers
Born on November 8, 1924, in Youngstown, Ohio and after attending Northwestern University, Flynn began his entertainment career as a ventriloquist and as a radio performer. During World War II, he served in the Army's Special Services Branch (formerly the Morale Branch) entertaining the troops in ...
16. John Inman
Actor | Are You Being Served?
John Inman was born on June 28, 1935 in Preston, Lancashire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Are You Being Served? (1972), Are You Being Served? (1977) and Odd Man Out (1977). He was married to Ron Lynch. He died on March 8, 2007 in Paddington, London, England, UK.
17. Mollie Sugden
Actress | Are You Being Served?
Best remembered as 'Mrs. Slocombe' on the British comedy "Are You Being Served?" Mollie Sugden was born in Keighley, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. She attended Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Her first television role came in 1962 with the series "Hugh and I," which ran for four...
18. Larry Linville
Actor | M*A*S*H
Larry Linville was born on September 29, 1939 in Ojai, California, USA. He was an actor, known for M*A*S*H (1972), Paper Dolls (1984) and Mannix (1967). He was married to Deborah Guydon, Susan Hagan, Melissa Gallant, Vaughn Taylor and Kate Geer. He died on April 10, 2000 in New York City, New York,...
19. John Ritter
Actor | Sling Blade
Jonathan Southworth Ritter was born in Burbank, California, on September 17, 1948. He was the son of legendary country singer/actor Tex Ritter (born Woodward Maurice Ritter) and his wife, actress Dorothy Fay (née Dorothy Fay Southworth). The couple married in 1941 and had their first child, Tom ...
20. 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 ...
21. John Cleese
Actor | A Fish Called Wanda
John Cleese was born on October 27, 1939, in Weston-Super-Mare, England, to Muriel Evelyn (Cross) and Reginald Francis Cleese. He was born into a family of modest means, his father being an insurance salesman; but he was nonetheless sent off to private schools to obtain a good education. Here he ...
22. Tony Robinson
Producer | Time Team
Tony Robinson was born on August 15, 1946 in London, England, UK. He is a producer and actor, known for Time Team (1994), Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (1989) and Blackadder Goes Forth (1989). He has been married to Louise Hobbs since June 27, 2011. He was previously married to Mary Shepherd.
23. Hugh Laurie
Actor | House M.D.
Hugh was born in Oxford, England on June 11, 1959, to Patricia (Laidlaw) and William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie, a doctor, both of Scottish descent. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. Son of an Olympic gold medalist in the sport, he rowed for the England youth team (1977) and for ...
24. Stephen Fry
Actor | Gosford Park
Writer, actor, comedian, doer of good works, excellent good friend to the famous and not, Fry lives in his London SW1 flat and his Norfolk house when not traveling. Famous for his public declaration of celibacy in the "Tatler" back in the 1980s, Emma Thompson has characterised her friend as "90 ...
25. Jerry Seinfeld
Producer | Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Betty (Hesney) and Kalman Seinfeld. His father was of Hungarian Jewish descent, while Jerry's maternal grandparents, Salha and Selim Hosni, were Syrian Jewish immigrants (from Aleppo). He moved with his family, including sister Carolyn, to ...
26. Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Actress | Seinfeld
Julia Louis-Dreyfus was born on January 13, 1961, in the New York City borough of Manhattan, to Judith (LeFever), a special needs tutor and author, and Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, a billionaire businessman. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she spent her childhood in Washington, D.C., and New ...
27. Jason Alexander
Actor | Seinfeld
Jay Scott Greenspan, known professionally as Jason Alexander, is an American actor, comedian, film director, and television presenter. An Emmy and Tony winner, he is best known for his role as George Costanza in the television series Seinfeld (1989), for which he was nominated for seven consecutive...
28. Michael Richards
Actor | Seinfeld
Immortalized as Cosmo Kramer on the classic sitcom Seinfeld (1989), West Coast comedy star Michael Richards was born on July 24, 1949, and raised in South Los Angeles, California, to Phyllis (Nardozzi), an Italian-American medical records librarian, and William Richards, an electrical engineer. ...
29. Patricia Routledge
Actress | Keeping Up Appearances
Daughter of Catherine and Isaac Routledge. Her father was a haberdasher, and, during WWII, the family lived weeks at a time in the basement of her father's shop. She attended Birkenhead High School, where she sang in the choir and ran the Sunday School. She studied English at Liverpool University, ...
30. Rainn Wilson
Actor | The Office
Rainn Wilson lives in Los Angeles with his wife, fiction writer Holiday Reinhorn (Big Cats), and his son, Walter McKenzie Wilson who was born in 2004. He grew up in Seattle, Washington but graduated from New Trier H.S. in Winnetka, Illinois. After attending both Tufts University and the University ...
31. 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 ...
32. Jenna Fischer
Actress | The Office
Jenna Fischer is best known for playing Pam Beesly on the acclaimed television show The Office, for which she received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress and two SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Comedy.
She was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but was raised mostly in St...
33. John Krasinski
Actor | Jack Ryan
American actor John Krasinski is known for his role as sardonic nice guy Jim Halpert on NBC's popular TV sitcom, The Office (2005), for which he won a 2007 and 2008 Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series.
Born John Burke Krasinski on October 20, 1979,...
34. 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 (...
35. Richard Ayoade
Writer | Submarine
Richard Ellef Ayoade was born in Hammersmith, and grew up in Suffolk, in England, the son of a Norwegian mother, Dagny Amalie (Baassuik), and a Nigerian father, Layide Ade Laditi Ayoade. He studied Law at Cambridge university, and followed in the footsteps of British Comedy legends like Monty ...
36. Katherine Parkinson
Actress | Pirate Radio
Katherine Jane Parkinson is an English actress. She appeared in Channel 4's The IT Crowd comedy series as Jen Barber, for which she received a British Comedy Best TV Actress Award in 2009 and 2014, and was nominated twice for the BAFTA Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance, winning in...
37. Jim Parsons
Actor | The Big Bang Theory
Having grown up in Houston, and its northern suburb of Spring, he made his first stage appearance in a school play at the age of 6. Parsons then went on to study theater at the University of Houston. From there he won a place on a two-year Masters course in classical theater at the University of ...
38. Kaley Cuoco
Actress | The Big Bang Theory
Kaley Christine Cuoco was born in Camarillo, California, to Layne Ann (Wingate) and Gary Carmine Cuoco, a realtor. She is of Italian (father) and German and English (mother) descent. A model and commercial actress from the age of 6, Cuoco's first major role was in the TV movie Quicksand: No Escape ...
39. Johnny Galecki
Actor | The Big Bang Theory
John Mark Galecki was born in Bree, Belgium, to American parents; his father was stationed there while serving in the U.S. Air Force. When he was three years old, his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he grew up with his parents, Mary Lou and Richard Galecki, and siblings, sister Allison (...
40. Kunal Nayyar
Actor | The Big Bang Theory
Kunal Nayyar is an British actor. He moved from India to the US in 1999. He first moved to Portland, Oregon, to study business. He started acting in plays as a way of making new friends. He took acting classes, but he went on to graduate from the University of Portland with a degree in business, as...
41. Simon Helberg
Actor | Florence Foster Jenkins
Simon Helberg was born and raised in Los Angeles but despite this, and the fact that his father is the actor Sandy Helberg and his mother the casting director Harriet B. Helberg, his main interest as a young boy was karate. In his teens, though, he discovered acting and went on to study at New York...
42. Mayim Bialik
Actress | Beaches
Mayim Bialik grew up in San Diego and got her first acting job (Pumpkinhead (1988)) when she was just 12 years old. A number of TV roles followed until in 1990 she was cast in Blossom (1990), the role which made her famous.
By 1993, while Blossom was still airing, she had already won a deferred ...
43. Melissa Rauch
Actress | The Big Bang Theory
Melissa Ivy Rauch was born in Marlboro, New Jersey. She attended Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, where she received a BFA degree. While going to school, Melissa performed stand-up comedy around Manhattan, and soon made a name for herself on the NYC comedy scene. Her one-woman show, "...
44. Kevin Sussman
Actor | Burn After Reading
Kevin Sussman was born on December 4, 1970 in Staten Island, New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Burn After Reading (2008), Killers (2010) and Almost Famous (2000).
45. John Ross Bowie
Actor | Speechless
John Ross Bowie was born in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Speechless (2016), The Big Bang Theory (2007) and Childrens Hospital (2008). He has been married to Jamie Denbo since June 5, 2004. They have two children.
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