Favorite Actresses
by qempyrean | created - 30 Dec 2016 | updated - 1 week ago | PublicThis non-comprehensive list might always be in progress.
1. Ida Lupino
Actress | High Sierra
Ida was born in London to a show business family. In 1932, her mother took Ida with her to an audition and Ida got the part her mother wanted. The picture was Her First Affaire (1932). Ida, a bleached blonde, went to Hollywood in 1934 playing small, insignificant parts. Peter Ibbetson (1935) was ...
2. Barbara Stanwyck
Actress | Double Indemnity
Today Barbara Stanwyck is remembered primarily as the matriarch of the family known as the Barkleys on the TV western The Big Valley (1965), wherein she played Victoria, and from the hit drama The Colbys (1985). But she was known to millions of other fans for her movie career, which spanned the ...
3. Thelma Ritter
Actress | Rear Window
Thelma Ritter appeared in high school plays and was trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In the 1940s she worked in radio. Her movie career was started with a bit part in the 1946 Miracle on 34th Street (1947). In the movie she played a weary Xmas shopper. Her performance in the short ...
4. Constance Ford
Actress | A Summer Place
Constance Ford began her career in television in the 1950s, performing in live television dramas on Studio One (1948), Armstrong Circle Theatre (1950), Goodyear Playhouse (1951), and other acclaimed series, and playing recurring characters in four afternoon serials; "Rose Peabody" in Search for ...
5. Dorothy Provine
Actress | The Great Race
Flashy, leggy, bouffant blonde Dorothy Provine was a solid screen representation of the Kennedyesque era when life seemed so full of fun, so innocent and so optimistic. This sparkling beauty also gave TV audiences a double dose blast to the past via her popular co-starring roles on late 50s/early ...
6. Romy Schneider
Actress | L'important c'est d'aimer
Romy Schneider was born on 23 September 1938 in Vienna, Austria into a family of actors. Making her film debut at the age of 15, her breakthrough came two years later in the very popular trilogy Sissi (1955). Her mother, supervising her daughter's career, immediately approved Romy's participation ...
7. Jeanne Moreau
Actress | Jules et Jim
When people gave Louis Malle credit for making a star of Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows (1958) immediately followed by The Lovers (1958), he would point out that Moreau by that time had already been "recognized as the prime stage actress of her generation." She had made it to the Comédie ...
8. Annette Bening
Actress | American Beauty
Annette Bening was born on May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, the youngest of four children. Her family moved to California when she was young, and she grew up there. She graduated from San Francisco State University and began her acting career with the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, ...
9. Maureen Stapleton
Actress | Reds
Academy Award-winner Maureen Stapleton was born June 21, 1925 in Troy, New York, to Irene (née Walsh) and John P. Stapleton. Her family was of Irish descent. Maureen moved to New York City at the age of eighteen and did modeling to pay the bills. Already a Tony Award-winner, she made her Academy ...
10. Constance Towers
Actress | General Hospital
This elegant, lovely blonde singer/actress initially had designs on becoming an opera singer. Born in Montana on May 20, 1933, and christened Constance Mary Towers, she appeared on radio as a child singer. Her family moved to New York where she subsequently studied at the Julliard School of Music ...
11. 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...
12. Sharon Gless
Actress | Burn Notice
Few actresses have the distinction of being recognized and revered worldwide for multiple iconic roles in groundbreaking television shows. Sharon Gless is one of them.
Generations of TV viewers know and love the remarkable characters brought to life by this standout multi Emmy and Golden Globe ...
13. Marlo Thomas
Actress | That Girl
Many well known and highly identifiable actresses have tried and failed to make the arduous crossover from fizzy TV sitcom star to mature, dramatic artist. Usually it was their hardcore fans who refused to accept them in any other light. Sally Field and Elizabeth Montgomery come first to mind as ...
14. Joan Bennett
Actress | Suspiria
Joan Geraldine Bennett was born on February 27, 1910, in Palisades, New Jersey. Her parents were both successful stage actors, especially her father, Richard Bennett, and often toured the country for weeks at a time. In fact, Joan came from a long line of actors, dating back to the 18th century. ...
15. Joan Blondell
Actress | Grease
With blonde hair, big blue eyes and a big smile, Joan Blondell was usually cast as the wisecracking working girl who was the lead's best friend.
Joan was born Rose Blondell in Manhattan, New York, the daughter of Katie and Eddie Blondell, who were vaudeville performers. Her father was a Polish ...
16. Penelope Wilton
Actress | The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Penelope Wilton was born on June 3, 1946 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, UK. She is an actress, known for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Match Point (2005). She was previously married to Ian Holm and Daniel Massey.
17. Penelope Keith
Actress | The Good Life
Early in her career she worked in repertory in Manchester and while there obtained occasional television roles. When offered scripts she can usually tell within 5 pages if it is suitable for her. When it came to 'To the Manor Born' which was intended for a radio series, she considered it one of the...
18. Wendy Craig
Actress | The Nanny
Her parents, George and Anne were originally farmers in the Sacriston area of County Durham where she started her education at a village school and eventually attended Durham High School. Her family eventually gave up farming and became haulage contractors in Darlington where she then attended ...
19. Helen Mirren
Actress | The Queen
Dame Helen Mirren was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital in West London. Her mother, Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda (Rogers), was from a working-class English family, and her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov, was a Russian-born civil servant, from Kuryanovo, whose own father was a diplomat. ...
20. Diane Baker
Actress | Marnie
Actress with a notable career in films and television. Born and raised in Hollywood, she moved to New York at eighteen to study acting with Charles Conrad and ballet with Nina Fonaroff. She continued her training in Los Angeles at the Estelle Harman Workshop, securing a contract with Twentieth ...
21. Tippi Hedren
Actress | The Birds
From working for the exacting Alfred Hitchcock to a film written by Edward D. Wood Jr., Tippi Hedren, the Minnesota blonde, has had a distinctive career. She was born Nathalie Kay Hedren in New Ulm, MN, to Dorothea (née Eckhardt) and Bernard Hedren, who ran a general store, and is of Swedish, ...
22. Jessica Tandy
Actress | Driving Miss Daisy
A beloved, twinkly blue-eyed doyenne of stage and screen, actress Jessica Tandy's career spanned nearly six and a half decades. In that span of time, she enjoyed an amazing film renaissance at age 80, something unheard of in a town that worships youth and nubile beauty. She was born Jessie Alice ...
23. Doris Day
Soundtrack | Love Me or Leave Me
One of America's most loved actresses was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choir master. Her grandparents were all German immigrants. She had two brothers, Richard, who died ...
24. Shirley Knight
Actress | As Good as It Gets
Shirley Knight was an American actress who appeared in more than 180 feature films, television movies, television series, and Broadway productions in her career playing leading and character roles.
She was a member of the Actors Studio. Knight was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best ...
25. Kathleen Widdoes
Actress | As the World Turns
Quite distinctive with her dark hollow eyes, sharp ethnic looks and frizzy head of hair, veteran stage actress Kathleen Widdoes began her career enacting delicate but vibrant classical heroines. In later years, she gained significant visibility on TV, particularly as an emotive, but well-meaning ...
26. Beverlee McKinsey
Actress | Another World
Beverlee McKinsey was born on August 9, 1935 in McAlester, Oklahoma, USA. She was an actress, known for Another World (1964), Guiding Light (1952) and Texas (1980). She was married to Berkeley Harris, Angus Duncan and Mark Howard McKinsey Jr.. She died on May 2, 2008 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
27. Victoria Wyndham
Actress | Another World
Victoria Wyndham was born on May 22, 1945 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She is an actress, known for Another World (1964), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Guiding Light (1952).
28. Susan Sullivan
Actress | Dharma & Greg
Originally groomed for the theater, Sullivan worked at the National Repertory Theatre in Washington D.C. before landing a role in Broadway opposite Dustin Hoffman in "Jimmy Shine". Sullivan continued appearing in theater while working on Falcon Crest (1981) in the 1980s. In the 1960s, Susan played ...
29. Jean Seberg
Actress | À bout de souffle
Jean Dorothy Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, to substitute teacher Dorothy Arline (Benson) and pharmacist Edward Waldemar Seberg. Her father was of Swedish descent and her mother was of English and German ancestry.
One month before her 18th birthday, Jean landed the title role in Otto ...
30. 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 ...
31. Jennifer Jones
Actress | The Towering Inferno
One of the world's most underrated Academy Award-winning actresses, Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on 2 March 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Flora Mae (Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley, who ran a travelling stage show. As a young aspiring actress, she met and fell for young, handsome, aspiring ...
32. Eartha Kitt
Actress | The Emperor's New Groove
An out-of-wedlock child, Eartha Kitt was born in the cotton fields of South Carolina. Kitt's mother was a sharecropper of African-American and Cherokee Native American descent. Her father's identity is unknown. Given away by her mother, she arrived in Harlem at age nine. At 15, she quit high school...
33. Ruby Dee
Actress | American Gangster
Ruby Dee was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and civil rights activist. She is best known for originating the role of "Ruth Younger" in the stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun (1961).
She also starred in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), Cat People (1982), ...
34. 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 ...
35. Lee Remick
Actress | The Omen
Lee Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Gertrude Margaret (Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin Remick, a department store owner. She had Irish and English ancestry. Remick was educated at Barnard College, studied dance and worked on stage and TV, before making her film debut as a sexy ...
36. Ann-Margret
Actress | Carnal Knowledge
Actress and singer Ann-Margret is one of the most famous sex symbols and actresses of the 1960s and beyond. She continued her career through the following decades and into the 21st century.
Ann-Margret was born Ann-Margret Olsson in Valsjöbyn, Jämtland County, Sweden, to Anna Regina (Aronsson) and ...
37. Kristen Bell
Actress | Frozen
Kristen Anne Bell (born 1980) is an American actress and singer. She was born and raised in Huntington Woods, Michigan, and is the daughter of Lorelei (Frygier), a nurse, and Tom Bell, a television news director. Her ancestry is Polish (mother) and German, English, Irish, and Scottish (father). ...
38. Kirsten Dunst
Actress | Spider-Man
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, who also holds German citizenship. She was born on April 30, 1982 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, to parents Inez (née Rupprecht), who owned an art gallery, and Klaus Dunst, a medical services executive. She has a younger brother named Christian Dunst, ...
39. Louise Latham
Actress | Marnie
Louise Latham was an American actress from Texas, whose career lasted from the 1950s to the early 2000s. She is primarily remembered for her film debut as the invalid mother Bernice Edgar, who is financially dependent on her daughter Marnie (played by Tippi Hedren). At age 42, Latham was playing ...
40. Agnes Moorehead
Actress | The Magnificent Ambersons
Agnes was born of Anglo-Irish ancestry near Boston, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (her mother was a mezzo-soprano) who encouraged her to perform in church pageants. Aged three, she sang 'The Lord is my Shepherd' on a public stage and seven years later joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera ...
41. France Nuyen
Actress | Battle for the Planet of the Apes
France Nuyen was born on July 31, 1939 in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. She is an actress, known for Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), The Joy Luck Club (1993) and South Pacific (1958). She was previously married to Robert Culp and Dr. Thomas Gaspar Morell.
42. Teri Garr
Actress | Tootsie
Teri Garr can claim a career in show business by birthright. She was the daughter of Eddie Garr, a Broadway stage and film actor, and Phyllis Garr, a dancer. While she was still an infant, her family moved from Hollywood to New Jersey but, after the death of her father when she was 11, the family ...
43. Ronnie Claire Edwards
Actress | The Dead Pool
Ronnie Claire Edwards was born on February 9, 1933 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. She was an actress, known for The Dead Pool (1988), The Waltons (1972) and The American Parade (1974). She was married to Bill Record and Robert K. Sands. She died on June 14, 2016 in Dallas, Texas, USA.
44. Patricia Neal
Actress | The Day the Earth Stood Still
Patricia Neal, the Oscar and Tony Award-winning actress, was born Patsy Louise Neal in Packard, Kentucky, where her father managed a coal mine and her mother was the daughter of the town doctor. She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she attended high school. She was first bit by the acting bug...
45. Stockard Channing
Actress | Practical Magic
One of Broadway and Hollywood's perennial and cleverer talents who tends to shine a smart, cynical light on her surroundings, Stockard Channing was born Susan Williams Antonia Stockard on February 13, 1944 in New York City to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother of Irish descent. Her parents ...
46. Mabel Albertson
Actress | What's Up, Doc?
When, at 50, Mabel Albertson was given the supporting role of Mrs. Carter, young actress Aileen Stanley Jr.'s mother in a Warner Bros. Technicolor musical romance, little did she know that she was starting out a movie and TV career in which she would shine as "the ultimate haughty judgmental (often...
47. Anne Francis
Actress | Forbidden Planet
Anne Francis got into show business quite early in life. She was born on September 16, 1930 in Ossining, New York (which is near Sing Sing prison), the only child of Phillip Ward Francis, a businessman/salesman, and the former Edith Albertson. A natural little beauty, she became a John Robert Powers...
48. Diana Rigg
Actress | Last Night in Soho
British actress Dame Diana Rigg was born on July 20, 1938 in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England. She has had an extensive career in film and theatre, including playing the title role in "Medea", both in London and New York, for which she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Rigg made her ...
49. Madeline Kahn
Actress | Paper Moon
Madeline Kahn was born Madeline Gail Wolfson of Russian Jewish descent on September 29, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Freda Goldberg (later known as Paula Kahn), who was still in her teens, and Bernard B. Wolfson, a garment manufacturer. She began her acting career in high school and went on to...
50. Virginia Christine
Actress | Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Virginia has a long career as a character actress on the screen, but she will always be best remembered as the Swedish "Mrs. Olsen", who somehow knew everything about making coffee, and we somehow always found her in the kitchen of some hapless young housewife who just couldn't seem to make good ...
51. Eileen Atkins
Actress | Gosford Park
Eileen Atkins was born in a Salvation Army Women's Hostel in north London. Her father was a gas meter reader; her mother, a seamstress and barmaid. A drama teacher taught her how to drop her Cockney accent, and she studied Shakespeare and Greek tragedies. Her breakthrough role in "The Killing of ...
52. Myrna Loy
Actress | The Thin Man
Myrna Williams, later to become Myrna Loy, was born on August 2, 1905 in Helena, Montana. Her father was the youngest person ever elected to the Montana State legislature. Later on her family moved to Radersburg where she spent her youth on a cattle ranch. At the age of 13, Myrna's father died of ...
53. Carolyn Jones
Actress | The Man Who Knew Too Much
Carolyn Jones was born April 28, 1930, in Amarillo, Texas to homemaker Chloe Jeanette Southern (1906-1979), and Julius Alfred Jones (1897-1979), a barber. Her sister was Bette (later Mrs. Moriarty). Carolyn was an imaginative child, much like her mother. In 1934, her father abandoned the family and...
54. Julie Adams
Actress | Creature from the Black Lagoon
Betty May Adams was the daughter of a travelling Iowa cotton buyer with a penchant for alcohol. Growing up in Arkansas, Betty expressed an early interest in acting and made her performing debut in a third grade play of "Hansel and Gretel." Beautiful, talented and determined, the freshly minted '...
55. Joanne Linville
Actress | Star Trek
Joanne Linville made her mark on television from the 1950s-1980s, appearing in such respected anthology series as Studio One (1948), Kraft Theatre (1947) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), among others. While her film work consisted mainly of smaller character roles and she never had regular ...
56. Jean Marsh
Actress | Willow
Born in London, Jean Marsh became interested in show business while taking dancing and mime classes as therapy for a childhood illness. After attending a charm school and working as a model, she started acting in repertory and took voice lessons. Her repertory work was supplemented by a number of ...
57. Eleanor Audley
Actress | Sleeping Beauty
Eleanor Audley was an American actress, with a distinctive voice that helped her find work as a voice actress in radio and animation. She is primarily remembered as the first actress to voice Lady Tremaine and Maleficent, two of the most memorable Disney villains.
Audley's real name was Eleanor ...
58. Honor Blackman
Actress | Goldfinger
One of four children, Blackman was born in London's East End, to Edith Eliza (Stokes), a homemaker, and Frederick Thomas Blackman, a statistician employed with the Civil Service. She received elocution lessons for her 16th birthday (at her own request), and later attended the Guildhall School of ...
59. Beulah Bondi
Actress | It's a Wonderful Life
Character actress Beulah Bondi was a favorite of directors and audiences and is one of the reasons so many films from the 1930s and 1940s remain so enjoyable, as she was an integral part of many of the ensemble casts (a hallmark of the studio system) of major and/or great films, including The Trail...
60. Mimi Kennedy
Actress | Midnight in Paris
Best known to television viewers as a series regular on two Chuck Lorre hit comedies: "Dharma & Greg" (5 seasons) and "Mom" (8 seasons). She garnered a Critics Choice Award nomination for Best Guest Performer in a Comedy Series for her portrayal of Marjorie in Season 1 of "Mom" before becoming a ...
61. Hideko Takamine
Actress | Ukigumo
Along with Hara Setsuko and Tanaka Kinuyo, Takamine Hideko remains one of Japan's most admired and prolific film actresses. Born as Hirayama Hideko in Hakodate, Hokkaido in northern Japan in 1924, she became a child actress for Shochiku Studio at age five appearing in the film Haha. She would go on...
62. Patty Duke
Actress | Valley of the Dolls
Patty Duke was born Anna Marie Duke on December 14, 1946 in Elmhurst, Queens County, New York, to Frances Margaret (McMahon), a cashier, and John Patrick Duke, a cab driver and handyman. She was seven eighths Irish and one eighth German. Her acting career began when she was introduced to her ...
63. Constance Cummings
Actress | Blithe Spirit
Coming from a musical family - her mother was a concert soprano - Constance Cummings made her show business debut in 1926 in regional stock theater, and by 1928 had appeared in her first Broadway play. Her success in the theater resulted in an invitation to Hollywood, where she went 1931. Although ...
64. Suzanne Pleshette
Actress | The Birds
Suzanne Pleshette achieved television immortality in her role as Bob Newhart's wife in the 1970s classic situation comedy, The Bob Newhart Show (1972). For her role as "Emily Hartley," wife of psychologist "Bob Hartley" (played by Bob Newhart), Pleshette was nominated for the Emmy Award twice, in ...
65. Brenda Vaccaro
Actress | Midnight Cowboy
A leading lady on screen, stage and sometimes television, Brenda Vaccaro, was born in Brooklyn but was actually raised in Dallas, Texas.
Her appetite for acting increased following several appearances in high school productions, and she finally started a professional career in the 1960s. Memorable ...
66. Ethel Merman
Actress | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Born in the Astoria section of Queens, New York City, Ethel Merman surely is the pre-eminent star of 'Broadway' musical comedy. Though untrained in singing, she could belt out a song like quite no one else, and was sought after by major songwriters such as Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Having ...
67. Virginia Gregg
Actress | Operation Petticoat
Virginia Gregg was born on March 6, 1916 in Harrisburg, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Operation Petticoat (1959), Police Story (1973) and Emergency! (1972). She was married to Jaime Del Valle. She died on September 15, 1986 in Encino, Los Angeles, California, USA.
68. Marion Davies
Actress | Little Old New York
Marion Davies was one of the great comedic actresses of the silent era and into the 1930s.
Marion Cecelia Douras was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York on January 3, 1897, the daughter of Rose (Reilly) and Bernard J. Douras, a lawyer and judge. Her parents were both of Irish descent. Marion ...
69. June Lockhart
Actress | Lost in Space
Born in New York City on June 25, 1925, the daughter of actors Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Lockhart, June Lockhart made her professional debut at age eight in a Metropolitan Opera production of "Peter Ibbetson", playing Mimsey in the dream sequence. In the mid-1930s, the Lockharts relocated to ...
70. Nancy Kwan
Actress | The World of Suzie Wong
At just 18, Nancy Kwan was studying dance with England's Royal Ballet School, when she was spotted by producer Ray Stark, who tested her and gave her the starring role of a free-spirited Hong Kong prostitute who captivates artist William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960). She followed it the...
71. Doris Roberts
Actress | Everybody Loves Raymond
Doris Roberts was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Ann (Meltzer) and Larry Green. She was raised in New York, and took her stepfather's surname. Roberts was a 20-year veteran of the Broadway stage before she began appearing steadily in character roles in film and on television during the 1970s. A ...
72. Connie Gilchrist
Actress | Auntie Mame
With more than two decades of stage experience in France, England and on Broadway behind her, this moon-faced, heavy-set character actress first entered films in 1940. But no matter a film's genre - contemporary drama, historical costumer or shoot 'em up western - her Brooklyn roots always sounded ...
73. Diana Dors
Actress | The Long Haul
Diana Dors was born Diana Mary Fluck on October 23, 1931 in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. She and her mother both nearly died from the traumatic birth. Because of the trauma, her mother lavished on Diana anything and everything she wanted--clothes, toys and dance lessons were the order of the day. ...
74. Mary Wickes
Actress | White Christmas
From the grand old school of wisecracking, loud and lanky Mary Wickes had few peers while forging a career as a salty scene-stealer. Her abrupt, tell-it-like-it-is demeanor made her a consistent audience favorite on every medium for over six decades. She was particularly adroit in film parts that ...
75. Phyllis Diller
Actress | A Bug's Life
Diller put out an autobiography in 2005 in her late 80s, and entitled it "Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse", which pretty much says it all when recalling the misfit life and career of the fabulous, one-of-a-kind Phyllis Diller. It may inspire all those bored, discouraged and/or directionless ...
76. Diana Sands
Actress | The Landlord
Diana Sands was born on August 22, 1934 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Landlord (1970), A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and East Side/West Side (1963). She was married to Lucien Jean Happersberger. She died on September 21, 1973 in New York City, New York, USA.
77. Kim Stanley
Actress | Seance on a Wet Afternoon
Kim Stanley's movie roles were few and far between; she is perhaps best known for her stellar performances on stage, including successes on Broadway. But when she did step in front of the camera, nothing short of memorable resulted. Her repertoire in movies and on stage covered such diversity from ...
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