Acting in a better place

1. Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.

Wood was born July 20, 1938 in ...

Robert Wagner, you should rot in hell. You robbed the world of one of its brightest lights.

2. Florence Henderson

Actress | The Brady Bunch

Florence Henderson was considered by protocol executive Jerold Franks, CSA to be "...one of the most generous stars I have ever worked with." Los Angeles, New York and all parts of the country, Florence has helped raise millions of dollars for various charitable organizations.

Jerold Franks, friend ...

3. Marilyn Monroe

Actress | Some Like It Hot

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and ...

4. Jayne Mansfield

Actress | The Girl Can't Help It

One of the leading sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s, film actress Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the only child of Vera J. (nee Palmer; later Peers) and Herbert W. Palmer. Her parents were well-to-do, with her father a successful attorney ...

5. Carole Lombard

Actress | My Man Godfrey

Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908. Her parents divorced in 1916 and her mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the ...

6. Ann B. Davis

Actress | The Brady Bunch

Ann B. Davis made her debut in show business at age 6 earning $2.00 in a puppet show. At the University of Michigan, Ann planned to study medicine but got the acting bug from her brother who was the lead dancer in the national company of "Oklahoma" for over a year. Ann then spent six years in ...

7. Robert Reed

Actor | The Brady Bunch

Robert Reed was an American actor, mostly known for television roles. His most famous role was that of pater familias Michael Paul "Mike" Brady in the popular sitcom "The Brady Bunch" (1969-1979). He returned to this role in several of the sitcom's sequels and spin-offs.

Reed was born under the name...

8. Farrah Fawcett

Actress | Saturn 3

Farrah Fawcett is a true Hollywood success story. Born in Texas, she was the daughter of Pauline Fawcett (Pauline Alice Evans), a homemaker, and James Fawcett, an oil field contractor. She was a natural athlete, something that her father encouraged, and she attended a high school with a strong arts...

9. David Doyle

Actor | Capricorn One

David Fitzgerald Doyle was born in Lincoln, Nebraska December 1, 1929. He was the son of Mary Ruth Fitzgerald and Lewis Raymond (Lum) Doyle, a prominent Lincoln attorney. His maternal grandfather was John Fitzgerald, a prominent banker and railroad builder in Nebraska. His paternal grandfather was ...

10. Tanya Roberts

Actress | A View to a Kill

The second daughter of manufacturing executive Oscar Blum and his wife Dorothy, Tanya Roberts was born 1949 in Manhattan and grew up in the elite Westchester County suburbs Scarsdale and Greenburgh. Tanya reportedly dropped out of high school, got married and hitchhiked around the country until her...

11. 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 ...

12. Jerry Orbach

Actor | Law & Order

Jerry Orbach was born in the Bronx, New York, the only child of Leon Orbach, a former vaudevillian actor, was a German Jewish immigrant, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, and Emily (nee Olexy), a radio singer, was born in Pennsylvania to immigrant Polish-Lithuanian Roman Catholic parents, Alexander...

13. Betty White

Actress | The Proposal

Betty White was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Christine Tess (Cachikis), a homemaker, and Horace Logan White, a lighting company executive for the Crouse-Hinds Electric Company. She was of Danish, Greek, English, and Welsh descent.

Although she was best known as the devious Sue Ann Nivens on the ...

14. 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...

15. Gavin MacLeod

Actor | Mary Tyler Moore

Gavin MacLeod's pleasing, agreeable manner on two hit TV series in the 1970s and '80s belied a number of shady villains he portrayed in his early career. Born Allan George See in Mt. Kisco, New York, on February 28, 1931, and raised in Pleasantville, he was the son of Margaret (Shea) and George See...

16. Edward Asner

Actor | Up

Edward Asner was born of Russian Jewish parentage in Kansas City, to Morris David Asner (founder and owner of the Kansas City-based Asner Iron & Metal Company) and his wife Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Seliger). After attending college, Ed worked various jobs, including in a steel mill, as a door-to-door ...

17. Ted Knight

Actor | Mary Tyler Moore

Actor Ted Knight paid his dues with nearly two decades of relatively obscure dramatic, often villainous television work, before finding enduring fame in a scene-stealing supporting turn on a classic 1970s sitcom, hilariously overplaying a silver-haired, self-important imbecile. Although the ...

18. 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...

19. Larry Hagman

Actor | Dallas

The son of a legendary actress (Mary Martin) and a district attorney, Larry Martin Hagman was born on September 21, 1931 in Fort Worth, Texas. After his parents' divorce, he moved to Los Angeles, California to live with his grandmother. When he was 12, his grandmother died and he moved back to his ...

20. Bonnie Franklin

Actress | One Day at a Time

Bonnie Franklin, of the freckled, fair-skinned, hazel-eyed, rosy-cheeked, carrot-haired variety, could light up a room with her buoyant, folksy personality, but she could be quite serious in a take-charge manner when it came to purposeful acting work. It took Norman Lear and a highly popular TV ...

21. John Wayne

Actor | True Grit

John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Iowa, to Mary Alberta (Brown) and Clyde Leonard Morrison, a pharmacist. He was of English, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and Irish ancestry.

Clyde developed a lung condition that required him to move his family from Iowa to the warmer climate of southern ...

22. Cameron Boyce

Actor | Mrs. Fletcher

Cameron Boyce was an American actor, with Afro-Caribbean and African-American descent. His paternal grandmother Jo Ann Allen was one of the "Clinton Twelve", the first African-Americans to attend an integrated high school in the Southern United States (specifically in Clinton, Tennessee).

In 1999, ...

23. Barbara Bel Geddes

Actress | Vertigo

Arguably best remembered for her role as Miss Ellie, the Ewing family matriarch on the long-running TV series Dallas (1978), Barbara Bel Geddes had earlier scored success on stage and screen long before gaining more lasting fame on television. She was born in New York City on Halloween Day 1922, ...

24. Ken Kercheval

Actor | Dallas

Ken Kercheval was born on July 15, 1935 in Wolcottville, Indiana, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Dallas (1978), Network (1976) and The Secret Storm (1954). He was married to Cheryl Paris, Ava Ruth Fox and Judith Peters Launt. He died on April 21, 2019 in Clinton, Indiana USA.

25. Jim Davis

Actor | Big Jake

Tall, rangy Jim Davis spent much of his early career in westerns mainly at Republic Pictures. The Missouri-born and -raised Davis' relaxed, easygoing manner and Southern drawl easily fit most moviegoers' image of the cowboy and Republic put him in a ton of them over the years (the fact that, unlike...

26. Donna Reed

Actress | It's a Wonderful Life

Donna Reed was born in the midwestern town of Denison, Iowa, on January 27, 1921, as Donna Belle Mullenger. A small town - a population of less than 3,000 people - Denison was located by the Boyer River, and was the county seat of Crawford County. Donna grew up as a farm girl, much like many young ...

27. 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 ...

28. Howard Hesseman

Actor | WKRP in Cincinnati

Howard Hesseman was a leading counter-culture figure since the late 1960s. He was a member of the improv group, "The Committee", for a decade in the 1960s/1970s. A character actor for many years on different television shows since the 1960s, he took small parts in The Andy Griffith Show (1960), ...

29. Gordon Jump

Actor | WKRP in Cincinnati

The burly character actor Gordon Jump will probably be best remembered for the role of the radio station manager Arthur Carlson in the TV sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978). This is coincidental since, in the first part of his working life, he was found either behind a microphone or camera in stints ...

30. Burt Reynolds

Actor | Boogie Nights

Enduring, strong-featured, and genial star of US cinema, Burt Reynolds started off in T.V. westerns in the 1960s and then carved his name into 1970s/1980s popular culture, as a sex symbol (posing nearly naked for "Cosmopolitan" magazine), and on-screen as both a rugged action figure and then as a ...

31. Valerie Harper

Actress | Mary Tyler Moore

Making people laugh was only one facet of Valerie Harper's career, which extended from the stage to television and feature films. A native of Suffern, New York -- "I was born to suffer" -- Harper began her career as a dancer with the corps de ballet at Radio City Hall during its spectacular heyday....

32. Marcia Wallace

Actress | The Simpsons

Born on November 1, 1942, the eldest of three born to an Iowa general storeowner, Marcia Wallace endured a troubled childhood (alcoholism, physical abuse). Performing in high school plays as a teenager, she studied at Parsons College in Fairfield, Iowa, where she majored in English and theatre.

...

33. Patrick Swayze

Actor | Dirty Dancing

Patrick Wayne Swayze was born on August 18, 1952 in Houston, Texas, to Patsy Swayze (née Yvonne Helen Karnes), a choreographer, and Jesse Wayne Swayze, a chemical plant engineer draftsman. His mother owned a dance school in Houston, where Patrick was also a student. His father passed away in 1982. ...

34. Christopher Reeve

Actor | Superman

Christopher D'Olier Reeve was born September 25, 1952, in New York City, to journalist Barbara Johnson (née Barbara Pitney Lamb) and writer/professor F.D. Reeve (Franklin D'Olier Reeve). He came from an upper-class family; his paternal grandfather was CEO of Prudential Financial, and one of his ...

35. Dana Reeve

Actress | Everyone's Hero

Dana Reeve was born on March 17, 1961 in Teaneck, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Everyone's Hero (2006), Loving (1983) and Above Suspicion (1995). She was married to Christopher Reeve. She died on March 6, 2006 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.

36. 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...

37. Greta Garbo

Actress | Ninotchka

Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and ...

38. Marlene Dietrich

Soundtrack | Witness for the Prosecution

Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator ...

39. Michael Conrad

Actor | Hill Street Blues

Michael Conrad was a powerfully built, towering New York-born American character actor, best known for his role as the pompous but beloved desk sergeant Phil Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues (1981), for which he won two Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Emmy Awards (1981, 1982). He also ...

40. Merlin Olsen

Actor | Mitchell

Merlin Olsen was born on September 15, 1940 in Logan, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for Mitchell (1975), The Undefeated (1969) and Fathers and Sons (1986). He was married to Susan Wakely. He died on March 11, 2010 in Duarte, California, USA.

41. Michael Landon

Actor | Little House on the Prairie

Michael Landon was born Eugene Maurice Orowitz, on Saturday, October 31st, 1936, in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. In 1941, he and his family moved to Collingswood, New Jersey.

When Eugene was in high school, he participated -- and did very well -- in track and field, especially javelin throwing, ...

42. Carrie Fisher

Actress | Star Wars

Carrie Frances Fisher was born on October 21, 1956 in Burbank, California, to singers/actors Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. She was an actress and writer known for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return ...

43. Debbie Reynolds

Actress | Singin' in the Rain

Debbie Reynolds was born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas, the second child of Maxine N. (Harmon) and Raymond Francis Reynolds, a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Her film career began at MGM after she won a beauty contest at age 16 impersonating Betty Hutton. Reynolds wasn't a ...

44. Leslie Nielsen

Actor | Airplane!

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

45. Charles Nelson Reilly

Actor | Millennium

Charles Nelson Reilly was born to Charles Joseph Reilly and Signe Elvera Nelson. His father was Irish-American and Catholic, his mother was Swedish-American and Lutheran. As a child he amused himself with improvised puppet theater performances.

He had a traumatic experience in 1944, when present for...

46. Brett Somers

Actress | Battlestar Galactica

In 1973, Brett became a popular panelist on the television game show, "The Match Game." The Match Game (in its original version) ran on NBC's daytime lineup from 1962 to 1969. The show returned in 1973 with a significantly changed format on CBS (also in daytime). "The Match Game" became a major ...

47. Luke Perry

Actor | Beverly Hills, 90210

Luke Perry was an American actor, primarily remembered as a teen idol throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s. Perry was born in Mansfield, Ohio in 1966. Mansfield was known at the time as a center for the home appliances and stove manufacturing industries. The city's largest employer used to be ...

48. Pernell Roberts

Actor | Bonanza

Best recalled as the eldest son and first member of the "Bonanza" Cartwright clan to permanently leave the Ponderosa in the hopes of greener acting pastures, dark, deep-voiced and durably handsome Pernell Roberts' native roots lay in Georgia. Born Pernell Elvin Roberts, Jr. on May 18, 1928, in ...

49. Stanley Kamel

Actor | Domino

Stanley Kamel was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on January 1, 1943 and was raised in South River, New Jersey. He attended high school at Rutgers Prepatory School (graduated 1961) in Somerset, New Jersey and received his college degree from the Boston University School of Fine Arts in 1965. ...

50. John Forsythe

Actor | The Trouble with Harry

John Forysthe was born Jacob Lincoln Freund in Penns Grove, New Jersey, the son of Blanche Materson (Blohm) and Samuel Jeremiah Freund, a Wall Street businessman. He chose to pursue acting over the objections of his father. He did some work in radio soaps and on Broadway before signing a movie ...

51. James Garner

Actor | The Notebook

Amiable and handsome James Garner had obtained success in both films and television, often playing variations of the charming anti-hero/con-man persona he first developed in Maverick, the offbeat western TV series that shot him to stardom in the late 1950s.

James Garner was born James Scott ...