My Favorite Actors
A list of my favorite actors of today.
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1.
Johnny Depp
Actor, Edward Scissorhands
Johnny Depp is perhaps one of the most versatile actors of his day and age in Hollywood, who has recuperated his image greatly since his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow in the acclaimed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, with a supporting cast of Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, and Geoffrey Rush. Though highly successful now...
2.
Christian Bale
Actor, The Dark Knight
Christian Charles Philip Bale was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK on January 30, 1974, to a English parents Jennifer James and David Bale. Christian's father was a commercial pilot, and the family lived in different countries throughout Bale's childhood, including England, Portugal, and the United States. Bale acknowledges the constant change was one of the influences on his career choice...
3.
Harrison Ford
Actor, Star Wars
Harrison Ford was born on July 13, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. His father had Irish and German ancestry, and his maternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. He was a lackluster student at Maine Township High School East in Park Ridge Illinois (no athletic star, never above a C average)...
4.
Hugh Jackman
Actor, The Prestige
Born in Sydney, to English parents, and the youngest of five children, Jackman has a communications degree with a journalism major from the University of Technology Sydney. After graduating, he pursued drama at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, immediately after which he was offered a starring role in the ABC-TV prison drama Correlli...
5.
Michael Caine
Actor, The Dark Knight
Born Maurice Micklewhite in London, Michael Caine was the son of a fish-market porter and a charlady. He left school at 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager...
6.
Tommy Lee Jones
Actor, No Country for Old Men
Born in San Saba, Texas, the son of Clyde C. and Lucille Marie (Scott) Jones, Tommy Lee Jones worked in underwater construction and on an oil rig. He attended St. Mark's School of Texas, a prestigious prep school for boys in Dallas, on a scholarship, and went to Harvard on another scholarship.He roomed...
7.
Morgan Freeman
Actor, The Shawshank Redemption
With an authoritative voice and calm demeanor, this ever popular American actor has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern US cinema. Born in June 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, the young Freeman attended Los Angeles City College before serving several years in the US Air Force as a mechanic between 1955 and 1959...
8.
Russell Crowe
Actor, Gladiator
Born in New Zealand, Russell has made his home in Australia since he was a small child. The son of movie set caterers, Russell got the acting bug early in life. Beginning as a child star on a local Australian TV show, Russell's first big break came with two films ... the first, Romper Stomper, gained him a name throughout the film community in Australia and the neighboring countries...
9.
Robert Downey Jr.
Actor, The Avengers
Robert Downey Jr. has evolved into one of the most respected actors in Hollywood. With an amazing list of credits to his name, he has managed to stay new and fresh even after three decades in the business. In 1992, Downey received an Academy Award nomination and won the BAFTA (British Academy Award) for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of Chaplin...
10.
Chris Evans
Actor, The Avengers
Chris Evans - not to be confused with the British DJ and wild man of the same name - began his acting career in typical fashion: performing in school productions and community theater. But it was his rapid rise to stardom that was unusual. Bitten by the acting bug in the first grade because his older sister...
11.
Chris Hemsworth
Actor, Thor
Though born in Melbourne, Australia, Chris Hemsworth saw quite a bit of the country in his youth when his family moved first to the Northern Territory before finally settling on Phillip Island to the south of Melbourne. He is brother to actors Liam Hemsworth and Luke Hemsworth. In 2004, he unsuccessfully...
12.
Liam Neeson
Actor, Schindler's List
Born on June 7, 1952 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, UK, Liam Neeson worked as a forklift operator for Guinness, truck driver, assistant architect and an amateur boxer. He had originally sought a career as a teacher by attending St Mary's Teaching College, Newcastle. However, in 1976, Neeson joined...
13.
Tom Hardy
Actor, Inception
With his breakthrough performance as Eames in Christopher Nolan's science fiction thriller Inception, English actor Tom Hardy has been brought to the attention of mainstream audiences worldwide. But the versatile actor has been steadily working on both stage and screen since his television debut in the mini-series Band of Brothers...
14.
Daniel Craig
Actor, Skyfall
Daniel Craig, one of British theatre's most famous faces who was waiting tables as a struggling teenage actor with the NYT, went on to star as "James Bond" in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. He was born Daniel Wroughton Craig on March 2, 1968, at 41 Liverpool Road, Chester, Cheshire...
15.
Viggo Mortensen
Actor, A History of Violence
Since his screen debut as a young Amish Farmer in Peter Weir's Witness, Viggo Mortensen's career has been marked by a steady string of well-rounded performances. Critics have continually recognized his work in over thirty movies, including such diverse projects as Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady...
16.
Tom Cruise
Actor, Top Gun
If you had told fourteen-year-old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not-too-distant future he would be considered one of the top hundred movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to become a priest. None the less...
17.
Brad Pitt
Actor, Inglourious Basterds
An actor and producer known as much for his versatility as he is for his handsome face, Golden Globe-winning actor Brad Pitt's most widely recognized role may be Tyler Durden in Fight Club. But his portrayals of Billy Beane in Moneyball, and Rusty Ryan in the remake of Ocean's Eleven and its sequels, also loom large in his filmography...
18.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Actor, Donnie Darko
Jake Gyllenhaal was born into a family of talent. His mother and father are producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner and director Stephen Gyllenhaal. He is also the brother of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, who played his sister in Donnie Darko. His godmother is actress Jamie Lee Curtis. His mother is from a Jewish family and his father's ancestry includes Swedish...
19.
Mark Wahlberg
Actor, Boogie Nights
American actor Mark Wahlberg is one of a handful of respected entertainers who successfully made the transition from teen pop idol to respected actor. A Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee for The Departed who went on to receive positive critical reviews for his performance in The Fighter, Wahlberg also is a solid comedy actor, proven by his starring role in Ted...
20.
Channing Tatum
Actor, 21 Jump Street
Channing Tatum was born in a small town called Cullman, 50 miles north of Birmingham, Alabama. Growing up, he was full of energy and somewhat troublesome, so his parents decided to enroll him in different sports such as track and field, baseball, soccer, and football to keep him out of trouble. In the ninth grade he was sent to catholic school...
21.
Ewan McGregor
Ewan Gordon McGregor was born on March 31, 1971 in Crieff, Scotland. At age 16, he left Crieff and Morrison Academy to join the Perth Repertory Theatre. His parents encouraged him to leave school and pursue his acting goals rather than be unhappy. McGregor studied drama for a year at Kirkcaldly in Fife...
22.
Jack Black
Actor, Kung Fu Panda
Jack Black was born in California, and attended the University of California at Los Angeles. While at UCLA, he was a member of Tim Robbins's acting troupe and it was through this collaboration that led to his 1992 film debut in Bob Roberts. Although he was just a background voice in his first film...
23.
Henry Cavill
Actor, Man of Steel
Henry William Dalgliesh Cavill was born on the Bailiwick of Jersey, a British Crown Dependency in the Channel Islands, just off the coast of Normandy, France. He is the second youngest with four brothers. He was educated at St. Michael's Preparatory School in Saint Saviour, Jersey before attending Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, England...
24.
Jeff Bridges
Actor, The Big Lebowski
The son of well-known film and TV star Lloyd Bridges and his long-time wife Dorothy Dean Bridges, Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born on December 4, 1949 in Los Angeles, California, and grew up amid the happening Hollywood scene with big brother Beau Bridges. Both boys popped up, without billing, alongside their mother in the film The Company She Keeps...
25.
Mel Gibson
Actor, Braveheart
Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson was born on January 3, 1956, in Peekskill, New York, USA as the sixth of eleven children to parents Hutton Gibson, a railroad brakeman, and Ann Gibson, who was born in Australia and died in December of 1990. Though born in the US, Mel and his family moved to New South Wales...
26.
Liam Hemsworth
Born on January 13, 1990, in Melbourne, Australia, Liam Hemsworth is the younger brother of actors Chris Hemsworth and Luke Hemsworth and the son of Leonie, an English teacher, and Craig Hemsworth, a social-services counselor; the Hemsworth family lived primarily on Phillip Island, a small island located south of Melbourne...
27.
Will Ferrell
Actor, Step Brothers
A graduate of the University of Southern California, Will Ferrell became interested in performing while a student at University High School in Irvine, California, where he made his school's daily morning announcements over the public address system in disguised voices. He started as a member of the Los Angeles comedy/improvisation group The Groundlings...
28.
Andrew Garfield
Actor, The Amazing Spider-Man
Andrew Russell Garfield was born in Los Angeles, California, to a British-born mother, Lynn (Hillman), and an American-born father, Richard Garfield. When he was three, he moved to Surrey, U.K., with his parents and older brother. Andrew was raised Jewish. He went to a private school, the City of London Freemen's School...
29.
Michael Fassbender
Actor, Inglourious Basterds
Michael Fassbender was born in Heidelberg, Germany, to a German father, Josef, and an Irish mother, Adele (originally from Larne, County Antrim, in Northern Ireland). Michael was raised in the town of Killarney, Co. Kerry, in south-west Ireland, where his family moved to when he was two years old. He is based in London...
30.
Sam Worthington
Actor, Avatar
Sam Worthington was born on August 2, 1976 in Surrey, England. His parents, Jeanne and Ronald Worthington, moved the family to Australia when he was six months old, and raised him and his sister Lucinda in Warnbro, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia. Worthington graduated from NIDA (Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art) in 1998 at the age of 22...
31.
Matthew McConaughey
Actor, Dallas Buyers Club
The youngest son of a gas station owner, who ran an oil pipe supply business and mother - substitute school teacher, Matthew McConaughey was born in Uvalde, Texas, but grew up in Longview, Texas where he graduated from the local High School (1988). Showing little interest in his father's oil business...
32.
Will Smith
Actor, Men in Black
Will Smith was the second of four children of Caroline (school board employee) and Willard C. Smith Sr. (owner of a refrigeration company). He grew up in a middle class area in West Philadelphia called Wynnefield. Will attended the Overbrook High School located in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia...
33.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Actor, The Terminator
With an almost unpronounceable surname and a thick Austrian accent, who would have ever believed that a brash, quick talking bodybuilder from a small European village would become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, marry into the prestigious Kennedy family, amass a fortune via shrewd investments and one day be the Governor of California!...
34.
Orlando Bloom
Orlando Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, England on January 13, 1977. The man he briefly knew as his father, Harry Bloom, was a legendary political activist who fought for civil rights in South Africa. But Harry died of a stroke when Orlando was only four years old. After that, Orlando and his older sister...
35.
Joaquin Phoenix
Actor, Gladiator
Joaquin Phoenix was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Arlyn (Dunetz) and John Bottom, and is the middle child in a brood of five. His parents, from the continental United States, were then serving as Children of God missionaries. His mother was originally from a Jewish family in New York, while his father...
36.
Clint Eastwood
Actor, Million Dollar Baby
Perhaps the icon of macho movie stars, Clint Eastwood has become a standard in international cinema. Born in 1930 in San Francisco, the son of a steelworker, Eastwood briefly attended Los Angeles City College but dropped out to pursue acting. He found bit work in such B-films as Revenge of the Creature and Tarantula until he got his first breakthrough in the long-running TV series Rawhide...
37.
Ken Watanabe
Actor, Inception
Ken Watanabe was born on October 21, 1959 in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. In 1978, he moved to Tokyo to pursue his career as an actor. He drew the attention of the critics when Yukio Ninagawa, a famous Japanese director, chose him for the lead role in one of his plays even though Ken was still an acting student...
39.
Matt Damon
Actor, The Bourne Identity
Matt Damon was born in 1970. His father, Kent Damon, a tax preparer, and his mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a college professor, are now divorced. His older brother, Kyle (b. 1967), is a sculptor. Matt's first film role was a one-line part in Mystic Pizza. Hollywood's power brokers realized his potential...
40.
Guy Pearce
Actor, Memento
Born in 1967 in Cambridgeshire, England, Guy Pearce and his family traveled to Australia initially for two years after his father, Stuart Pearce, was offered the position of Chief test pilot for the Australian Government. Guy was just 3-years-old. After deciding to stay in Australia and settling in the Victorian city of Geelong...
41.
Robert Duvall
Actor, The Godfather: Part II
Veteran actor and director Robert Duvall was born on January 5, 1931, in San Diego, CA, the son of a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, IL), then served a two-year hitch in the army after graduating in 1953. He began attending The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre In New York City on the G.I...
42.
Kenneth Branagh
Actor, Frankenstein
Kenneth Charles Branagh was born on December 10, 1960, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, to parents William Branagh, a carpenter born in 1930, and Frances Branagh, also born in 1930. His brother, William Branagh Jr., was born in 1955 and sister, Joyce Branagh, was born in 1970. At 23, Branagh joined the Royal Shakespeare Company...
43.
Denis Leary
Writer, Two If by Sea
Denis Leary was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Nora and John Leary, Irish immigrants who had grown up together. After a childhood in the 1960s, Leary went to Emerson College in Boston, where he tried his hand at acting and writing. He was a charter member of Emerson's Comedy Workshop...