Inspirational people. People I admire.
by nicesegue | created - 28 Dec 2013 | updated - 01 May 2014 | Public1. Jerry Stahl
Actor | Zoolander
Jerry Stahl was born on September 28, 1953 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Zoolander (2001), Inland Empire (2006) and Bad Boys II (2003). He has been married to Zoe Hansen since August 20, 2023. He was previously married to Elizabeth Stahl and Brandy ...
2. Martin Luther King
Soundtrack | Freedom Writers
Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Alberta Christine (Williams), a schoolteacher, and Martin Luther King Sr. a pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. For Martin the civil rights movement began one summer in 1935 when he was six ...
3. Steven Spielberg
Producer | Schindler's List
One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, ...
4. Michael Bay
Producer | Armageddon
A graduate of Wesleyan University, Michael Bay spent his 20s working on advertisements and music videos. His first projects after film school were in the music video business. He created music videos for Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, Lionel Richie, Wilson Phillips, Donny Osmond and Divinyls. His work won...
5. Chris Hardwick
Producer | Talking Dead
Chris Hardwick was born on November 23, 1971 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for Talking Dead (2011), @midnight (2013) and The Wall (2016). He has been married to Lydia Hearst since August 20, 2016. They have one child.
6. Moby
Soundtrack | Southland Tales
Richard Melville Hall was born September 11, 1965, in the Manhattan, New York City, in the Harlem neighborhood to Elizabeth McBride (née Warner) and James Frederick Hall. His mother was a medical secretary and his father a professor of chemistry. The nickname Moby was assigned by his father, and ...
7. Denzel Washington
Actor | Fences
Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. was born on December 28, 1954 in Mount Vernon, New York. He is the middle of three children of a beautician mother, Lennis, from Georgia, and a Pentecostal minister father, Denzel Washington, Sr., from Virginia. After graduating from high school, Denzel enrolled at ...
8. Barack Obama
Producer | Leave the World Behind
U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama II was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a white American from Wichita, Kansas. His father, Barack Obama Sr., who was black, was from Alego, Kenya. They were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left...
9. Conan O'Brien
Actor | The Lego Batman Movie
Conan O'Brien grew up in a large Irish Catholic family in Massachusetts. At an early age, he developed a love of comedy and goofing off. This carried on when he entered prestigious Harvard University, acting out many pranks in his time, as well as becoming the president of the Harvard humor ...
10. Stephen King
Writer | Maximum Overdrive
Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, at the Maine General Hospital in Portland. His parents were Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury), who worked as a caregiver at a mental institute, and Donald Edwin King, a merchant seaman. His father was born under the surname "Pollock," but used the last name ...
11. Derek Cianfrance
Director | Blue Valentine
Derek Cianfrance began making movies at age 13. He later attended The University of Colorado where he studied under avant-garde film legends Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon. His first three films, 'Five O'clock Shadow', 'Raw Footage', and Brother Tied (1998), won consecutive Goldfarb Awards for best...
12. Tony Scott
Producer | Domino
Tony Scott was a British-born film director and producer. He was the youngest of three brothers, one of whom is fellow film director Ridley Scott. He was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England to parents Jean and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. As a result of his father's career in the British...
RIP, Tony.
13. Ridley Scott
Producer | The Martian
Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom ...
14. Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Director | The Kings of Summer
Jordan Vogt-Roberts was born on September 22, 1984 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He is a director and producer, known for The Kings of Summer (2013), Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Successful Alcoholics (2010).
15. Mark Wahlberg
Producer | The Fighter
American actor Mark Wahlberg is one of a handful of respected entertainers who successfully made the transition from teen pop idol to acclaimed actor. A Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee for The Departed (2006) who went on to receive positive critical reviews for his performance in The Fighter (...
Started off as a violent street punk, but he was able to turn his life around and is now helping folks in need. I respect that.
16. Tom Cruise
Actor | Top Gun
In 1976, 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 Tom Cruise, one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to join the priesthood. ...
17. Nicolas Cage
Actor | Face/Off
Nicolas Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola in Long Beach, California, the son of comparative literature professor August Coppola (whose brother is director Francis Ford Coppola) and dancer/choreographer Joy Vogelsang. He is of Italian (father) and Polish and German (mother) descent. Cage changed his...
18. Leonardo DiCaprio
Actor | Inception
Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s,...
19. Wei Zhao
Actress | Hua Mulan
Wei Zhao was born in Wuhu, Anhui province. She is the second child of her family. Because she is the only girl, Zhao's father named her Wei, literally "Rose". Her father was a senior engineer, her mother was a music teacher.
After filming A Soul Haunted By Painting (1994) as a figurant, Wei Zhao was...
20. Martin Scorsese
Director | Taxi Driver
Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later ...
21. Morgan Freeman
Actor | Se7en
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. Morgan was born on June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mayme Edna (Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber. The young Freeman...
22. Adrian Lyne
Director | Jacob's Ladder
Adrian Lyne (Director/Writer/Producer) is the creative force behind some of the most talked-about movies of our time, among them, Fatal Attraction (1987), 9½ Weeks (1986) and Indecent Proposal (1993).
Born in Peterborough, England and raised in London, Lyne attended the Highgate school, where...
23. Jeremy Irons
Actor | Dead Ringers
British actor Jeremy Irons was born in Cowes, Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England. He is the son of Barbara Anne Brereton (Sharpe) and Paul Dugan Irons, an accountant. Young Jeremy didn't prove very fond of figures. He visited mainland England only once a year. He wound up ...
24. Jerry Bruckheimer
Producer | Top Gun: Maverick
Jerry Bruckheimer is a film and television producer born on September 21, 1943 in Detroit. He graduated from high school in 1961 before it was moving to Arizona. He started his career in 1968 to produce television commercials and advertising for the firm BBD&O in New York.
He left the commercial ...
25. Nansun Shi
Producer | Double Team
Nansun Shi was born in Hong Kong. She is known for Double Team (1997), Infernal Affairs (2002) and Detective Dee: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010). She was previously married to Hark Tsui.
26. John Woo
Director | Ying hung boon sik
Born in southern China, John Woo grew up in Hong Kong, where he began his film career as an assistant director in 1969, working for Shaw Brothers Studios. He directed his first feature in 1973 and has been a prolific director ever since, working in a wide variety of genres before A Better Tomorrow ...
27. 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 ...
28. Ricky Gervais
Writer | The Office
Ricky Dene Gervais was born in a suburb of Reading, Berkshire, to Eva Sophia (House) and Lawrence Raymond Gervais, who was a hod carrier and labourer. His father was born in Ontario, Canada, of French-Canadian descent, and his mother was English. He was educated at Ashmead Comprehensive School and ...
29. David Koepp
Writer | Jurassic Park
David Koepp is an American film director and screenwriter. He is known for writing Jurassic Park directed by Steven Spielberg, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spider-Man directed by Sam Raimi and Panic Room directed by David ...
30. Alex Kurtzman
Producer | Sleepy Hollow
Alex Kurtzman is an American filmmaker and screenwriter. He directed People Like Us and the panned 2017 reboot The Mummy starring Tom Cruise and Sofia Boutella. He wrote Transformers 1 and 2, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Star Trek, The Island and Cowboys & Aliens. He also created the TV show Fringe.
31. Steve Jablonsky
Composer | Transformers
Steve Jablonsky is an American film composer who is known for his collaborations with film directors Michael Bay and Peter Berg. He composed five Transformers films, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Lone ...
32. Trevor Rabin
Composer | Deep Blue Sea
Trevor Rabin was born in South Africa in 1954. He began playing guitar at the age of 12 after having had piano lessons since he was a toddler. In 1972 he formed the band Rabbit becoming the most successful rock act ever to emerge from South Africa. Rabin left Rabbit to pursue a solo career in ...
33. Hans Zimmer
Composer | Gladiator
German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to ...
34. Kathleen Kennedy
Producer | The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Eight-time Academy Award®-nominated, Kathleen Kennedy is one of the most successful and respected producers and executives in the film industry today. As President of Lucasfilm, she oversees the company's three divisions: Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. In 1992, she ...
35. James Cameron
Writer | Avatar: The Way of Water
James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954 in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. He moved to the United States in 1971. The son of an engineer, he majored in physics at California State University before switching to English, and eventually dropping out. He then drove a truck to support his ...
36. Matt Damon
Actor | Good Will Hunting
Matthew Paige Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Kent Damon, a stockbroker, realtor and tax preparer, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Matt has an older brother, Kyle, a sculptor. His father was of English and ...
37. Ben Seresin
Cinematographer | Unstoppable
Ben Seresin B.S.C., A.S.C., has lensed a number of notable features with big-name directors. He collaborated with Michael Bay on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and on Pain and Gain. He shot Marc Forster's World War Z starring Brad Pitt (sharing credit with Robert Richardson, A.S.C.), and Tony ...
38. John Schwartzman
Cinematographer | Seabiscuit
John Schwartzman was born on October 18, 1960 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is a cinematographer and actor, known for Seabiscuit (2003), Pearl Harbor (2001) and Armageddon (1998).
39. Mitchell Amundsen
Camera_department | G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Mitchell "Mitch" Amundsen grew up in Larkspur in Marin County outside of San Francisco. During his high school years he became interested in still photography and studied film at the Montana State University in Bozeman. There, he took classes on motion pictures, which sparked his interest in ...
40. Hark Tsui
Producer | Di Renjie zhi Tongtian diguo
Tsui Hark recently became the fourth Chinese film director to join the board of judges for the 57th Cannes Film Festival in the feature films category this year.
An internationally acclaimed visionary director, Tsui started making experimental movies with 8mm film when he was only 13. After ...
41. 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 ...
42. Brendan Gleeson
Actor | The Guard
Brendan Gleeson was born in Dublin, Ireland, to Pat and Frank Gleeson. From a very young age, he loved to learn, especially reading classical text in and outside the classroom. He took great attention to Irish play writers such as Samuel Beckett, which eventually led to him performing in his high ...
43. Robbie Coltrane
Actor | Cracker
Robbie Coltrane, one of Britain's most popular comedians who was head of debating society at school and won prizes for his art, is now a film star who played in two James Bond films and in the "Harry Potter" franchise.
Coltrane was born Anthony Robert McMillan on March 30, 1950, in Rutherglen, a ...
44. Pierce Brosnan
Actor | Mamma Mia!
Pierce Brendan Brosnan was born in Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland, to May (Smith), a nurse, and Thomas Brosnan, a carpenter. He lived in Navan, County Meath, until he moved to England, UK, at an early age (thus explaining his ability to play men from both backgrounds convincingly). His father left...
Tell Your Friends