most charismatic and/or interesting celebrities

David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father was a journalist, and his mother was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early age (he wrote and published eerie short stories, thus following his father's path) and for music (playing classical guitar until he was 12)...

Eddie Izzard made his first stage appearance in London's West End in 1993 with his one-man comedy show Eddie Izzard: Live at the Ambassadors. The show earned Izzard a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for outstanding achievement and garnered Izzard his first British Comedy Award for top stand-up comedian. He returned to the West End the next year with his second one-man show...

Born in 1965 in the Icelandic capital city of Reykjavik, the daughter of Gudmundur Gunnarsson (an electrician) and Hildur Hauksdóttir who divorced before her second birthday, Björk grew up in a hippie-type community with her mother and her seven siblings. She started to study classical music at the...

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother, Ruthie. Bette demanded attention from birth, which led to her pursuing a career in acting. After graduation from Cushing Academy she was refused...

Born in 1946 in Missoula, Montana, David Lynch was raised early in small town America. After high school, he went to Boston to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Shortly after that, he planned a 3 year trip to Europe to work on his art, but didn't take to it and left after 15 days. In 1977...

Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Her parents were well-to-do, with her father as a successful attorney in Phillipburg, New Jersey, where Jayne was beginning her girlhood. Tragedy struck when Jayne was three when her father suddenly died of a heart attack...

Tim Burton was raised in Burbank, California. He spent most of his childhood as a recluse, drawing cartoons and watching old movies (he was especially fond of films with Vincent Price). When he was in the ninth grade, his artistic talent was recognized by a local garbage company when he won a prize for an anti-litter poster he designed...

Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France. Her father had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance...

Born Be'la Ferenc Dezso Blasko on October 20, 1882, Lugos, Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania) . The youngest of four children. During WWI, volunteered and was commissioned as an infantry lieutenant. Wounded three times. Married Ilona Szmik (1917 - 1920) Arrived in New York City in December, 1920. Married Ilona von Montagh (...

British actor whose greatest success came after 1990 when he moved to the States to play American heavies. He has been a favorite of director Quentin Tarantino.

Helena Bonham Carter is an actress of great versatility, and one of the UK's finest and most successful. Most recently, she has starred in Sweeney Todd as Mrs Lovett alongside Johnny Depp for which she was awarded Best Actress at the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2008. Other recent work includes Conversations with Other Women opposite Aaron Eckhart...

"Dad was a true Westerner, and I take after him", Gary Cooper told people who wanted to know more about his life before Hollywood. Dad was Charles Henry Cooper, who left his native England at 19, became a lawyer and later a Montana State Supreme Court justice. In 1906, when Gary was 5, his dad bought the Seven-Bar-Nine...

Perhaps the icon of macho movie stars, Clint Eastwood has become a standard in international cinema. Born in San Francisco, he is the son of Clinton Eastwood, Sr., a factory worker, and Ruth Wood (née Runner). The family frequently moved around Northern California when Clint was growing up before settling in Oregon...

The son of a Methodist Royal Navy chaplain, James, and his wife Patricia, a school secretary, Tim Curry studied Drama and English at Cambridge and at Birmingham University, from which he graduated with Combined Honors. His first professional success was in the London production of 'Hair,' followed by more work in the Royal Shakespeare Company...

Growing up in a small, isolated village in Austria, he turned to bodybuilding as his ticket to a better life. Prior to that he served a mandatory one year in the Austrian military (beginning in 1965). After conquering the world as arguably the greatest bodybuilder who ever lived, he went to America to make his name in motion pictures...

William Shatner was born on March 22, 1931 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Handsome actor who-despite his detractors-has notched up an impressive 50-plus years in front of the camera, most recently displaying comedic talent, and being instantly recognizable to several generations of cult television fans as the square-jawed Captain James T...

Nick Cave is a man of many talents. Musician. Songwriter. Screenwriter. Novelist. Actor. The Australian was born in Warracknabeal, Victoria in 1957, and would go onto form the alternative rock band Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, who have since successfully released a string of hit albums. In film, Nick has starred in two films with Brad Pitt: Johnny Suede by Tom DiCillo and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford...

Founder of the Church of Satan. Author of "The Satanic Bible", "The Satanic Witch, " "The Satanic Rituals, " and "The Devil's Notebook."

His father was a well-to-do inventor, his mother a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died (he was seven) he traveled the world with his father. When his father died (he was fifteen) he became the ward of Chicago's Dr...

Stanley Kubrick was born in New York, and was considered intelligent despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father Jack (a physician) sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school...

Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, at the Maine General Hospital in Portland. His parents were Donald Edwin King and Ruth Pillsbury King. He was the only natural-born child in the family, his older brother David having been adopted at birth two years earlier. The Kings were the typical...

He was only 6 years old when he started composing music under the protection of his brother Enrique. After the Spanish Civil War he was able to continue his studies at the Real Conservatorio de Madrid, where he finished piano and harmony. Being a Bachelor of Law and an easy-read novel writer (under the pseudonym David Khume)...

Ian Murray McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England. His parents, Denis and Margery, soon moved with Ian and his sister Jean to the mill town of Wigan. It was in this small town that young Ian rode out World War II. He soon developed a fascination with acting and the theater...

Klaus Kinski grew up in Berlin, was drafted into the German army in 1944 and captured by British forces in Holland. After the war he began acting on the stage, quickly gaining a reputation for his ferocious talent and equally ferocious temper. He started acting in films shortly afterwards, showing an...

Along with fellow actors Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, Boris Karloff is recognized as one of the true icons of horror cinema, and the actor most closely identified with the general public's perception of the "monster" from the classic Mary Shelley book, "Frankenstein". William Henry Pratt was born on November 23...

Peter Wilton Cushing was born on May 26, 1913 in Kenley, Surrey, England. He and his older brother David were raised first in Dulwich Village, a south London suburb, and then later back in Surrey by his mother Nellie Marie and father George Edward, who was a quantity surveyor. At an early age, Cushing was attracted to acting...

Born in Detroit, Ellen Burstyn worked a number of jobs before she became an actress. At 14, she was a short-order cook at a lunch counter. After graduating from Detroit's Cass Technical High School, she went to Texas to model and then to New York as a showgirl on The Jackie Gleason Show. From there, it was to Montreal as a nightclub dancer and then Broadway with her debut in "Fair Game (1957)"...

A native of Flint, Michigan. Earned an Art Excellence Scholarship to attend Western Michigan University and also earned a full-ride athletic scholarship to play football. Crews was an All-Conference defensive end, and was a major contributor on the 1988 MAC champion WMU Broncos. His college success was rewarded in 1991, when he was Drafted by the NFL's Los Angeles Rams...

Ralph Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes was born on December 22, 1962 in Suffolk, England to Mark Fiennes, a photographer, and Jennifer Lash, a novelist, the eldest of six children. Four of his siblings are also in the arts: Martha Fiennes, a director; Magnus Fiennes, a musician; Sophie, a producer; and Joseph Fiennes, an actor...

Ridley Scott was born in South Shields, Tyne and Wear (then Northumberland) on 30 November 1937. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the UK and Europe before they eventually returned to Teesside. Scott wanted to join Army...

Christian Michael Leonard Slater was born on August 18, 1969 in New York City to Michael Hawkins, a well-known soap actor and Mary Jo Slater, a casting agent. Christian started in show business early, appearing on the soap opera The Edge of Night in 1976 at the age of 7. He went on to star in many Broadway shows in the early-1980s...

Macaulay Culkin, one of the most famous American child stars, was born on August 26, 1980, in New York, New York, USA as the third of seven children to his father Christopher Culkin (a former stage and child actor and also Macaulay's former manager) and mother Patricia Brentrup. "Mack", as he's known to his close friends and family...

The iconoclastic gifts of the visually striking and fiercely talented Scottish actress Tilda Swinton, who was born on November 5th, 1960, have been appreciated by a more international audience of late. Born into a patrician military family, she was educated at an English and a Scottish boarding school...

David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981-1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials and music videos after signing with N...

Probably the most celebrated of all actresses, Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on Tuesday, June 1st, 1926, in Los Angeles General Hospital. Prior to her birth, Marilyn's father bought a motorcycle and headed north to San Francisco, abandoning the family in Los Angeles. Marilyn grew up not knowing for sure who her father really was...

Gore Vidal was born in 1925 to West Point aeronautics instructor Gene Vidal and his wife Nina. The Vidals endured a rocky marriage divorcing ten years after Gore's birth. Young Gore spent much of his childhood with his blind grandfather, Senator T.P. Gore of Oklahoma. He is also a cousin of Tennessee ex-senator and ex-vice president Al Gore...

Alice Cooper was born Vincent Damon Furnier, in Detroit, Michigan, the son of a minister. He moved to Phoenix, Arizona, at a young age and still lives in the state today. At age 17, he formed a rock band called the Earwigs, who changed their name to The Spiders and then The Nazz, before finally settling on Alice Cooper...