List of Famous people who are 72

Aziza al-Yousef is a Saudi Arabian women's rights activist and academic. She was detained by Saudi authorities in May 2018 along with Loujain al-Hathloul and five others.

Banmei Takahashi is a Japanese film director. Takahashi started his career in the pink film industry, making his directorial debut in 1972 with Escaped Rapist Criminal. Due to a disagreement with his producer, Takahashi quit the film industry for a couple years. He joined pink film pioneer Kōji Wakamatsu's production studio in 1975, working as a script-writer until Wakamatsu produced Takahashi's second film, Delinquent File: Juvenile Prostitution (1976). For the next few years Takahashi averaged five films annually at Wakamatsu's studio, until Takahashi left to start his own production company in 1979.

Jiří Drahoš is a Czech physical chemist and politician who has been the Senator of Prague 4 since October 2018. Previously, Drahoš served as President of the Czech Academy of Sciences from 2009 to 2017, and was a candidate in the 2018 Czech presidential election.

Robert Plagnol is a French actor, who starred as 'Boris Vilde' in the French TV series Résistance.

Steven Williams is an American actor in films and television. He is known for his roles as Captain Adam Fuller on 21 Jump Street, Lt. Jefferson Burnett on The Equalizer, Det. August Brooks on L.A. Heat, X on The X-Files, Russell "Linc" Lincoln in Linc's, and Rufus Turner in Supernatural.

Mika Launis is a Finnish illustrator and graphic designer who studied graphic design at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. For his final project, he did the illustrations for a children's book written in Northern Sámi. Launis has illustrated several books, mainly children's books. In addition, he has provided illustrations for book covers, of which his most well-known are probably the covers of the Finnish versions of the Harry Potter books. Some of his works have also been published as postage stamps. Launis was the 1997 recipient of the Rudolf Koivu Award, which is awarded to illustrations in children's and young adult books. Furthermore, he won the competition to design Finland's first Euro postage stamp.

François Heisbourg is currently Senior Advisor for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and Special Advisor at the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique. He was director of the IISS from 1987 to 1992 and its chairman from 2001 to 2018.

Gloria Hendry, also known inaccurately as Gloria Henry, is an American actress and former model. Hendry is best known for her roles in films from the 1970s, most notably: portraying Rosie Carver in 1973's James Bond film Live and Let Die; and Helen Bradley in the blaxploitation film Black Caesar, and the sequel, Hell Up in Harlem.

Michael Ying Lee Yuen is a Hong Kong billionaire businessman and philanthropist. Ying is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Esprit Holdings Limited, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with a 15% stake. Ying steadily reduced his majority stake in recent years, pocketing more than $2 billion. Ying has donated to various charitable organizations, and started the Yanai Foundation in 2006 to benefit medical and educational related initiatives.

Jorge Aragão is a Brazilian musician, singer/songwriter, working in the genres of samba and pagode. He is a multi-instrumentalist, and plays the guitar, surdo, cavaco and banjo, among other instruments. In performance, he usually plays the cavaquinho most of the show, and sometimes the banjo.