List of Famous people who born in 1926

Elizabeth II is Queen of the United Kingdom and 15 other Commonwealth realms.

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, model, and singer. Famous for playing comedic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s and was emblematic of the era's changing attitudes towards sexuality. She was a top-billed actress for only a decade, but her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, she has continued to be a major icon of pop culture. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Monroe sixth on its list of the greatest female screen legends from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Anthony Dominick Benedetto, known professionally as Tony Bennett, is an American singer of traditional pop standards, big band, show tunes, and jazz. He is also a painter, having created works under his birth name that are on permanent public display in several institutions. He is the founder of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York.

Hugh Marston Hefner was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obscenity. The first issue of Playboy was published in 1953 featuring Marilyn Monroe in a nude calendar shoot; it sold over 50,000 copies.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration the Republic of Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and state socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.

Sir David Frederick Attenborough is an English broadcaster and natural historian. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection that together constitute a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth. He is a former senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in each of black and white, colour, HD, 3D and 4K. In 2018 and 2019, he received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator. He considers his 2020 documentary film, David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, his personal witness statement of his life and the future.

Melvin Kaminsky, known professionally as Mel Brooks, is an American director, writer, actor, comedian, producer and composer. He is known as a creator of broad film farces and comedic parodies. Brooks began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show Your Show of Shows (1950–1954) alongside Woody Allen, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. Together with Carl Reiner, he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man. He wrote, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series Get Smart, which ran from 1965 to 1970.

Klaus Kinski was a German actor. He appeared in more than 130 films, and was a leading role actor in the films of Werner Herzog, including Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Woyzeck (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and Cobra Verde (1987). He also appeared in many Spaghetti Westerns, such as For a Few Dollars More (1965), A Bullet for the General (1966), The Great Silence (1968), And God Said to Cain (1970), Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead (1971) and A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (1975).

Elizabeth Ann Theresa Lynn is a retired American actress. She is best known for her role as Thelma Lou, Deputy Barney Fife's girlfriend, on The Andy Griffith Show. During the 1940s and 1950s, she appeared in many films, including Sitting Pretty (1948), June Bride (1948), the original Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956).

Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing, also known as Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981.