List of Famous people who born in 1942

Leo Beenhakker is a Dutch international football coach. He has had an extensive and successful career both at club and international level. He led both Ajax and Feyenoord to Dutch championships and also had domestic success with Real Madrid. At international level, he led Trinidad and Tobago to the 2006 FIFA World Cup and Poland to UEFA Euro 2008, both firsts for each nation. His role in Spanish football has earned him the nickname Don Leo, largely due to his fondness of cigars and dry humour.

Elizabeth Counsell is an English actress, best known for starring in the BBC television series Brush Strokes, and for her work in classical theatre. She played Lady Macbeth to Michael Gambon's Macbeth at the Forum Theatre, Billingham in 1968, and was Michael Redgrave's leading lady in his anthology Shakespeare's People, 1976-77. In 1983 she took the nominal part in Peter Hall's Jean Seberg at the Royal National Theatre. Her film career includes roles in Hot Millions (1968), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), Doctor at Sea (1974), Under the Doctor (1976), Killer's Moon (1978), and Claudia (1985). Her most recent film appearances include the 2012 film Song for Marion with Vanessa Redgrave, and the 2014 film Grace of Monaco starring Nicole Kidman. Her most recent appearance is in the second series of the BBC1 drama The Split (2020).

Richard V. Gotti is a capo in the Gambino crime family. Richard was born in 1942 to John Gotti, Sr. and his wife Fannie. Richard's brothers included former Gambino boss John, capo Gene, former boss Peter, and Vincent Gotti. They grew up in East New York, Brooklyn. Gotti has a son, Richard G. Gotti, who also belongs to the Gambino family. Gotti had a strange fascination with grass and would later work as a groundskeeper at Yankee Stadium. Gotti became a Gambino associate in 1962 and was first arrested in 1969 for statutory rape. Gotti was given the job of general manager for the Our Friends Social Club, at his brother John's urging. Gotti and an accomplice once tried to rob a high-stakes poker game in a Manhattan hotel room. Brandishing sawed-off shotguns, they demanded the players turn over their money. Hardly bothering to look up from their cards, the players told them to go to hell. The players then began throwing poker chips at them and chased them off down the hallway. By 1988, Gotti had become a made man and by 1999 a caporegime.

Vladimír Mečiar is a Slovak politician who served as Prime Minister of Slovakia three times, from 1990 to 1991, from 1992 to 1994 and from 1994 to 1998. He was the leader of the People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (ĽS-HZDS). Mečiar led Slovakia during the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992–93 and was one of the leading presidential candidates in Slovakia in 1999 and 2004. He has been criticized by his opponents as well as by Western political organisations for having an autocratic style of administration and for his connections to organized crime and his years in government became infamously known as Mečiarizmus.

Robert Howard Grubbs ForMemRS is an American chemist and the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He was a co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on olefin metathesis. He is a co-founder of Materia, a university spin-off startup to produce catalysts.

Abdul Rahim Mrad is a Lebanese Sunni politician. He was born in 1942. A former minister, he is the founder of the Lebanese International University. He is the leader of the Union Party.

Raymond A. J. Chrétien, CC is a Canadian lawyer and diplomat. He served as Canada's ambassador to the United States from 1994–2000. His uncle is former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

Roger E. Young is an American TV and film director.

Jean Auroux is a French politician. He served as Minister of Labour from 1981 to 1983, under former President François Mitterrand.