List of Famous people born in California, United States of America
Dwayne Johnson
Dwayne Douglas Johnson, also known by his ring name the Rock, is an American-Canadian actor, producer, businessman, retired professional wrestler, and former American football and Canadian football player. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he wrestled for the World Wrestling Federation for eight years prior to pursuing an acting career. His films have grossed over $3.5 billion in North America and over $10.5 billion worldwide, making him one of the world's highest-grossing actors.
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed an exacting system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a deeply technical understanding of how tonal range is recorded and developed in exposure, negative development, and printing. The resulting clarity and depth of such images characterized his photography.
Zendaya
Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman is an American actress and singer. She began her career as a child model and backup dancer, before gaining prominence for her role as Rocky Blue on the Disney Channel sitcom Shake It Up (2010–2013).
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards, she has been named Hollywood's highest-paid actress multiple times.
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor, film producer and environmentalist. He has often played unconventional roles, particularly in biopics and period films. As of 2019, his films have grossed US$7.2 billion worldwide, and he has placed eight times in annual rankings of the highest-paid actors in the world.
Kim Kardashian
Kimberly Noel Kardashian West is an American media personality, socialite, model, businesswoman, producer, and actress. Kardashian first gained media attention as a friend and stylist of Paris Hilton but received wider notice after a 2002 sex tape, Kim Kardashian, Superstar, with her then-boyfriend Ray J was released in 2007. Later that year, she and her family began to appear in the E! reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007–2021). Its success soon led to the creation of the spin-off series Kourtney and Kim Take New York (2011–2012) and Kourtney and Kim Take Miami (2009–2013).
Jake Gyllenhaal
Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal is an American actor and producer. Born into the Gyllenhaal family, he is the son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner. He began acting as a child, making his acting debut in City Slickers (1991), followed by roles in his father's films A Dangerous Woman (1993) and Homegrown (1998). His breakthrough roles were as Homer Hickam in October Sky (1999) and as a psychologically troubled teenager in Donnie Darko (2001). His most widely seen film to that point came with the disaster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004).
Clint Eastwood
Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor, film director, composer, and producer. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s, and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. His accolades include four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three César Awards, and an AFI Life Achievement Award.
Tom Brady
Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. is an American football quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL). He spent the first 20 seasons of his career with the New England Patriots, where he was a core contributor of the franchise's dynasty from 2001 to 2019. Brady is considered by many sports writers, commentators, and players to be the greatest quarterback of all time.
Bruce Lee
Lee Jun-fan, commonly known as Bruce Lee, was a Chinese-American martial artist, actor, director, martial arts instructor and philosopher. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA). Lee is considered by commentators, critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West. He is credited with helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films.
Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell is an American singer-songwriter. She first gained attention in 2015 when she uploaded the song "Ocean Eyes" to SoundCloud, which was subsequently released by the Interscope Records subsidiary Darkroom. The song was written and produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell, with whom she collaborates on music and live shows. Her debut EP, Don't Smile at Me (2017), became a sleeper hit, reaching the top 15 in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc., the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar, and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Susan Wojcicki
Susan Diane Wojcicki is the CEO of YouTube. She has been in the tech industry for over 20 years.
Rami Malek
Rami Said Malek is an American actor. He is best known for portraying computer hacker Elliot Alderson in the USA Network television series Mr. Robot (2015–2019), for which he received accolades such as the 2016 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, and as Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury in the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), for which he received awards such as the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and British Academy Film Award for Best Actor. He has also received multiple other accolades, and is the first actor of Egyptian heritage to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Time magazine named Malek one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Joanna Aniston is an American actress, producer, and businesswoman. The daughter of actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow, she began working as an actress at an early age with an uncredited role in the 1987 film Mac and Me; her first major film role came in the 1993 horror comedy Leprechaun. Since her career grew in the 1990s, Aniston has been one of Hollywood's highest-paid actresses.
Hailee Steinfeld
Hailee Steinfeld is an American actress, singer and model. She earned many accolades for her breakthrough role as Mattie Ross in the drama western film True Grit (2010), for which she was nominated for BAFTA Award for Best Actress as well as Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the ninth youngest nominee in category.
Kylie Jenner
Kylie Kristen Jenner is an American media personality, socialite, model, and businesswoman. She has starred in the E! reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians since 2007 and is the founder and owner of cosmetic company Kylie Cosmetics.
Venus Williams
Venus Ebony Starr Williams is an American professional tennis player. A former world No. 1 in both singles and doubles, Williams is generally regarded as one of the all-time greats of women's tennis and, along with younger sister Serena Williams, is credited with ushering in a new era of power and athleticism on the women's professional tennis tour.
Marilyn Monroe
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.
Blake Lively
Blake Ellender Lively is an American actress. Lively is known for starring as Serena van der Woodsen in the CW drama television series Gossip Girl (2007–2012). She also starred in a number of films, including The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008), The Town (2010), Green Lantern (2011), Savages (2012), The Age of Adaline (2015), The Shallows (2016) and A Simple Favor (2018).