List of Famous people born in Illinois, United States of America

Michael Steven Ovitz is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He was a talent agent who co-founded Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in 1975 and served as its chairman until 1995. Ovitz later served as President of The Walt Disney Company from October 1995 to January 1997.

Henry Skillman Breckinridge was an American lawyer and politician who was a member of the prominent Breckinridge family and served as the United States Assistant Secretary of War from 1913 to 1916. During the Lindbergh kidnapping trial he served as Charles Lindbergh's attorney and was the only serious opponent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 Democratic primaries.

Howard Robert Horvitz is an American biologist best known for his research on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston, whose "seminal discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death" were "important for medical research and have shed new light on the pathogenesis of many diseases".

Alfrederick "Al" Joyner is an American track and field coach and former athlete. He was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. He is the 1984 Olympic gold medalist in the triple jump. He was also the coach and husband of the late four-time Olympic medalist Florence Griffith Joyner and is the brother of six-time Olympic medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Alfred Eno Woodward II was an American attorney and jurist who served as the Chief Judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court, DuPage County, Illinois, from 1973 to 1975. He is the father of reporter and author Bob Woodward.

Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.

Joan Mitchell was an American "second generation" abstract expressionist painter and printmaker. She was a member of the American abstract expressionist movement, even though much of her career took place in France. Along with Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, Helen Frankenthaler, Shirley Jaffe, Elaine de Kooning, and Sonia Gechtoff, she was one of her era's few female painters to gain critical and public acclaim. Her paintings and editioned prints can be seen in major museums and collections across the United States and Europe.

Brett Halliday is the primary pen name of Davis Dresser, an American mystery and western writer. Halliday is best known for the long-lived series of Michael Shayne mysteries he wrote and later commissioned others to write. Dresser wrote westerns, non-series mysteries, and romances under the names Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Kathryn Culver, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Anthony Scott, Peter Field, and Anderson Wayne.

James Goldman was an American screenwriter and playwright, and the brother of screenwriter and novelist William Goldman.