List of Famous people born in Illinois, United States of America
Kimberly Baldwin
Kimberly Bruckner Baldwin is an American road cyclist. She represented her nation at the 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2006 UCI Road World Championships.
Leona Woods
Leona Harriet Woods, later known as Leona Woods Marshall and Leona Woods Marshall Libby, was an American physicist who helped build the first nuclear reactor and the first atomic bomb.
David Sills
David George Sills was an American jurist. Sills served as the presiding justice for the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District, Division Three. He is a former mayor of Irvine, California, the largest planned city in the United States.
Lisa Madigan
Lisa Murray Madigan is an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as Attorney General of the U.S. state of Illinois from 2003 to 2019, being the first woman to hold that position. She is the adopted daughter of Michael Madigan, who served as Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1983-1995 and 1997-2021.
Dennis Dugan
Dennis Barton Dugan is an American director, actor, writer, artist and comedian. He is known for his partnership with comedic actor Adam Sandler, with whom he directed the films Happy Gilmore (1996), Big Daddy (1999), I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007), You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008), Grown Ups (2010), Just Go with It (2011), Jack and Jill (2011), and Grown Ups 2 (2013). Dugan is a 4 time Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director nominee, winning once.
Ruth Bryan Owen
Ruth Baird Bryan Leavitt Owen Rohde, also known as Ruth Bryan Owen, was elected to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the first woman appointed as a United States ambassador. The daughter of attorneys William Jennings Bryan and Mary E. Baird, she was a Democrat, who in 1929 was elected from Florida's 4th district as Florida's first female U.S. Representative and the second from the South after Alice Mary Robertson. Representative Owen was also the first woman to earn a seat on the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs. She campaigned for prohibition.
George Montgomery
George Montgomery is a retired American basketball player. He played basketball at Illinois, and was a second-round draft selection of the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1985 NBA Draft, though he never played in the NBA. He is the biological father of Suns center JaVale McGee,
Dino Stamatopoulos
Konstantinos "Dino" Stamatopoulos is an American writer, producer, and actor. He has worked on TV programs such as Mr. Show, TV Funhouse, Mad TV, The Dana Carvey Show, Late Show with David Letterman, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He has also created multiple animated TV shows such as Moral Orel, Mary Shelley's Frankenhole, and High School USA!. As an actor, he is best known for his recurring role as the character Alex "Star-Burns" Osbourne on the NBC comedy series Community, on which he also worked as a producer and consulting writer.
Craig Rodwell
Craig L. Rodwell was an American gay rights activist known for founding the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on November 24, 1967, the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors, and as the prime mover for the creation of the New York City pride demonstration. Rodwell is considered by some to be the leading gay rights activist in the early homophile movement of the 1960s.
Ken Kwapis
Kenneth William Kwapis is an American film and television director, screenwriter, and author. He specialized in the single-camera sitcom in the 1990s and 2000s and has directed feature films such as Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird (1985), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), and He's Just Not That Into You (2009).