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

Kevin Yagher is an American special effects technician, known for Freddy Krueger's makeup and the Crypt Keeper creature.

Robert Gerald Goldsborough is an American journalist and writer of mystery novels. He worked for 45 years for the Chicago Tribune and Advertising Age, but gained prominence as the author of a series of 16 authorized pastiches of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe detective stories, published from 1986 to 1994 and from 2012 to 2021. The first novel, Murder in E Minor (1986), received a Nero Award.

Frederick James Karlin was an American composer of more than 130 scores for feature films and television movies. He also was an accomplished trumpeter adept at playing jazz, blues, classical, rock, and medieval music.

Robert Ridgway was an American ornithologist specializing in systematics. He was appointed in 1880 by Spencer Fullerton Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, to be the first full-time curator of birds at the United States National Museum, a title he held until his death. In 1883, he helped found the American Ornithologists' Union, where he served as officer and journal editor. Ridgway was an outstanding descriptive taxonomist, capping his life work with The Birds of North and Middle America. In his lifetime, he was unmatched in the number of North American bird species that he described for science. As technical illustrator, Ridgway used his own paintings and outline drawings to complement his writing. He also published two books that systematized color names for describing birds, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists (1886) and Color Standards and Color Nomenclature (1912). Ornithologists all over the world continue to cite Ridgway's color studies and books.

Robert Ardrey was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for The Territorial Imperative (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences in the 1950s.

Stanford Moore was an American biochemist. He shared a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1972 (with Christian B. Anfinsen and William Howard Stein, for work done at Rockefeller University on the structure of the enzyme ribonuclease and for contributing to the understanding of the connection between the chemical structure and catalytic activity of the ribonuclease molecule.

Paris K. C. Barclay is an American television director and producer, and writer. He is a two-time Emmy Award winner and is among the busiest single-camera television directors, having directed over 160 episodes of television to date, for series such as NYPD Blue, ER, The West Wing, CSI, Lost, The Shield, House, Law & Order, Monk, Numb3rs, City of Angels, Cold Case, and more recently Sons of Anarchy, The Bastard Executioner, The Mentalist, Weeds, NCIS: Los Angeles, In Treatment, Glee, Smash and The Good Wife, Extant, and Manhattan, Empire, and Scandal. In 2016, Barclay worked as an executive producer and principal director for the Fox series Pitch. And most recently, Barclay was tapped as the executive producer and director of the Shondaland show, Station 19, which follows a group of Seattle firefighters that exist in the Grey’s Anatomy universe and stars Jaina Lee Ortiz, Jason George, Grey Damon, Miguel Sandoval, Jay Hayden, Danielle Savre, Barrett Doss, Okieriete Onaodowan, and Boris Kodjoe. The show is also executive produced by Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers, Ellen Pompeo, and Krista Vernoff. It premiered on ABC in March 2018 and is currently airing its fourth season.

Clay Margrave Armstrong is an American physiologist and a former student of Andrew Fielding Huxley. Armstrong received his MD from Washington University School of Medicine in 1960. He is currently emeritus professor of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also held professorial appointments at Duke University and the University of Rochester.

Thomas Adrian Sands is an American pop music singer and actor. Working in show business as a child, Sands became an overnight sensation and instant teen idol when he appeared on Kraft Television Theater in January 1957 as "The Singin' Idol". The song from the show, "Teen-Age Crush", reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on Cashbox.

Steve Di Giorgio is an American musician of Italian descent. He is best known for working with numerous acts such as Sadus, Death, Testament, Sebastian Bach, Iced Earth, Autopsy, Obituary, Control Denied, Dragonlord and Charred Walls of the Damned, and he has performed on over 50 albums as a guest, session or full-time band musician.