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

Ringgold Wilmer "Ring" Lardner Jr. was an American journalist and screenwriter. A member of the "Hollywood Ten", he was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studios during the late 1940s and 1950s after his appearance as an "unfriendly" witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) leading to Lardner's being found guilty of contempt of Congress.

Patrick Ray Leonard is an American songwriter, keyboardist, film composer, and music producer, best known for his longtime collaboration with Madonna. His work with Madonna includes her albums True Blue (1986), Who's That Girl (1987), Like a Prayer (1989), I'm Breathless (1990) and Ray of Light (1998). He scored Madonna's 2008 documentary I Am Because We Are, played keyboards with her at Live Aid (1985), and was musical director and keyboardist on The Virgin Tour (1985) and the Who's That Girl World Tour (1987).

Jasen Lee Fisher is an American former child actor, born in Chicago.

John Vande Velde is an American track cyclist who competed on velodromes around the world, winning three national championships, and he competed at the 1968 Summer Olympics and the 1972 Summer Olympics. He was a 2004 inductee into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame.

Tom Amandes is an American actor. His best-known role to date is that of Eliot Ness in the 1990s television series The Untouchables; he also played Geena Davis' boyfriend in The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Abraham Lincoln in the 2013 film Saving Lincoln.

Gregg Wesley Toland, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer known for his innovative use of techniques such as deep focus, examples of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, and The Long Voyage Home. Toland is also known for his work as a director of photography for Wuthering Heights (1939), The Westerner (1940), The Outlaw (1940), Ball of Fire (1941), Song of the South (1946), and The Bishop's Wife (1947).

Fred Basolo was an American inorganic chemist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1943, under Prof. John C. Bailar, Jr.. Basolo spent his professional career at Northwestern University. He was a prolific contributor to the fields of coordination chemistry, organometallic, and bioinorganic chemistry, publishing over 400 papers. He supervised many Ph.D. students. With colleague Ralph Pearson, he co-authored the influential monograph "Mechanisms of Inorganic Reactions", which illuminated the importance of mechanisms involving coordination compounds. This work, which integrated concepts from ligand field theory and physical organic chemistry, signaled a shift from a highly descriptive nature of coordination chemistry to a more quantitative science.

Gordon McCallum was an American-born English sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound and was nominated for three more in the same category. He worked on over 300 films between 1944 and 1985.

Michael Omartian is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, keyboardist, and music producer. He has been a participant in numerous albums during a career that has spanned more than four decades. As a producer, he has had number-one records in three consecutive decades. He is a multiple Grammy Award winner, including for Keyboardist of the Year and Producer of the Year. He spent five years on the A&R staff of ABC/Dunhill Records as a producer, artist, and arranger. He was subsequently hired by Warner Bros. Records as an in-house producer and A&R staff member. Omartian moved from Los Angeles to Nashville in 1993, where he served on the Board of Governors of the Recording Academy, and has helped to shape the curriculum for the first master's-degree program in the field of Music Business at Belmont University.

Vera Louise Caspary was an American writer of novels, plays, screenplays, and short stories. Her best-known novel, Laura, was made into a highly successful movie. Though she claimed she was not a "real" mystery writer, her novels effectively merged women's quest for identity and love with murder plots. Independence is the key to her protagonists, with her novels revolving around women who are menaced, but who turn out to be neither victimized nor rescued damsels.