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

Joyce Jameson was an American actress, known for many television roles, including recurring guest appearances as Skippy, one of the "fun girls" in the 1960s television series The Andy Griffith Show as well as "the Blonde" in the Academy Award-winning The Apartment (1960).

Kevin Earley is an American actor and singer.

Ethel Clayton was an American actress of the silent film era.

Joanna Merlin is an American actress and casting director who has worked with Stephen Sondheim and starred in the original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof. She has written two acting guides and is a faculty member of New York University's graduate acting program. In recent years, she has become known for her recurring role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Judge Lena Petrovsky.

Norman Kaye Panama was an American screenwriter, film producer and film director born in Chicago, Illinois. He is known for his partnership with Melvin Frank and their work on films such as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), White Christmas (1954), and The Court Jester (1956). Without Frank, he directed films such as How to Commit Marriage (1969).

Khalil Gibran Muhammad is an American academic. He is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute. He is the former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a Harlem-based branch of the New York Public Library system, a research facility dedicated to the history of the African diaspora. Prior to joining the Schomburg Center in 2010, Muhammad was an associate professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington.

Todd Martin is an American retired tennis player. He reached the men's singles final at the 1994 Australian Open and the 1999 US Open and achieved a career-high singles ranking of world No. 4.

Preston Sturges was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. In 1941, he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film The Great McGinty, his first of three nominations in the category.

Beatrice Winde was an American actress.

Ana Castillo is a Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Considered one of the leading voices in Chicana experience, Castillo is known for her experimental style as a Latina novelist. Her works offer pungent and passionate socio-political comment that is based on established oral and literary traditions. Castillo's interest in race and gender issues can be traced throughout her writing career. Her novel Sapogonia was a 1990 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and her text So Far from God was a 1993 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is the editor of La Tolteca, an arts and literary magazine. Castillo held the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University. She has attained a number of awards including a 1987 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters, a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry and in 1998 Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago.