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

John Edward Robinson is an American serial killer, con man, embezzler, kidnapper, and forger who was found guilty in 2003 for three murders committed in and around Kansas City, Kansas, receiving the death sentence for two of them. In 2005, he admitted responsibility for five additional homicides across the river, at trial in Kansas City, Missouri, in a deal to receive multiple life sentences without possibility of parole and avoid more death sentences. Investigators fear that there might be other undiscovered victims as well, in both cities and elsewhere. As of 2019, with eight murder convictions across both states, Robinson remains on death row in Kansas.

Donald T. Sterling is an American attorney and businessman who was the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers professional basketball franchise of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1981 to 2014.

Henry Joseph Darger Jr. was an American writer, novelist and artist who worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story.

Arne Starkey Duncan is an American educator and was a United States Secretary of Education from January 2009 through July 2016. While his tenure as Secretary was marked by varying degrees of opposition from both social conservatives and teachers unions, he nevertheless enjoyed strong support from the US president who appointed him, Barack Obama. Conservatives and some parents resisted Duncan's push for all U.S. states to adopt the Common Core Standards to determine what students had learned, and most US teachers unions disliked his emphasis on the use of data from student tests to evaluate teachers and schools. Despite antagonism to the changes Duncan had introduced, Obama praised his work at the Department of Education by saying, "Arne has done more to bring our educational system – sometimes kicking and screaming – into the 21st century than anybody else."

Hannibal Amir Buress is an American comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He started performing comedy in 2002 while attending Southern Illinois University. He co-starred on Adult Swim's The Eric Andre Show from 2012 to 2020 and was featured on Comedy Central's Broad City from 2014 to 2019.

Mary Jane Rathbun, popularly known as Brownie Mary, was an American medical cannabis rights activist. As a hospital volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital, she became known for baking and distributing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients. Along with activist Dennis Peron, Rathbun lobbied for the legalization of cannabis for medical use, and she helped pass San Francisco Proposition P (1991) and California Proposition 215 (1996) to achieve those goals. She also contributed to the establishment of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States.

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2018, Powers has published twelve novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.

Daryl Davis is an American R&B and blues musician, activist, author, actor and bandleader. His efforts to improve race relations, in which as an African-American he engaged with members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), convinced Klansmen to leave and denounce the KKK. Known for his energetic style of boogie-woogie piano, Davis has played with such musicians as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, B. B. King, and Bruce Hornsby.

Tavares Lamont Taylor, known professionally as Lil Reese, is an American rapper and songwriter, from Chicago, Illinois. Hailing from Chicago's drill scene in the early 2010s, he is known for his collaborations with fellow rappers Chief Keef, Fredo Santana and Lil Durk. In 2012, Lil Reese was featured on Chief Keef's single "I Don't Like", which peaked at number 73 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaked at number 20 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, and peaked at number 15 on the Hot Rap Songs chart. His debut mixtape, ‘Don't Like’ was released later that year. Since the first mixtape release, Lil Reese has gone on to release six mixtapes in total, including the 2013 ‘Supa Savage’ mixtape, as well as three EPs, including the 2017 collaborative project ‘Supa Vultures’ EP with Lil Durk.

Wyatt Jess Oleff is an American actor, known for portraying the role of Stanley Uris in the 2017 supernatural horror film It and its 2019 sequel, as well as the role of Stanley Barber in the coming-of-age comedy-drama web television series I Am Not Okay With This. Oleff also had a minor role in the Marvel Studios films Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, as the young Peter Quill.