List of Famous people born in Minnesota, United States of America
Roxanne Cheesman
Alexandra Holden
Alexandra Paige Holden is an American actress. Her credits include films such as Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) and The Hot Chick (2002), and recurring roles in Friends, Ally McBeal, Friday Night Lights, Franklin & Bash, and Rizzoli & Isles
Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-three novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail," her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."
Wayne Wilderson
Wayne Wilderson is an American comedian and actor who has had guest spots on many successful television programs, including How to Get Away with Murder, Mom, Bones, CSI: Vegas, The Office, Seinfeld, Mr. Show, The Steve Harvey Show, Two and a Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory. He appeared in the pilot episode of The Thick of It as a political blogger. He makes a cameo in Evan Almighty. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He graduated from Breck School in 1984 and received a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts (acting) from Boston College in 1989.
R. T. Rybak
Raymond Thomas "R. T." Rybak Jr. is an American politician, journalist, businessperson, and activist who served as the 46th mayor of Minneapolis. In the 2001 election Rybak defeated incumbent Sharon Sayles Belton by a margin of 65% to 35%, the widest margin of victory over an incumbent mayor in city history. He took office in January 2002, and won a second term in 2005 and a third in 2009. In late December 2012, he announced he would not run for another term and was going to be concentrating on his family. Rybak called being mayor his "dream job."
Scott Lynch
Scott Lynch is an American fantasy author who wrote the Gentleman Bastard series of novels. His first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, was purchased by Orion Books in August 2004 and published in June 2006 under the Gollancz imprint in the United Kingdom and under the Bantam imprint in the United States. The next two novels in the series, Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves, were published in 2007 and 2013, respectively.
Gerald Vizenor
Gerald Robert Vizenor is an American writer and scholar, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Director of Native American Studies. With more than 30 books published, Vizenor is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.
Ray Shero
Rejean "Ray" Shero is a former NHL hockey executive who served as the general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils franchises.
Gordon L. Kane
Gordon Leon Kane is Victor Weisskopf Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan and Director Emeritus at the Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics (LCTP), a leading center for the advancement of theoretical physics. He was director of the LCTP from 2005 to 2011 and Victor Weisskopf Collegiate Professor of Physics from 2002 - 2011. He received the Lilienfeld Prize from the American Physical Society in 2012, and the J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics in 2017.
Estia J. Eichten
Estia Joseph Eichten, is an American theoretical physicist, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). He received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics, where he was a student of Roman Jackiw's, and was Associate Professor of Physics at Harvard before joining the Fermilab Theoretical Physics Department in 1982.