List of Famous people born in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Ewald Lienen is a German football manager and former player. He is the current technical director of FC St. Pauli.

Herbert Reul is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who currently serves as State Minister for Internal Affairs in the government of Minister-President Armin Laschet. He previously served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP).

Sabrina Mockenhaupt is a German long-distance runner who specialises in track events and the marathon. She is a two-time winner of the Cologne Marathon and has also won the Frankfurt Marathon and the Berlin Half Marathon. She represented Germany at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics and was the 3000 metres bronze medallist at the 2005 European Indoor Championships. She has a marathon best of 2:26:21, set at the 2010 Berlin Marathon.

Paula Kalenberg is a German actress. She is probably best known to international audiences for her roles in films Krabat, Vision – From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen and Jew Suss: Rise and Fall.

Frank Schätzing, is a German writer, mostly known for his best-selling science fiction novel The Swarm (2004).

Cora Schumacher is a German actress, model, racing driver and television presenter. She has featured on German television programmes such as Top of the Pops, Marienhof, Let's Dance and Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei, and featured on the cover of the GQ, Maxim and Playboy magazines. During her motor racing career, Schumacher competed in the Mini Challenge Deutschland, the SEAT León Supercopa, the Dubai 24 Hour three times, the GT4 European Series Northern Cup and the GT4 Central European Cup.

Helge Schneider is a German comedian, jazz musician and multi-instrumentalist, author, film and theatre director, and actor. Schneider's works are an unconventional mixture of horseplay humor, parody, and jazz-influenced music. They involve spontaneity and improvisation as important elements.

Klaus Johannes Behrendt is a German actor. Since 1992 he has starred in the Westdeutscher Rundfunk version of the popular television crime series Tatort; he also stars in the 2008 film Die Bienen - Tödliche Bedrohung.

Viktor Hermann Brack was a German Nazi war criminal, an organiser of the euthanasia programme Action T4, where the Nazi state systematically murdered over 70,000 disabled German and Austrian people. Following this, Brack was one of the men responsible for the gassing of Jews in the extermination camps, and he conferred with Odilo Globočnik about the practical implementation of the Final Solution. Brack was sentenced to death in 1947 and executed by hanging in 1948.

Anja Kruse is a German film and television actress. She played the title role in the 1984 historical series Beautiful Wilhelmine.