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

Max Rendschmidt is a German Olympic canoeist. He represented his country at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and won two gold medals, in K-2 1000 metres and K-4 1000 m events. He is triple world champion and five-time European champion. On 1 November 2016, Rendschmidt received the Silver Laurel Leaf, the highest award for an athlete in Germany, from the German Federal President Joachim Gauck in Berlin. He works for the German Federal Police.

Herbert Zimmermann was a popular German football commentator.

Fritz Schramma is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He was mayor of Cologne from 2000 until 2009.

Anna Sauerbrey is a German journalist and a member of the editorial board of the Tagesspiegel.

Dominick Drexler is a German footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder for 1. FC Köln.

Bettina Hoy is an Olympic-level equestrian rider, who competes for Germany in Eventing competitions. Bettina competed in the 1984 Summer Olympics and in the 2004 Summer Olympics.

William Kamm, also known as "The Little Pebble", is the founder and leader of a religious group in Australia called the "Order of St Charbel" named after the Maronite saint Charbel Makhlouf. The Order of St Charbel is considered as a Christian sect and a fringe religious grouping. His religious order claims to be part of the Roman Catholic Church, but the Maronite Church and the Holy See do not regard the group as being part of Roman Catholicism. He was released from prison after serving 9 years of a 10-year prison term for the rape and assault of a teenager.

Margot Eskens is a German Schlager singer, most popular in the 1950s and 1960s. She continued to be a frequent guest on television programs into the 2000s.

Kalle Pohl is a German comedian and actor.

Edith Frank was the mother of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank, and her older sister Margot. She was a prisoner during the Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where she died from starvation.