List of Famous people born in Žilina region, Slovakia
Peter Sagan
Peter Sagan is a Slovak professional road bicycle racer, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Bora–Hansgrohe. Sagan had a successful junior cyclo-cross and mountain bike racing career, winning the Junior Mountain Bike World Championship in 2008, before moving to road racing.
Stan Mikita
Stanley Mikita was a Slovak-born Canadian professional ice hockey player for the Chicago Black Hawks of the National Hockey League, generally regarded as the best centre of the 1960s. In 2017, he was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players. He was the first Slovak born player to win the Stanley Cup, which he did in 1961.
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was a Hungarian-American actor. Lorre began his stage career in Vienna before moving to Germany where he worked first on the stage, then in film in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Lorre caused an international sensation in the German film M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang, in which he portrayed a serial killer who preys on little girls.
Martin Dúbravka
Martin Dúbravka is a Slovak professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Premier League club Newcastle United and the Slovakia national team.
Vlasta Průchová
Vlasta Průchová was a Czech jazz singer. From the second half of the 1940s, she gradually built up her leading position in the Czech jazz scene. Průchová was the mother of the renowned Czech-American pianist and composer Jan Hammer.
Emília Vášáryová
Emília Vášáryová, Doctor Artis Dramaticae (hon.) is a Slovak stage and screen actress, referred to as the "First Lady of Slovak Theater". During her over five decades long career, she has received numerous awards including the Meritorious Artist (1978), Alfréd Radok Award (1996), Czech Lion Award Golden Goblet Award (2008), and most recently the honorary degree Doctor Artis Dramaticae Honoris Causa (2010) as the only female to date, and ELSA (2010). While her sister is former diplomat Magdaléna Vášáryová, Czech media regards her as an "Honorary Consul of Czech and Slovak Relations".
Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav
Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav was a Slovak poet, dramatist, translator, and for a short time, member of the Czechoslovak parliament. Originally, he wrote in a traditional style, but later became influenced by parnassism and modernism.
Jozef Kroner
Jozef Kroner was a Slovak actor. His brother Ľudovít Kroner, daughter Zuzana Kronerová, and wife Terézia Hurbanová-Kronerová were also actors. He starred in the Oscar-winning film The Shop on Main Street, and in more than 50 other Slovak films, as well as in several Czech, Bulgarian and Hungarian productions. He never studied acting; his career started in amateur theater troupes.
Aurel Stodola
Aurel Boleslav Stodola was a Slovak engineer, physicist, and inventor. He was a pioneer in the area of technical thermodynamics and its applications and published his book Die Dampfturbine in 1903. In addition to the thermodynamic issues involved in turbine design the book discussed aspects of fluid flow, vibration, stress analysis of plates, shells and rotating discs and stress concentrations at holes and fillets. Stodola was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Swiss Polytechnical Institute in Zurich. He maintained friendly contact with Albert Einstein. In 1892, Stodola founded the Laboratory for Energy Conversion.
Janko Jesenský
Baron Ján Jesenský was a Slovak lower nobleman of the House of Jeszenszky, poet, prose writer, translator, and politician. He was a prominent member of the Slovak national movement.