List of Famous people named Joseph

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet politician who ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. During his years in power, he served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he ultimately consolidated power to become the Soviet Union's de facto dictator by the 1930s. A communist ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies are known as Stalinism.

Joseph "JoJo" Pedroza Diaz Jr. is an American professional boxer. He has held the IBF super featherweight title since January 2020 and challenged once for the WBC featherweight title in 2018. At regional level, he held the WBC-NABF, and WBO-NABO featherweight titles between 2015 and 2018. As an amateur he competed at the 2012 Olympics as a bantamweight.

Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted associates, and was known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor, filmmaker, singer, and entrepreneur. As a child, Gordon-Levitt appeared in the films A River Runs Through It, Angels in the Outfield, Holy Matrimony, and 10 Things I Hate About You. He played the role of Tommy Solomon in the TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun. He took a break from acting to study at Columbia University, but dropped out in 2004 to pursue acting again. He has since starred in (500) Days of Summer, Inception, Hesher, 50/50, Premium Rush, Miracle at St. Anna, The Brothers Bloom, The Dark Knight Rises, Brick, Looper, The Lookout, Manic, Lincoln, Mysterious Skin, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. He portrayed Philippe Petit in the Robert Zemeckis-directed film The Walk (2015) and whistleblower Edward Snowden in the Oliver Stone film Snowden (2016). For his leading performances in (500) Days of Summer and 50/50, he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Joseph Dennis Parker, OM, is a New Zealand professional boxer of Samoan heritage. He held the WBO heavyweight title from 2016 to 2018, and previously multiple regional heavyweight championships including the WBO Oriental, Africa, and Oceania titles; as well as the PABA, OPBF, and New Zealand titles. As an amateur he represented New Zealand at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in the super-heavyweight division, and narrowly missed qualification for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Joseph Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, known as Joseph Fiennes, is an English film and stage actor. He is known for his portrayals of William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, Sir Robert Dudley in Elizabeth (1998), Commisar Danilov in Enemy at the Gates (2001), and Monsignor Timothy Howard in the second season of the TV series American Horror Story (2012–2013). His role in the 2017 TV drama series The Handmaid's Tale was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.

Joseph Carey Merrick, often erroneously called John Merrick, was an English man known for having severe deformities. He was first exhibited at a freak show as the "Elephant Man", and then went to live at the London Hospital after he met Frederick Treves, subsequently becoming well known in London society.

Joseph May is a British-born Canadian-American actor, who has appeared in television and film. He is best known for his role as Andy Button in the television series Episodes, Paul who was the boyfriend of Sam Colloby, in Casualty, Luke in I Live with Models and for voicing Thomas the Tank Engine in the US dub of the children's television series Thomas & Friends.

Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this, he used counterrotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistiscope.

Iosif (Joseph) Davydovich Kobzon was a Soviet and Russian singer, known for his crooner style.