Best Actors Within Television & Movies
by jjholt1 | created - 29 Jul 2014 | updated - 22 Oct 2014 | Public
1. Richard Dean Anderson
Actor | Stargate SG-1
The original MacGyver (1985) and Stargate SG-1 (1997) star was born on January 23, 1950, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, Stuart Anderson, was a teacher at a local high school and his mother, Jocelyn, was an artist who was talented in both sculpting and painting. He and his three younger ...
2. Andrew Lincoln
Actor | The Walking Dead
Andrew Lincoln is a British actor. Lincoln spent his early childhood in Hull, Yorkshire before his family relocated to Bath, Somerset when he was age 10. He was educated at Beechen Cliff School in Bath, and then the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. His father is a civil engineer...
3. Norman Reedus
Actor | The Walking Dead
Norman Reedus was born in Hollywood, Florida. He is of Italian, English, Scottish and Irish descent. He is an accomplished photographer with several books of his photography published and continues to do art shows in galleries all around the world every year. His first novel was published in 2022 ...
4. Michael Shanks
Actor | Stargate SG-1
Michael Shanks was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is an actor and producer, known for Stargate SG-1 (1997), Stargate: Continuum (2008) and Elysium (2013). He has been married to Lexa Doig since August 2, 2003. They have two children.
5. Jason Momoa
Actor | Aquaman
Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa was born on August 1, 1979, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the son of Coni (Lemke), a photographer, and Joseph Momoa, a painter. His father is of Native Hawaiian and Samoan descent; and his mother, who is from Iowa, is of German, Irish, and Native American ancestry. Jason ...
6. Scott Wilson
Actor | The Ninth Configuration
One chillingly infamous screen role for Scott Wilson in 1967 set the tone for an actor who went on to prove himself an invaluable character player for five decades. Born on March 29, 1942, the Atlanta native was awarded a basketball scholarship following high school at Georgia's Southern Tech ...
7. Christopher Judge
Actor | Stargate SG-1
Douglas Christopher Judge was born and raised in Los Angeles, and is of African-American and Cherokee ancestry.
Judge always knew that he wanted to be an actor, wanting to invoke feelings in others that he was receiving from the shows. He realized quickly that sports would be the stepping stone to ...
8. David Morrissey
Actor | The Walking Dead
David Morrissey started acting at Everyman's Youth Theatre in Liverpool, where he was born and raised. He made an auspicious debut in One Summer (1983), a series about two Liverpool runaways. Following a degree at RADA, he worked with the theatre company Cheek By Jowl. He has also worked at theatre...
9. Chandler Riggs
Actor | The Walking Dead
Chandler Riggs was born on June 27, 1999 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Chandler is an actor and producer, known for The Walking Dead (2010), A Million Little Things (2018) and Only (2019).
10. Bryan Cranston
Actor | Breaking Bad
Bryan Lee Cranston was born on March 7, 1956 in Hollywood, California, to Audrey Peggy Sell, a radio actress, and Joe Cranston, an actor and former amateur boxer. His maternal grandparents were German, and his father was of Irish, German, and Austrian-Jewish ancestry. He was raised in the Canoga ...
11. Aaron Paul
Actor | Breaking Bad
Aaron Paul was born Aaron Paul Sturtevant in Emmett, Idaho, to Darla (Haynes) and Robert Sturtevant, a retired Baptist minister. While growing up, Paul took part in church programs, and performed in plays.
He attended Centennial High School in Boise, Idaho. It was there, in eighth grade, that Aaron ...
12. Steven Yeun
Actor | Minari
Steven Yeun was born in Seoul, South Korea, to June and Je Yeun. His family first immigrated to Canada and stayed there for one year, and then moved to the U.S. He has a brother named Brian. He began acting while at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, MI, where he studied Psychology as a major (BS in ...
13. Amanda Tapping
Actress | Stargate SG-1
Born In England, raised in Canada. BFA Acting University of Windsor. Amanda spent 12 seasons on Stargate SG-1 (1997) and its spin-offs, Stargate: Atlantis (2004) and Stargate Universe (2009), as "Samantha Carter". She then took on the lead role of "Dr. Helen Magnus" on the television series ...
14. Ben Affleck
Producer | Argo
Benjamin Géza "Ben" Affleck-Boldt was born on August 15, 1972 in Berkeley, California and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to mother Chris Anne (Boldt), a school teacher, and father Timothy Byers "Tim" Affleck, a social worker. Ben has a younger brother, actor Casey Affleck, who was born in 1975...
15. Robert Carlyle
Actor | The Full Monty
Robert Carlyle was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland, to Elizabeth, a bus company employee, and Joseph Carlyle, a painter and decorator. He was raised by his father after his mother left him when he was four. At the age of 21, after reading Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," he enrolled in acting ...
16. Matthew McConaughey
Actor | Interstellar
American actor and producer Matthew David McConaughey was born in Uvalde, Texas. His mother, Mary Kathleen (McCabe), is a substitute school teacher originally from New Jersey. His father, James Donald McConaughey, was a Mississippi-born gas station owner who ran an oil pipe supply business. He is ...
17. Leonardo DiCaprio
Actor | Inception
Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s,...
18. Dean Norris
Actor | Breaking Bad
Dean Joseph Norris is an American actor. He is well known for playing DEA agent Hank Schrader on the AMC series Breaking Bad (2008-2013). He also portrayed town councilman James "Big Jim" Rennie on the CBS series Under the Dome (2013-2015) and played mob boss Clay "Uncle Daddy" Husser on the TNT ...
19. Kurtwood Smith
Actor | RoboCop
Kurtwood Smith was born on July 3, 1943 in New Lisbon, Wisconsin, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for RoboCop (1987), Broken Arrow (1996) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). He has been married to Joan Pirkle since November 5, 1988. He was previously married to Cecilia Souza.
20. Robin Lord Taylor
Actor | John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
A native of Shueyville, Iowa, Taylor is a graduate of Northwestern University's School of Speech.
Robin Lord Taylor has appeared in several acclaimed television series, such as The Walking Dead (2010), Law & Order (1990), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) The Good Wife (2009) and ...
21. Jared Leto
Actor | Dallas Buyers Club
Jared Leto is a very familiar face in recent film history. Although he has always been the lead vocals, rhythm guitar, and songwriter for American band Thirty Seconds to Mars, Leto is an accomplished actor merited by the numerous, challenging projects he has taken in his life. He is known to be ...
22. Emilia Clarke
Actress | Game of Thrones
British actress Emilia Clarke was born in London and grew up in Oxfordshire, England. Her father was a theatre sound engineer and her mother is a businesswoman. Her father was working on a theatre production of "Show Boat" and her mother took her along to the performance. This is when, at the age ...
23. James Spader
Actor | The Blacklist
James Todd Spader was born on February 7, 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of teachers Jean (Fraser) and Stoddard Greenwood "Todd" Spader. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover with director Peter Sellars; he dropped out in eleventh grade. He bused tables, shoveled manure, and taught yoga ...
24. Peter Dinklage
Actor | Game of Thrones
Peter Dinklage is an American actor. Since his breakout role in The Station Agent (2003), he has appeared in numerous films and theatre plays. Since 2011, Dinklage has portrayed Tyrion Lannister in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) . For this he won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a...
25. Don S. Davis
Actor | A League of Their Own
Don S. Davis was born on August 4, 1942 in Aurora, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for A League of Their Own (1992), The Fan (1996) and Twin Peaks (1990). He was married to Ruby Fleming-Davis and Sondra Sue Davis. He died on June 29, 2008 in Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada.
26. Louis Ferreira
Actor | Bad Blood
Louis Ferreira has spent more than 30 years performing recognizable roles in award-winning film and television productions, garnering him countless accolades along the way.
Ferreira had a recurring role on the TV series Shōgun (2024) for Amazon Studios. Prior to that, he was in the highly ...
27. Maisie Williams
Actress | The New Mutants
Margaret Constance "Maisie" Williams (born April 15, 1997) is an English actress. She made her professional acting debut as Arya Stark in the HBO fantasy television series Game of Thrones, for which she won the EWwy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, the Portal Award for Best Supporting ...
28. Lena Headey
Actress | 300
Lena Headey is a Bermudian-British actress. Headey is best known for her role as "Cersei Lannister" in Game of Thrones (2011) (2011-2019) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), Possession (2002), and The Remains of the Day (1993). Headey stars as "Queen Gorgo", a heroic Spartan woman in the period film, 300...
29. Terry O'Quinn
Actor | Lost
Terrance Quinn (born July 15, 1952), known professionally as Terry O'Quinn, is an American actor. He played John Locke on the TV series Lost (2004), the title role in The Stepfather (1987) and Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy (1989), and Peter Watts in Millennium (1996), which ran for three ...
Terry O'Quinn was born on July 15, 1952 in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, USA as Terrance Quinn. He is an actor, known for Lost (2004), Primal Fear (1996) and The X Files (1998). He was previously married to Lori O'Quinn
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