PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: entertainment
German composer
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer, the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. Widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived, Ludwig...
Austrian composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer, widely recognized as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. With Haydn and Beethoven he brought to its height the achievement of...
German composer
Johann Sebastian Bach composer of the Baroque era, the most celebrated member of a large family of north German musicians. Although he was admired by his contemporaries primarily as an outstanding harpsichordist,...
English-born American director
Alfred Hitchcock was an English-born American motion-picture director whose suspenseful films and television programs won immense popularity and critical acclaim over a long and tremendously productive...
Italian composer
Giuseppe Verdi was a leading Italian composer of opera in the 19th century, noted for operas such as Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), La traviata (1853), Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1871), Otello (1887),...
American film director and producer
Steven Spielberg is an American motion-picture director and producer whose diverse films—which ranged from science-fiction fare, including such classics as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and...
American actor and director
Woody Allen is an American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, comedian, playwright, and author who is best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and...
American actor, director, and writer
Orson Welles was an American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. His innovative narrative techniques and use of photography, dramatic lighting, and music to further the dramatic line...
American director
Martin Scorsese is an American filmmaker known for his harsh, often violent depictions of American culture. From the 1970s, Scorsese created a body of work that was ambitious, bold, and brilliant. But...
American director
Vincente Minnelli was an American motion-picture director who infused a new sophistication and vitality into filmed musicals in the 1940s and ’50s. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)...
American director, writer, and actor
John Huston was an American motion-picture director, writer, and actor whose taut dramas were among the most popular Hollywood films from the early 1940s to the mid-1980s. Many of his films were literary...
Austrian composer
Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer who was one of the most important figures in the development of the Classical style in music during the 18th century. He helped establish the forms and styles for...
American film director
Frank Capra was an American motion-picture director who was the most prominent filmmaker of the 1930s, during which he won three Academy Awards as best director. His most-beloved films, many of which were...
German composer
Richard Wagner was a German dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against...
French singer and actor
Johnny Hallyday was a French rock singer and actor whose powerful vocals and prolific career spanning more than half a century enabled him to achieve unprecedented stardom in France. Credited with popularizing...
American composer
George Gershwin was one of the most significant and popular American composers of all time. He wrote primarily for the Broadway musical theatre, but important as well are his orchestral and piano compositions...
Hungarian-American director, actor, and writer
Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian-born American motion-picture director whose prolific output as a contract director for Warner Brothers consisted of numerous genre films along with a string of motion picture...
Italian composer and musician
Claudio Monteverdi was an Italian composer in the late Renaissance, the most important developer of the then new genre, the opera. He also did much to bring a “modern” secular spirit into church music....
The true story of the music legend who inspired the film Deliver Me from Nowhere.
Bruce Springsteen is an American singer, songwriter, and bandleader who became the archetypal rock performer of the 1970s and ’80s. With his poetic lyrics describing the lives of everyday Americans, his...
Russian composer
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was the most popular Russian composer of all time. His music has always had great appeal for the general public in virtue of its tuneful, open-hearted melodies, impressive harmonies,...
Austrian composer
Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer who bridged the worlds of Classical and Romantic music, noted for the melody and harmony in his songs (lieder) and chamber music. Among other works are Symphony...
German composer
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote symphonies, concerti, chamber music, piano works, choral compositions, and more than 200 songs. Brahms was the great...
Hungarian composer
Franz Liszt was a Hungarian piano virtuoso and composer. Among his many notable compositions are his 12 symphonic poems, two (completed) piano concerti, several sacred choral works, and a great variety...
Irish dramatist and critic
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and socialist propagandist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. (Read George Bernard Shaw’s 1926 Britannica essay on socialism.)...
American director
William Wyler was a German-born American director of motion pictures that combined a high degree of technical polish with a clear narrative style and sensitive handling of human relationships. Most of...
French composer
Hector Berlioz was a French composer, critic, and conductor of the Romantic period, known largely for his Symphonie fantastique (1830), the choral symphony Roméo et Juliette (1839), and the dramatic piece...
Russian composer
Sergey Prokofiev was a 20th-century Russian (and Soviet) composer who wrote in a wide range of musical genres, including symphonies, concerti, film music, operas, ballets, and program pieces. Prokofiev...
German composer
Christoph Willibald Gluck was a German classical composer, best known for his operas, including Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), Alceste (1767), Paride ed Elena (1770), Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), the French...
Spanish author
Pedro Calderón de la Barca was a dramatist and poet who succeeded Lope de Vega as the greatest Spanish playwright of the Golden Age. Among his best-known secular dramas are El médico de su honra (1635;...
American musician
Bob Dylan is an American folksinger and songwriter who moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, theretofore concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with...
American director
Howard Hawks was an American motion-picture director who maintained a consistent personal style within the framework of traditional film genres in work that ranged from the 1920s to the ’70s. Although...
Austrian composer
Gustav Mahler was an Austrian Jewish composer and conductor, noted for his 10 symphonies and various songs with orchestra, which drew together many different strands of Romanticism. Although his music...
American director and producer
Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born American motion-picture scenarist, director, and producer known for films that humorously treat subjects of controversy and offer biting indictments of hypocrisy in American...
American singer and actor
Frank Sinatra was an American singer and motion-picture actor who, through a long career and a very public personal life, became one of the most sought-after performers in the entertainment industry; he...
Russian composer
Igor Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer whose work had a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and whose compositions remained a touchstone of modernism...
English actor, poet, and producer
David Garrick was an English actor, producer, dramatist, poet, and comanager of the Drury Lane Theatre. Garrick was of French and Irish descent, the son of Peter Garrick, a captain in the English army,...
American author
William Faulkner was an American novelist and short-story writer who was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. As the eldest of the four sons of Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Falkner, William Faulkner...
American director
Raoul Walsh was an American motion-picture director popular in the 1930s and 1940s for his tough, masculine films starring such actors as Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, and James Cagney. (Read Martin Scorsese’s...
American director and screenwriter
Francis Ford Coppola is an American motion-picture director, writer, and producer whose films range from sweeping epics to small-scale character studies. As the director of films such as The Godfather...
American singer-songwriter
Taylor Swift is a multitalented singer-songwriter and global superstar who has captivated audiences with her heartfelt lyrics and catchy melodies, solidifying herself as one of the most influential artists...
American filmmaker, painter, musicologist, ethnographer, collector, and mystic
Harry Smith was an American filmmaker, painter, musicologist, ethnographer, collector, and mystic. Smith is best known as the compiler of the Anthology of American Folk Music (1952), which served as a...
American director
Stanley Kubrick was an American motion-picture director and writer whose films are characterized by his dramatic visual style, meticulous attention to detail, and a detached, often ironic or pessimistic...
German-English composer
George Frideric Handel was a German-born English composer of the late Baroque era, noted particularly for his operas, oratorios, and instrumental compositions. He wrote the most famous of all oratorios,...
American singer, songwriter, and dancer
Michael Jackson was an American singer, songwriter, and dancer who was one of the most popular and influential entertainers in the world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Jackson transformed popular...
British actor, director, writer, and composer
Charlie Chaplin was a British comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture...
American singer and actor who rose from rags to riches to become the “King of Rock and Roll”
Elvis Presley was an American popular singer widely known as the “King of Rock and Roll” and one of rock music’s dominant performers from the mid-1950s until his death. Presley revolutionized popular music...
American actor and director
Clint Eastwood is an American film actor who emerged as one of the most popular Hollywood stars in the 1960s, known for his portrayal of tough individualists, first as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s...
Polish-French composer and pianist
Frédéric Chopin was a Polish French composer and pianist of the Romantic period, best known for his solo pieces for piano and his piano concerti. Although he wrote little but piano works, many of them...
American director
Norman Taurog was an American director of some 80 feature films, many of which were comedies, including a number with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and musicals, nine of which starred Elvis Presley. However,...
German composer
Richard Strauss was an outstanding German Romantic composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His symphonic poems of the 1890s and his operas of the following decade have remained an indispensable...