Sophia Michaels
Ohio is a proud state that has produced some of the most famous stars in America. Actors, comedians, musicians, and more, Ohio has it all. Here is our list of some of the most popular stars born in the great state of Ohio.
Halle Berry
Halle Berry is pure Ohio. Not only was John Wick: Chapter 3 star born in Cleveland but she’s even named after a local department store, Halle’s. Berry grew up in the suburb of Oakwood, just outside the Cleveland city limits, and even attended Cuyahoga Community College while she was first starting her career toward fame. Before starring in some of Hollywood’s biggest movies, Berry represented her home state in the Miss USA contest, after being named Miss Ohio USA in 1986.
Luke Perry
Luke Perry found fame playing a high school student at the posh West Beverly High, but his beginnings were much more humble. The son of a steelworker, Perry was born in the Ohio town of Mansfield and raised in a tiny burg called Fredericktown, where he attended high school at Fredericktown High School. He moved to Los Angeles after graduating and while it took a few years, he landed his big break in Beverly Hills, 90210. Perry died tragically from a stroke in 2019.
Drew Carey
No one on this list is more proud to be from Ohio than Price Is Right host Drew Carey. It’s clear that his Cleveland roots mean a lot to him, given that his show, The Drew Carey Show, was set in Cleveland, with a theme song called “Cleveland Rocks.” Not only did the comedian grow up in Cleveland, he also attended Kent State in Ohio and even served in the Marine Corps reserves in the state before moving west to find fame.
Katie Holmes
Katie Holmes was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1978 and has always remained a proud Ohioan. She attended Catholic school as a kid and began modeling in Toledo while still in high school. That led to opportunities in New York City, which led to her landing her first film role at 19 in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (1997). Soon after, she joined the cast of Dawson’s Creek and the rest is history.
John Legend
The Voice judge John Legend was born in the central Ohio town of Springfield. Legend was a true prodigy during his upbringing. He was dabbling in music at a young age, before leaving Ohio to attend the University of Pennsylvania.
Yvette Nicole Brown
Yvette Nicole Brown took the hard road to fame. Before she landed her starring role on Community, she found her way to success with bit parts and one-offs on TV shows. It all paid off in the end, but before she made it in Hollywood, she was born and raised in the Cleveland, OH area. After high school, she attended the University of Akron and moved to LA after she graduated.
Clark Gable
There is no bigger star from the Golden Age of Hollywood than Clark Gable. Like many of his fellow Ohioans, he had humble beginnings. Born in 1901 in Cadiz, OH, Gable moved around the state quite a bit before his father and stepmother settled near Akron. Gable struck out on his own, first working in a tire factory in Akron, before bouncing around until he finally ended up in Hollywood in the 1920s.
Beverly D’Angelo
When you are the granddaughter of the architect who designed the famous Ohio Stadium at The Ohio State University, you know you are pure Ohio. Such is the case for Vacation star Beverly D’Angelo. Unsurprisingly, D’Angelo was born in Columbus and raised in the suburb of Upper Arlington, before setting out on an entertainment career that took her all over North America, before she found success in Hollywood.
Steve Harvey
Okay, so we’re fudging here a little, as beloved talk show host and TV judge Steve Harvey was actually born in West Virginia, but he was raised in Cleveland. After graduating from high school, he briefly attended Kent State, before dropping out and starting his standup career in comedy clubs in and around Cleveland.
Paul Newman
When you think of the words “movie star,” there’s a good chance you might picture Paul Newman. From the mid-’50s until his death in 2008, the Shaker Heights, OH native was box office gold. He graduated from Shaker Heights High in 1943 and joined the Navy during World War II. He finally headed to LA in the ’50s and over the next six decades starred in some of the biggest movies of all time.
Arsenio Hall
Born in Cleveland in 1956, actor and talk show host Arsenio Hall grew up in nearby Warrensville Heights, Ohio, and attended college at both Ohio University and Kent State. He left Ohio, first for Chicago and later LA, and his career took off with some fantastic roles from there.
Phyllis Diller
Phyllis Diller’s remarkable life began in Lima, Ohio in 1917. Her roundabout way to comedy legend status started when she was still a full-time mother and homemaker with her military husband in Alameda, CA. She was discovered after she made some appearances on Bay Area radio and TV stations and from there became a star.
Rachael Harris
Lucifer star Rachael Harris was born in Worthington, OH, and grew up in the Columbus area before attending college at Otterbein University in nearby Westerville, OH. She moved to LA and was a member of the legendary improv group The Groundlings before she started landing TV roles in the 1990s. Today she’s best known for Goosebumps (2023) and Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010), in addition to Lucifer.
Steven Spielberg
In The Fablemans, Ohio native Steven Spielberg tells a fictionalized version of his own life, but one major change was made. In the movie, Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) and his family move from New Jersey to Arizona. In real life, the Spielbergs moved to Phoenix from Cincinnati, Ohio. Though he only lived in Cincinnati for the first ten years or so of his life, there is no doubt that one of the all-time great directors has his roots in Ohio.
Carmen Electra
Carmen Electra was born just outside of Cincinnati and grew up in the Queen City. She first started dancing and acting at Princeton High School in the Cincinnati school district and her love of doing both led directly to Hollywood where she’s been doing both for decades now.
Doris Day
Though she retired from acting in 1968, Doris Day is still remembered as a legend of old Hollywood. She also recorded almost three dozen albums over her nearly 100-year life. It all started in Cincinnati in 1922 when Day was born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff. Her career started as a singer on a local radio station in Cincinnati, WLW. Her music led her to Hollywood, and a star was born.
Philip Michael Thomas
Philip Michael Thomas is most famous for starring as Rico Tubbs on the ’80s hit Miami Vice. He’s also famous for inventing the term “EGOT”, claiming in the ’80s that he would win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, though he has yet to win any of the prestigious awards. Thomas was born in Cincinnati, but raised in California, where his career began.
Teri Garr
Though she was raised mostly in Los Angeles, Teri Garr was born near Cleveland, OH, in the suburb of Lakewood. Her parents were entertainers, so it makes sense they would eventually land in Southern California, so while Garr didn’t spend much time in Ohio, the state can certainly claim her as one of their own.
Randy “Macho Man” Savage
Oh yeah! One of the greatest wrestlers of all time came from Columbus, OH. Born Randy Poffo in 1952, the Macho Man and his wrestling brother “Leaping” Lanny Poffo lived in Zanesville, Ohio, until the family moved to the Chicagoland area when Savage was in high school. Though he tried to become a pro baseball player, Savage found fame with the WWE and was a superstar in the sport until he died in 2012.
Anne Heche
Before her tragic death in 2022, Anne Heche put together an impressive career in Hollywood and broke a lot of barriers when she very publicly dated Ellen DeGeneres. It was a long way from her strict Christian upbringing in Ohio. Heche was born in the Akron suburb of Aurora, Ohio, and also lived near Cleveland for a time before her father moved the family to New Jersey in 1977 when Heche was eight.
Rob Lowe
Okay, okay, so Rob Lowe was actually born in Virginia, but he moved to Dayton, OH at a very young age and was raised in the Buckeye State. His first gigs as a professional actor came when he was still living in Dayton and as soon as he could, he headed out to Hollywood where he became one of the famous “Brat Pack” in the 1980s. His career had a few bumps in the road, but today he’s one of the most beloved stars on the silver screen.
Sarah Jessica Parker
Sarah Jessica Parker’s most famed role is of a dyed-in-the-wool Manhattanite, but the actress was born in a quaint little town near Columbus named Nelsonville, Ohio, with a population of about 5000. Her career as a child actor took her whole family to New York in the 1970s and Parker has never looked back.
Lili Reinhart
Riverdale star Lili Reinhart was born and raised in the Cleveland area, where she lived until she was 18. After graduating high school, she moved to LA and though she struggled like most young actors, eventually she started landing parts in a few movies, before scoring a starring role on the CW’s Riverdale, playing the iconic Betty Cooper.
Jamie Farr
Jamie Farr’s most famous character, Corporal Klinger on one of the highest-rated shows of all time, M*A*S*H, was from Toledo, Ohio, which would have been easy for the actor to remember, as that is where Farr is from too. For decades, Farr’s name was associated with the LPGA golf tournament, The Jamie Farr Classic (with various sponsor names over the years).
Martin Sheen
Born Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez in Dayton, OH, The West Wing star Martin Sheen always knew he wanted to be an actor, even growing up in Dayton. Orphaned at eleven, he lived in Dayton until he graduated high school and headed off for New York to make it big, and it’s safe to say he has.
Fred Willard
Comedy legend Fred Willard is responsible for some of the funniest lines in the Christopher Guest family of films, a sense of humor he developed as a kid in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, OH. Born in Cleveland in 1933, Willard moved to New York in the ’50s, and though it took a couple of decades to find fame, he eventually did. The world lost a great one when he died in 2020.
Allison Janney
Though she is technically from Boston, where she was born in 1959, Allison Janney was raised in Dayton. Even her legendary character from The West Wing, CJ Craig, was from Dayton and went back home in one episode for her high school reunion.
Katt Williams
Katt Williams, the unpredictable, and hilarious, comedian was born and raised in Cincinnati, but left town and moved to Florida after being emancipated from his parents at age 13. For years he worked the comedy clubs before launching to fame in the late ’90s.
Nancy Cartwright
She might not be the most famous face on this list, but her voice is one of the most famous in the world. Nancy Cartwright has been doing the voice of Bart Simpson (and other Simpsons characters) for more than 30 years, but long before scoring that gig, she grew up in Kettering, Ohio after being born in Dayton.
Patricia Heaton
Patricia Heaton, star of Everybody Loves Raymond and The Middle, was born in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village, OH and she got her bachelor’s degree at The Ohio State University. So while she lives in LA and in the UK these days, she’s an Ohioan through and through.
Catherine Bach
It’s hard to believe that The Dukes of Hazzard was consistently one of the highest-rated shows during its run in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It’s not hard to believe that Cleveland native Catherine Bach as Daisy Duke in her short shorts was a big reason why it was so popular.
Rocky Carroll
NCIS star Rocky Carroll is a proud son of Cincinnati, where he attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts for high school like many other stars from the area. After attending college in St. Louis, MO, he moved to New York City to start his career and he’s never looked back.
While it may not jump out as an entertainment hotbed, when you scratch the surface, you’ll soon realize just how many celebrities have been born in Ohio, and it’s a lot.
