Famous People From St. Louis

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Updated October 19, 2018 63.5K views988 items

List of famous people from St. Louis, including photos when available. The people below are listed by their popularity, so the most recognizable names are at the top of the list. Some of the people below are celebrities born in St. Louis, while others are simply notable locals. If you're from St. Louis you might already know that these prominent figures are also from your hometown, but some of the names below may really surprise you. This list includes people who were born and raised in St. Louis, as well as those who were born there but moved away at a young age.

Larry Hughes and Pat Musick are only the beginning of the people on this list.

If you want to answer the questions, "Which famous people are from St. Louis?" or "Which celebrities were born in St. Louis?" then this list is a great resource for you.
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  • Kevin Kline
    • Birthplace: USA, St. Louis, Missouri
    Kevin Delaney Kline (born October 24, 1947) is an American actor and singer. He has won an Academy Award and three Tony Awards and is a 2003 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee.Kline began his career on stage in 1972 with The Acting Company. He has gone on to win three Tony Awards for his work on Broadway, winning Best Featured Actor in a Musical for the 1978 original production of On the Twentieth Century, Best Actor in a Musical for the 1981 revival of The Pirates of Penzance, and Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for the 2017 revival of Present Laughter.He made his film debut in Sophie's Choice (1982). For his role in the 1988 comedy hit A Fish Called Wanda, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 2003, he starred as Falstaff in the Broadway production of Henry IV, for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play. He has been nominated for 2 Emmy Awards, two BAFTA Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. His other films include The Big Chill (1983), Silverado (1985), Cry Freedom (1987), Grand Canyon (1991), Dave (1993), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), The Ice Storm (1997), In & Out (1997), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), De-Lovely (2004), The Conspirator (2010), My Old Lady (2014), and Beauty and the Beast (2017). Since 2011, Kline has had a recurring role on the animated comedy series Bob's Burgers.
  • Kimora Lee Simmons
    • Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri, USA
    Kimora Lee Leissner (née Perkins, formerly Simmons; born May 4, 1975), known professionally as Kimora Lee Simmons, is an American fashion model and fashion designer who took over Baby Phat after Russell Simmons and was CEO/creative director through 2010. She had her own reality television shows Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane (2007–2011) and Kimora: House of Fab (2013) Kimora Lee Perkins was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Joanne "Kyoko" Perkins, was born in Korea to a Japanese mother and adopted by a U.S. serviceman during the Korean War and raised in the U.S. She later worked as an administrator for Social Security. Kimora's father, Vernon Whitlock Jr., is African American. Her father worked as a Federal Marshal, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigator, a bail bondsman and later became a barber in St. Louis. He was sentenced to prison when Kimora was in grade school for distribution of narcotics. It was substantiated in the U.S. District Court (Honorable Clyde Cahill) that government agents attempted to recruit Whitlock as an informant in exchange for probation, but he vehemently refused. Consequently, he was refused probation and was taken off his $100 bond and was given the 24-year sentence; he was released after five years. Her parents split up and she was raised by her mother.Growing up in the northern St. Louis suburb of Florissant, Missouri, Kimora was the target of schoolyard bullying and teasing, because of her height, as she was 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall by the time she was 10 years old and mixed ancestry. To give her confidence because of her height, Simmons's mother enrolled her in a modeling class when she was eleven years old. Two years later she was discovered by Marie-Christine Kollock (a representative for seminal Paris Agency Glamour) at a Model Search in Kansas City (organized by Kay Mitchell) and sent to Paris. Simmons is a graduate of Lutheran North High School in St. Louis, Missouri.
  • John Goodman
    • Birthplace: Affton, Missouri, USA
    John Stephen Goodman (born June 20, 1952) is an American actor and voice artist. Early in his career, he was known for playing Dan Conner on the ABC TV series Roseanne (1988–1997; 2018), for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in 1993. He is also a regular collaborator with the Coen brothers on such films as Raising Arizona (1987), Barton Fink (1991), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). Goodman's voice roles in animated films include Pacha in Disney's The Emperor's New Groove (2000) and Sulley in Pixar's Monsters, Inc. (2001) as well as its prequel, Monsters University (2013). His other film performances include lead roles in Always (1989), The Babe (1992), The Flintstones (1994) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and supporting roles in Coyote Ugly (2000), The Artist (2011), Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), Argo (2012), Flight (2012), The Hangover Part III (2013), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), Patriots Day (2016), Kong: Skull Island, and Transformers: The Last Knight (both 2017). On television, he has had regular roles on Amazon Studios's Alpha House and on the first season of HBO's Treme and has been a frequent host of Saturday Night Live, as well as playing guest roles on series such as Community. John Heilpern of Vanity Fair has called him "among our very finest actors".
  • Maya Angelou

    Maya Angelou

    Dec. at 86 (1928-2014)
    • Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri, USA
    Maya Angelou ( (listen); born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim. She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, sex worker, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made around 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes such as racism, identity, family and travel.
  • Chuck Berry
    • Birthplace: USA, St. Louis, Missouri
    Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive. Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.Born into a middle-class African-American family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star, with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand. However, he was sentenced to three years in prison in January 1962 for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines. After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including "No Particular Place to Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine". But these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. However, in 1972 he reached a new level of achievement when a rendition of "My Ding-a-Ling" became his only record to top the charts. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four-month jail sentence and community service, for tax evasion. Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine's "greatest of all time" lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 and 2011 lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry's: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record. He was nicknamed by NBC as the "Father of Rock and Roll".
  • Akon

    Akon

    Age: 50
    • Birthplace: USA, St. Louis, Missouri
    Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam (; born April 16, 1973) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, philanthropist and actor. He rose to prominence in 2004 following the release of "Locked Up", the first single from his debut album, Trouble. He has since founded two successful record labels, Konvict Muzik and KonLive Distribution. The labels served as a stepping stone for many soon-to-be successful acts, such as Lady Gaga, T-Pain, R. City, Kardinall Offishall, and Red Café. His second album, Konvicted received three nominations for the Grammy Awards in two categories, Best Contemporary R&B Album for Konvicted album and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Smack That" and "I Wanna Love You". He is the first solo artist to hold both the number one and two spots simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 charts twice. Akon has had four songs certified as 3× platinum, three songs certified as 2× platinum, more than ten songs certified as 1× platinum and more than ten songs certified as gold in digital sales. Akon has sung songs in other languages including Tamil, Hindi, and Spanish. He was listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the #1 selling artist for master ringtones in the world. Akon often provides vocals as a featured artist and is currently credited with over 300 guest appearances and more than 35 Billboard Hot 100 songs, resulting to five Grammy Awards nominations. He has released 6 solo albums, and has handled the majority of production on his solo work and guest features. Alongside this, he also produced records mainly for artists on his respective labels, as well as for other artists such as Michael Jackson, Snoop Dogg, Lionel Richie, Leona Lewis, Sean Paul and Whitney Houston. Forbes ranked Akon 80th (Power Rank) in Forbes Celebrity 100 in 2010 and 5th in 40 Most Powerful Celebrities in Africa list, in 2011. Billboard ranked Akon No. 6 on the list of Top Digital Songs Artists of the decade.