List of most popular artists (all time)

Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), professionally known as Ray Charles, was an American singer, songwriter, musician and composer. He was sometimes referred to as "The Genius", and was also nicknamed "The H...

Akira Kurosawa ( March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese filmmaker. Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.

John Clayton Mayer (born October 16, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter and producer. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and raised in nearby Fairfield. He attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, but d...

James George Janos (born July 15, 1951) better known by his stage name Jesse Ventura is an American former professional wrestler, actor, political commentator, author, naval veteran, and politician who served as the 38th Governor...

Krist Anthony Novoselic is an American rock musician. He was the bassist and co-founder of the grunge band Nirvana. After Nirvana disbanded following the death of the lead singer Kurt Cobain, Novoselic formed Sweet 75 and Eyes Adr...

Edward John David Redmayne (born 6 January 1982) is an English actor, singer and model.

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He enriched established German styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and the ada...

James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker, inventor, engineer, philanthropist, and deep-sea explorer who has directed the two biggest box office films of all time (Avatar and Titanic). He first found maj...

Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes (born 22 December 1962), is an English actor. A noted Shakespeare interpreter, he first achieved success onstage at the Royal National Theatre.

Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks Studios.

Christopher Jonathan James Nolan (born 30 July 1970) is an English-American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has created several of the most commercially successful films of the early 21st century. His nine films have...

Justin Randall Timberlake (born January 31, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actor. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, he appeared on the television shows Star Search and The All-New Mickey Mouse Club as a child. In the late...

William Thomas "Bill" Berry (born July 31, 1958) is a retired American musician and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the drummer for the alternative rock band R.E.M. In addition to his drumming duties, Berry played many other...

Adam Thomas Jones (born January 15, 1965) is a three-time Grammy Award-winning American musician and visual artist, best known for his position as the guitarist for Tool. Jones is also the director of the majority of Tool's music...

Georg Philipp Telemann (14 March 1681 – 25 June 1767) was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg,...

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronolo...

William Byrd (birth date variously given as c.1539/40 or 1543 – 14 July 1623) was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular...

Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. His use and development of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions put the music of Norway in the international spectrum, as well as...

Jean-Philippe Rameau (25 September 1683 – 12 September 1764) was a French composer and music theorist of the Baroque era. Little is known about Rameau's early years, and it was not until the 1720s that he won fame as a major theor...

Henry Purcell (10 September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer. Although incorporating Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, Purcell's legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. No ot...

Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orch...

Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the mod...

Michael Andrew Fox, (born June 9, 1961), known as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian-American actor, author, producer, and advocate. With a film and television career spanning from the 1970s, Fox's roles have included Marty McFly from...

Rachel Anne McAdams (born November 17, 1978) is a Canadian actress. After graduating from a four-year theatre program at York University in 2001, she initially worked in Canadian television and film productions such as the drama f...

John Robert "Joe" Cocker (20 May 1944 – 22 December 2014) was an English singer and musician. Cocker's cover of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" reached number one in the UK in 1968. He performed the song live at...

Glenn Lewis Frey (November 6, 1948 – January 18, 2016) was an American singer, songwriter, producer and actor, best known as a founding member of rock band the Eagles. During the 1970s, Frey played guitar with the band, as well as...

Norah Jones (born Geetali Norah Jones Shankar; March 30, 1979) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Throughout her career, Jones has won numerous awards and has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. Billboard named...

Dame Margaret Natalie "Maggie" Smith (born 28 December 1934) is an English actress. She made her stage debut in 1952 and has had an extensive, varied career in stage, film and television spanning over sixty years. Smith has appear...

Alicia Amanda Vikander (born 3 October 1988) is a Swedish actress and dancer. Vikander began her career by appearing in Swedish short films and television series, most notably in the popular TV drama Andra Avenyn (2008–11). She ma...

Frances Louise McDormand (born June 23, 1957) is an American actress. She has been married to director and writer Joel Coen since 1984 and has starred in several of the Coen brothers' films, including Blood Simple (1984), Raising...

Owen Cunningham Wilson (born November 18, 1968) is an American actor, writer, producer and screenwriter. His older brother Andrew and his younger brother Luke are also actors. He has had a long association with filmmaker Wes Ander...

William James "Bill" Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He first gained exposure on Saturday Night Live, for which he earned his first Emmy Award and later went on to star in comedy films,...

Keira Christina Knightley (born 26 March 1985) is an English actress and model. She began acting as a child on television and made her film debut in 1995. She had a supporting role as Sabé in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menac...

Marion Mitchell Morrison (born Marion Robert Morrison; May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director, and producer. An Academy Award-winner for True Grit (1969), Wayne was...

Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), known professionally as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, rapper, singer, comedian, writer, film producer, and film director. As an actor, his work in the 2004 Ray Charles biographical...

Diane Kruger (born Diane Heidkrüger; 15 July 1976) is a German actress and former fashion model. She is known for roles such as Helen in the epic war film Troy (2004), Dr. Abigail Chase in the adventure/heist film National Treasur...

Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American actor and musician whose films include musical-drama film Footloose (1984), the controversial historical conspiracy legal thriller JFK (1991), the legal drama A Few Good Men (...

Ronald Walken, known professionally as Christopher Walken (born March 31, 1943), is an American actor. He has appeared in more than 100 films and television shows, including The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, The Prophecy trilogy, The D...

Mark Alan Ruffalo (born November 22, 1967) is an American actor, director, humanitarian and producer. He has portrayed the Marvel Comics character Dr. Bruce Banner / the Hulk in The Avengers (2012) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (201...

John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, dancer, and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979) and starring in the box of...

Nicole Mary Kidman, (born 20 June 1967) is an American-born Australian actress and film producer. Kidman's breakthrough roles were in the 1989 feature film thriller Dead Calm and television thriller mini series Bangkok Hilton. App...

Sir Michael John Gambon (born 19 October 1940) is an Irish-born English actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. Gambon has played Philip Marlow in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, Jules Maigret in the...

John Boyega (born 17 March 1992) is a British actor, best known for playing Moses in his 2011 film debut Attack the Block and starring as the lead role of Finn in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens...

Daisy Jazz Isobel Ridley (born 10 April 1992) is an English actress. She appears in the lead role of Rey in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Adam Douglas Driver (born November 19, 1983) is an American actor. He made his Broadway debut in Mrs. Warren's Profession (2010). He returned to Broadway in the 2011 production of Man and Boy and made his feature film debut in J...

James McAvoy (born 21 April 1979) is a Scottish actor. He made his acting debut as a teen in 1995's The Near Room and continued to make mostly television appearances until the late 2000s. His notable television work includes the d...

David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), better known by his stage name The Edge (or just Edge), is a British-born Irish musician and songwriter best known as the lead guitarist, keyboardist and backing vocalist of the rock band U...

Robert John "Robin" Finck (born November 7, 1971) is an American guitarist. He is one of only a few artists who has played in two different bands listed on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock": Nine Inch Nails (ranked no. 43)...

Elijah Jordan Wood (born January 28, 1981) is an American actor, film producer and DJ. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II (1989). As a child, he starred in the films Radio Flyer (1992), The Good...

Samuel Roy "Sammy" Hagar (born October 13, 1947), also known as The Red Rocker, is an American rock vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and musician. Hagar came to prominence in the 1970s with the hard rock band Montrose. He afterward...