Greatest artists (all time)

Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer. Schubert died before his 32nd birthday, but was extremely prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal work...

William McChord Hurt (born March 20, 1950) is an American stage and film actor. He received his acting training at the Juilliard School and began acting on stage in the 1970s. Hurt made his film debut as a troubled scientist in th...

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress, businesswoman and humanitarian. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars...

Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman (born November 19, 1958) is an American screenwriter, producer, director, and lyricist. He wrote the films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...

Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, composer, musician, television producer, film producer, instrumentalist, magazine founder, entertainment company executive, and h...

Richard St John Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor, singer, theatrical and song producer, film director and writer. He appeared on stage and in many films, appearing as Frank Machin in This Sporting Life,...

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. He started as a stand-up comedian in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. After rising to fame as Mork in the sitcom Mork & M...

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas (or, as some of his later works were later known, "music dramas"). Un...

Wesley Wales "Wes" Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American film director, film producer, screenwriter, and actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001, Moonrise Ki...

Idrissa Akuna "Idris" Elba (born 6 September 1972) is a British actor, musician and DJ. Elba is best known for his portrayal of drug lord and aspiring businessman Russell "Stringer" Bell in the HBO series The Wire, Detective John...

Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi (born December 13, 1957) is an American actor and film director. Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films, including Parting Glances, New York Stories, Mystery Train,...

Leonard Norman Cohen (born 21 September 1934) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, musician, painter, poet, and novelist. His work has explored religion, politics, isolation, sexuality, and personal relationships. Cohen has been indu...

Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was a German-Austrian filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor.

Ewan Gordon McGregor (born 31 March 1971) is a Scottish actor. His first professional role was in 1993, when he won a leading role in the Channel 4 series Lipstick on Your Collar. He is best known for his roles as heroin addict Ma...

Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor, singer, and producer. Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as superhero, period, and romance characters. He is perhaps...

Ken Watanabe (渡辺 謙 Watanabe Ken, born October 21, 1959) is a Japanese actor. To English-speaking audiences, he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Ka...

Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014) was an American actor, director, and producer of film and theater. Best known for his distinctive supporting and character roles – typically lowlifes, bullies, and misfits...

Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth (born September 13, 1937) is an American animator, film director, producer, writer, production designer, video game designer and animation instructor who is known for directing animated films, including T...

Stephen Chow (Chinese: 周星馳, Chow Sing-Chi; born 22 June 1962) is a Hong Kong actor, screenwriter, film director, producer and political adviser of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference...

Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti (born June 6, 1967) is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Cinderella Man and is also known for his roles in the films Sideways, American S...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir (25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919), was a French painter who was influential in the development of Impressionism.

Frank Wilton Marshall (born September 13, 1946) is an American film producer and director, often working in collaboration with his wife, Kathleen Kennedy. With Kennedy and Steven Spielberg, he was one of the founders of Amblin Ent...

Jean-Jacques Annaud (born 1 October 1943) is a French film director, screenwriter and producer, best known for directing Quest for Fire (1981), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Lover (1991), and Seven Years in Tibet (1997). Annaud...

Alexandre Michel Gérard Desplat (born 23 August 1961) is a French and Greek film composer. He has won one Academy Award for his soundtrack to the film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and received seven additional Academy Award nominatio...

Maynard James Keenan (born James Herbert Keenan; April 17, 1964), often referred to by his initials MJK, is an American progressive metal singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, winemaker, and actor, best known as the vocal...

Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965), known professionally as Trent Reznor, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and film score composer. As a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, he has led the industrial rock pr...

Toshiro Mifune (April 1, 1920 – December 24, 1997) was a Japanese actor who appeared in almost 170 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration (1948–65) with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa in such works as Rashomon, Se...

Jaco Van Dormael (born 9 February 1957) is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. Van Dormael spent his childhood travelling around Europe, before going on to study filmmaking at the INSAS in Brussels, where he wrot...

Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (born 1 March 1969) is a Spanish actor. In 2007, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as psychopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. He has also known for r...

Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. He has worked as a composer for movies and musicals and has acted in supporting roles in films, including Paradise Alley and Br...

Zhang Yimou (born 14 November 1951) is a Chinese film director, producer, screenwriter and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1...

Omar Sharif (born Michel Dimitri Chalhoub; 10 April 1932 – 10 July 2015) was an Egyptian actor. He began his career in his native country in the 1950s, but is best known for his appearances in both British and American productions...

Spike Jonze (born Adam Spiegel; October 22, 1969) is an American director, producer, screenwriter and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television. He started his feature film directing career with Bei...

Edward Lodewijk "Eddie" Van Halen (born January 26, 1955 in Nijmegen) is a Dutch-American musician, songwriter and producer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, occasional keyboardist and co-founder of the hard rock band Van H...

Clifford Lee "Cliff" Burton (February 10, 1962 – September 27, 1986) was an American musician, best known as the bass guitarist for the American thrash metal band Metallica. Burton joined Metallica in 1982 and performed on the ban...

Dr. George Miller (born 3 March 1945) is an Australian film director, screenwriter, producer, and former medical doctor. He is best known for his Mad Max franchise. Aside from the Mad Max films, Miller has been involved in a wide...

Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones (born 30 May 1971) is an English film director, film producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for directing the award-winning science fiction films Moon (2009) and Source Code (2011). He is also the...

Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson (born July 23, 1961) is an American actor, activist and playwright. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee and has won one Emmy Award out of seven nominations. His breakout role came in 1985, joinin...

James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, Jr., OBE (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer mostly known as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Page began his care...

David Jon Gilmour (born 6 March 1946) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. In a career spanning more than 50 years, he is best known for his work as the guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the progre...

Yasiin Bey ( born Dante Terrell Smith; December 11, 1973), better known by his former stage name Mos Def ), is an American hip hop recording artist, actor, comedian, and activist from Brooklyn, New York City, New York...

Lauren Bacall, (born Betty Joan Perske; September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014) was an American actress. Bacall began her career as a model, before making her debut as a leading lady with Humphrey Bogart in the film To Have and Have...

Steven Siro Vai (born June 6, 1960) is an American guitarist, songwriter, singer, and producer who has sold over 15 million albums. After starting his career as a music transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, he recorded and toured in Z...

Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, 25 March 1947) is an English singer-songwriter, composer and pianist. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriting partner since 1967; they have collaborated o...

Carlos Santana (born July 20, 1947) is a Mexican and American musician who first became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock and Latin American music. He has won 10 Gram...

Albert King Nelson (April 25, 1923 – December 21, 1992), known professionally as Albert King, was an American blues guitarist and singer, and a major influence in the world of blues guitar playing. One of the "Three Kings of the B...

Freddie King (September 3, 1934 – December 28, 1976) was an American blues guitarist and singer. He is often mentioned as one of "the Three Kings" of electric blues guitar along with Albert King and B.B. King. Freddie King based h...

Michael Benjamin Bay (born February 17, 1965) is an American filmmaker. He is known for directing big-budget action films characterized by fast edits, stylistic visuals and extreme use of special effects. His films, which include...

Frank Arpad Darabont (born Darabont Ferenc; January 28, 1959) is a Hungarian-American film director, screenwriter and producer who has been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. In his early career he was pr...

Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and musician. He began performing in a group covering Shadows instrumentals in Canada in 1960, before moving to California in 1966, where he co-founded t...