PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: entertainment
German composer
Ludwig van Beethoven, 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, 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 the...
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, English-born American motion-picture director whose suspenseful films and television programs won immense popularity and critical acclaim over a long and tremendously productive career....
Italian composer
Giuseppe Verdi, 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, 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 E.T.:...
American actor and director
Woody Allen, American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, comedian, playwright, and author, best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and the absurd...
American actor, director, and writer
Orson Welles, 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 and to...
American director
Vincente Minnelli, American motion-picture director who infused a new sophistication and vitality into filmed musicals in the 1940s and ’50s. He was born to Italian-born musician Vincent Minnelli and French...
American director
Martin Scorsese, 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 even his...
American director, writer, and actor
John Huston, 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 adaptations...
Austrian composer
Joseph Haydn, 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 the string...
American film director
Frank Capra, 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 made...
German composer
Richard Wagner, 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 them....
American composer
George Gershwin, 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...
Italian composer and musician
Claudio Monteverdi, 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. Monteverdi,...
Hungarian-American director, actor, and writer
Michael Curtiz, Hungarian-born American motion-picture director whose prolific output as a contract director for Warner Brothers was composed of many solid but run-of-the-mill genre films along with a...
Russian composer
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 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, 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 No. 9...
German composer
Johannes Brahms, 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 master...
Hungarian composer
Franz Liszt, 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 of solo...
Irish dramatist and critic
George Bernard Shaw, 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, 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 his feature...
Russian composer
Sergey Prokofiev, 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 (Prokofjev...
German composer
Christoph Willibald Gluck, 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 version...
Spanish author
Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 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; The...
French composer
Hector Berlioz, 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 La...
American singer, songwriter, and bandleader
Bruce Springsteen, American singer, songwriter, and bandleader who became the archetypal rock performer of the 1970s and ’80s. Springsteen grew up in Freehold, a mill town where his father worked as a...
American musician
Bob Dylan, American folksinger 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 the intellectualism...
American director
Howard Hawks, 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 his films...
Austrian composer
Gustav Mahler, 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 was largely...
American director and producer
Billy Wilder, 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, 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 is often...
Russian composer
Igor Stravinsky, 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, 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, and Arabella...
American author
William Faulkner, 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, American motion-picture director popular in the 1930s and 1940s for his tough, masculine films. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.) As a young man, Walsh worked...
American director
Stanley Kubrick, 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 perspective....
American director and screenwriter
Francis Ford Coppola, 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 (1972),...
German-English composer
George Frideric Handel, 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, Messiah...
British actor, director, writer, and composer
Charlie Chaplin, 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 history....
Polish-French composer and pianist
Frédéric Chopin, 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 brief,...
German composer
Richard Strauss, 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...
German musician and composer
Felix Mendelssohn, German composer, pianist, musical conductor, and teacher, one of the most-celebrated figures of the early Romantic period. In his music Mendelssohn largely observed Classical models...
American actor and director
Clint Eastwood, American motion-picture actor who emerged as one of the most popular Hollywood stars in the 1960s and went on to become a prolific and respected director-producer. (Read Marin Scorsese’s...
American director
Mervyn LeRoy, American motion-picture director whose wide variety of films included dramas, romances, epics, comedies, and musicals. He also produced films, including the classic The Wizard of Oz (1939)....
American director
Robert Altman, unconventional and independent American motion-picture director, whose works emphasize character and atmosphere over plot in exploring themes of innocence, corruption, and survival. Perhaps...
American director
George Stevens, American director known for films that exhibited intelligence, great humanism, and brilliant camera techniques. His classic movies include the screwball comedy Woman of the Year (1942),...
American film director
King Vidor, American motion-picture director whose films of the 1920s and ’30s in both content and theme were among the most creative of those produced in Hollywood; they deal in relatively uncompromising...
German director
Fritz Lang, Austrian-born American motion-picture director whose films, dealing with fate and people’s inevitable working out of their destinies, are considered masterpieces of visual composition and expressionistic...