Category:Famous People from Los Angeles
Los Angeles is the only city on this wiki whose roster splits almost evenly between people who were born there and left, and people who were born elsewhere and came. Earl Warren was born in the city in 1891 and spent his career in Sacramento and Washington; Stassi Schroeder was born in New Orleans and became known for a restaurant job in West Hollywood. This category collects biographical entries on people from Los Angeles, California, and the shape of the membership follows the city's two industries: an entertainment sector that imports its cast, and a set of national careers in law, politics, finance and science that the city exported.
Background
Los Angeles incorporated in 1850 and grew from a town of a few thousand into the second-largest city in the United States over the following century, driven first by railroads and oil, then by the film studios that consolidated in Hollywood in the 1910s and 1920s, then by aerospace. The metropolitan area is a set of distinct neighborhoods rather than a single center, and the entries in this category name them specifically: Pacoima, Woodland Hills, Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, Bel Air, the San Fernando Valley. Its two dominant employers for the people listed here are the entertainment industry and elected office, which is why the roster carries actors and members of Congress in comparable numbers and relatively few of the manufacturing or academic careers that shape rosters in other cities.
Born in Los Angeles, careers made elsewhere
The single clearest pattern in this category is people born in the city who built their public lives somewhere else. Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles in 1891 and raised in Bakersfield, served as Governor of California from 1943 to 1953, and then as Chief Justice of the United States until 1969. Adlai Stevenson II was born in Los Angeles in 1900 into an Illinois political family, became Governor of Illinois, won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and again in 1956, and later served as ambassador to the United Nations. Jack Kemp was born in the city in 1935 and attended Fairfax High School before a professional football career and a run as a congressman and cabinet secretary based in western New York. Jerry Jones was born in Los Angeles in 1942, moved with his family to Arkansas as a child, and now owns the Dallas Cowboys.
The same pattern holds outside politics. Elinor Ostrom was born in Los Angeles during the Depression, took all three of her degrees at UCLA, and received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work on how communities govern shared resources. Michael Freedman was born in the city in 1951 and became known for his work on four-dimensional manifolds. Chip Wilson was born in Los Angeles and raised in Canada, where he founded an athletic apparel company. Steve Daines, Kim Schrier and David Schweikert were all born in Los Angeles and represent Montana, Washington and Arizona respectively.
Screen, music and reality television
The entertainment members divide into two groups that arrived by opposite routes. Those born in the city include Barbara Billingsley, born in 1915, whose television work defined a version of the 1950s American mother; Corbin Bernsen, born into a family already working in the industry; Jennifer Tilly; Chynna Phillips, the daughter of two members of the Mamas and the Papas, who grew up inside the city's music business; Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley; Alison Brie; Blake Lively; Issa Rae; Billie Eilish; Courtney Gains; Eva Marcille; Andrew Garfield, born in Los Angeles and raised in Surrey; and Ben Affleck, born in the city and raised partly in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Frank Darabont was born in France to Hungarian refugee parents and grew up in Los Angeles.
The reality-television cluster runs the other way and is worth reading as its own group, because almost none of it is native. Erika Girardi came from Atlanta by way of New York, Stassi Schroeder from New Orleans, Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave from Indiana and the South, and Kathy Hilton entered it through marriage in 1979. Shannon Storms Beador came up through the wider Southern California social scene. Crystal Kung Minkoff and Eden Sassoon are the natives, Minkoff born in the city in 1983 and raised in a Chinese American family there, Sassoon born there in 1973 as the daughter of Vidal Sassoon. Nava Rose and Tezza Barton represent the newer version of the same import: creators who relocated to Los Angeles because the audience and the brand deals are there.
Money, technology and public office
Los Angeles money in this category is mostly first-generation and mostly born in the city. Larry Fink was born there in 1952 and co-founded the largest asset manager in the world. Cathie Wood was born there in 1955. Donald Bren was born there in 1932 and built a Southern California real estate company. Evan Spiegel was born there in 1990 and co-founded Snap. Travis Kalanick was born there in 1976 and co-founded Uber, and Logan Green grew up in the city and has said its freeway congestion is what pointed him at ridesharing before he co-founded Lyft. Mitch Lasky was born in Los Angeles in 1962 and moved from video games into venture capital.
City and congressional politics supply the rest. Karen Bass was born in Los Angeles in 1953 and became its mayor in December 2022. Henry Waxman was born there in 1939 and represented portions of western Los Angeles in the House from 1975 to 2015. Alex Padilla was born there in 1973, grew up in Pacoima, became the youngest president of the City Council at twenty-eight, and now serves as California's senior senator. Judy Chu and Tony Cardenas were both born in the county, Cárdenas in Pacoima. Gloria Allred built her practice in the city, and H. R. Haldeman, born in Los Angeles in 1926, went from the local advertising business into the Nixon White House. Oscar De La Hoya was born in East Los Angeles to Mexican immigrant parents and became a world champion across five weight classes, and Florence Griffith Joyner was born in the city in 1959 and won the 100 and 200 meters at the 1988 Seoul Olympics in times that have not been beaten since.
See also
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