37.9074° N, 121.0764° W
OAKLAND
Most Famous People Born in Oakland, United States
- Notable people
- 1,016
- Peak decade
- 1940s
- Median birth year
- 1949
- Most distinctive
- Rapper 23.4×
The Rapper bench here runs at better than twenty-three times the global baseline — Too $hort, MC Hammer, and the entire Bay Area hyphy lineage compressed into one line of the panel, a regional rap dialect invented the way New Orleans invented jazz. The deep Baseball count is the other Oakland story, the A's dynasty years and the West Oakland sandlots that produced Rickey Henderson, while the outsized Artist bench still runs on Black Panther-era visual culture.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Oakland during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1940s with 138 notable births.
What Oakland Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Football is Oakland's biggest profession — 12% of all notables (118).
Oakland over-indexes on rapper — 23.4× the global rate.
Oakland under-produces politician — only 0.4× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Oakland's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Sports
- Music
- Film & TV
- Politics & Law
- Writing
- Art & Design
- Other
- Field: Film Clear ×
Russ Meyer
1922 - 2004
George Stevens
1904 - 1975
Ryan Coogler
Born 1986
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Born 1977
Gary Goldman
Born 1944
Ted Lange
Born 1948
Andrew L. Stone
1902 - 1999
Donna Hanover
Born 1950
Robert Mandel
Born 1945
Jeff Dowd
Born 1949
Finn Taylor
Born 1958
Yoon Sung-hyun
Born 1982
Herman C. Raymaker
1893 - 1944
Nnegest Likké
Born 1970
Aaron Woolfolk
Born 1969
Marv Newland
Born 1947
Lynn Breedlove
Born 1965
Jason Cortlund
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Fritz Manes
Born 1932
Lee Mishkin
1927 - 2001
Robert N. Zagone
Born 1938
Mark Levinson (film director)
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Harold Gaba
1946 - 2009
Anthony Lucero (director)
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