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.

Through the Decades

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 rapper23.4× the global rate.

Oakland under-produces politician — only 0.4× the global rate.

  1. Football118
  2. Baseball102
  3. Actor85
  4. Basket52
  5. Politician50
  6. Music47
  7. Singer35
  8. Artist35
  1. Rapper2623.4×
  2. Baseball1028.8×
  3. Basket524.1×
  4. Artist353.4×
  5. Music473.2×
  6. Novelist112.7×
  7. Film241.9×
  8. Lawyer321.8×
  1. Politician500.4×
  2. Writer230.7×

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.

18001825185018751900192519501975
  • Sports
  • Music
  • Film & TV
  • Politics & Law
  • Writing
  • Art & Design
  • Other
Film24
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Showing 24 of 1,016 notable people

0006 FILM

Russ Meyer

1922 - 2004

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0009 FILM

George Stevens

1904 - 1975

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0014 FILM

Ryan Coogler

Born 1986

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0022 FILM

Cary Joji Fukunaga

Born 1977

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0061 FILM

Gary Goldman

Born 1944

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0065 FILM

Ted Lange

Born 1948

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0094 FILM

Andrew L. Stone

1902 - 1999

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0118 FILM

Donna Hanover

Born 1950

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0130 FILM

Robert Mandel

Born 1945

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0208 FILM

Jeff Dowd

Born 1949

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0233 FILM

Finn Taylor

Born 1958

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0307 FILM

Yoon Sung-hyun

Born 1982

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0347 FILM

Herman C. Raymaker

1893 - 1944

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0350 FILM

Nnegest Likké

Born 1970

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0402 FILM

Aaron Woolfolk

Born 1969

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0423 FILM

Marv Newland

Born 1947

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0426 FILM

Lynn Breedlove

Born 1965

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0615 FILM

Jason Cortlund

-

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0634 FILM

Fritz Manes

Born 1932

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0682 FILM

Lee Mishkin

1927 - 2001

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0729 FILM

Robert N. Zagone

Born 1938

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0732 FILM

Mark Levinson (film director)

-

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0872 FILM

Harold Gaba

1946 - 2009

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0960 FILM

Anthony Lucero (director)

-

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