Famous people who grew up or lived in and around Los Angeles

Betty White1923–1940

📍 Beverly Hills, California, USA

I was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in January 1922, the only child of Horace White, a lighting company executive, and my mother, Tess. When I was a baby we moved to California, first to…

Billie Eilish2001–2019

📍 Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA 90042, USA

Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell was born in Los Angeles in December 2001 and grew up in a small 1912 bungalow in Highland Park, a hilly, artistic neighbourhood in north-east Los…

Billie Jean King1943–1961

📍 Long Beach, CA, USA

Billie Jean Moffitt was born in San Francisco in November 1943 and grew up in Long Beach, California, a busy port city of neat suburban streets and public parks south of Los Angeles. Her…

Bonnie Raitt1949–1967

📍 Burbank, CA, USA

Bonnie Lynn Raitt was born in Burbank, California, in November 1949, the daughter of John Raitt, the Broadway star of Carousel and The Pajama Game, and Marjorie Haydock, a pianist. The…

Charles Mingus1922–1945

📍 Watts, Los Angeles, CA 90002, USA

I was born in April 1922 on an army base in Nogales, Arizona, where my father, Charles Sr., was a sergeant. My mother died when I was a few months old, and my father moved us to Watts, a…

Cher1956–1962

📍 Encino, Los Angeles, CA 91436, USA

Cher was born Cherilyn Sarkisian in El Centro, California, in May 1946. Her mother, Georgia Holt, was a singer, model and actress who married several times, and her Armenian-American father…

Doja Cat2000–2012

📍 Topanga, California, USA

Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, known as Doja Cat, was born in Tarzana, Los Angeles, in October 1995. Her mother, Deborah Sawyer, is an American painter and designer, and her father is the…

Dr. Dre1965–1986

📍 Compton, CA, USA

Andre Romelle Young was born in Compton, California, in February 1965, when his mother, Verna, was just sixteen. She worked two jobs to support the family, and found relief in her R&B…

Eazy-E1964–1986

📍 Compton, CA, USA

I was born Eric Lynn Wright in Compton, California, in September 1964, the son of Richard Wright, a postal worker, and Kathie, a grade school administrator. Compton was a working-class…

Eddie Van Halen1962–1978

📍 Pasadena, CA, USA

I was born Edward Lodewijk Van Halen in Amsterdam in January 1955, and grew up in Nijmegen, in the east of the Netherlands. My father, Jan, was a Dutch jazz clarinettist and saxophonist…

Florence Griffith Joyner1959–1977

📍 Jordan Downs, Watts, Los Angeles, CA 90002, USA

I was born Delorez Florence Griffith in Los Angeles in December 1959, the seventh of eleven children. My father, Robert, was an electronics technician, and my mother, Florence, a seamstress…

Greg Noll1940–1954

📍 Manhattan Beach, CA, USA

I was born in San Diego in February 1937, and as a small boy I moved with my mother to Manhattan Beach, a small beach town in the South Bay of Los Angeles, with a long wooden pier and wide…

Ice Cube1969–1987

📍 South Los Angeles, CA, USA

O'Shea Jackson was born in South Los Angeles in June 1969, and grew up in a stable, loving home in the heart of South Central. His mother, Doris, worked as a hospital clerk and custodian…

Jackie Robinson1922–1939

📍 121 Pepper Street, Pasadena, CA 91103, USA

I was born in Cairo, Georgia, in January 1919, the youngest of five children of a sharecropper family. My father left when I was a baby, and in 1920 my mother, Mallie, took us west by train…

James Hetfield1963–1981

📍 Downey, CA, USA

James Alan Hetfield was born in Downey, California, a suburb south-east of Los Angeles, in August 1963. His father, Virgil, was a truck driver who ran a trucking business, and his mother…

Janet Collins1921–1940

📍 Los Angeles, CA, USA

I was born in New Orleans in March 1917, and when I was four, my family moved to Los Angeles, hoping for a better life away from the harsh segregation of the South. My father was a tailor…

Julia Child1912–1930

📍 Pasadena, California, USA

I was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams in Pasadena, California, in August 1912, the eldest of three children of John McWilliams, a Princeton-educated land manager, and Julia Carolyn Weston…

Karen Carpenter1963–1974

📍 Downey, California, USA

We left New Haven for Downey in June 1963, when I was thirteen. Mom and Dad had decided Richard's piano deserved Southern California, and Downey, with its flat, sunny streets of new stucco…

Kendrick Lamar1987–2012

📍 1485 W 134th Street, Compton, California 90222, USA

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born in Compton, California, in June 1987. His parents, both from the South Side of Chicago, had moved to Compton as teenagers in 1984, hoping for a fresh…

Kim Kardashian1980–1998

📍 Beverly Hills, California, USA

Kim Kardashian was born in 1980 and grew up in Beverly Hills, the second of four children of the lawyer and businessman Robert Kardashian and Kris Jenner. The family home was a 1950s house…

Leonardo DiCaprio1974–1990

📍 Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California, USA

Leonardo DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles in 1974, the only child of Irmelin Indenbirken, a German-born legal secretary, and George DiCaprio, an underground comix writer and publisher…

Marilyn Monroe1962

📍 Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, USA

I lived in a small guest house in Brentwood in the last years of my life — a modest Spanish-style house at Fifth Helena Drive that I bought in 1962, the first and only property I ever…

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex1981–1999

📍 View Park-Windsor Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA

Meghan Markle was born in Los Angeles in 1981 and grew up in View Park-Windsor Hills, a leafy, largely Black middle-class neighbourhood in the hills south-west of downtown, sometimes called…

Nipsey Hussle1985–2019

📍 Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90043, USA

I was born Ermias Joseph Asghedom in Los Angeles in August 1985, and grew up in the Crenshaw District of South Los Angeles, the heart of the city's Black community, around the corner of…

Quentin Tarantino1966–1985

📍 Torrance, California, USA

Quentin Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in March 1963. His mother, Connie, was just sixteen when she became pregnant, and his father left before he was born. When Quentin was…

Randy Rhoads1956–1979

📍 Burbank, CA, USA

I was born Randall William Rhoads in Santa Monica, California, in December 1956, the youngest of three children, and grew up in Burbank, in the San Fernando Valley, a suburb of film studios…

Sally Ride1951–1968

📍 Encino, Los Angeles, CA 91436, USA

I was born in May 1951 and grew up in Encino, a quiet suburb in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, the older of two daughters of Dale and Joyce Ride. My father taught political science…

Serena Williams1981–1995

📍 1117 E Stockton Street, Compton, CA 90221, USA

Serena Jameka Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in September 1981, the youngest of five daughters of Oracene Price, and the youngest child of Richard Williams. When she was a small…

Snoop Dogg1971–1992

📍 Long Beach, CA, USA

Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. was born in Long Beach, California, in October 1971, and grew up on the city's tough east side. His father left when he was a baby, and he was named after his…

Tiger Woods1975–1994

📍 6704 Teakwood Street, Cypress, CA 90630, USA

Eldrick Tont Woods was born in Cypress, California, in December 1975, the only child of Earl Woods, a former US Army officer and Green Beret who had served in Vietnam, and Kultida Woods…

Tim Burton1958–1976

📍 Burbank, California, USA

Tim Burton was born in Burbank, California, in August 1958 and grew up in this sunny, orderly suburb in the San Fernando Valley, home to the Disney, Warner Bros and NBC studios, with neat…

Tom Araya1966–1983

📍 Huntington Park, CA, USA

Tomás Enrique Araya Díaz was born in Viña del Mar, a seaside resort city on the Pacific coast of Chile, in June 1961, the fourth of nine children of Chilean parents. In 1966, when he was…