Famous New Jerseyites

Famous People Born in New Jersey

See our top list of the most famous people from New Jersey. We’ve chosen people like athletes, actors, civil rights activists, scientists and people from other walks of life that have come from the “The Garden State”.

Bud Abbott comedian, Asbury Park
Charles Addams cartoonist, Westfield
Edwin Aldrin astronaut, Montclair
William Count Basie band leader, Red Bank
Joan Bennett actress, Palisades
Judy Blume author, Elizabeth
Jon Bon Jovi musician, Sayreville
William J. Brennan jurist, Newark
Aaron Burr political leader, Newark
Lloyd H. Conover inventor, Orange
James Fenimore Cooper author, Burlington
David Copperfield magician, Metuchen
Lou Costello comedian, Paterson
Stephen Crane writer, Newark
Helen Gahagan Douglas representative, Boonton
Allen Ginsberg poet, Newark
Savron Glover choreographer, Newark
William Frederick Halsey, Jr. admiral, Elizabeth
Lauryn Hill rapper, South Orange
Donald Fletcher Holmes inventor, Woodbury
Whitney Houston entertainer, Newark
Ice-T rapper, Newark
Alfred Joyce Kilmer poet, New Brunswick
Alfred C. Kinsey zoologist, Hoboken
Ernie Kovacs comedian, Trenton
Dorothea Lange photographer, Hoboken
Jerry Lewis comedian, film director, Newark
Anne Morrow Lindbergh author, Englewood
Norman Mailer author, Long Branch
James W. Marshall discovered gold in California, Hunterdon
Patricia McBride ballerina, Teanick
Eger V. Murphree inventor, Bayonne
Jack Nicholson actor, Neptune City
Dorothy Parker author, West Bend
Zebulon Mongomery Pike explorer, soldier, Lamberton
Joe Piscopo comedian, actor, Passaic
Paul Robeson singer, actor, Princeton
Edward J. Rosinski inventor, Gloucester County
Philip Milton Roth author, Newark
Ruth St. Denis dancer, choreographer, Newark
Antonin Scalia jurist,Trenton
Norman Schwarzkopf army general, Trenton
Frank Sinatra singer, actor, Hoboken
Kevin Spacey actor, South Orange
Bruce Springsteen musician, Freehold
Amos Alonzo Stagg football coach, West Orange
Alfred Stieglitz photographer, Hoboken
Meryl Streep actress, Summit
Albert Payson Terhune journalist, author, Newark
Dave Thomas restaurateur, Atlantic City
William Henry Vanderbilt financier, New Brunswick
Sarah Vaughan singer, Newark
Dionne Warwick actress, singer, East Orange
William Carlos Williams physician, poet, Rutherford
Ray Liotta actor, Newark
Edmund Wilson literary critic, author, Red Bank