Anderson_bynes_DiCaprio_Douglas_Ford_-Franco_Graham_Jovovich_Nimoy_Kunis_Denisof_Duchovny_Ryder_Penn_Kravitz_Scherzinger_Tyler_Connelly_Phoenix_FarmigaAfter see Lisa Kudrow's new show, Who do you think you are?, Yesterday I was very inspired to look at the stars for parents myself and see who I can relate to. Ok, so maybe not related, but since I was born in Odessa, Ukraine, it's fun to see who else from my neck of the woods. After some research, I found the 20 celebrities who believe it or not, are actually descendants of Russian / Ukrainian immigrants (No, this is not the same place), or were born there.
1. Pamela Anderson - known for his roles in television series Home Improvement and Baywatch. Pamela was born in Ladysmith, British Columbia. Her great-grandfather, Juho Hyytiäinen, was Finnish, a native of Finland Saarijärvi who left in 1908, changed his name to Anderson when he arrived as an immigrant. Her mother is of Russian descent.
2. Amanda Bynes - Known for its co-lead role in the TV series What I like about you as well as popular films like She's the Man (2006) and Hairspray (2007). Amanda was born and raised in Thousand Oaks, California. Her father is Catholic and her mother is Jewish. Her maternal grandparents are from Toronto, Ontario, but she is of Polish, Irish, Russian and Romanian descent.
3. Leonardo DiCaprio - Known for films like Titanic, Romeo Juliet, Catch Me If You Can and Shutter Island. Leo was born in Los Angeles, California. His grandmother, Helene Inde Birkenhead, who was born Yelena Smirnova, was a Russian immigrant to Germany. His mother moved from the Islands Erkenschwick-Ruhr, Germany to America in 1950, while his father is fourth-generation American and half Italian, half German descent.
4. Michael Douglas - Known for movies like Wall Street, Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. Michael was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His mother and maternal grandparents, Ruth Rapalje Neilson and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, came from Devonshire Parish, Bermuda, while his paternal grandparents, Bryna Sanglel and Herschel Danielovitch were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus, which was part member of the Russian empire.
5. Harrison Ford - Known for films like The Fugitive and Indiana Jones series. Harrison was born in Chicago. His maternal grandparents, Anna and Harry Lifschutz Nidelman were Jewish immigrants from Minsk, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire) and his paternal grandparents, Florence Veronica Niehaus and John Fitzgerald Ford, was of German and Irish Catholic descent .
6. James Franco - Known for movies like Spider Man trilogy, Pineapple Express and Milk. James was born in Palo Alto, California. Franco's father is of Portuguese and Swedish descent and Franco's mother is Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Russia.
7. Catherine Graham - known for playing Bonnie Bennett of The CW show The Vampire Diaries. Catherine was born in Geneva, Switzerland. She is the daughter of a Liberian father, Joseph Graham, and a Russian Jewish mother, Natasha. Graham attended Hebrew school and speaks English, Spanish, French and some Portuguese and Hebrew.
8. Mila Jovovich - Known for films like The Fifth Element and Resident Evil. Mila was born in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Mila was the daughter of Bogdan Bogdanovich Jovović, a Serbian pediatrician, and Galina Logitech Nova, a Ukrainian-Russian stage actress.
9. Leonard Nimoy - Best known for playing the role as Spock in the original Star Trek series. Leonard was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Ukraine.
10. Mila Kunis - best known for her roles in That '70s Show, Family Guy and The Book of Eli. Mila Kunis Markovna Milena was born in Chernivtsi, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union to a Jewish family to Los Angeles, California moved in 1991.
11. Alexis Denisof - known for playing Wesley Wyndam-Pryce in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Alexis was born in Salisbury, Maryland and is of Russian descent.
12. David Duchovny - best known for his work as an FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on the X-Files. David was born in New York City, New York. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, and his mother is a Lutheran immigrant from Scotland. His father was hi his name to the sort of mispronunciations he suffered at the hands of sergeants, while serving in the army to escape.
13. Winona Ryder - Known for films such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Mr. Deeds. Winona was born Winona Laura Horowitz in Olmsted County, Minnesota. Her father, Michael Horowitz is an atheist and her mother is a Buddhist. Her grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Ryder has a full brother or sister, a younger brother, Uri, named in honor of the first Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.
14. Sean Penn - known for his roles in I Am Sam, Mystic River and milk. Sean was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother is a Catholic of Italian and Irish descent, while his paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Russia. According to Penn's mother, Leo Penn (father) had distant Spanish ancestry, as the family name was originally "Pinon".
15. Lenny Kravitz - Singer / songwriter, known for hits like "American Woman" and "Where are we Running". Lenny was born in New York City, New York. Kravitz's father was of Russian Jewish descent from Kiev, and his mother was of Bahamian descent.
16. Nicole Scherzinger - best known as singer of the Pussycat Dolls. Nicole was born Nicole Scherzinger Prescovia Elikolani Valiente in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her biological father, Alfonso Valiente, is Filipino and her mother, Rosemary, is Hawaiian and Russian descent.
17. Steven Tyler - musician and songwriter, he is best known as frontman of rock band Aerosmith. Steve was born Stephen Victor Tallarico in Yonkers, New York. His mother is a Russian or Ukrainian and Cherokee background and his paternal side of the Italian (grandfather Giovanni Tallarico was born in Cotronei, Calabria) and German descent.
18. Jennifer Connelly - Known for such films as Requiem for a Dream, A Beautiful Mind, and He's Just Not That Into You. Jennifer was born in Catskill Mountains in New York. Connelly's father was Irish, Catholic and Norwegian descent, and Connelly's mother was Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Russia and Poland.
19. Joaquin Phoenix - is known for films like Gladiator, Signs and Walk The Line. Joaquin was born Joaquin Rafael Bottom in Río Piedras, located in the town of San Juan, Puerto Rico. His father, John Lee Bottom, was a Catholic from California. His mother, Arlyn Phoenix, was born in Bronx, New York to Jewish parents from Hungary and Russia. In 1968, Arlyn moved to California and met Phoenix's father while hitchhiking. They married in 1969, later in the religious cult "The Children of God" and began traveling through South America, where Joaquin was born.
20. Vera Farmiga - Best known for his roles in the films Running Scared, The Departed, Up in the Air. Vera was born in Clifton, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants Mykhailo and Luba Farmiga. Vera was raised in an insular Ukrainian American community who do not speak English until age six. She also attended a Ukrainian Catholic school in Newark and toured with a Ukrainian folk dance ensemble.
No comments:
Post a Comment