- Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. KBE (April 16, 1889 - December 25, 1977), better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an English comedy actor. Chaplin became one of the most famous performers as well as a notable director and musician in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era. He is considered to be one of the finest mimes and clowns ever caught on film and has greatly influenced performers in this field. - Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton (born Joseph Frank Keaton, October 4, 1895 - February 1, 1966) was an American silent film comic actor and filmmaker. His trademark was physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face" (referencing the Nathaniel Hawthorne story about the "Old Man of the Mountain"). His career as a performer and director is widely regarded to be among the most innovative and important work in the history of cinema. - Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd (April 20, 1893 - March 8, 1971) was an American film actor and director, most famous for his silent comedies. Harold Lloyd ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies", between 1914 and 1947. He is best known for his "Glasses Character", a resourceful, … - Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks (May 23, 1883 - December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer, who became noted for his swashbuckling roles in silent movies such as "The Mark of Zorro" (1920), "The Three Musketeers" (1921), "Robin Hood" (1922), "The Thief of Bagdad" (1924) and "The Black Pirate" (1926). - Louise Brooks
Louise Brooks (14 November 1906 - 8 August 1985) was an American dancer, showgirl, and silent film actress. She became, at the end of her life, a writer and critic of the silent film era. - Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson, was an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning American Hollywood actress. She was prolific during the silent film era, but her career declined with the advent of "talkies." She is now best known for her comeback role in the film "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), in which—mirroring her own life—she portrayed a former silent movie star largely forgotten by audiences of the day. - Clara Gordon Bow
There are some actresses who are adored by critics and the public alike, and some who find adulation with fans despite critical derision. Clara Bow falls into the latter category. Virtually ignored by the press in her day - the roaring 20s, when cinema's silent days were approaching the highest levels of artistic achievement - Clara was the greatest sensation for legions of admirers. A lovely woman with ethereal beauty, Clara also had talent. - Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand (November 10, 1895 - February 23, 1930) was a US film actress, who was a popular comedienne of the silent film era. - Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a revolutionary Soviet film director and film theorist noted in particular for his silent films "Strike", "Battleship Potemkin" and "Oktober". His work vastly influenced early film makers owing to his innovative use of and writings about montage. - Guy Maddin
Over the course of a career that has spanned nearly two decades and 25 films, both short and feature, filmmaker Guy Maddin has provided his viewers with more than their fair share of unique, cinematic moments. - Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford was an American actor in the silent film era of the 1910s and 20s. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Harrison Ford began acting on stage and made his Broadway debut in 1904. He turned to film beginning in 1915 and moved to Hollywood. He became a leading man opposite early stars such as Constance Talmadge, Norma Talmadge, Marie Prevost, Marion Davies, and Clara Bow. Ford's acting career ended with the advent of talkies. - Harry Langdon
Harry L. Langdon was an American silent film comedian. - Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlow (born on June 2, 1938 in Crowborough, Sussex) is a filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, and author. Brownlow is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era. Brownlow developed an interest in silent film at the young age of eleven. This interest grew into a life-long passion for the cinema and a career spent documenting and restoring film. - John Gilbert
John Gilbert (July 10, 1899 - January 9, 1936) was an actor and major star of the silent film era. Known as "the great lover," he rivaled even the great Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw. Though he was often cited as one of the high profile examples of an actor who was unsuccessful in making the transition to talkies, his decline as a star in fact had as much to do with studio politics and money as did the sound of his screen voice. - Colleen Moore
Colleen Moore, born Kathleen Morrison was an American film actress, and one of the most fashionable stars of the silent film era. - Theda Bara
Theda Bara was the stage name of Theodosia Burr Goodman (July 29, 1885 - April 7, 1955), a silent film actress. Movie executives made promotional claims that her stage name was chosen because it is an anagram for "Arab Death." In reality, "Theda" was a childhood nickname for Theodosia. "Bara" was a shortened form of her maternal grandfather's last name, Baranger. Bara was one of the most popular screen actresses of her era, … - William S. Hart
William Surrey Hart (December 6, 1864 in Newburgh, New York - June 23, 1946 in Newhall, California) was a silent film actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. A successful Shakespearian actor on Broadway, William S. Hart went on to become one of the first great stars of the motion picture western. Hart appeared in original 1899 stage production of " Ben Hur." He entered films in 1914 where, after playing supporting roles in two short films, … - Mary Astor
Mary Astor (May 3, 1906 - September 25, 1987) was an Academy Award-winning American actress. Most famous for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) opposite Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. She eventually made a successful transition to talkies, but almost saw her career destroyed due to public scandal in the mid-1930s. - Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge was one of the handful of true superstars of the silent screen. She was a major box office draw for more than a decade. A specialist in melodrama, her films are seldom revived today, and the often haughty look of her still pictures give little hint of her animated face and sparkling personality. Norma Talmadge was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, probably in 1893 (though she said 1895 and finally 1897). - Jackie Coogan
John Leslie (Jackie) Coogan was an American actor who began his movie career as a child actor in silent film - Max Linder
Max Linder (December 16, 1883 - October 31, 1925) was an influential French pioneer of silent film. - Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a world-renowned French film director, producer, writer, actor and editor best remembered for his work in silent film. Gance was born illegitimate in Paris. His parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but he was attracted to the theatre from an early age. He made his stage debut as an actor in Brussels at the age of 19, and took his first film role in the 1909 film, "Molière". - Tod Browning
Charles Albert Browning, Jr. (July 12, 1880 - October 6, 1962), better known as Tod Browning, was an American film actor and director whose career spanned the silent and talkie eras. Best known as the director of "Dracula" (1931), the cult classic "Freaks" (1932), and classic silent film collaborations with Lon Chaney, he directed many movies in a wide range of genres. - Pola Negri
Pola Negri (3 January, 1897 - August 1, 1987) was a Polish film actress who achieved notoriety as a "femme fatale" in silent films between 1910's and 1930's. - Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman (February 9 1891 - May 19 1958) was an Oscar-winning English actor. Born in Richmond, Surrey, England, Colman discovered acting while at school. He intended to attend Cambridge University to study engineering, but his father's death put an end to that. He joined the Territorial Army and served in the London Scottish Regiment during the Great War (World War I), with fellow actors Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall and Basil Rathbone. - Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade (February 19 1873 - February 25 1925) was a French film director from the silent era. Louis Feuillade was born in Lunel (Herault, France) to a family of modest wine merchants. Just beyond adolescence, he showed a deep interest in literature and created numerous drama and vaudeville projects. His excessively academic poems were occasionally published in local newspapers, and he acquired a reputation for his articles devoted to bullfighting. - Richard Barthelmess
Richard "Dick" Semler Barthelmess (May 9, 1895 - August 17, 1963) was a silent film star. The son of an actress, Barthelmess began acting in college, doing amateur productions. Convinced by a family friend, actress Alla Nazimova, to try acting professionally, he made his first film appearance in 1916 in the serial "Gloria's Romance" as an extra. His next role, in "War Brides" opposite Alla Nazimova, attracted the attention of legendary director D. W. Griffith, … - Roscoe Arbuckle
Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle aka Fatty Arbuckle was an American silent film comedian. Arbuckle is noted as one of the most popular actors of his era, but he is best remembered for a heavily publicized criminal prosecution that halted his screen career. Although he was acquitted by a jury with a written apology, the trial's scandal ruined the actor, who would not appear on screen again for another 10 years. - Wallace Reid
Wallace Reid was an actor in silent film referred to by "Motion Picture Magazine" as "the screen's most perfect lover". - Harry Carey
Harry Carey (January 16, 1878 - September 21, 1947) was an American actor and one of silent film's earliest superstars. - Mary Miles Minter
Mary Miles Minter (April 1, 1902 - August 4, 1984) was a U.S. film actress in silent films. - Francis X. Bushman
Francis Xavier Bushman (January 10, 1883 - August 23, 1966) was the first major male movie star to be known by name to the audience. His matinee idol career started in 1911 in the silent film "His Friend's Wife," but it did not survive the silent screen era. Bushman, like many of his contemporaries, broke into the moving picture business via the stage. He was performing at Broncho Billy Anderson's Essanay Studios in Chicago, Illinois, … - Mack Swain
Mack Swain (February 16, 1876 - August 25, 1935) was an American actor and vaudevillian, prolific throughout the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, he worked in vaudeville before starting in silent film at Keystone Studios under Mack Sennett. While with Keystone, he was teamed up with Chester Conklin to make a series of comedy films. With Swain as "Ambrose" and Conklin as the grand mustachioed "Walrus", … - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (December 28, 1888 - March 11, 1931) was one of the most influential directors of the silent film era. He was one of a number of directors who were part of the expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s, and he directed many movies that were influential. While some of Murnau's films from the silent era have been lost, most still survive. They are widely acknowledge among film scholars as masterpieces. - Richard Arlen
Richard Arlen was an American actor. Born Cornelius Richard Van Mattimore in Charlottesville, Virginia, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War I. At war's end, he went to Los Angeles where he found work as an unskilled laborer. By a stroke of pure luck, he was given an opportunity to act, appearing at first in silent films before making the transition to talkies. - Karl Dane
Karl Dane (October 12, 1886 in Copenhagen - died April 15, 1934 in Los Angeles) was a comedian and actor of the silent film era, and a sad example of the fate that befell many silent movie stars who were unable to make the transition to talkies. Born Rasmus Karl Therkelsen Gottlieb in Copenhagen, Denmark to a theatrical family, Dane first appeared on stage at the age of 14. In January 1916, … - Brigitte Helm
Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm was a German actress, most famous for her role as Maria in Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film, "Metropolis". After "Metropolis", which was her second film, Helm made over 30 other films, including talking pictures, before retiring in 1936. Her other appearances include "The Love of Jeanne Ney" (1927), "Alraune" (1928), "Gloria" (1931), "The Blue Danube" (1932) and "Gold" (1934). - George O'Brien
George O'Brien (April 19, 1899 - September 4, 1985) was an American actor, popular during the silent film era and into the talkie era of the 1930s. Born in San Francisco, California, O'Brien was the son of a policeman who later became police chief of San Francisco and then California Director of Penology. O'Brien was a popular college athlete before enlisting in the United States Navy to fight in World War I, then as a stretcher bearer in the Marine Corps. - Lya de Putti
Lya De Putti (Amalia Putty) (January 10, 1899 - November 27, 1931) was an international film actress of the silent era, noted for her portrayal of vamp characters. - Conrad Nagel
Conrad Nagel, (March 16, 1897 - February 24, 1970) was a successful American screen actor and matinee idol of the silent film era and beyond. He was also a well known television actor and radio performer.
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