1676) Robert Redford

Charles Robert Redford Jr. (1936 – 2025). American actor, director, and producer. Over a career spanning more than six decades, he received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award amd five Golden Globe Awards.
He achieved stardom with Barefoot in the Park (1967) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). His subsequent performances in Downhill Racer (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Candidate (1972), and The Sting (1973) established him as one of Hollywood’s leading actors, with the latter earning him an Academy Award nomination.
Redford made his directorial debut with the family drama Ordinary People (1980), which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. His later directing credits include The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992), Quiz Show (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998), and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). A major advocate for independent cinema, Redford co-founded the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival in 1978.
Redford was of Irish, Scottish, and English ancestry.

 

- "With Irish red hair and a wrinkled face from a very young age, Redford was perfect in every role..." https://www.unionesarda.it/en/robert-redford-has-died-the-film-icon-was-89-cil09syg

 

- "Redford, with his freckled face and red hair stood out and not just for his striking looks but also for the kind of cinema he was associated to." https://www.wionews.com/photos/rembering-robert-redford-1936-2025-7-films-of-the-iconic-actor-director-that-you-must-watch-1758031548909/1758031548911

 

- " I recall talking to an old friend of Redford’s on the phone once, a guy he used to hang out with in Van Nuys, and this guy told me that Redford’s high-school nickname at the time was “Red.” But eventually he let the blonde thing go. I know that he walked around as a natural copperhead when he was hosting the Sundance Film Festival in the ’90s." https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/robert-redford-james-cagney-no-one-else/

 

 - "My hair was red and unmanageable and I had cowlicks going all over the place. I had freckles and my teeth were too big..." https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/16/style/fashion-robert-redford-intl-scli

 

 

1634) Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith (born Margaret Natalie Smith, 1934 – 2024). British actress known for her wit in both comedic and dramatic roles.
She had an extensive career on stage and screen for over seven decades and was one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actresses. She received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for six Olivier Awards. Smith is one of the few performers to earn the Triple Crown of Acting.
Smith began her stage career as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional debut on Broadway in New Faces of '56. Over the following decades she established herself alongside Judi Dench as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. On Broadway, she received Tony Award nominations for Noël Coward's Private Lives (1975) and Tom Stoppard's Night and Day (1979), and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage (1990).
Smith won Academy Awards for Best Actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and Best Supporting Actress for California Suite (1978). She was Oscar-nominated for Othello (1965), Travels with My Aunt (1972), A Room with a View (1985) and Gosford Park (2001).
She married actor Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens and were divorced in 1975. Later that year Smith married playwright Alan Beverly Cross and they remained married until his death in 1998.
Smith was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.

- "She was very striking with that red hair, very thin, very tall." https://www.vogue.com/article/dame-maggie-smith-obituary

- "Smith was red-haired, wore braces as a kid and had a lot of freckles." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/maggie-smith-oscar-favourite-is-a-glorious-antidote-to-the-selfabsorption-of-so-many-in-her-profession-a6734096.html

- "“Maggie Smith’s red-haired Desdemona is a beautifully vibrant, sensitive lass who accepts the realization of her doom with pathetic submissiveness.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/maggie-smith-has-died-at-89-after-iconic-career-in-harry-potter-movies-and-downton-abbey

- "A master at classical and contemporary roles who was as renowned for her subtlety as for her broad-stroke mannerisms, the red-haired Smith delighted several generations of theatergoers on both sides of the Atlantic..." https://variety.com/2024/legit/news/maggie-smith-dead-harry-potter-1236157839/

- "The girl who effects this contrast is a British actress with dark red hair, a smile that could win a war or at least make one worth losing, and “a light in her eye” https://time.com/archive/6833053/actresses-maggie-maggie/

 

1335) Willis H. O'Brien

Willis Harold O'Brien (1886 – 1962). American motion picture special effects and stop-motion animation pioneer, who according to ASIFA-Hollywood "was responsible for some of the best-known images in cinema history," and is best remembered for his work on The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949), for which he won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

- "The young Willis, red-haired and blue-eyed, the fourth of six children..."  https://books.google.it/books…

949) Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler (born Leila Marie Koerber, 1868 – 1934). Canadian-American stage and screen actress, comedian, and early silent film and Depression-era film star. Successful on stage in vaudeville and comic operas, she was also successful in film. In 1914, she was in the first full-length film comedy. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931.
Leaving home at the age of 14, Dressler built a career on stage in traveling theatre troupes. While not conventionally beautiful, she learned early to appreciate her talent in making people laugh. In 1892, she started a career on Broadway that lasted into the 1920s, performing comedic roles that allowed her to improvise to get laughs. From one of her successful Broadway roles, she played the titular role in the first full-length screen comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), opposite Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. She made several shorts, but mostly worked in New York City on stage. During World War I, along with other celebrities, she helped sell Liberty Bonds. In 1919, she helped organize the first union for stage chorus players.
Her career declined in the 1920s, and Dressler was reduced to living on her savings while sharing an apartment with a friend. In 1927, she returned to films at the age of 59 and experienced a remarkable string of successes. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930–31 for Min and Bill and was named the top film star for 1932 and 1933. 

- "... she was allowed to crop her red hair and dress in a pair of her father's old pants..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "May red hair is my own, but it was my father who bequeted me the T.N.T. that goes with it."  https://books.google.it/books…

 

740) Mary Astor

Mary Astor (born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke; 1906 – 1987). American actress. Her mother had Irish and Portuguese roots.
She is best remembered for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941).
Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. When talkies arrived, her voice was initially considered too masculine and she was off the screen for a year. After she appeared in a play with friend Florence Eldridge, the film offers came in, and she was able to resume her career in talking pictures. In 1936, her career was nearly destroyed by scandal. Astor had an affair with playwright George S. Kaufman and was branded an adulterous wife by her ex-husband, in a custody fight over her daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, Astor had greater success on screen, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Great Lie (1941). Astor was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player through most of the 1940s and continued to work in film, television and on stage until her retirement in 1964. She authored five novels. Her autobiography was a bestseller, as was her later book, A Life on Film, which was about her career.
Director Lindsay Anderson wrote of Astor in 1990 that "when two or three who love the cinema are gathered together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played".

- "A Manhattan photographer, Charles Albin, saw her photograph and asked the young girl with haunting eyes and long auburn hair, whose nickname was "Rusty", to pose for him."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Astor

- "Her nickname "Rusty" came from her dark auburn hair. One fan magazine described her hair color as "Titian, which photographs black, and her eyes are very dark"."  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000802/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

- "Her hair was auburn and naturally curly, and A Life on Film describes how novelist Elinor Glyn came up with a way to make it look "Spanish" on film."  http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/…/mary-astor-invented-y…

- "His gauzy, Pre-Raphaelite studies of the “Madonna-child,” her delicate face framed by a cloud of dark hair (it was actually auburn, not brunette as it appeared in black-and-white films), finally interested a producer at Famous Players-Lasky studio, and she got her first contract."  https://brightlightsfilm.com/…/mary-astor-birthday-tribut…/…

- "Q - Was your mother actually called Rusty?
A - Yes, even her Mom called her that. It was because of her red hair."  http://themaryastorcollection.com/interview/

735) Robert Z. Leonard

Robert Zigler Leonard (1889 – 1968). American film director, actor, producer, and screenwriter.
He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Divorcee and The Great Ziegfeld (starring William Powell and Myrna Loy). Both were also nominated for Best Picture, and the latter won. Leonard was brought in late by MGM as a reliable director who could get its Pride and Prejudice (1940), starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, onto the big screen. He directed more than 160 films.

- "... and her big, red-headed director-husband Robert Z. Leonard..." https://books.google.it/books…

665) Frank Borzage

Frank Borzage (1894 – 1962). American film director and actor, most remembered for directing 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), Man's Castle (1933), and The Mortal Storm (1940).
Borzage was a successful director throughout the 1920s but reached his peak in the late silent and early sound era. Absorbing visual influences from the German director F.W. Murnau, who was also resident at Fox at this time, he developed his own style of lushly visual romanticism in a hugely successful series of films starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, including 7th Heaven (1927), for which he won the first Academy Award for Best Director, Street Angel (1928) and Lucky Star (1929). He won a second Oscar for 1931's Bad Girl.

- "Mr. Borzage is a ridiculously youn person with curly red-brown hair and an ingratiating smile. [...] A boyish, red-hair figure calling 'Good-night people!' Chorus in response 'Good-night, Mr. Borzage!'" https://books.google.it/books…

660) Janet Gaynor

Janet Gaynor (born Laura Augusta Gainor; 1906 – 1984). American film, stage and television actress and painter.
By 1927, Gaynor was one of Hollywood's leading ladies. Her image was that of a sweet, wholesome, and pure young woman who was notable for playing her roles with depth and sensitivity. Her performances in 7th Heaven (directed by Frank Borzage), the first of 12 films she would make with actor Charles Farrell; Sunrise, directed by F. W. Murnau and Street Angel (directed again by Borzage), also with Charles Farrell, earned her the first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929, when for the first and only time the award was granted for multiple roles, on the basis of total recent work rather than for one particular performance. This practice was prohibited three years later by a new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rule. Gaynor was not only the first actress to win the award, but at 22, was also the youngest until 1986, when deaf actress Marlee Matlin, 21, won for her role in Children of a Lesser God.
Gaynor was one of only a handful of established lead actresses who made a successful transition to sound films. In 1929, she was reteamed with Charles Farrell (the pair was known as "America's favorite love birds") for the musical film Sunny Side Up. During the early 1930s, Gaynor was one of Fox's most popular actresses and one of Hollywood's biggest box office draws; in 1931 and 1932, she and Marie Dressler were tied as the number-one draw. After Dressler's death in 1934, Gaynor held the top spot alone. She was often cited as a successor to Mary Pickford, and was cast in remakes of two Pickford films, Daddy Long Legs (1931) and Tess of the Storm Country (1932).

- "Miss Gaynor captivated audiences with her red-haired beauty and portrayals of elegant but vulnerable women." https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/0c900734-45e8-4fa0-9aae-…/…

- " As it began I beheld its star, an incredibly beautiful woman with tightly curled auburn hair and large, expressive brown eyes. Something about her was more than a little familiar and I took a peek at the TV book. It was then that I learned her name – Janet Gaynor. " http://www.ginalobiondo.com/janet-gaynor/

523) Anthony Asquith

Anthony William Lars Asquith (1902 – 1968). English film director, the son of Herbert Henry Asquith, the Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, and Margot Asquith.
He collaborated successfully with playwright Terence Rattigan on The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951), among other adaptations. His other notable films include Pygmalion (1938, for which George Bernard Shaw, Cecil Lewis, Ian Dalrymple, and W. P. Lipscomb won the 1938 Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay), French Without Tears (1940), The Way to the Stars (1945) and a 1952 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

- "He had red curly hair that appeared to have a life of its own." https://books.google.it/books…

491) Myrna Loy

Myrna Loy (born Myrna Adele Williams; 1905 – 1993). American film, television and stage actress.
Trained as a dancer, Loy devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. She was originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, but her career prospects improved greatly following her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). In 1991, Myrna Loy became the first actress to receive an Honorary Oscar without having previously been nominated for an Oscar in a competitive category.

- "Today she is 83, her wavy hair the color of faded ginger..." https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/8a97b4ca-44cc-4ed0-be6f-…/…
 

- "... but finally someone in the film industry noticed the talented, red-haired beauty and invited her into the studio." http://montanakids.com/cool_stories/famous_montanans/loy.htm

- "In real life she had Celtic ancestry, freckles and red hair..." https://books.google.it/

 

- "... with real diamonds and emeralds around her neck, and perfecly coifed red hair."  https://books.google.it/

444) Red Buttons

Red Buttons (born Aaron Chwatt; 1919 – 2006). American actor and comedian. He won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the 1957 film Sayonara.

- "The combination of his red hair and the large, shiny buttons on the bellhop uniforms inspired orchestra leader Charles "Dinty" Moore to call him "Red Buttons," the name under which he would later perform." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Buttons

- "since he wore a bellhop uniform, he was, naturally, called Buttons, and at the time his hair was red. The name stuck, even though his hair turned dark brown as he got older." https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/arts/14buttons.html

443) George Sanders

George Henry Sanders (1906 – 1972). English film and television actor, singer-songwriter, music composer, and author. His career as an actor spanned over forty years. His upper-class English accent and bass voice often led him to be cast as sophisticated but villainous characters.
For his role as the acerbic, cold-blooded theatre critic Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (1950), Sanders won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

- "He had reddish-brown hair with touches of grey." https://books.google.it/books…

- "George Sanders with red hair and beard." https://theblondeatthefilm.com/2016/12/05/the-black-swan/

437) James Cagney

James Cagney (1899 – 1986). American actor and dancer, both on stage and in film. In 1943 he won an Academy Award for his performance in the film Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Orson Welles said of him, "[he was] maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera", and Stanley Kubrick considered him to be one of the best actors of all time.

- "His hair was a Van Gogh, Renoir, Titian red with… gold waving through. His eyes were delft blue, with the longest, thickest lashes I have ever seen. He blinked his eyes at me, and since I had never seen a blink like that before, I instantaneously fell in love." (actress Joan Blondell)" http://www.themave.com/Cagney/article/index.html

- "Once a movie star, it was years before fans knew he had vivid red hair because all of his early films were photographed in black and white. "http://www.tcm.com/…/18928…/Robert-Osborne-January-2008.html

427) Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton (1899 – 1962). English stage and film actor. Laughton was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death.
He played a wide range of classical and modern parts, making an impact in Shakespeare at the Old Vic. His film career took him to Broadway and then Hollywood, but he also collaborated with Alexander Korda on notable British films of the era, including The Private Life of Henry VIII, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the title character. He portrayed everything from monsters and misfits to kings. Among Laughton's biggest film hits were The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Mutiny on the Bounty, Ruggles of Red Gap, Jamaica Inn, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Big Clock. In his later career, he took up stage directing, notably in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, in which he also starred. He directed one film, the thriller The Night of the Hunter.
Daniel Day-Lewis cited Laughton as one of his inspirations, saying: "He was probably the greatest film actor who came from that period of time. He had something quite remarkable. His generosity as an actor, he fed himself into that work. As an actor, you cannot take your eyes off him."

- "His considerable physical bulk, his red hair and doughy facial features seemed like the stuff villains were made of, not heroes." https://books.google.it/books…

- "Laughton's hair was red as well, but the complexion is more sallow." http://www.headlesshearseman.com/paint.html

406) Susan Hayward

Susan Hayward (born Edythe Marrenner, 1917 –1975) American actress. Her paternal grandmother was an actress, Kate Harrigan, from County Cork, Ireland Her mother was of Swedish descent. 
After working as a fashion model, Hayward traveled to Hollywood in 1937. She secured a film contract and played several small supporting roles over the next few years.By the late 1940s, the quality of her film roles had improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first of five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performance as an alcoholic in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947). Her career continued successfully through the 1950s and she received subsequent nominations for My Foolish Heart (1949), With a Song in My Heart (1952), and I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955). She finally won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958).

- "After leaving school Susan decided to try modelling and the energetic 16-year-old redhead was soon one of the Thornton Agency's top model. [...] ... when George Cukor picked up a copy of the Saturday Evening Post that displayed a sweater-clad teenager wit knowing eyes and a wealth of red hair." https://books.google.it/

 

- “It was this mix of lineages that would eventually give Edythe her good looks and her trademark red tresses.”  http://www.susanhayward.com/

375) Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn (1907 - 2003). American actress. Known for her fierce independence and spirited personality, Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years. She appeared in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards—a record for any performer—for Best Actress. In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
She had a lifelong relationship with Spencer Tracy.

- "On May 12, 1907, the Hepburns had their second child, Katharine Houghton Hepburn. Kit was thrilled about the newborn daughter's red hair and asked the nurse to hold her up to the window so Tom could see it. 'Yes, it's red!' she shouted to Tom." https://books.google.it/

- "She washes her own red hair, plans her own clothes, shoulders her own wherever she is going."  https://breac.nd.edu/articles/maeve-brennan-celebrity-and-harpers-bazaar-in-the-1940s/ 

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371) Spencer Tracy

Spencer Tracy (1900 - 1967). American actor. oted for his natural style and versatility. One of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tracy won two Academy Awards for Best Actor from nine nominations, sharing the record for nominations in that category with Laurence Olivier. He had a lifelong relationship with Katharine Hepburn. 

"And who could have forecast that the red hair would turn pure white?"
https://books.google.it/books

- "Tracy with his thick red hair, freckles all over white skin and bad teeth." http://www.jugendohnefilm.com/george-cukor-just-squeezing-it-out-of-other-people/ 

333) Greer Garson

Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson (1904 - 1996). British-American actress, popular during the Second World War, being listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top-ten box office draws from 1942 to 1946.
A major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the 1940s, Garson received seven Academy Award nominations, including a record-tying five consecutive nominations for acting, all in the Best Actress category (1940–1945), winning the award for Mrs. Miniver (1942).

"It was filmed in Technicolor and audiences had their first chance to see Greer's flaming red hair."

https://ggarson.weebly.com/biography.html

313) Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers (1911 –1995). American actress, dancer, and singer, widely known for performing in films and RKO's musical films, partnered with Fred Astaire. She had her first successful film role as a supporting actress in 42nd Street (1933). Throughout the 1930s, Rogers made 9 films with Astaire, among which were some of her biggest successes, such as Swing Time (1936) and Top Hat (1935). After two commercial failures with Astaire, Rogers began to branch out into dramatic films and comedies. Her acting was well received by critics and audiences, and she became one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1940s. Her performance in Kitty Foyle (1940) won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

- “Her natural hair color is actually auburn, which you can see in some of her very early films likes those with Joe E. Brown, according to Ginger Rogers’ autobiography.” https://cometoverhollywood.com/2012/01/31/hair-to-dye-for/

- "Her natural red hair having been dyed blonde early in her movie career, Ginger tended to be type-cast as young starlets or molls." http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Ginger/ginger-bio.htm

- "Ginger(who let her natural reddish-brown hair color come through for the role) is outstanding as Kitty."
https://portraitsbyjenni.wordpress.com/tag/sam-wood/

276) F. W. Murnau

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; 1888 – 1931). German film director. Murnau was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt.
Murnau emigrated to Hollywood in 1926, where he joined the Fox Studio and made Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, starring George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston), a film often cited by scholars as one of the greatest of all time. Released in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system (music and sound effects only), Sunrise was not a financial success, but received several Oscars at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. In winning the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production it shared what is now the Best Picture award with the film Wings.

- "As a performer, Wilhelm Plumpe was hampered by his height (nearly six-and-a-half feet) and his red hair, but he was a nascent genius." https://books.google.it/books…

- "He was the sort of person - with a shock of red hair and athletic body - who liked to ride in an open car." https://books.google.it/books…
 

- "He was very tall, six feet four or something, and very handsome, and he had red hair..." https://books.google.it/books…