25 Famous People From Buffalo, New York

Shark Girl sculpture at Buffalo Canalside during a winter snowstorm

Shark Girl at Canalside in Buffalo, New York, during a winter snowfall. Photo by KMarsh / Shutterstock.com.

Buffalo has always had an identity all its own. Sitting at the eastern end of Lake Erie and shaped by the Erie Canal, railroads, heavy industry, immigration, music, sports, and some of the harshest winters in New York, the city developed a character very different from downstate New York. That history also produced an extraordinary group of actors, musicians, writers, broadcasters, athletes, inventors, and cultural figures whose careers reached far beyond Western New York.

For this list, the standard is the same one used throughout our famous New Yorkers series: these are people who were born in Buffalo, were raised in the city, or spent a substantial part of their formative childhood there. A later career, residence, or business connection to Buffalo by itself is not enough.

1. Christine Baranski

Christine Baranski was born in Buffalo in 1952 and grew up in the Buffalo area. She went on to study at Juilliard before building an extraordinary career on Broadway, television, and film. Baranski won Tony Awards for The Real Thing and Rumors and later became widely known for roles in Cybill, The Good Wife, The Good Fight, and the Mamma Mia! films. Long before her elegant and often razor-sharp screen characters became familiar to audiences, her story began in Western New York.

2. David Boreanaz

David Boreanaz was born in Buffalo in 1969. His father, David Thomas Boreanaz, later became a well-known television weather forecaster under the name Dave Roberts. The family eventually left Buffalo while David was still young, but the city remains his birthplace. Boreanaz became internationally famous as Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel, followed by long-running starring roles on Bones and SEAL Team.

3. Wendie Malick

Wendie Malick was born in Buffalo in 1950 and graduated from Williamsville South High School in the Buffalo area. After college and an early career in modeling, she moved into acting and became one of television comedy’s most recognizable performers. Malick earned major acclaim for her role as Nina Van Horn on Just Shoot Me! and later starred in Hot in Cleveland. Her distinctive voice and dry comic timing helped build a career that has lasted for decades.

4. Chad Michael Murray

Chad Michael Murray was born in Buffalo in 1981 and grew up in the Western New York community of Clarence. He later moved into modeling and acting before becoming one of the best-known television stars of the early 2000s. Murray reached a huge audience as Lucas Scott on One Tree Hill and also appeared in films including Freaky Friday and A Cinderella Story. His career eventually took him to Hollywood, but his beginnings were in the Buffalo region.

5. William Sadler

William Sadler was born in Buffalo in 1950 and developed into one of American film and television’s most recognizable character actors. After extensive stage work in New York, Sadler built a screen career that included memorable performances in Die Hard 2, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile. His ability to move between villains, authority figures, drama, and comedy has kept him working steadily for decades.

6. Tom Fontana

Tom Fontana was born on Buffalo’s West Side in 1951 and attended Canisius High School and Buffalo State College. He worked at Buffalo’s Studio Arena Theater before moving into television writing and production. Fontana became one of the most important creative figures in modern television through his work on St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life on the Street, and HBO’s Oz. His career helped shape the darker, more serialized style of drama that later became central to prestige television.

7. Michael Bennett

Michael Bennett was born in Buffalo in 1943 and began studying dance while still a child. He eventually became one of the most important directors and choreographers in Broadway history, winning seven Tony Awards during his career. Bennett worked on major productions including Company, Follies, Dreamgirls, and, most famously, A Chorus Line. His innovative workshop process for A Chorus Line helped turn the experiences of Broadway dancers into one of the landmark musicals of the twentieth century.

8. Dick Shawn

Dick Shawn was born in Buffalo in 1923 and spent his early childhood in nearby Lackawanna. He became an unconventional comedian and actor whose unpredictable performances made him a distinctive figure in film, television, and live comedy. Shawn appeared in movies including It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Mel Brooks’s The Producers, where he played the memorably outrageous Lorenzo Saint DuBois, better known as L.S.D.

9. Beverly Johnson

Beverly Johnson was born and raised in Buffalo and originally devoted much of her energy to competitive swimming. Her career took a completely different direction after she entered modeling, and in 1974 she became the first Black model to appear on the cover of American Vogue. Johnson’s breakthrough changed the fashion industry and opened doors for generations of models who followed her. Before New York fashion made her internationally famous, she was a Buffalo student and athlete.

10. Buffalo Bob Smith

Robert Emil Schmidt, better known as Buffalo Bob Smith, was born in Buffalo in 1917 and attended Masten Park High School. His broadcasting career also began in his hometown, where he worked in radio before moving to national television. Smith became famous as the host of Howdy Doody, one of the defining children’s television programs of the early broadcast era. His nickname permanently carried his hometown into American popular culture.

11. Rick James

Rick James was born James Ambrose Johnson Jr. in Buffalo in 1948 and grew up in the city. After a complicated early life that eventually took him to Canada and into a band with a young Neil Young, James returned to the United States and built a career that fused funk, rock, soul, and theatrical showmanship. His 1981 album Street Songs produced hits including “Super Freak” and “Give It to Me Baby.” James remained strongly identified with Buffalo throughout his life and was buried in the city’s Forest Lawn Cemetery.

12. Ani DiFranco

Ani DiFranco was born in Buffalo in 1970 and began performing around the city while still very young. She attended the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts and developed as a singer-songwriter in the local music scene before leaving for college. DiFranco later founded Righteous Babe Records and built an influential independent career outside the traditional major-label system. She eventually returned part of that success to Buffalo through the restoration of a former church that became the Babeville arts complex.

13. John Rzeznik

John Rzeznik was born in Buffalo in 1965 and grew up in a Polish-American family on the city’s East Side. After losing both parents while still young, music became one of the defining forces in his life. In 1986, Rzeznik formed the Goo Goo Dolls with Robby Takac, beginning in Buffalo’s punk and club scene before the band evolved into one of the most successful alternative-rock acts of the 1990s. Rzeznik wrote major hits including “Name,” “Iris,” and “Slide.”

14. Robby Takac

Robby Takac was born in Buffalo in 1964 and grew up in nearby West Seneca. As bassist and co-founder of the Goo Goo Dolls, Takac helped take a Buffalo club band from the city’s underground rock scene to international success. Unlike many musicians who leave their hometown behind after becoming famous, Takac maintained a strong Western New York presence, founding the Music Is Art festival and supporting local musicians and arts organizations.

15. Brian McKnight

Brian McKnight was born in Buffalo in 1969 and spent his early childhood there in a deeply musical family. He began singing in church before his family moved away from the city when he was still young. McKnight later developed into one of the most successful R&B singers and songwriters of his generation, known for songs including “Back at One,” “Anytime,” and “One Last Cry.” His career earned him numerous Grammy Award nominations and millions of record sales.

16. Grover Washington Jr.

Grover Washington Jr. was born in Buffalo in 1943 and grew up in a musical household where his father played saxophone and his mother sang in a church choir. He received his first saxophone as a child and developed his musical skills in Buffalo before leaving the city as a young man. Washington became one of the central figures in jazz-funk and smooth jazz, recording influential albums including Mister Magic and Winelight. His recording of “Just the Two of Us” with Bill Withers became one of his best-known songs.

17. Cory Wells

Cory Wells was born Emil Lewandowski in Buffalo in 1941 and began performing in Buffalo-area bands while he was still a teenager. He eventually moved west and became one of the three lead vocalists of Three Dog Night, one of the most commercially successful American rock bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Wells sang on numerous recordings during the group’s run of major hits and remained connected to Western New York later in life.

18. Tim Russert

Tim Russert was born and raised in Buffalo in 1950 and attended Canisius High School. His working-class Irish-American upbringing remained central to his public identity throughout his career. Russert eventually became the longtime moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, where his detailed preparation and direct questioning made him one of the most respected political journalists on television. His memoir Big Russ and Me drew heavily on his Buffalo childhood, family, faith, and neighborhood life.

19. A.R. Gurney

Playwright Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr. was born in Buffalo in 1930 and grew up in the city’s old Protestant establishment. He attended the Nichols School before going on to Yale and later becoming one of America’s most prolific playwrights. Gurney repeatedly drew on the manners, social codes, family rituals, and declining privilege of the world he knew growing up in Buffalo. His best-known works include The Dining Room, Love Letters, and The Cocktail Hour.

20. F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, but spent much of the first decade of his childhood in Buffalo. His family first moved there in 1898 because of his father’s work with Procter & Gamble, briefly lived in Syracuse, and returned to Buffalo from 1903 to 1908. Fitzgerald attended Catholic schools on Buffalo’s West Side, including Nardin Academy. Those years made Buffalo one of the most important places in his early life long before he wrote The Great Gatsby and became one of the defining voices of the Jazz Age.

21. Warren Spahn

Warren Spahn was born in Buffalo in 1921 and grew up in the city before becoming one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. His professional career was interrupted by military service during World War II, where he fought in Europe and received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. After returning to baseball, Spahn became the winningest left-handed pitcher in Major League history, finishing his career with 363 victories and earning induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

22. Patrick Kane

Patrick Kane was born in Buffalo in 1988 and grew up in South Buffalo in a family devoted to hockey. He developed through the Western New York youth hockey system before becoming one of the most gifted American players of his generation. Selected first overall by the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2007 NHL Draft, Kane won three Stanley Cups, the Conn Smythe Trophy, and the Hart Memorial Trophy. His road to NHL stardom began on Buffalo-area ice.

23. Tommy Paul

Tommy Paul was born in Buffalo in 1909 and became one of the city’s great boxing figures during the Depression era. Fighting as a featherweight, Paul built an impressive professional record and won the world featherweight championship in 1932 by defeating Johnny Pena. His success made him a major hometown sports figure at a time when boxing was among America’s most popular spectator sports. Paul spent his later years in Buffalo and remained part of the city’s boxing history.

24. Wilson Greatbatch

Wilson Greatbatch was born in Buffalo in 1919 and attended school in nearby West Seneca before serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He later studied electrical engineering at Cornell University and the University at Buffalo. Greatbatch became famous for developing the first practical implantable cardiac pacemaker, one of the most important medical-engineering advances of the twentieth century. His work ultimately helped extend millions of lives and earned him induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

25. Gordon Bunshaft

Architect Gordon Bunshaft was born in Buffalo in 1909 and attended Lafayette High School. After studying architecture at MIT, he joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and became one of the most influential modernist architects of the twentieth century. Bunshaft’s major works included Lever House in Manhattan, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. He received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988, completing a remarkable journey that began in a Buffalo immigrant family.

For more New York history connected to Buffalo and Western New York, read History of the Erie Canal and History of New York’s Empire State Express Train.