25 Famous People From Westchester County, New York

Renaissance Plaza in downtown White Plains, Westchester County, New York

Renaissance Plaza in downtown White Plains, New York. Editorial photo by quiggyt4 / Shutterstock.com.

I remember the 1970s, when a lot of my friends were moving out of the Bronx. Many of them moved just a little farther north to White Plains, Yonkers, and Dobbs Ferry. What all of those towns had in common was that they were part of Westchester County. People in Queens usually moved out to Long Island. Brooklyn moved to Staten Island, and New Jersey. Manhattan; most people just stayed there. But for many of us from the Bronx, it was Westchester County; except for me, we actually moved out to Long Island.

Westchester County sits directly north of New York City between the Hudson River and Long Island Sound, with communities ranging from the cities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, and White Plains to river towns, Sound Shore villages, and northern Westchester hamlets. For this series, Westchester stands on its own rather than being folded into Upstate New York, and its cultural history easily supports a list of its own.

The standard here is the same one used for our Nassau and Suffolk County articles: these are people who were born in Westchester County, were raised here, or spent a substantial part of their formative childhood here. Simply owning a house in Westchester later in life is not enough. Every person on this list has a genuine early-life connection to Westchester County.

1. Denzel Washington

Denzel Washington was born in Mount Vernon in 1954 and spent his childhood there. His father was a Pentecostal minister, while his mother owned a beauty parlor. Washington has frequently credited the Boys & Girls Club of Mount Vernon with giving him structure and guidance while he was growing up. He later studied at Fordham University and became one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation, winning Academy Awards for Glory and Training Day and earning additional recognition as a director and stage actor.

2. Jon Voight

Jon Voight was born in Yonkers in 1938 and attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, where he first became seriously interested in acting. After college, he returned to New York and began working in theater and television before breaking through in film. His role in Midnight Cowboy earned him an Academy Award nomination, and he later won the Oscar for Best Actor for Coming Home. Voight’s early life was firmly rooted in southern Westchester.

3. Stanley Tucci

Stanley Tucci was born in Peekskill in 1960 and grew up in Katonah. He attended John Jay High School in Cross River, where acting became one of his main interests, and later studied at SUNY Purchase. Tucci went on to build one of the most varied careers in American film and television, appearing in productions including Big Night, The Devil Wears Prada, Spotlight, and Julie & Julia. His Westchester upbringing and education formed the beginning of that career.

4. Sid Caesar

Sid Caesar was born in Yonkers in 1922 and grew up working around his parents’ restaurant, where he heard a constant mixture of accents and languages from customers. Those sounds later became part of the extraordinary mimicry and double-talk that helped define his comedy. Caesar graduated from Yonkers High School and went on to become one of the great pioneers of early television through Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. His comedy owed much to the Yonkers neighborhood world he absorbed as a child.

5. Matt Dillon

Matt Dillon was born in New Rochelle in 1964 and raised in Mamaroneck. He attended local schools before being discovered as a teenager and cast in the 1979 film Over the Edge. Dillon quickly became one of the most recognizable young actors of the 1980s through films including The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, and The Flamingo Kid. His later performances in films such as Drugstore Cowboy and Crash established him as a serious dramatic actor, but his career began while he was still a Westchester teenager.

6. Art Carney

Art Carney was born in Mount Vernon in 1918 and attended A.B. Davis High School. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II and being wounded in combat, Carney built a career in radio and television before becoming famous as Ed Norton opposite Jackie Gleason on The Honeymooners. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Harry and Tonto. One of television’s most beloved comic actors began his life in Mount Vernon.

7. Vanessa Williams

Vanessa Williams spent nearly her entire childhood in Millwood in northern Westchester after moving there with her family when she was very young. Both of her parents were music educators, and Williams grew up surrounded by music, dance, and performance. She became the first Black woman crowned Miss America and later built major careers in recording, Broadway, film, and television. Her Westchester upbringing helped establish the artistic foundation for a remarkably diverse career.

8. Alan Menken

Composer Alan Menken grew up in New Rochelle in a household filled with music and theater. He attended New Rochelle High School before studying at New York University. Menken eventually became one of the most successful composers in the history of film and musical theater, writing music for Disney classics including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas, as well as the stage musical Little Shop of Horrors. His musical beginnings were rooted in Westchester.

9. DMX

DMX, born Earl Simmons, was born in Mount Vernon in 1970 and spent much of his childhood in Yonkers. His early life was extraordinarily difficult, but Yonkers became inseparable from the identity and sound he later brought to hip-hop. After years of performing and battling locally, DMX became one of the dominant rap stars of the late 1990s, with albums including It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood. Few artists have been more strongly associated with Yonkers.

10. Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald was born in Virginia in 1917 but moved to Yonkers with her mother as a child and spent much of her formative youth there. She sang, danced, played neighborhood games, and traveled into Harlem to watch performers at the Apollo Theater. After a difficult adolescence, Fitzgerald won an Amateur Night competition at the Apollo in 1934 and began the career that made her the “First Lady of Song.” Her years in Yonkers were an important part of the childhood that preceded one of the greatest careers in American music.

11. Mary J. Blige

Mary J. Blige was born in the Bronx in 1971 but spent crucial childhood and teenage years in the Schlobohm Houses in Yonkers. Music became an escape from an often difficult environment, and while still a teenager she recorded a demo of Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture” at a recording booth in a White Plains shopping mall. That tape eventually reached Uptown Records and helped launch a career that made Blige the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.” Her rise is deeply connected to Yonkers and Westchester County.

12. Jadakiss

Jadakiss, born Jason Phillips, was born in Yonkers in 1975 and began freestyle rapping while still young. He eventually joined childhood friends Styles P and Sheek Louch to form the group that became the LOX. The trio’s hard-edged Yonkers sound carried them from local battles to Bad Boy Records and Ruff Ryders, while Jadakiss also developed a successful solo career. His voice and lyrical style remain closely tied to the city where he grew up.

13. Pete Rock

Producer and rapper Pete Rock was born in the Bronx but moved to Mount Vernon with his family when he was seven years old. He began experimenting with records and turntables as a child and eventually became one of the most influential producers in hip-hop. His work with C.L. Smooth, including the landmark album Mecca and the Soul Brother, helped define the sound of early 1990s East Coast rap. Mount Vernon became one of the key places where his musical identity developed.

14. Heavy D

Heavy D, born Dwight Myers in Jamaica in 1967, moved with his family to Mount Vernon while he was still a young child. He formed Heavy D & the Boyz with friends from the area and became one of hip-hop’s most successful crossover stars during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His blend of rap, R&B, dance music, and humor gave him unusually broad appeal. Long before his national success, Heavy D’s musical life was taking shape in Mount Vernon.

15. Steven Tyler

Steven Tyler was born in Manhattan in 1948, but his family moved to Yonkers when he was about nine years old. He attended Roosevelt High School and began developing his musical identity while playing drums, piano, and performing with local bands. Tyler later moved to the Boston area and co-founded Aerosmith, becoming one of rock music’s most recognizable frontmen. His teenage musical years, however, were firmly rooted in Yonkers.

16. Chip Taylor

Songwriter and musician Chip Taylor was born James Wesley Voight in Yonkers in 1940. The younger brother of Jon Voight, Taylor built a very different career from his famous sibling by becoming one of the era’s most successful songwriters. He wrote “Wild Thing,” made famous by the Troggs, as well as “Angel of the Morning” and numerous other songs recorded by major artists. His long career in country, folk, and popular music began in the same Yonkers family that produced Jon Voight.

17. E.B. White

Elwyn Brooks White was born in Mount Vernon in 1899. He later became one of the defining writers associated with The New Yorker and one of America’s most beloved children’s authors. White wrote Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan, and he also revised William Strunk Jr.’s The Elements of Style, turning it into one of the best-known writing guides in the English language. His life eventually became closely associated with Maine, but it began in Westchester County.

18. Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers in 1919 and spent parts of his complicated childhood in Chappaqua and Bronxville. He later became one of the central literary figures associated with the Beat Generation, although his importance extended far beyond his own poetry. In San Francisco, he co-founded City Lights Booksellers & Publishers and published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, leading to a landmark obscenity trial and victory for literary free expression. Ferlinghetti’s earliest years were rooted in Westchester.

19. Joseph Campbell

Mythologist and writer Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains in 1904 and grew up in New Rochelle. His fascination with mythology began early and eventually developed into a lifetime of scholarship on recurring patterns in myths from around the world. Campbell’s best-known book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, introduced his influential concept of the hero’s journey to a broad audience. His ideas later influenced generations of writers, filmmakers, artists, and scholars, but his own journey began in Westchester County.

20. Jonathan Larson

Jonathan Larson was born in Mount Vernon in 1960 and grew up in White Plains, where he attended White Plains High School and became deeply involved in music and theater. He later studied at Adelphi University before moving to Manhattan and devoting himself to musical theater. Larson created Rent, the groundbreaking rock musical that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and multiple Tony Awards after his sudden death in 1996. His creative life began in Westchester schools and community theater.

21. Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg was born in White Plains in 1984 and raised in Dobbs Ferry. His interest in computers emerged early, and while still a child he began writing programs at home, including a messaging system used by his family and his father’s dental office. After attending Ardsley High School and later Phillips Exeter Academy, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard, where he launched the website that became Facebook. One of the world’s most influential technology companies grew from skills that first developed in a Westchester household.

22. Lynn Conway

Computer scientist and electrical engineer Lynn Conway was born in Mount Vernon in 1938 and spent part of her youth in White Plains. As a teenager, she built sophisticated electronics projects, including a radio telescope. Conway later became a pioneering figure in computer engineering, helping revolutionize the design of very-large-scale integrated circuits and influencing generations of microchip designers. She also became an important advocate for transgender rights and for greater recognition of discrimination in science and technology.

23. Edwin Binney

Inventor and businessman Edwin Binney was born in Shrub Oak in Westchester County in 1866. He later joined his cousin C. Harold Smith in the company that became Binney & Smith. Their work in pigments, chalk, and coloring materials ultimately produced one of America’s most familiar products: Crayola crayons. Binney also helped develop dustless chalk for schools. One of the most recognizable names in childhood art supplies traces its origin back to a Westchester-born inventor.

24. Mike Breen

Sportscaster Mike Breen was raised in Yonkers and attended St. Paul the Apostle grammar school before graduating from Salesian High School in New Rochelle. After studying at Fordham University, Breen worked his way into professional broadcasting and became the longtime television voice of the New York Knicks as well as the lead play-by-play announcer for the NBA Finals. His signature “Bang!” call became one of basketball broadcasting’s most recognizable sounds. Breen’s path to Madison Square Garden began in Westchester.

25. Dick Clark

Dick Clark was born in Bronxville in 1929 and raised in neighboring Mount Vernon, where he attended A.B. Davis High School. His interest in radio began while he was still young, eventually leading him to Syracuse University and a career in broadcasting. Clark became nationally famous as the host of American Bandstand and later created and hosted numerous television programs, including New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. One of television’s most enduring personalities grew up in Westchester County.

For more Westchester and Lower Hudson Valley history, read History of Yonkers Raceway, Washington Irving, Sleepy Hollow, and the American Short Story, Billie Burke, Oz, Ziegfeld, and the Hastings-on-Hudson Estate, and 10 Lost Railroads of Westchester, the Hudson Valley & Upstate New York.