Celebs in Kentucky

Kentucky isn’t just famous for horses and bourbon, there’s many a famous son and daughter from the Bluegrass State.

Ever heard of George Clooney, perhaps Kentucky’s most famous living son and often voted the sexiest man alive. Well he still has a home here, he loves it so much. Of course he has a second home somewhere else; we forget it’s name, is it a small town called Hollywood?

Johnny Depp isn’t exactly ugly, either, and he was born in Owensboro. Two tasty men, same state … girls, why are you waiting?

Lillian Gish and Irene Dunne were Kentuckians

Come to think of it, Tom Cruise was raised in Louisville, where Hollywood heartthrob Victor Mature was born, and William Shatner, good old Captain Kirk himself, has set up home here, owning a horse farm deep in bluegrass country…

Lee Majors, aka the Bionic Man, Steve Austin, was raised in Middlesboro, the town in Kentucky, not the Teesside port in north-east England.

Award-winning cult film director Gus Van Sant (Goodwill Hunting, Milk, My Own Private Idaho) was born in Louisville.

Steve Zahn lives in Scott County, where he indulges in his lust for fly-fishing. OK, he may not be as famous as Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US president, who was born in LaRue County, Kentucky.

That other heavyweight, Muhammad Ali, perhaps the world’s most famous boxer has a museum and learning centre in Louisville, where he was born Cassius Clay, named after the famous anti-slavery campaigner Cassius Marcellus Clay, also born here.

Other sporting greats, apart from the fabled stallion Seabiscuit, include Tyson Gay the gold-medal sprinter.

Wendell Berry, the poet and author, was born here in 1934, three years before perhaps his polar opposite, Hunter S Thompson, of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas fame.

Jim Bowie, the fabled pioneer and woodsman, who died at the Alamo (the old church in Texas, not the car-hire place) was a Kentuckian, too.

As for military figures, General George Patten may not have lived in the state, but a museum dedicated to him is, at Fort Knox. Other military figures include the most famous Colonel of all, colonel Harland Sanders, the man who took over the world with Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you prefer pizza, the Papa Johns founder, John Schnatter, lives here.

Famous musicians are legion, too, notably Billy Ray Cyrus the country singer, and Skeeter Davis. Oh, and the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil!