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San Francisco is one of the most notable cities in the United States. As a result, it makes sense that there are some very well-known individuals who came from either the city or the city’s surroundings. Some of these people are famous because of their involvement in the entertainment industries. Others have managed to make their names through other pursuits.

20. William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst gets a position for being interesting rather than for being likable. For those who are unfamiliar, he is an excellent reminder that yellow journalism has been a powerful force for a very long time. In fact, Hearst’s publications are sometimes said to be one of the major reasons that the United States fought the Spanish-American War, though the truth of this is rather exaggerated. Still, he was very much involved in politics throughout his entire life. Besides this, it is thought that Hearst was one of the models for the titular character in Citizen Kane, which infuriated him so much that he went to considerable lengths to limit showings without having seen it.

19. Rikishi

Rikishi is the title of a professional sumo wrestler. However, WWE fans are likelier to associate the title with Solofa Fatu Jr., a WWE Hall of Famer who wrestled under that ring name. It is interesting to note that he is a part of the Anoa’i family of Samoan wrestlers, which includes other well-known individuals. For example, Yokozuna was another San Francisco-born WWE Hall of Famer. Similarly, Dwayne Johnson is considered to be an honorary member of the family because Amituana’i Anoa’i and his grandfather Peter Maivia were blood brothers.

18. Kirk Hammett

Kirk Hammett wasn’t a founding member of Metallica. Still, he might as well as be, seeing as how he has been the lead guitarist for the band ever since 1983. Besides his guitar-playing, Hammett is also notable for being a contributor to Metallica’s song-writing.

17. Margaret Cho

Margaret Cho is a stand-up comedian who has also been an actress, an author, a musician, and a fashion designer. Like a lot of comedians, she uses her routines to critique various issues with a particular focus on race and sex. Cho has a nomination for a Primetime Emmy, which was earned by playing Kim Jong-il on 30 Rock.

16. Mel Blanc

Chances are good that people won’t recognize Mel Blanc’s face. This is fair because the man was best-known for his voice, seeing as how he was a radio personality as well as a voice actor during the Golden Age of Radio in the United States. As such, Blanc lent his voice to a wide range of projects. In particular, he is famous for having been the voice actor of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and other characters from Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Moreover, Blanc played both Barney Rubble and Mr. Spacely in Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

15. Courtney Love

Courtney Love has been overshadowed by Kurt Cobain. However, that isn’t 100 percent fair because she was a notable figure in 1990s alt rock in her own right as the frontwoman of Hole. Love did go through a very bad period in the 2000s but she seems to have gotten somewhat better since, as shown by the various projects that she has worked on in recent years. It is interesting to note that she has been a supporter of the LGBT community and vice versa for a very long time. Indeed, Love has joked about her fan-base consisting of women, gay men, and just a small number of straight men.

14. Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood is a name that needs little introduction. He became famous as an actor in the latter half of the 20th century. After which, Eastwood went on to become a very successful director. Some of his movies starred himself. Others do not. In total, Eastwood has won four Oscars as well as a host of other awards.

13. Alicia Silverstone

Alicia Silverstone started out as a teen idol in the 1990s. However, she went on to become a successful actress, as shown by how she played the role of Batgirl in Batman & Robin. Since then, Silverstone has continued appearing in a wide range of projects, with an excellent example being the upcoming crime thriller called Reptile. Besides her acting, she is also known for her support for animal rights as well as environmental causes. Indeed, she herself is a vegan who has penned cookbooks.

12. Carlos Santana

Carlos Santana was born in Mexico. Still, his musical career started up in the San Francisco of the 1960s where he was exposed to a wide range of musical influences. Santana rose to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, the sheer length of his career can be seen in how he experienced a resurgence of popularity in the late 1990s. In any case, Santana has been extremely successful by any standard. After all, he has sold more than 100 million records. Furthermore, he has won 10 Grammys as well as 3 Latin Grammys.

11. Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia was a founding member of the Graceful Dead. He denied being the leader of the band. Even so, it was common for people to see him as such, not least because he was a singer, a songwriter, and a guitarist. Regardless, Garcia and the rest of the Graceful Dead rose to prominence through the counter-culture of the 1960s. Something that enabled them to exert influence far beyond their time and their place. In the present time, Garcia himself is still widely considered to be one of the greatest guitarists to have ever lived.

10. Danny Glover

Danny Glover is best-known for having played Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon series. Having said that, he might be even more interesting because of his activism. Plenty of celebrities are known to support this cause or that cause. However, it seems safe to say that Glover is more passionate about this than most. As recently as 2010, Glover was arrested in Maryland where he was participating in a SEIU protest of Sodexo’s treatment of its workers. He would have been in his 60s at the time.

9. Joe DiMaggio

Joe DiMaggio is famous for spending his entire baseball career playing for the New York Yankees. Even so, he has a connection to San Francisco. This is because his father Giuseppe brought the DiMaggio family to the San Francisco Bay Area, though that wasn’t possible until he had worked his way from the East Coast to the West Coast before saving up for four years. In any case, while Giuseppe had hoped that his sons would follow him in becoming a fisherman, Joe DiMaggio became interested in baseball instead. Something that was apparently prompted in part by his nausea at the smell of dead fish. Suffice to say that Joe DiMaggio went on to become a baseball legend, as shown by how he was voted the greatest living baseball player for the sport’s centennial in 1969.

8. Steve Jobs

For a long time, Steve Jobs was seen in a rather complicated light. There could be no doubt about the fact that he was one of the people responsible for the popularization of PCs. Still, his career wasn’t exactly a string of uncomplicated successes, as shown by how he was forced out of Apple at one point in time. Jobs’s return to Apple proved to be much more promising. Under him, the company launched products such as the iPad, the iPod, and the iPhone, which have had a huge cultural impact on top of their financial success. There was a time when Apple was floundering. Jobs’s subsequent leadership transformed it into a true titan of modern times.

7. Sharon Stone

Sharon Stone started acting in the 1970s. Since then, she has managed to make a formidable reputation for herself by playing femme fatales as well as women of mystery. To name an example, Stone received her first nomination for a Golden Globe by playing Catherine Tramell in 1992’s Basic Instinct. However, that was just one out of more than a hundred acting roles, which have earned her a Golden Globe, a Primetime Emmy, and a couple of MTV Movie Awards. Stone is very much active in modern times, so it will be interesting to see how her career continues to unfold.

6. Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee was born in the city of San Francisco. This happened because his father was an opera singer who was out on tour. In total, Lee’s family was in the city for just four months before they returned to Hong Kong in April of 1941, which wasn’t the best timing on their part because the Japanese invaded just a short while later in December of 1941. Still, Lee’s family survived the four-year Japanese occupation with the result that Lee himself went on to become involved in the entertainment industries. There are a lot of people who remember him because of his major contribution to the surge of popularity that East Asian martial arts received in the United States in the 1970s.

5. Rube Goldberg

Rube Goldberg didn’t set out to become an artist. Instead, he studied to become a mining engineer, thus enabling him to find a job mapping out both sewer pipes and water mains. That didn’t keep his attention for very long, as shown by how he started drawing cartoons for the newspapers. In particular, Goldberg is remembered for Rube Goldberg machines, which are all about doing something very simple in a very complicated manner. Presumably, his engineering background proved to be very useful for imagining these things.

4. Levi Strauss

Levi Strauss was born in a time when the German Confederation was still a thing. However, he wasn’t around to see the toothless institution transform into the German Empire. Instead, the Strauss family headed to the United States where they founded a dry goods business. Eventually, Levi Strauss was sent as a representative to the San Francisco-based branch of the business. This put him in a position to go into business with Jacob W. Davis, which is notable because said individual was the founder of riveted denim pants. In other words, the two founded the first jeans company, which is still around in modern times.

3. Robert Frost

Robert Frost lost his father when he was still young. After which, his family moved from the city of San Francisco to the city of Lawrence over in the state of Massachusetts. Frost has a reputation for realistic depictions of rural life, which makes sense because he spent a fair amount of time as a farmer. Of course, he is best-known because of his poetry, which was greatly honored during his lifetime. For example, Frost was named the poet laureate of Vermont in 1961. Similarly, he is the sole individual to have won four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

2. Dian Fossey

Dian Fossey was a primatologist who made her name through the study of mountain gorillas. She was one of the Trimates, which refers to three women who were chosen by the anthropologist Louis Leakey to study great apes in their natural habitats. Fossey studied mountain gorillas. Meanwhile, Jane Goodall studied chimpanzees and Birute Galdikas studied orangutans. The trio became leading experts on their subjects of study. Furthermore, they became passionate advocates of these great apes, which has been much needed because of the latter’s often-precarious positions. In Fossey’s case, she spent 20 years in Rwanda for the purpose of studying mountain gorillas. Something that did much to convince people that said species is sapient. Unfortunately, Fossey was found murdered at her cabin in December of 1985. There has never been a consensus on who killed her, though her research assistant was convicted in absentia based on the claim that he was seeking to steal her manuscript for an upcoming book.

1. Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou worked various odd jobs as a young adult. However, she went on to become one of the most notable poets in American history. For proof, look no further than the fact that she was asked to make an inaugural recitation at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993, which made her the first poet to be asked to do so since Robert Frost in 1961. There are a number of reasons why Angelou was so influential. To name an example, the release of her first memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969 resulted in her being hailed as one of the first African-American women to be able to discuss their personal lives out in public.

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