Arlington may contain but 5 percent of Virginia’s population, but a new ranking says 60 percent of the top five living celebrities from the Old Dominion have roots in the county.
And that includes the person who occupies the No. 1 spot.
Famouspeople.io commissioned a survey that evaluated more than 3,000 individuals from the entertainment, political and athletic arenas to determine the most famous ones from each state.
Topping the list from Virginia was actress/producer Sandra Bullock, a graduate of what then was Washington-Lee High School.
Another Washington-Lee grad, actress Shirley MacLaine, ranked fifth among Virginia natives. (Her brother, Warren Beatty, is equally famous but did not make the top five.)
Journalist Katie Couric, a graduate of Yorktown High School, was No. 3 on the survey, in between actor Rob Lowe (born in Charlottesville) and musician Chris Brown (born in Tappahannock).
The rankings are based on a survey representative of the U.S. population conducted in the second quarter of 2023. Individuals were presented with a series of famous people and asked to respond whether or not they were familiar with them.
(The full report is available at https://www.famouspeople.io/report/most-famous-person-by-state.)
Across the nation, some states were easily identifiable with a famous celebrity – Bill Clinton and Arkansas, for instance, and Donny Osmond and Utah.
Other states might have been harder to guess, if you don’t know from where celebrities emanate.
Alabama? Its most famous living native son is Lionel Richie, according to the survey. Missouri? Dick Van Dyke. New Jersey? Jack Nicholson.
Nancy Pelosi may be more identified with San Francisco, but she’s a native of Maryland and ranks at the top of that state’s most famous. Tops on the list from the District of Columbia was Samuel L. Jackson.
