January 17 is the birthday of 62 notable people we've found so far, including actors, authors, entrepreneurs and creators, and 2 of them are billionaires.
Daniel Bruce Gilbert is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the co-founder, majority owner, and chairman of Rocket Mortgage, and founder of Rock Ventures.
Share of the 62 people we list, by documented field. People can belong to more than one.
Actors34% (21 people)
Authors32% (20 people)
Creators23% (14 people)
Entrepreneurs23% (14 people)
Musicians18% (11 people)
Politicians18% (11 people)
Athletes15% (9 people)
Countries
25 countries, most often United States
Citizenship as recorded on Wikidata, one country per person.
United States19 (19 people)
United Kingdom5 (5 people)
France4 (4 people)
Argentina3 (3 people)
Ireland3 (3 people)
Japan3 (3 people)
Spain3 (3 people)
Life timeline
What were people born on January 17 doing at your age?
Dated milestones from Wikidata (company foundings, awards, top jobs, notable works), placed at the age each person reached them. Add your birth year above to see the ones you have passed.
James Eugene Carrey is a Canadian and American actor and comedian. Known primarily for his energetic slapstick performances, he is regarded as one of the most prominent comedic actors of his generation.
Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general.
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Jake Joseph Paul is an American professional boxer, influencer, and former actor. He began his career posting videos on Vine in September 2013 and had amassed 5.3 million followers and 2 billion views before the app was discontinued.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who served as First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017 as the wife of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.
Lawrence Jackson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Enzo Jeremías Fernández is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Premier League club Manchester City and the Argentina national team.
Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski was a seminal Russian and Soviet theatre practitioner. He was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor, and the many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Carl Lammle Sr. was a German-American film producer and the co-founder and, until 1934, owner of Universal Pictures. Laemmle, along with Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B.
Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
William Ray Norwood Jr., known professionally as Ray J, is an American R&B singer, rapper, songwriter, television presenter, and actor. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Carson, California, he is the younger brother of singer and actress Brandy.
Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky was a Russian scientist, mathematician and engineer, and a founding father of modern aero- and hydrodynamics. Whereas contemporary scientists scoffed at the idea of human flight, Zhukovsky was the first to undertake the study of airflow.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Betty Marion Ludden was an American actress and comedian. A pioneer of early television with a career spanning almost seven decades, she was noted for her vast number of television appearances, acting in sitcoms, sketch comedy, and game shows.
Álvaro Arbeloa Coca is a Spanish professional football manager and former footballer who is the head coach of Premier League club Fulham. He predominantly played as a right-back, and occasionally on the left side.
User:Steindy derivative work: Mario Žamić (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
James Earl Jones was an American actor. A pioneer for Black actors in the entertainment industry, he was acclaimed for his performances on stage and screen. Jones is one of the few performers to achieve the EGOT.
Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She was known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty song "Santa Baby".
Jyh-Lurn Chang @ Homo olympus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Dwyane Tyrone Wade Jr. is an American basketball executive and former professional player who is a co-owner of the Utah Jazz of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is also currently the host of the American adaptation of The Cube.
Flickr user Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ryuichi Sakamoto was a Japanese musician, composer, keyboardist, record producer, singer and actor. He pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the synth-based band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO).
Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, professionally known as Dalida, was an Italian naturalized French singer and actress. Throughout her international career, Dalida sold more than 140 million records worldwide.
Unknown, press, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Stanisław II August, known also by his regnal Latin name Stanislaus II Augustus, and as Stanisław August Poniatowski, was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1764 to 1795, and the last monarch of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Marcello Bacciarelli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Katalin "Kati" Karikó is a Hungarian and American biochemist who specializes in ribonucleic acid (RNA)-mediated mechanisms, particularly in vitro-transcribed messenger RNA (mRNA) for protein replacement therapy.
US Embassy Sweden, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Pietro Parolin is an Italian Catholic prelate who has served as the Vatican's Secretary of State since 2013, and has served as a member of the Council of Cardinals since 2014, the same year he was made a cardinal.
Photo Claude TRUONG-NGOC, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, better known by the stage name Lola Montez, was an Irish dancer and actress who became famous as a Spanish dancer, courtesan, and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made her Gräfin (Countess) von Landsfeld.
Joseph Karl Stieler, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Guillermo Stábile was an Argentine professional football player and manager who played as a centre forward. At club level, Stábile won two national championships with Huracán and played in Italy and France.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard.
Douglas Ross Hyde, known as An Craoibhín Aoibhinn, was an Irish academic, linguist, scholar of the Irish language, politician, and diplomat who served as the first president of Ireland from June 1938 to June 1945.
Alice Boughton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Archibald Gracie IV was an American writer, soldier, amateur historian, real estate investor, and passenger aboard RMS Titanic. Gracie survived the sinking of the Titanic by climbing aboard an overturned collapsible lifeboat and wrote a popular book about the disaster.
Wikimedia Commons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Brian Thomas Helgeland is an American screenwriter, film producer, and director. He is best known for writing the screenplays for the films L.A. Confidential (1997) and Mystic River (2003).
President (2009-2017 : Obama). Office of Management and Administration. Office of White House Personnel. Photography Off, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Simone Johanna Maria Simons is a Dutch singer. She is best known for being the lead singer of Dutch symphonic metal band Epica, which she joined at the age of seventeen, releasing nine studio albums and touring the world.
Andreas Lawen, Fotandi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Luis Echeverría Álvarez was a Mexican lawyer, academic, and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 57th president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976. Previously, Echeverría was Secretary of the Interior from 1963 to 1969.
CarlAlbertArchives, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Henao was a Spanish dramatist, poet, and writer. He is known as one of the most distinguished poets and writers of the Spanish Golden Age, especially for the many verse dramas he wrote for the theatre.
Unknown engraver. Cropped by User:Andrew Dalby, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
George Joseph Stigler was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics.
This page lists 62 people born on January 17, every one traced to a Wikidata record and, where shown, a Wikipedia summary (CC BY-SA) and a licensed Wikimedia Commons photo. 2 of them carry a dated net-worth estimate citing Forbes or Bloomberg; combined wealth is the sum of the low end of those estimates, the newest as of May 2025. Rankings compare all 366 dates in the dataset built on 2026-09-28. Milestone ages come from dated Wikidata statements; a tilde marks year-only dates. Nothing on this page is a prediction about anyone born on January 17. Read the full methodology.
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