May 12 is the birthday of 50 notable people we've found so far, including authors, actors, historical figures and creators, and 2 of them are billionaires.
$10.3Bolder estimate, as of November 2024 · Forbes
Bernard Marcus was an American billionaire businessman. He co-founded Home Depot in 1978. He was the company's first CEO and first chairman until retiring in 2002. In November 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$10.3 billion.
Marc Bennett Nathanson is an American entrepreneur who served as the United States ambassador to Norway from 2022 to 2024. He is best known for his founding of Falcon Cable, which he sold in 1999 for $3.7 billion.
Chief, National Guard Bureau, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Share of the 50 people we list, by documented field. People can belong to more than one.
Authors34% (17 people)
Actors28% (14 people)
Creators20% (10 people)
Politicians20% (10 people)
Entrepreneurs16% (8 people)
Athletes14% (7 people)
Artists12% (6 people)
Countries
18 countries, most often United States
Citizenship as recorded on Wikidata, one country per person.
United States22 (22 people)
France3 (3 people)
Canada2 (2 people)
Germany2 (2 people)
Ireland2 (2 people)
Japan2 (2 people)
Russia2 (2 people)
Life timeline
What were people born on May 12 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.
Emilio Estevez is an American actor and filmmaker. The son of actor Martin Sheen and the older brother of Charlie Sheen, he made his film debut with an uncredited role in Badlands (1973).
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince, written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death.
Santi di Tito, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
1820–1910 · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Florence Nightingale was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organised care for wounded soldiers at Constantinople.
Henry Hering (1814-1893), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American filmmaker and former actress. She has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Golden Lion, and a Cannes Film Festival Award as well as nominations for three BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jared Schutz Polis is an American politician, entrepreneur, businessman, and philanthropist serving since 2019 as the 43rd governor of Colorado. From 2009 to 2019, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Colorado's 2nd congressional district.
US House Office of Photography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Nikolai Tsvetkov is a Russian oligarch, the founder and president of Nikoil Financial, Chairman of the Board of Directors of FC Uralsib. As of 2009, with a wealth of $1.8 billion, he was the world's 397th-richest person.
Domhnall Gleeson is an Irish actor, screenwriter and producer. The son of actor Brendan Gleeson, he studied media arts at the Dublin Institute of Technology.
Malin Maria Åkerman, often anglicised to Malin Akerman, is a Swedish and American actress. She first appeared in smaller parts in both Canadian and American productions, including The Utopian Society (2003) and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004).
Emily Irene VanCamp is a Canadian actress. She gained acclaim and international recognition for portraying the lead role of Emily Thorne on the ABC series Revenge (2011–2015).
Stephen Andrew Baldwin is an American actor. He has appeared in the films Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Posse (1993), 8 Seconds, Threesome, The Usual Suspects (1995), Bio-Dome (1996) and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000).
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Justinian I, also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii. This ambition was expressed by the partial recovery of the territories of the defunct Western Roman Empire.
Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Irving Rameses Rhames is an American actor. Born and raised in Harlem, New York City, he studied drama at SUNY Purchase before transferring to the Juilliard School, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1983.
Gabriel James Byrne is an Irish actor. He has received a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Tony Awards.
Ian Smith from London, England, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jiddu Krishnamurti was an Indian spiritual figure, speaker, and writer. Adopted by members of the Theosophical Society as a child, Krishnamurti was raised to fill the mantle of the prophesied World Teacher, a role tasked with aiding humankind's spiritual evolution.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Jason Matthew Biggs is an American and Italian actor, director, and producer. From 1999 to 2012, he starred as Jim Levenstein in the American Pie film series.
Marcelo Vieira da Silva Júnior, known as Marcelo, is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as a left-back. Widely regarded as one of the greatest left-backs of all time, he is known for his attacking capabilities.
Burt Freeman Bacharach was an American composer, songwriter, record producer, and pianist, widely regarded as one of the most important and influential figures of 20th-century popular music.
ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Alina Maratovna Kabaeva is a Russian politician, media manager, and retired individual rhythmic gymnast, who has been designated Honoured Master of Sports by the Russian government.
Полномочное представительство Республики Татарстан в Российской Федерации, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra was an American professional baseball catcher who later took on the roles of manager and coach. He played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), all but the last for the New York Yankees.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.
George Frederic Watts, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers.
Eugène Pirou, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin was an English chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential for structural biology.
University of Bristol, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
David Andrew Roy White is an American actor, film director, screenwriter, film producer, and businessman. He co-founded Pinnacle Peak Pictures, a distribution and production company specializing in Christian faith-themed and family-themed films.
1812–1888 · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised but which term he never used.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Justus Freiherr von Liebig was a German scientist who made major contributions to the theory, practice, and pedagogy of chemistry, as well as to agricultural and biological chemistry; he is considered one of the principal founders of organic chemistry.
https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/ac/dd/c54b42077234b991f7783555c991.jpg Gallery: https://wellcomeimages.o, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are Manon (1884) and Werther (1892).
Photographer: Eugène Pirou (1841-1909) Restorer: Adam Cuerden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Daniel Libeskind is a Polish and American architect, artist, professor, and set designer. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect.
Ishmael Orendain, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Erik Durm is a German former professional footballer who played as a full-back. He played for Borussia Dortmund, Huddersfield Town, Eintracht Frankfurt and Kaiserslautern.
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ash-Shaybānī, better known as ʿAlī ʿIzz ad-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī was a Hadith expert, historian, and biographer of Arab descent who wrote in Arabic and was from the Ibn Athir family.
Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky was a Soviet and Russian poet and writer who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as "one of the greatest living poets in any language." He was one of the "Children of the '60s," a new wave of iconic Soviet intellectuals led by the Khrushchev Thaw.
Russian Presidential Press and Information Office, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jean-Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, OP, often styled Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, was a French Catholic priest, journalist, theologian and political activist. He re-established the Dominican Order in post-Revolutionary France.
Théodore Chassériau, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Masaaki Higashiguchi is a Japanese professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Gamba Osaka and the Japan national football team. He previously played for Albirex Niigata.
This page lists 50 people born on May 12, 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 November 2024. 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 May 12. Read the full methodology.
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