30 Most Famous Hispanic People

A photo o Danny Trejo by Gage Skidmore – Wikimedia commons

30 Most Famous Hispanic People

Hispanic Americans come from diverse social, economic, and geographic backgrounds. They can be very different depending on their family heritage and national origin. 

Alongside those more established names is a slew of rising figures in the worlds of film, politics, and literature. Therefore, in the article are the thirty famous Hispanic people.

1. Danny Trejo

Danny Trejo photo by Gage Skidmore – Wikimedia commons

Danny Trejo was born on 16 May 1944. He is an American actor. He has appeared in films including Desperado, Heat, and the From Dusk Till Dawn film series. With frequent collaborator and his second cousin Robert Rodriguez, he portrayed the character of Isador “Machete” Cortez, originally developed for the Spy Kids series and later expanded into its franchise of the same name.

2. Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio photo by US Senate – Wikimedia commons

Marco Antonio Rubio was born on 28 May 1971. He is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Florida since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2006 to 2008.

Rubio unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 2016, winning presidential primaries in Minnesota, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

3. Shakira

A photo of Shakira by Vogue Taiwan – Wikimedia commons

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born on 2 February 1977. She is a Colombian singer. Since she was born and raised in Barranquilla, she has been referred to as the “Queen of Latin Music”. She is also noted for her musical versatility. She made her recording debut with Sony Music Colombia at the age of 13.

4. Cesar Chavez

Cezar Chavez photo by Joel Levine – Wikimedia commons

Cesar Chavez was born Cesario Estrada Chavez on 31 March 1927 and died on 23 April 1993. He was an American labour leader and civil rights, activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) labour union.

5. Gloria Estefan

Gloria Estefan photo by Michele Eve – Wikimedia commons

Gloria Estefan was born Gloria María Milagrosa Fajardo García on 1 September 1957. She is a Cuban-American singer, actress, and businesswoman. Estefan is a seven-time Grammy Award winner, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and has been named one of the Top 100 greatest artists of all time by both VH1 and Billboard.

6. Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lopez photo by John Bauld – Wikimedia commons

Jennifer Lynn Affleck Lopez was born on 24 July 1969. J.Lo is an American singer, actress, and dancer. In 1991, she began appearing as a Fly Girl dancer on the sketch comedy television series In Living Color, where she remained a regular until she decided to pursue an acting career in 1993.

For her first leading role in Selena (1997), she became the first Hispanic actress to earn over US$1 million for a film. She went on to star in Anaconda (1997) and Out of Sight (1998) and established herself as the highest-paid Hispanic actress in Hollywood.

7. Sonia Sotomayor

Sonia Sotomayor y Steve Petteway – Wikimedia commons

Sonia Maria Sotomayor was born on 25 June 1954. She is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, and has served since August 8, 2009. She is the third woman, the first woman of colour, the first Hispanic, and the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court.

8. Ted Cruz

A photo of Ted Cruz by Gage Skidmore – Wikimedia commons

Rafael Edward Cruz was born on 2 December 1970). She is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States senator for Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to 2008.

9. Pablo Picasso

A photo of Pablo Picasso by Anonymous – Wikimedia commons

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on 25 October 1881 and died on 8 April 1973. He was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France.

One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.

10. Ricardo Montalbán

Ricardo Montalbán photo by ABC Television – Wikimedia commons

Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG was a Mexican American film and television actor. Montalbán’s career spanned seven decades, during which he became known for performances in various genres, from crime and drama to musicals and comedy.

He portrayed Armando in the Planet of the Apes film series from the early 1970s, starring in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).

11. Juana Inés de la Cruz

Doña Inés de Asbajey Ramírez de Santillana, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was born on 12 November 1648 and died on 17 April 1695. She was a Mexican writer, philosopher, composer, poet of the Baroque period, and a Hieronymite nun.

Her contributions to the Spanish Golden Age gained her the nicknames of “The Tenth Muse” or “The Phoenix of America”. A historian Stuart Murray calls her a flame that rose from the ashes of “religious authoritarianism”.

12. Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda photo by USGov – Wikimedia commons

Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto was born on 12 July 1904 and died on 23 September 1973. He is better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda. He was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).

13. Franklin Chang-Díaz

Franklin Changdiaz photo by NASA – Wikimedia commons

Franklin Ramón Chang-Díaz was born on 5 April 1950. He is a Costa Rican-born American mechanical engineer, physicist and former NASA astronaut. He is the sole founder and CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company as well as a member of Cummins’ board of directors.

14. Geraldo Rivera

Geraldo Rivera photo by Justin Hoch – Wikimedia commons

Geraldo Rivera was born Gerald Riviera on 4 July 1943. He is an American journalist, attorney, author, political commentator, and former television host. He hosted the tabloid talk show, Geraldo, from 1987 to 1998.

He gained publicity with the live 1986 TV special The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults. Rivera hosted the news magazine program Geraldo at Large, hosts the occasional broadcast of Geraldo Rivera Reports, and appears regularly on Fox News programs such as The Five.

15. Benjamin Bratt

Benjamin Bratt photo by Dulce Osuna – Wikimedia commons

Benjamin Bratt was born on 16 December 1963. He is an American actor and producer who has worked in film and television. He had supporting roles in the 1990s in such box office hits as Demolition Man (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), and The River Wild (1994).

16. Bad Bunny

Bad Bunny photo – Wikimedia commons

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known professionally as Bad Bunny, is a Puerto Rican rapper and singer. His music is defined as Latin trap and reggaeton. He rose to popularity in 2016 with his song “Diles”, which led to a deal with Hear This Music.

17. Andy García

Andy Garcia photo by David Shankbone – Wikimedia commons

Andrés Arturo García Menéndez is an American actor, director and musician. He first rose to prominence acting in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) alongside Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro.

18. Esai Morales

Esai Morales photo by Kristin Dos Santos – Wikimedia commons

Esai Manuel Morales Jr. is an American actor. He has had notable roles in the films Bad Boys with Sean Penn and La Bamba with Lou Diamond Phillips (1987). Morales has described himself as an “actorvist”

He is the primary founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts. He is also interested in environmental issues and was a founding board member of E.C.O. (Earth Communications Office).

19. Alex Rodriguez

Alex Rodriguez photo by Arturo Pardavila III – Wikimedia commons

Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez, nicknamed “A-Rod”, is an American former professional baseball shortstop and third baseman, businessman and philanthropist. Rodriguez played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, and New York Yankees.

20. John Leguizamo

John Leguizamo photo by David Shankbone – Wikimedia commons

John Alberto Leguizamo Peláez is an American actor, comedian, and film producer. He rose to fame with a co-starring role in Super Mario Bros. as Luigi, and a supporting role in the crime drama Carlito’s Way. He later notably starred in the film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!

21. Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo photo by Guillermo Kahlo – Wikimedia commons

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artefacts of Mexico. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy.

22. Alanna Ubach

Alanna Ubach photo by Glen Wexler – Wikimedia commons

Alanna Ubach is an American actress, known for her roles as Serena McGuire in Legally Blonde (2001) & Legally Blonde 2 (2003), Isabel Villalobos in Meet the Fockers (2004), and many other films.

23. Freddie Prinze Jr.

Frederick James Prinze Jr. is an American actor, television and film producer, and screenwriter. He has starred in films such as I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, She’s All That, Summer Catch, Scooby-Doo, and its sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.

24. Alexa PenaVega

Alexa PenaVega photo by anna Hanks – Wikimedia commons

Alexa Ellesse PenaVega is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Carmen Cortez in the Spy Kids film series and Julie Corky in the 2004 film Sleepover. In 2009, she starred as the title character Ruby Gallagher in the ABC Family series Ruby & the Rockits.

25. Cheech Marin

Cheech Marin photo by Hispanic Lifestyle – Wikimedia commons

Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marin is an American actor, musician, comedian, and activist who gained recognition as part of the comedy act Cheech & Chong during the 1970s and early 1980s with Tommy Chong and as Don Johnson’s partner, Insp. Joe Dominguez, on Nash Bridges.

26. Raquel Welch

Raquel Welch photo by Justin Hoch – Wikimedia commons

Raquel Welch is an American actress. She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage, after which she won a contract with 20th Century Fox. They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C.

27. Eva Longoria

Eva Longoria photo by Georges Biard – Wikimedia commons

Eva Jacqueline Longoria Bastón is an American actress, producer, and director. After several guest roles on numerous television series, she was recognized for her portrayal of Isabella Braña on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless, in which she starred from 2001 to 2003.

28. Jovita Idár

Jovita Idar photo by an Unknown author – Wikimedia commons

Jovita Idar Vivero was an American journalist, teacher, political activist, and civil rights worker who championed the cause of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. She began her career in journalism at La Crónica, her father’s newspaper in Laredo, Texas, her hometown.

29. Emma González

Emma Gonzalez photo by United States Army Band – Wikimedia commons

X González is an American activist and advocate for gun control. In 2018, they survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, and response co-founded the gun-control advocacy group Never Again MSD.

30. Guy Gabaldon

Guy Gabaldon photo by Wikimedia commons

Guy Louis Gabaldon was a United States Marine. At age 18, captured or persuaded to surrender over 1,300 Japanese soldiers and civilians during the battles for Saipan and Tinian islands in 1944 during World War II.