After seeing Lisa Kudrow’s new show, Who Do You Think You Are?, yesterday I was very inspired to look into the stars ancestry myself and see who I may be related to. Ok, so maybe not related, but since I myself was born in Odessa, Ukraine it’s kinda fun to see who else is from my neck of the woods. After some research, I found 20 celebrities who believe it or not, are in fact descendants of Russian /Ukrainian immigrants (No, it is not the same place) or were born there themselves.

1. Pamela Anderson – Known for her roles on the television series Home Improvement and Baywatch. Pamela was born in Ladysmith, British Columbia. Her great-grandfather, Juho Hyytiäinen, was Finnish, a native of Saarijärvi who left Finland in 1908,changing his name to Anderson when he arrived as an immigrant. Her mother however is of Russian ancestry.
2. Amanda Bynes – Known for her co-lead role in the Television series What I Like About You as well as popular movies such as She’s the Man (2006) and Hairspray (2007). Amanda was born and raised in Thousand Oaks, California. Her father is Catholic and her mother is Jewish. Her maternal grandparents are from Toronto, Ontario but she is of  Polish, Irish, Russian and Romanian descent.
3. Leonardo DiCaprio - Known for movies like Titanic, Romeo + Juliet, Catch Me If You Can and Shutter Island. Leo was born in Los Angeles, California. His maternal grandmother, Helene Indenbirken, who was born Yelena Smirnova, was a Russian immigrant to Germany. His mother moved from Oer-Erkenschwick at the Ruhr, Germany, to the U.S. during the 1950s, while his father is a fourth-generation American of half Italian and half German descent.
4. Michael Douglas - Known for movies such as Wall Street, Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. Michael was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His mother and maternal grandparents, Ruth Rapalje Neilson and Lt. Col. Thomas Melville Dill, were natives of Devonshire Parish, Bermuda, while his paternal grandparents, Bryna Sanglel and Herschel Danielovitch, were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus, at that time a part of the Russian Empire.
5. Harrison Ford – Known for movies like The Fugitive and the Indiana Jones series. Harrison was born in Chicago. His maternal grandparents, Anna Lifschutz and Harry Nidelman, were Jewish immigrants from Minsk, Belarus (at that time a part of the Russian Empire) and his paternal grandparents, Florence Veronica Niehaus and John Fitzgerald Ford, were of German and Irish Catholic descent.
6. James Franco – Known for movies such as the Spider Man trilogy, Pineapple Express and Milk. James was born in Palo Alto, California. Franco’s father is of Portuguese and Swedish descent and Franco’s mother is Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Russia.
7. Katerina Graham – Known for playing Bonnie Bennett in the The CW show The Vampire Diaries. Katerina was born in Geneva, Switzerland. She is the daughter of a Liberian father, Joseph Graham, and a Russian Jewish mother, Natasha. Graham attended Hebrew school and speaks English, Spanish, French, and some Portuguese and Hebrew.
8. Mila Jovovich – Known for movies like The Fifth Element and Resident Evil. Mila was born in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Mila is the daughter of Bogdan Bogdanovich Jovović, a Serbian pediatrician, and Galina Loginova, a Ukrainian/Russian stage actress.
9. Leonard Nimoy – Best known for playing the role of Spock in the original Star Trek series. Leonard was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Ukraine.
10. Mila Kunis - Best known for her roles in That ’70s Show, Family Guy and The Book of Eli. Mila was Born Milena Markovna Kunis in Chernivtsi, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union to a Jewish family that moved to Los Angeles, California in 1991.
    
11. Alexis Denisof – known for playing Wesley Wyndam-Pryce in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Alexis was born in Salisbury, Maryland and is of Russian descent.
12. David Duchovny – Best known for his work as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files. David was born in New York City, New York. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, and his mother is a Lutheran immigrant from Scotland. His father dropped the h in his last name to escape the sort of mispronunciations he suffered at the hands of sergeants while serving in the Army.
13. Winona Ryder – Known for films such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Mr. Deeds. Winona was born Winona Laura Horowitz in Olmsted County, Minnesota. Her father, Michael Horowitz, is an atheist and her mother is a Buddhist. Her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Ryder has one full sibling, a younger brother, Uri, named in honor of the first Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.
14. Sean Penn – Known for his roles in I Am Sam, Mystic River and Milk. Sean was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother is a Catholic of Italian and Irish descent, while his paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Russia. According to Penn’s mother, Leo Penn (father) may have had distant Spanish ancestry, as the family’s surname was originally “Piñón”.
15. Lenny Kravitz – Singer/Songwriter, known for hits like “American Woman” and “Where Are We Running”. Lenny was born in New York City, New York. Kravitz’s father was of Russian Jewish descent from Kiev and his mother was of Bahamian descent.
16. Nicole Scherzinger – Best known as the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls. Nicole was born Nicole Prescovia Elikolani Valiente Scherzinger in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her biological father, Alfonso Valiente, is Filipino, and her mother, Rosemary, is of Hawaiian and Russian descent.
17. Steven Tyler – Musician and songwriter, he is best known as the lead singer for the rock band Aerosmith. Steven was born Stephen Victor Tallarico in Yonkers, New York.  His maternal background is Cherokee and Russian or Ukrainian, and His paternal side is of Italian (Grandfather  Giovanni Tallarico was born in Cotronei, Calabria) and German descent.
18. Jennifer Connelly – Known for movies such as Requiem for a Dream, A Beautiful Mind and He’s Just Not That Into You. Jennifer was born in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Connelly’s father was of Irish, Catholic and Norwegian descent, and Connelly’s mother was Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Russia and Poland.
19. Joaquin Phoenix – Known for movies like Gladiator, Signs and Walk The Line. Joaquin was born Joaquin Rafael Bottom in Río Piedras, located in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico. His father, John Lee Bottom, was a Catholic from California. His mother, Arlyn Phoenix, was born in the Bronx, New York to Jewish parents from Hungary and Russia.In 1968, Arlyn moved to California and met Phoenix’s father while hitch-hiking. They married in 1969, then later joined the religious cult “The Children of God” and began traveling throughout South America where Joaquin was born.
20. Vera Farmiga – Best known for her roles in the films Running Scared, The Departed and Up in the Air. Vera was born in Clifton, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants Mykhailo and Luba Farmiga. Vera was raised in an insular Ukrainian American community, not speaking English until the age of six. She  also attended a Ukrainian Catholic school in Newark and toured with a Ukrainian folk-dancing ensemble.

I also found a neat little piece of information… The top 10 highest Russian population neighborhoods:

• Pikesville, Maryland 19.30%
• Roslyn Estates, New York 18.60%
• Hewlett Harbor, New York 18.40%
• East Hills, New York 18.00%
• Wishek, North Dakota 17.40%
• Eureka, South Dakota 17.30%
• Beachwood, Ohio 16.80%
• Penn Wynne, Pennsylvania 16.70%
• Kensington, New York and Mayfield, Pennsylvania 16.20%
• Napoleon, North Dakota 15.80%