1. James Franco
   Charlton Heston
2. Tommy Lee Jones
   Charles Bronson

Charlton Heston was born John Charlton Carter but borrowed the Heston name from his stepfather. He was famous for the "Planet of the Apes" movies and, of course, for playing Moses in "The Ten Commandments." His three-month-old son also appeared in that movie as baby Moses.

1. Chuck Connors
   Larry Hagman
2. Jack Palance
   James Drury

Chuck Connors spent several years on TV in the show "The Rifleman," but acting was not his only claim to fame. He's one of only 13 athletes in history to play in both the MLB and the NBA for the Chicago Cubs and Boston Celtics respectively.

1. Gary Cooper
   Nick Adams
2. Woody Strode
   Roy Rogers

Gary Cooper started off making a handful of silent-era Westerns, owing to the fact he was skilled on a horse and could do his own stunts. The stunt work was brutal though and inspired Cooper to get an agent so he could start landing more serious, less painful acting roles.

1. Robert Conrad
   Robert Vaughn
2. Robert Redford
   Robert Wagner

Robert Redford played the Sundance half of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." The Sundance Film Festival is named for the character and was founded in 1978 with Redford as the chairman.

1. James Coburn
   Rory Calhoun
2. James Garner
   Robert Stack

James Coburn started his career in Westerns back in the day and slowly eased out of them as he tried to expand his repertoire. The movie "Our Man Flint" made him hugely popular. In later years he even did some voice acting. You probably heard him as Henry J. Waternoose in "Monsters Inc."

1. Lee Marvin
   Lee Majors
2. Doug McClure
   Jack Palance

Lee Marvin won not just an Academy Award but a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, a Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear Award and a National Board of Review Award for playing dual roles in the Western comedy "Cat Ballou." When accepting his Oscar, Marvin thanked the horse he rode in the movie.

1. Paul Newman
   George Kennedy
2. Steve McQueen
   Robert Redford

Paul Newman was one of the biggest names in Hollywood history and while he acted in a wide range of films, his turn as Butch Cassidy in the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was especially iconic and was named by the American Film Insitute as the 7th greatest Western of all time.

1. Burt Lancaster
   Robert Mitchum
2. Richard Boone
   Paul Crawley

Burt Lancaster made numerous Western films in his career, some better received than others. Word is Lancaster's dream as a teen was to be an opera singer at first but then he went on to drop out of school to be a circus acrobat. After serving in the military, he was discovered entirely by chance in an elevator and asked to audition for an acting role.

1. Lorne Greene
   Ernest Borgnine
2. Clayton Murphy
   Michael Landon

Lorge Greene is likely most famous for his role as Ben Cartwright on the show "Bonanza" or as Commander Adama on the original "Battlestar Galactica." Greene played Cartwright for 14 years and over 400 episodes.

1. Dale Evans
   Victor French
2. Gregory Peck
   Robert Mitchum

Before he got into acting Robert Mitchum had quite an interesting life. He was actually expelled from school when he was only 12 years old because he got into a fight with the principal. He traveled the country in railroad cars until he was arrested and put on a chain gang at age 14. He escaped and went back home for a while.

1. Robert Fuller
   Glenn Ford
2. John McIntire
   William Holden

Glenn Ford had a lot of contact with world leaders in his time. Aside from being related to Sir John A.Macdonald, Canad's first Prime Minister, he was also related to President Martin Van Buren and managed to impress Franklin D. Roosevelt enough to get an invitation to the President's birthday party.

1. Kurt Russell
   Val Kilmer
2. Jeff Bridges
   Sam Elliott

Kurt Russell has had one of the most successful careers in film history that started in 1963 and is still going strong today. His first role as a 12-year-old was in the show "The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters."

1. Lorne Greene
   Clu Gulager
2. James Arness
   Tim Drake

James Arness portrayed Marshall Matt Dillon on the TV show "Gunsmoke" for 20 years, which is a pretty epic haul for any actor. That managed to cover 5 separate decades thanks to the series running from the '50s to the '70s, a made-for-TV movie in 1987, then several more in the '90s.

1. Eli Wallach
   Roy Rogers
2. Jimmy Stewart
   Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck was in numerous Westerns from "How the West was Won" to "Mackenna's Gold" to "Billy Two Hats." Peck was known for liking to perform his own fight scenes and apparently once decked Robert Mitchum by accident on the set of "Cape Fear."

1. Richard Boone
   Forrest Tucker
2. Fess Parker
   Clayton Moore

Richard Boone played the coolly named Paladin in "Have Gun — Will Travel" for six years, a role that netted him two Emmy nominations. It proved so popular along with his many other roles that he got his own weekly anthology series called "The Richard Boone Show."

1. Paul Newman
   Ken Curtis
2. Dan Blocker
   Ward Bond

Dan Blocker famously played the role of Eric "Hoss" Cartwright on "Bonanza." He was a big guy so the nickname "Big Hoss" is still used to describe big guys in a friendly nickname sort of way. Just how big was Blocker? His Wikipedia page points out he was 14 pounds at birth and was the largest baby ever born in the county.

1. Clint Eastwood
   Lee Marvin
2. Charlton Heston
   Charles Bronson

Clint Eastwood is arguably toe-to-toe with John Wayne as the standard for Hollywood cowboys. In his famous trilogy of movies "A Fistful of Dollars," "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" he wore the same poncho and never washed it. He later explained it would have fallen apart if it was washed. And he apparently still owns it.

1. Gregory Peck
   Ken Curtis
2. Kirk Douglas
   Michael Landon

Kirk Douglas is considered one of the greatest actors in film history and has received an impressive array of awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Jimmy Carter and an honorary Academy Award for "50 years as a moral and creative force in the motion picture community."

1. Gabby Hayes
   Gene Autry
2. George Kennedy
   Bernard Lewis

George "Gabby" Hayes didn't start out as a sidekick, but he filled the role so well he got cast in it numerous times. If you never saw Hayes in a movie, you'd still find him familiar if you saw "Toy Story 2" since Stinky Pete was based on him.

1. Clint Eastwood
   Roy Rogers
2. Chuck Conners
   John Wayne

John Wayne, born Marion Morrison, is the archetypal cowboy. His career might never have happened if not for a surfing injury that left him unable to play football in college. After losing his scholarship, he got a job working at the Fox Studios lot, where he got his break as an actor.

1. Robert Redford
   Robert Stack
2. Robert Vaughn
   Robert Duvall

Robert Duvall earned his first Academy Award nomination for "The Godfather" back in 1972. He would go on to win one for the movie "Tender Mercies" but his work as a cowboy in "Broken Trail" also earned him his first Emmy award.

1. Burt Lancaster
   Alan Ladd
2. James Garner
   Robert Duvall

Alan Ladd had achieved fame in "This Gun for Hire" about a hitman, bringing the character of a killer to life in a way few actors or stories had. It was likely the movie "Shane" in which he played the title role that he's most well known for, however.

1. Robert Stack
   Joel McCrea
2. Alan Ladd
   Jack Elam

Jack Elam was a perennial villain in many Westerns during his career until someone had the bright idea to cast him in "Support Your Local Sheriff" in a comedic role. The change of pace worked well, and he began taking on far more funny roles than sinister ones.

1. Doug McClure
   Yul Brynner
2. Terrence Hill
   Fess Parker

Doug McClure worked from the '50s to the '90s in Hollywood, and one of his most enduring legacies is partially inspiring "The Simpsons" character Troy McClure who was voiced by Phil Hartman. McClure, the real one, was apparently a fan of the cartoon parody.

1. Yul Brynner
   Paul Newman
2. Kurt Russell
   Kevin Costner

Kevin Costner has been on a heck of a Hollywood rollercoaster during his career. He directed and starred in "Dances with Wolves" which was nominated for a staggering 12 Academy Awards and won 7, including 2 for Costner himself for Best Actor and Best Director. He'd go on to make two of Hollywood's most notorious flops, "Waterworld" and "The Postman."

1. Clint Eastwood
   Eli Wallach
2. Charles Bronson
   Robert Stack

Charles Bronson was born in America to Lithuanian parents, one of 15 children. He played small tough-guy roles, sometimes a cowboy, sometimes a criminal, until he was cast in "The Magnificent Seven." He still played tough-guy roles after that, they were just in higher-profile movies and shows.

1. Lee Van Cleef
   James Coburn
2. Walton Goggins
   Jack Palance

Jack Palance was known for playing villains like his character in the movie "Shane" but that wasn't all. He was also known as a tough guy in real life and famously performed one-handed pushups on stage at the Academy Awards when he was 73.

1. Lee Van Cleef
   Lee Marvin
2. El Wallach
   Warren Oates

Lee Van Cleef appeared in many films that are known as "Spaghetti Westerns," typically as a villain and then as a heroic character late in life. In real life he served for the US Navy on a minesweeper in the Second World War, so he definitely had hero cred.

1. James Cagney
   Robert Mitchum
2. Steve McQueen
   Spencer Tracy

Steve McQueen was an action hero in every sense of the word, appearing in Westerns, cop movies, war movies and more. His first big break came in the movie that made numerous other Western stars "The Magnificent Seven."

1. Kurt Russel
   Val Kilmer
2. Sam Elliott
   Bill Paxton

Sam Elliot is one of the few modern actors who has carved a niche doing Western roles, including appearances as cowboys in non-Western films like "The Big Lebowski" and "Ghost Rider."

1. Tom Mix
   James Garner
2. William Holden
   Ernest Borgnine

James Garner rose to popularity on TV playing the title character on the show "Maverick." He even semi-reprised the role decades later in a Mel Gibson movie of the same name, playing the character's father. In the year 2000, he played opposite Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones in "Space Cowboys."

1. Jay Silverheels
   Robert Redford
2. Strother Martin
   Gene Autry

Gene Autry, whose real name was Orvon Grover Autry, was both a singer and actor who starred in nearly 100 films between 1934 and 1953. He was so popular that if you go to Oklahoma right now, you can visit a town that's called Gene Autry.

1. Tim Holt
   Jimmy Stewart
2. Denholm Elliott
   Robert Carradine

Jimmy Stewart starred in so many big movies, it's hard to say what he's most famous for. He made numerous popular Westerns like "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "How the West Was Won" but he also appeared in other huge non-Western films like Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

1. Jason Robards Jr.
   Warren Oates
2. Tom Mix
   Clint Walker

Clint Walker starred as Cheyenne Bodie on the show "Cheyenne" for 8 years. He was born Norman Walker but started acting under the curious name of "Jett Norman" before he landed the role in "Cheyenne" under the Clint Walker moniker.

1. Sam Elliott
   Kurt Russell
2. Jeff Bridges
   Jeff Daniels

Jeff Bridges has pulled off playing a cowboy not just in proper Western movies like "True Grit," he's also played a cowboy in the sci-fi comedy "R.I.P.D" and even in a Lyft commercial.

1. Ben Johnson
   Harry Carey, Jr.
2. Michael Landon
   Gene Autry

Ben Johnson was an Academy Award-winning actor and also a stuntman. He was originally the son of a rancher and came to Hollywood to deliver some horses before getting work as a stunt double in films and finally acting jobs.

1. James Cagney
   Eli Wallach
2. Bruce Dern
   Clu Gulager

Eli Wallach starred in Sergio Leone's famous "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" as Tuco (the Ugly). Over the years Wallach made a name for himself as something of a chameleon, playing characters from numerous background and ethnicities on screen and on stage.

1. Randolph Scott
   Henry Fonda
2. Slim Pickens
   Gabby Hayes

Slim Pickens stated roping steers and riding broncos when he was in his teens, winning money at competitions and making a name for himself in the rodeo. He came up with the name Slim Pickens to hide his involvement from his father whom he felt would not approve.

1. Abe Vigoda
   Yul Brynner
2. Charles Bronson
   James Garner

Yul Brynner is probably most famous for his role as the King of Siam in the musical "The King and I" but he made his mark in Westerns as well. He played Chris Adams in "The Magnificent Seven" and its sequel, but he also famously played "The Gunslinger" android in the original "Westworld."

1. Gene Autry
   Ben Johnson
2. Roy Rogers
   Slim Pickens

Roy Rogers was born Leonard Slye and appeared in hundreds of movies and TV shows as a cowboy and a Western singer. He was so famous that even his horse, a golden palomino named Trigger, was famous.