Who Was Alive

Who was alive in 1981?

843 of the people we track were surely alive in 1981. The best known are listed first, with the age each reached that year.

Born in 1981: Beyoncé, Roger Federer, Britney Spears, Natalie Portman, Serena Williams, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Fernando Alonso and Jessica Alba.

Died in 1981: Bob Marley, Anwar Sadat, Eugenio Montale and Hideki Yukawa.

  1. Barack Obama20
  2. Donald Trump35
  3. Michael Jackson23
  4. Vladimir Putin29
  5. Ronald Reagan70
  6. Nelson Mandela63
  7. George W. Bush35
  8. Joe Biden39
  9. Elizabeth II55
  10. Salvador Dalí77
  11. Bill Gates26
  12. Jimmy Wales15
  13. Pope Francis45
  14. Shakira4
  15. Steve Jobs26
  16. Bill Clinton35
  17. Angela Merkel27
  18. Neil Armstrong51
  19. François Hollande27
  20. Volodymyr Zelenskyy3
  21. Margaret Thatcher56
  22. John Paul II61
  23. Gabriel García Márquez54
  24. Fidel Castro55
  25. Marlene Dietrich80
  26. Mikhail Gorbachev50
  27. Stephen Hawking39
  28. Elon Musk10
  29. Mother Teresa71
  30. Jimmy Carter57
  31. Benedict XVI54
  32. Emmanuel Macron4
  33. Hillary Clinton34
  34. George H. W. Bush57
  35. Jorge Luis Borges82
  36. Nicolas Sarkozy26
  37. Madonna23
  38. Kamala Harris17
  39. Richard Nixon68
  40. Xi Jinping28
  41. Naruhito21
  42. Noam Chomsky53
  43. Simone de Beauvoir73
  44. Hugo Chávez27
  45. Muammar Gaddafi39
  46. Sung Jae-gi14
  47. Bob Dylan40
  48. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan27
  49. Pelé41
  50. Muhammad Ali39
  51. J. K. Rowling16
  52. Andy Warhol53
  53. Kofi Annan43
  54. Osama bin Laden24
  55. Akira Kurosawa71
  56. Lech Wałęsa38
  57. Freddie Mercury35
  58. Charles III33
  59. Gerald Ford68
  60. Diego Maradona21
  61. Eminem9
  62. Beyoncéborn
  63. Leo XIV26
  64. Indira Gandhi64
  65. Narendra Modi31
  66. Rafael Correa18
  67. Huang Xianfan82
  68. Naguib Mahfouz70
  69. Aung San Suu Kyi36
  70. Steven Spielberg35
  71. Michael Schumacher12
  72. Angelina Jolie6
  73. Saddam Hussein44
  74. Benjamin Netanyahu32
  75. Tenzin Gyatso46
  76. Dmitry Medvedev16
  77. Anna Netrebko10
  78. Rafael Orozco Maestre27
  79. Silvio Berlusconi45
  80. Bob Marley36 †
  81. Shinzō Abe27
  82. Isaac Asimov61–62
  83. Tim Berners-Lee26
  84. Ingmar Bergman63
  85. Federico Fellini61
  86. Mahathir Mohamad56
  87. Boris Yeltsin50
  88. Ali Khamenei42
  89. Robin Williams30
  90. Jackie Chan27
  91. Kim Il-sung69
  92. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn63
  93. Jacques Chirac49
  94. Guillermo Lasso26
  95. Céline Dion13
  96. Stanley Kubrick53
  97. Roger Federerborn
  98. Marlon Brando57
  99. Alexander Lukashenka27
  100. Hirohito80
  101. Richard Feynman63
  102. Woody Allen46
  103. Tony Blair28
  104. Yasser Arafat52
  105. Ban Ki-moon37
  106. Arnold Schwarzenegger34
  107. David Cameron15
  108. Linus Torvalds12
  109. Brigitte Bardot47
  110. Hebe Camargo52
  111. Umberto Eco49
  112. Boris Johnson17
  113. Benazir Bhutto28
  114. Jair Bolsonaro26
  115. Diana, Princess of Wales20
  116. Bashar al-Assad16
  117. Audrey Hepburn52
  118. Paul McCartney39
  119. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva36
  120. Anggun7

The 120 best known of 843 are listed.