The Most Famous
CRITICS from United States
This page contains a list of the greatest American Critics. The pantheon dataset contains 9 Critics, 3 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Critics.
Top 4
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary American Critics of all time. This list of famous American Critics is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Roger Ebert (1942 - 2013)
With an HPI of 59.02, Roger Ebert is the most famous American Critic. His biography has been translated into 84 different languages on wikipedia.
Roger Joseph Ebert ( EE-burt; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He was the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Ebert was known for his intimate, Midwestern writing style and critical views informed by values of populism and humanism. Writing in a prose style intended to be entertaining and direct, he made sophisticated cinematic and analytical ideas more accessible to non-specialist audiences. Ebert endorsed foreign and independent films he believed would be appreciated by mainstream viewers, championing filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Errol Morris and Spike Lee, as well as Martin Scorsese, whose first published review he wrote. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called him "the best-known film critic in America." Per The New York Times, "The force and grace of his opinions propelled film criticism into the mainstream of American culture. Not only did he advise moviegoers about what to see, but also how to think about what they saw." Early in his career, Ebert co-wrote the Russ Meyer movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Starting in 1975 and continuing for decades, Ebert and Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel helped popularize nationally televised film reviewing when they co-hosted the PBS show Sneak Previews, followed by several variously named At the Movies programs on commercial TV broadcast syndication. The two verbally sparred and traded humorous barbs while discussing films. They created and trademarked the phrase "two thumbs up," used when both gave the same film a positive review. After Siskel died from a brain tumor in 1999, Ebert continued hosting the show with various co-hosts and then, starting in 2000, with Richard Roeper. In 1996, Ebert began publishing essays on great films of the past; the first hundred were published as The Great Movies. He published two more volumes, and a fourth was published posthumously. In 1999, he founded the Overlooked Film Festival in his hometown of Champaign, Illinois. In 2002, Ebert was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands. He required treatment that included removing a section of his lower jaw in 2006, leaving him severely disfigured and unable to speak or eat normally. However, his ability to write remained unimpaired and he continued to publish frequently online and in print until his death in 2013. His RogerEbert.com website, launched in 2002, remains online as an archive of his published writings. Richard Corliss wrote, "Roger leaves a legacy of indefatigable connoisseurship in movies, literature, politics and, to quote the title of his 2011 autobiography, Life Itself." In 2014, Life Itself was adapted as a documentary of the same title, released to positive reviews.
2. Rosalind E. Krauss (b. 1941)
With an HPI of 50.23, Rosalind E. Krauss is the 2nd most famous American Critic. Her biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Rosalind Epstein Krauss (born November 30, 1941) is an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography. As a critic and theorist she has published steadily since 1965 in Artforum, Art International and Art in America. She was associate editor of Artforum from 1971 to 1974 and has been editor of October, a journal of contemporary arts criticism and theory that she co-founded in 1976.
3. Vincent Canby (1924 - 2000)
With an HPI of 39.26, Vincent Canby is the 3rd most famous American Critic. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who was the chief film critic for The New York Times from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. He reviewed more than one thousand films during his tenure there.
4. Todd McCarthy (b. 1950)
With an HPI of 36.58, Todd McCarthy is the 4th most famous American Critic. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Todd McCarthy (born February 16, 1950) is an American film critic and author. He wrote for Variety for 31 years as its chief film critic until 2010. In October of that year, he joined The Hollywood Reporter, where he subsequently served as chief film critic until 2020. McCarthy subsequently began writing regularly for Deadline Hollywood in 2020.
People
Pantheon has 4 people classified as American critics born between 1924 and 1950. Of these 4, 2 (50.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American critics include Rosalind E. Krauss, and Todd McCarthy. The most famous deceased American critics include Roger Ebert, and Vincent Canby. As of April 2024, 1 new American critics have been added to Pantheon including Rosalind E. Krauss.
