Famous People Who Grew Up on the Upper East Side

The Upper East Side has always been more than just a series of zip codes — it’s a state of mind. For generations, some of the most recognizable names in American history, entertainment, and culture spent their formative years walking the same blocks, attending the same schools, and growing up in the shadow of the same institutions that define the neighborhood today. From tenement-dwelling vaudevillians in Yorkville to Vanderbilt heirs on Fifth Avenue, here are some of the most famous people who grew up right here on the Upper East Side.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Long before she became America’s most iconic First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier was a little girl on Park Avenue. In the early 1930s, Jackie’s family moved into an apartment on the sixth and seventh floors of 740 Park Avenue — the legendary Art Deco building her own grandfather, developer James T. Lee, had built in 1929. Jackie lived there between the ages of two and seven, roller-skating through the unfurnished rooms of the duplex with her younger sister, Lee Radziwill — who would go on to become a celebrated socialite, interior decorator, and public figure in her own right. Both girls attended the Chapin School on East End Avenue before their parents’ divorce in 1940. It was the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the neighborhood. Decades later, after the assassination of President Kennedy, Jackie would return to the Upper East Side, settling into a sprawling apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, where she lived for the last 30 years of her life.

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The Marx Brothers

Groucho. Harpo. Chico. Gummo. Zeppo. Five of the funniest people who ever lived grew up right here on the Upper East Side — though their version of the neighborhood looked very different from today’s. In the 1890s, the Marx family — parents Sam and Minnie, five boys, two grandparents, and a cousin — crammed into a tenement apartment at 179 East 93rd Street in Yorkville. It was a working-class neighborhood of German, Irish, and Jewish immigrants, surrounded by breweries and teeming with street life. Harpo later described it as “a small Jewish neighborhood squeezed in between the Irish to the north and the Germans to the south.” The boys dropped out of school early, and their mother Minnie pushed them onto the vaudeville stage while their father stayed home to cook. The block where they grew up, now part of leafy Carnegie Hill, was officially co-named “Marx Brothers Place” in their honor.

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Sarah Michelle Gellar

Before she was Buffy the Vampire Slayer — or, as she memorably described herself in Cruel Intentions, “the Marcia f–king Brady of the Upper East Side” — Sarah Michelle Gellar was a kid growing up in the neighborhood for real. Born in Manhattan in 1977, Gellar was raised by her single mother, a nursery school teacher, on the Upper East Side after her parents divorced when she was seven. It was not a glamorous childhood: her mother worked “just above the poverty line,” and Gellar received a partial scholarship to attend Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, where she was bullied for being different and not having the money her classmates had. She was also a competitive figure skater who once placed third at a New York State regional competition and earned a black belt in taekwondo. A working child actress from a young age, Gellar eventually graduated from the Professional Children’s School in 1994 as a straight-A student with a 4.0 GPA — much of her senior year completed through guided study while she was simultaneously filming All My Children. Her real-life UES roots would later lend an ironic edge to her iconic Cruel Intentions role as the scheming socialite Kathryn Merteuil.

Lenny Kravitz

Before he was filling arenas with hits like “Fly Away” and “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” Lenny Kravitz was a kid on East 82nd Street. Born in 1964 to actress Roxie Roker (Helen Willis on The Jeffersons) and NBC news producer Sy Kravitz, Lenny grew up in a one-bedroom apartment at 5 East 82nd Street — just steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His parents gave him the bedroom and slept on the couch in the living room. Kravitz attended P.S. 6 on Madison Avenue, one of the Upper East Side’s most beloved public schools, and has spoken fondly about the Met being his “backyard” as a child. On weekdays, he was a UES kid; on weekends, he’d head to his grandmother’s house in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. In 2024, Kravitz returned to East 82nd Street and posted a nostalgic video tour on Instagram, showing off his old building, the diner where he first learned to tie his shoes, and neighbor Joe Namath’s parlor-floor apartment across the street.

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Gloria Vanderbilt

The woman who would become a fashion icon, artist, actress, and author had one of the most turbulent childhoods in American history — and much of it unfolded on the Upper East Side. Gloria was born in 1924 as the heiress to a massive Vanderbilt fortune. After her father died when she was a baby, a sensational custody battle erupted in 1934 between her mother and her paternal aunt, sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who lived on the UES. The court awarded custody to Whitney, and young Gloria was raised in her aunt’s world of Upper East Side wealth and high culture. She attended elite private schools in the neighborhood and grew up surrounded by art and society. She later raised her own sons — including future CNN anchor Anderson Cooper — on the Upper East Side, where she lived until her death in 2019 at age 95. Few people are more synonymous with the neighborhood’s storied history.

Natasha Lyonne

The star of Russian Doll and Orange Is the New Black had a characteristically unconventional Upper East Side childhood. Born in New York City to Orthodox Jewish parents, Natasha Lyonne spent the first eight years of her life in Great Neck, Long Island, followed by a year and a half in Israel — where she appeared in an Israeli children’s film that sparked her interest in acting. After her parents divorced, she and her brother returned to New York with their mother and settled on the Upper East Side. Lyonne attended the Ramaz School, the private Jewish day school on East 78th Street, where she was a scholarship student who took Talmud classes and read Aramaic — until she was expelled in her sophomore year for selling marijuana to classmates. She has described feeling like an outsider in the neighborhood and spent much of her free time at the Met, particularly in the Egyptian wing. Her mother eventually moved the family to Miami, but the UES years — scrappy, rebellious, and already marked by the outsider sensibility that would define her career — left a lasting imprint.

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Vera Wang

Before she revolutionized bridal fashion and became one of the most celebrated designers in the world, Vera Wang was an Upper East Side kid with dreams of Olympic gold. Born in 1949 to affluent Chinese immigrant parents — her father ran a pharmaceutical company, her mother was a United Nations translator — Wang grew up on the Upper East Side surrounded by culture and privilege. She attended the Chapin School, the elite all-girls academy on East End Avenue, and trained as a competitive figure skater, often practicing at Central Park’s Wollman Rink. Her Olympic hopes ended when she and her partner placed fifth at the 1968 U.S. National Championships — a disappointment that ultimately redirected her toward fashion. Wang spent 17 years at Vogue, then launched her own bridal line at age 40. Her first boutique, fittingly, was in the Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue — right back in the neighborhood where she grew up.

John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Kennedy

Perhaps the two most famous children in America spent their formative years at 1040 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park at 85th Street, after their mother brought them to the Upper East Side in 1964. JFK Jr. attended St. David’s, the small Catholic boys’ school on East 89th Street, before transferring to Collegiate. He grew up with the Met as his backyard and Central Park as his playground, becoming a familiar and beloved figure on UES streets. Caroline, meanwhile, was enrolled at the Convent of the Sacred Heart on 91st Street and grew up walking to school along Fifth Avenue, attending mass with her mother at St. Thomas More Church on East 89th Street. The Upper East Side provided the Kennedy children with something Jackie desperately wanted for them: a semblance of a normal, private life in a city that largely respected their space. Caroline would go on to become an author, attorney, and U.S. Ambassador. JFK Jr. became a lawyer, magazine founder, and one of New York’s most beloved public figures before his tragic death in 1999.

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Cynthia Nixon

Long before she played Miranda Hobbes on Sex and the City, Cynthia Nixon was growing up on the Upper East Side under very different circumstances than her fictional alter ego. After her parents divorced when she was six, Nixon was raised by her single mother in a one-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up apartment in the neighborhood. It was a modest, paycheck-to-paycheck existence — a far cry from the world of cocktails and Manolos her character would later inhabit. Nixon attended New York City public schools, including the highly selective Hunter College High School on the Upper East Side, where she thrived academically. She began acting as a child, landing her first Broadway role at age 12, and has often pointed to her UES upbringing as proof that the neighborhood has always been home to more than just the wealthy — it’s a place where working families and artists have carved out lives, too.

Phoebe Cates

Before she became the definitive ’80s “It girl” through films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Gremlins, Phoebe Cates was a teenager growing up on the Upper East Side. Born in 1963 to a Broadway producer father and a model mother, Cates attended the Professional Children’s School and was a familiar face in the neighborhood’s social scene. Classmates at the time remembered her as effortlessly cool — the first person in their orbit to wear a Benetton sweater, the girl with the Cartier watch. Cates left school early to pursue her acting career, but she later returned to the Upper East Side for good. She and her husband, actor Kevin Kline, raised their family in the neighborhood, and for over 15 years Cates ran Blue Tree, the beloved boutique on Madison Avenue that became a quiet UES institution in its own right.

Brooke Shields

One of the most famous faces of the 1980s grew up right here on the Upper East Side. Brooke Shields, who became a household name as a teenage model and actress, was raised by her mother, Teri Shields, in a series of townhouses in the neighborhood — first on East 73rd Street and later on East 62nd Street. Shields has described her upbringing in the area as a “privileged and safe” way to experience the city. Even as her career catapulted her to international fame through films like Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon and her iconic Calvin Klein campaign, the Upper East Side remained her home base — the steady backdrop behind one of the most scrutinized childhoods in Hollywood history.

Anderson Cooper

The CNN anchor is Upper East Side royalty — literally. Born in 1967 to fashion designer and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt and writer Wyatt Emory Cooper, Anderson grew up in the Vanderbilt family’s penthouse on the Upper East Side. He attended the Dalton School on East 89th Street, one of the neighborhood’s most elite private schools, before heading off to Yale. Cooper’s childhood was marked by both privilege and tragedy: he lost his father to a heart attack at age 10, and his older brother Carter died at the family’s UES penthouse in 1988 at age 23. Cooper has spoken publicly about how those losses during his Upper East Side upbringing shaped his drive to become a journalist and his deep fascination with stories of survival and resilience.

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Gwyneth Paltrow

The Oscar-winning actress and lifestyle mogul spent her teenage years on the Upper East Side after her family relocated from Santa Monica. In 1984, when Gwyneth was 11, her parents — television director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner — moved the family into a five-story Renaissance Revival townhouse at 9 East 92nd Street, just steps from Central Park. Gwyneth enrolled at the Spence School, the elite all-girls academy on East 91st Street, where her classmates came from some of New York’s most prominent families. She has described her UES adolescence with characteristic candor, recalling how she and her friends would sneak out to Dorrian’s on Second Avenue and take advantage of the fact that, as she once put it, “the more upscale places would let you in” without checking IDs. The Paltrow family’s townhouse last sold in 2022 for $12.9 million.

Nicky Hilton Rothschild

While her older sister Paris became the more tabloid-famous Hilton, Nicky has always been the one with the deeper Upper East Side roots. Born in New York City in 1983, Nicky attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, the exclusive all-girls Catholic school on East 91st Street, graduating in 2001. She went on to study at both the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons before launching her career in fashion design. Nicky has described how the UES school uniform policy — everything prescribed except your shoes — first ignited her passion for fashion and personal style.

Olivia Palermo

The fashion influencer, entrepreneur, and reality television personality is an Upper East Side native through and through. Born in 1986, Olivia Palermo was raised on the Upper East Side and in Greenwich, Connecticut — her father was a real estate developer, her mother an interior designer. She attended the Nightingale-Bamford School, another of the neighborhood’s elite all-girls institutions, for her elementary years. After high school in Connecticut, she studied at the American University of Paris and The New School before bursting onto the public scene in 2008 as a cast member on the reality series The City. Palermo has since become one of the most recognized names in the fashion world, known for her polished street style and front-row presence at fashion weeks around the globe — a persona that feels like a natural extension of a childhood spent on these very blocks.

Emmy Rossum

Long before she became a star as Fiona Gallagher on nine seasons of the hit Showtime series Shameless, Emmy Rossum was growing up on the Upper East Side with her single mother, Cheryl, a corporate photographer. Born in 1986, Rossum attended the Spence School, the same elite all-girls academy that educated Gwyneth Paltrow — though Rossum’s experience was quite different. As the child of a single working mom in a school full of old-money families, she has described feeling like an outsider in what she called a “crazy WASP-y, preppy” environment. But the UES also gave her everything she needed: at age seven, a Spence music teacher noticed her perfect pitch and encouraged her to audition for the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus. She was accepted and went on to perform in over 20 operas at Lincoln Center alongside legends like Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo. By the time she left the Met at 12 — having grown too tall for the children’s costumes — her path was set.

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Julia Fox

Not everyone on this list grew up in a Fifth Avenue penthouse — and actress, model, and author Julia Fox would be the first to tell you so. Born in Milan in 1990, Fox spent her earliest years with her grandfather in Italy before moving to New York at age six to live with her father, a contractor, in Yorkville. As she told her TikTok followers: “I didn’t grow up in the Upper East Side, I grew up in Yorkville” — a distinction she insists on, describing the neighborhood as working-class and gritty, with a clear social divide between the Yorkville kids and the wealthier UES kids to the west. Fox’s childhood was turbulent and largely unsupervised; she and her father crashed in whatever apartment he happened to be renovating at the time. She has been open about battling a heroin addiction as a teenager and being homeless at one point. But Yorkville also made her resourceful, tough, and fiercely creative — qualities that fueled her breakout performance in the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, her 2023 memoir Down the Drain, and her emergence as one of the most compelling cultural figures of her generation. Like the Marx Brothers a century before her, Fox represents the other Upper East Side — the scrappier, harder one east of Lexington — and she wears it as a badge of honor.

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