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List of famous left-handed people

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List of left-handed people.


Contents

Definition and guide

Royalty and nobility

Political and governmental leaders

American

Other nationalities

George Soros but writes right hand

Criminals

List of famous left-handed people:Osama bin Laden holding a gun with his left hand
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Osama bin Laden holding a gun with his left hand

Artists

Authors

Musicians and Composers

Left-handed people play guitar or electric bass in one of three ways: (1) play a right-handed guitar right-handed, (2) play a true left-handed instrument (or a right-handed instrument that has been altered to play left-handed, i.e. with the bass strings on top), or (3) turn a right-handed guitar upside down, pick with the left hand, but leave the strings as they were — which makes them reversed from the normal order for a left-handed player. Drum kits may be set up for left-handed or right-handed playing.

A-C

D-F

G-J

K-M

N-R

S-Z

Actors/ Actresses

[44]

Honorable Mention: Right-handed actor Gary Cooper played left-handed athlete Lou Gehrig in the film The Pride of the Yankees. For scenes requiring him to bat left-handed, Cooper wore a Yankee uniform with Gehrig's number 4 mirror-reversed on his back. Cooper batted the ball right-handed, then ran to third base (not first). The film was then optically reversed, turning Cooper into a southpaw. This same technique was used in Billy Crystal's film "61" to make Anthony Michael Hall appear left handed in his portrayal of left handed Yankee's pitcher Whitey Ford.

In 1953, while starring in a live television drama, right-handed actor Jack Lemmon decided to play his character left-handed, purely as an actor's exercise. Two years later, when Lemmon met James Cagney for the first time, Cagney's first words to Lemmon were "Are you still pretending you're left-handed?"

Film directors

Sportspeople

American Football

Baseball

Left-handedness is found in all sports but is particularly highly prized in baseball, among both hitters and pitchers. For hitters, the natural motion of swinging at a pitch gives a left-handed batter momentum running down the line to first. Left-handed batters typically also have a better view of the pitch thrown by a right-handed pitcher. Also, left-handers may have more room to hit if the first baseman is watching a runner on first, and some ball parks have short right-field fences, making it easier for left-handers to hit home runs. A left-handed batter runs a shorter distance to first base than a rightie, because he takes his stance in the batting box on the right side of home plate. Due to these advantages, some right-handed players will learn to hit left handed (these players are not considered left-handed.) Likewise, left-handed pitchers are valuable, in part because many left-handed sluggers have severe trouble hitting against left-handed pitchers. See left-handed specialist.

Position players

Pitchers

Basketball

Billiards and snooker

Bowling

Boxing

Cricket

In cricket, left-handed batsmen make bowlers bowl a completely different line (angle), which disrupts their accuracy. As batsmen in cricket work in pairs, teams traditionally like to have a mix of right and left handers to maximise this effect. This is particularly so for opening batsmen. The same arguments, in reverse, apply to left-handed bowlers. Top quality left-handed bowlers seem to be rarer than their batting equivalents.

Fencing

Figure-skating

Football (soccer)

Golf

Ice Hockey

Motor sport

Rugby Union

Tennis