Dave Matthews – South African/U.S.

Musician and actor David John Matthews was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on January 9, 1967. He was a self-taught guitarist who spent his youth moving around the world with his family. When Matthews was two years old, his family moved to Yorktown Heights, a New York suburb, where his father, a physicist, worked for IBM. They went back to South Africa and then moved back to the United States after high school to escape compulsory military service in South Africa. During this time, he worked as a bartender at Miller’s, a jazz club in Charlottesville, Virginia, and he started to fantasize about forming his own band.

Matthews’ biggest film credit will have to be when he played the title role of Will Coleman in the Disney film Where the Red Fern Grows. This was followed by Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), co-starring Jeff Daniels and Eva Marie Saint.