1956 births

María Zavala Valladares (born January 15, 1956) is a Peruvian politician, lawyer and judge. She was the Minister for Justice.

April Bernard (born 1956) is an American poet. She was born and raised in New England, and graduated from Harvard University. She has worked as a senior editor at Vanity Fair, Premiere, and Manhattan, inc. In the early 1990s, she taught at Amherst College. In Fall 2003, she was Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College. She currently teaches at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Boston Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, Parnassus, and The New York Review of Books.

Carmen Aurora Marcela Vildoso Chirinos (born March 3, 1956) is a Peruvian sociologist and academic. She served in Alan García's second administration, in the position of Minister of Women and Social Development, from October 2008 to June 2009.
Previously, she served as Deputy Minister of Promotion of Employment and Micro and Small Business at the Ministry of Labor and Promotion of Employment from August 2001 to July 2003 during Alejandro Toledo’s administration.

Fabiola León-Velarde Servetto (Lima, June 18, 1956) is a Peruvian physiologist who has devoted her research to the biology and physiology of high altitude adaptation. Born in Lima, Peru. She is the daughter of Carlos Leon-Velarde Gamarra and Juana Servetto Marti from Uruguay, and granddaughter of Angelica Gamarra. Under the mentorship of high altitude physiologist Carlos Monge Cassinelli, she obtained a BSc. in Biology (1979), an MSc (1981) and DSc (1986) in physiology at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Perú.
She was Rector of the Cayetano Heredia University (UPCH). She was previously Vice-President for Research of UPCH and Chairwoman of the Department of Biological and Physiological Sciences at the same university. She has also been Vice-President of the International Society for Mountain Medicine and, during nine years has been doing collaborative research with the Human Respiratory Section of the Laboratory of Physiology of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, where she has been invited as "Fellow" of the "Queen's College". At the moment, she is also Associated Investigator of ARPE/UFR of Medicine of the University of Paris XIII in France.
She has been a consultant in diverse national and international institutions, including the International Center of Research for Development (CIID) of Canada, on the health problems in the Andean Region and of the International Labour Organization (OIT). In the last years she has participated as a Consultant in the Antamina Mining Project and at the Andean Organism of Health. At the present time, she is Review Committee member of the National Council of Science and Technology [CONCYTEC], the National Agency for Scientific and Technological Promotion (SECYT-FONCYT), the International Foundation for Science (IFS) and member of the Board of Directors of the National Superintendence of Higher University Education (SUNEDU).
Leon-Velarde has a vast scientific production that has been published in more than 80 abstracts and more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals. She is also author of chapters in several books about altitude sickness and related topics particularly in the Andes. She is a member of important scientific societies such as The American Physiological Society and the Academy of Sciences of Latin America.
Leon-Velarde is a founding member of the judging panel of PODER's Think Tank of the Year Awards that aim to celebrate the good work done by think tanks in the country.
Leon-Velarde is the mother of one son, Gianpiero Leoncini Leon-Velarde.

Kimberly Beck (born January 9, 1956) is a former American actress and model. She is best known for her role as Trish Jarvis in Joseph Zito's Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984). Her other film roles include Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), Luc Besson's The Big Blue (1988), George T. Miller's Frozen Assets (1992), and Roland Emmerich's Independence Day (1996).

Carlo Urbani (Italian: [ˈkarlo urˈbaːni] ; 19 October 1956 – 29 March 2003) was an Italian physician and microbiologist and the first to identify severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) as probably a new and dangerously contagious viral disease, and his early warning to the World Health Organization (WHO) triggered a swift and global response credited with saving numerous lives. Shortly afterwards, he himself became infected and died.

Geneton Moraes Neto (13 July 1956 – 22 August 2016) was a Brazilian journalist and writer from Pernambuco.Neto worked as a journalist for over 40 years in print and television. Among other roles, he was a correspondent for O Estado de São Paulo and a prominent figure at GloboNews, where he edited Jornal Nacional.
Neto's book Dossiê Brasília: os segredos dos presidentes (Portuguese for 'Brasília Dossier: Presidential Secrets'), first published in 1997, is a series of interviews with former presidents of Brazil.He died of an aortic aneurysm.

John James Anderson (born April 18, 1956) is an American actor and producer best known to television audiences for playing the character of Jeff Colby in both the prime-time soap opera Dynasty and its spin-off series Dynasty II The Colbys throughout the 1980s.

Massimo Wertmüller (born 13 August 1956) is an Italian actor. He appeared in more than sixty films since 1978.

Pasquale Scimeca is an Italian film director and producer.