- Julius Axelrod - 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine laureate
- Adolph Green - lyricist and playwright
- Alan Greenspan - Chairman of the Federal Reserve
- Rudy Giuliani - Mayor of New York City (1994-2001)
- Marcia Gay Harden - Oscar Award winning actress
- Amy Heckerling - film director
- Martin Hellman - co-inventor of the Diffie-Hellman protocol for public-key cryptography
- Meir Kahane - leader of the Kach
political party in the Israeli Knesset,
founder of the Jewish Defense League in the US
- John F. Kennedy, Jr. - lawyer, journalist, son of
President John F. Kennedy
- Edward I. Koch - Mayor of New York City
- Tony Kushner - Tony
Award winning playwright
- Fiorello H. LaGuardia - Mayor of New York City
(1934-1945)
- Ang Lee - film director
- Spike Lee - actor and film director
- Ira Levin - author
- Frank McCourt - author
- Debra Messing - actor
- Martha Nussbaum - philosopher
- Frederick Reines - physicist, recipient of 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics
- Meg Ryan - actor
- Adam Sandler - actor, comedian, producer
- Martin Scorsese - film director
- M. Night Shyamalan - writer and film director
- Oliver Stone - director
- Maura Tierney - actor
A list of other notable alumni from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts can be found at
NYUview 
.
