Year 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Below, events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.

Jay Chou; (born 18 January 1979) is a Taiwanese musician, singer-songwriter, music and film producer, actor and director. In 1998 he was discovered in a talent contest where he displayed his piano and song-writing skills. Over the next two years, he was hired to compose for popular Mandarin singers. Although he was trained in classical music, Chou combines Chinese and Western music styles to produce songs that fuse R&B, rock and pop genres. He composes all his own songs, as well as songs for other singers.

In 2000, Chou released his first album, titled Jay, under the record company Alfa Music. Since then he has released one album per year except in 2009, selling several million copies each. His music has gained recognition throughout Asia, most notably in regions such as Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and in overseas Asian communities. He has sold more than 28 million albums worldwide up to 2010. He debuted his acting career in Initial D (2005), for which he won Best Newcomer Actor in both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards, and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor by Hong Kong Film Awards for his role in Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). He produced the theme song for the film Ocean Heaven starring Jet Li. His career now extends into directing and running his own record company JVR Music.

Lucio Dalla Grand Officer OMRI (4 March 1943 – 1 March 2012) was a popular Italian singer-songwriter, musician and actor. He also played clarinet and keyboards.

Dalla was the composer of Caruso (1986), which has been covered by numerous international artists. A version of Caruso sung by Luciano Pavarotti sold over 9 million copies, and another version was a track on Andrea Bocelli's first international album Romanza, which later sold over 20 million copies worldwide. This piece is also on Josh Groban's album Closer, which sold over 5,000,000 copies in the United States. The song is a tribute to the emblematic opera tenor Enrico Caruso. Maynard Ferguson also covered the song on his album "Brass Attitude", after having previously paid tribute to Caruso with his rendition of Vesti la giubba (titled as Pagliacci) on the album "Primal Scream".

Dalla was born in Bologna, Italy. He began to play the clarinet at an early age, in a jazz band in Bologna, and became member of a local jazz band called Rheno Dixieland Band, together with the future film director Pupi Avati. Avati said that he decided to leave the band after feeling overwhelmed by Dalla's talent. He also acknowledged that his film, Ma quando arrivano le ragazze? (2005), was inspired by his friendship with Dalla. In the 1960s the band participated in the first Jazz Festival at Antibes, France. The Rheno Dixieland Band won the first prize in the traditional jazz band category and was noticed by a Roman band called Second Roman New Orleans Jazz Band: with them Dalla performed his first record in 1961, and had the first contacts with RCA records, his future music publisher.

Glenn Ford (May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006) was a Canadian-born American actor from Hollywood's Golden Era with a career that spanned seven decades. Despite his versatility, Ford was best known for playing ordinary men in unusual circumstances.

Born as Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford at Jeffrey Hale Hospital in Quebec City, Ford was the son of Anglo-Quebecers Hannah Wood Mitchell and Newton Ford, a railway conductor. Through his father, Glenn Ford was a great-nephew of Canada's first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. Ford moved to Santa Monica, California with his family at the age of eight, and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939.

After Ford graduated from Santa Monica High School, he began working in small theatre groups. Ford later commented that his railroad executive father had no objection to his growing interest in acting, but told him, "It's all right for you to try to act, if you learn something else first. Be able to take a car apart and put it together. Be able to build a house, every bit of it. Then you'll always have something." Ford heeded the advice and during the 1950s, when he was one of Hollywood's most popular actors, he regularly worked on plumbing, wiring and air conditioning at home. At times, he worked as a roofer and installer of plate-glass windows.

Friedrich Robert Donat (18 March 1905 – 9 June 1958) was an English film and stage actor. He is best known for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps and Goodbye, Mr. Chips for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Donat was born in Withington, Manchester, Lancashire, to Ernst Emil Donat and his wife Rose Alice (née Green) who were married at Withington's St Paul's Church, in 1895. He was of English, Polish, German and French descent and was educated at Manchester’s Central High School for Boys.

Donat had a brother, John Donat, who was a trapper in Canada and later moved to Shelton, Connecticut, USA. John Donat's children were Jean, Jay and Peter. He was the owner of Lake George Camp for Girls in Gull Bay, New York, which catered to old New York families.

Donat made his first stage appearance in 1921, at the age of 16, with Henry Baynton's company at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Birmingham, playing Lucius in Julius Caesar. His real break came in 1924 when he joined the company of Shakespearean actor Sir Frank Benson, where he stayed for four years. Donat made his film debut in 1932 in Men of Tomorrow. His first great screen success came with The Private Life of Henry VIII, playing Thomas Culpeper.