My hero from age 5-10: Snoopy, from Charles Schulz's "Peanuts". He was "Joe Cool" and always did things his own way. And he was much smarter than that round-headed kid who brought him food.
From age 10-15: Sam Gamgee from "Lord of the Rings". I could always relate better to Sam than to Frodo. Sam wasn't an aristocrat, and didn't take things like elves and wizards for granted before he got involved with the Ring. He barely understood what he was getting into at first, but he met every crisis with bravery and resourcefulness. The worse things got, the more determined he was to see it through to the end. And in the middle of the whole mess, he still managed to be surprised and delighted when he finally got to see real, live elephants.
From age 15-23: Richard P. Feynman. He proved that you could be a science geek and still have a good time.
Since then, I haven't had any one specific hero, but there are a lot of people whose lives and words I've admired. Mostly people who took a stand for what was right, even in the face of massive opposition. For example:
Socrates
Jesus of Nazareth
Sir Thomas More
Thomas a Becket
Galileo
Thomas Jefferson
Mohandas Gandhi
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Dalai Lama
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