The celebrities are smarter than you think! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the famous faces who have achievements in intellectual pursuits that clash with their public personas or reputations.
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00:00 And I googled you like a stalker and it's you're amazing.
00:03 Yeah. Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:06 And today we're counting down our picks for the famous faces
00:08 who have achievements and intellectual pursuits
00:10 that clash with their public personas or reputations.
00:13 Right when I went to college,
00:15 it was kind of the first time I had to really work hard at school.
00:17 I mean, I was a good student.
00:19 And then college is like the next level of that.
00:21 Number 10, Ashton Kutcher, although public opinion has shifted
00:26 after he wrote a letter in support of Danny Masterson,
00:29 Kutcher was for a long time appreciated for his dopey yet lovable roles.
00:33 Hey, have you seen my car?
00:35 Well, I saw it last night.
00:37 I mean, I saw the backseat.
00:41 Oh, I'm talking about the whole thing.
00:42 Due to being typecast in this way, many got the impression
00:45 the actor harbored a similar personality in real life.
00:48 In actuality, Kutcher was very passionate about both acting
00:51 and education in his youth.
00:53 I was hoping to get a biochemical engineering degree.
00:58 I was going to become a geneticist, go work at a company,
01:00 make a decent like six figure salary, move up over time, you know, buy a house.
01:06 He was even expected to receive college scholarships
01:08 before he was arrested for breaking and entering into his own high school,
01:11 which nixed that possibility.
01:13 In spite of this, Kutcher took up residence at the University of Iowa
01:16 to study biochemical engineering
01:18 with the goal of helping treat his twin brother's heart condition.
01:21 While there, however, a modeling job enticed Kutcher to leave education
01:25 to pursue that career before transitioning to acting.
01:28 I was in a bar in Iowa and somebody asked me if I'd ever thought
01:31 about being a model, and I said, no, I've thought about being an actor.
01:34 Number nine, Rebel Wilson.
01:36 Today, she's known as one of Australia's biggest comedy exports
01:40 with a string of beloved films under her belt.
01:42 Life could have been very different for Wilson.
01:44 Can you sing? Yeah.
01:45 Can you read music? Yeah.
01:48 Can you match pitch? Try me.
01:50 Oh, as a high scoring high schooler,
01:55 she was part of the debate team that took part in the prestigious
01:58 Tournament of Minds competition.
02:00 From there, Wilson joined the University of New South Wales,
02:03 where she got a Bachelor of Arts in theater and performance studies,
02:06 as well as a Bachelor of Laws.
02:07 Before joining the university, she had plans to be a practicing lawyer.
02:11 Law degree is like five years total.
02:14 Yeah, combined law degree.
02:16 And I was already on Australian television by like year two.
02:19 However, she turned away from the corporate world soon after.
02:22 And interestingly enough, Wilson credits her early pursuits
02:25 in the film world to a series of hallucinations from malaria,
02:29 where she saw herself succeeding as an actress.
02:31 Still, that law training must come in handy during contract negotiations.
02:35 I went to the arbitration, represented the film and spoke to the jury.
02:39 And in under five minutes of jury deliberation, they declared me the winner.
02:43 Number eight, Carly Kloss.
02:45 After getting her first modeling job at the young age of 14,
02:48 Kloss's educational endeavors took a backseat for a few years
02:51 while she carved out a name for herself on the catwalk.
02:53 I remember stepping off this runway and feeling like something special had happened.
02:58 She was already one of the most recognizable supermodels around
03:02 when she decided to study web development at Flatiron School in 2014.
03:05 In 2015, while enrolled at the New York University's
03:08 Gallatin School of Individualized Study, she founded Code with Klossy.
03:12 Eight years ago, I learned how to code and I had a following on social media.
03:16 And I thought, what are these young women who are following me on social media
03:19 really need to know? And these technical skills are applicable to every industry.
03:23 How?
03:24 The initiative specializes in teaching computer coding to teenage girls
03:27 through free camps and workshops.
03:29 Thousands of youngsters have since graduated from the program.
03:32 In 2023, it was reported around 78 percent of graduates
03:35 have gone on to take majors or minors in computer science.
03:38 It is it's a creative skill set that can it's a problem solving skill set.
03:43 You can creatively build any idea and build a business or create the change
03:48 in the world that you want to create.
03:50 And number seven, Eva Longoria, known primarily for her acting work
03:55 with Desperate Housewives and now directing with Flamin' Hot.
03:58 Longoria had a big year in 1998.
04:00 Given all the things that you do, I can't believe your mother once told you
04:06 you're an underachiever because you hadn't gotten your master's degree.
04:11 After all, she won Miss Corpus Christi USA.
04:14 Equally impressive was graduating from Texas A&M University, Kingsville,
04:18 with a bachelor of science in kinesiology, the study of human body movement.
04:22 You know, I'm a big advocate for education.
04:24 So obviously you're never told to go back to school
04:26 and never told to continue your education.
04:28 After making her name in acting, as well as learning to speak French,
04:31 then Spanish, Longoria went back to school in 2013.
04:35 After three years of study,
04:36 she graduated from California State University, Northridge,
04:39 with a master's degree in Chicano studies.
04:41 And I said, I just want to take a class on the history of immigration
04:44 specifically for Mexican-Americans.
04:46 And and that class grew to another class, which grew to another class,
04:50 which made me enroll in getting my master's in Chicano studies.
04:54 The rightfully proud Longoria titled her thesis
04:56 Success Stems from Diversity, the Value of Latinas in STEM Careers.
05:01 Number six, Edward Norton.
05:03 Long before all of Hollywood knew his name, Norton attended Yale College.
05:07 On top of getting a bachelor of arts in history and studying Japanese,
05:10 Norton also competitively rode.
05:12 You speak Japanese?
05:13 Yeah, I used to speak it better than I do now.
05:15 But true. However, a back injury led to him pursuing acting more seriously.
05:19 Instead, in 1991, the prospective performer moved to Osaka, Japan,
05:24 to work as an analyst for his grandfather's nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners.
05:28 But I do think that that everybody can participate in that in small ways.
05:32 So I want to be a part of it.
05:32 During his time there, Norton learned the martial arts of Aikido
05:36 and continued his education in the Japanese language.
05:38 Over the years, Norton has impressed with his knowledge of the language,
05:41 since it's notorious as one of the most difficult for English
05:44 speaking natives to learn.
05:46 Number five, Kesha.
05:47 Rapper, singer, musician, pop diva, rocker.
05:52 Kesha has been described with plenty of titles over her successful music career.
06:03 In recent years, she's been known for her interest in the paranormal.
06:07 But Kesha was a very enthusiastic student in high school.
06:09 Not only did she play the trumpet and saxophone for the school marching band,
06:13 the future chart topper was a bright button.
06:15 With a love of math and physics, Kesha got a near perfect SAT score.
06:19 After band practice, she reportedly listened to history lectures
06:22 at Belmont University.
06:23 With all this, Kesha was offered a scholarship to Barnard College
06:27 of Columbia University.
06:28 However, she turned it down to pursue music.
06:30 I want my music to reflect where I'm at, and I'm feeling like a centered,
06:35 bad bitch.
06:37 In 2024, Kesha dabbled with academia again by teaching a songwriting course
06:42 at the Esalen Institute.
06:43 Number four, Cindy Crawford.
06:46 Supermodels have this unfair reputation that they're not the sharpest tools
06:49 in the shed.
06:50 Well, the legendary Crawford breaks this mold and then some.
06:53 Biggest misconception about you, I think, is because you're so ridiculously
06:57 gorgeous that people don't understand how brilliant a student you were.
07:02 You were the valedictorian of your school.
07:04 I was.
07:05 While she was beginning to make waves in the modeling industry as a teenager,
07:08 her education was also taking off.
07:10 Crawford graduated from DeKalb High School as valedictorian.
07:13 This secured her a scholarship to study chemical engineering
07:16 at Northwestern University.
07:17 You were in the chemical engineering program at Northwestern.
07:20 Can you tell me what alkaline metal is most reactive with its most stable
07:23 isotope, having a half-life of 22 minutes?
07:25 Francium.
07:27 It was there that she would be made to feel less than when during her first
07:30 calculus lesson, the professor took one look at her and told her
07:33 she must be in the wrong class.
07:34 That was the first time I actually saw that looking a certain way
07:39 can be could be a negative and that people are going to judge me
07:42 a certain way based on the way I look.
07:44 Nevertheless, another opportunity would present itself down the road.
07:47 And Crawford dropped out of Northwestern to pursue modeling.
07:50 However, in 2016, she returned to academia by attending UCLA
07:54 Anderson School of Management.
07:56 Number three, Dexter Holland.
07:58 Before he was the co-founder and frontman of the punk rock band The Offspring,
08:02 he was known as Brian Holland in high school.
08:05 I know you with me.
08:08 That's OK, because I got no.
08:11 His affinity for math and other scholarly subjects
08:15 led to him being valedictorian and nicknamed Dexter as in Poindexter,
08:20 which stuck for life with that passion.
08:22 Holland went to the University of Southern California
08:24 to get a bachelor of science in biology and then a master's in molecular biology.
08:29 When I was in college, I majored in biology.
08:31 And my favorite part of biology was molecular biology,
08:34 which is basically genetics.
08:35 So and my favorite part of molecular biology was was the viruses, virology.
08:40 But he stepped away from continuing his education to focus on his band.
08:44 In the meantime, he learned to be a pilot and completed a 10 day flight
08:47 around the world in 2004.
08:49 By 2017, Holland achieved his Ph.D.
08:51 in molecular biology with a thesis focused on HIV.
08:55 Yeah, it was what I was always interested in.
08:57 And my my doctorate was based on virology and HIV in particular.
09:02 Number two, David Duchovny.
09:04 Whether you know him as the aloof agent Fox Mulder from the X-Files
09:08 or as the messy Hank Moody from Californication,
09:10 you probably didn't expect Duchovny to have such a propensity for academia.
09:14 And I had no idea like all these things about you.
09:16 I had no idea that you went to Princeton.
09:18 Yeah, I had no idea you were a novelist.
09:20 I I didn't know these things about you.
09:21 I only knew you as an actor.
09:23 I like to keep it quiet.
09:24 After graduating from high school as head boy, the future multi
09:27 Golden Globe winner went to the prestigious Princeton University
09:30 to get a bachelor of arts in English literature.
09:32 Alongside creating award winning poetry, Duchovny then headed to Yale University
09:36 to further his education with a master's degree.
09:39 And I was in graduate school.
09:40 I was working towards getting a Ph.D.
09:43 so that I was I was probably I envisioned teaching at a college level.
09:47 And then he began his Ph.D.
09:48 thesis titled Magic and Technology in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry,
09:52 which is yet to be finished.
09:54 But his work did pop up during Duchovny's cameo in 2021's The Chair.
09:57 I only wrote the one chapter.
10:00 Oh, that's that's a hell of a chapter.
10:02 Did you use really big font?
10:03 No. Yeah, I got sidetracked for a few decades.
10:07 His love of literature also led him to write several novels.
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10:27 Number one, Lisa Kudrow.
10:29 When she was growing up, the future ditzy and lovable Phoebe Buffay
10:32 suffered from powerful headaches that seemingly ran in the family.
10:36 What's going on with you?
10:37 I got no sleep last night.
10:38 Her father, Lee Kudrow, was a doctor who specialized in treating
10:42 and researching the condition.
10:43 This led the Friends star to get a degree in biology from Pizarro College.
10:47 So you had this huge career change.
10:49 They were looking at a daughter
10:50 that was going to become this biologist, presumably very proud of you for that.
10:53 A great scientific career and everything.
10:55 And then, boom, suddenly you're on a sitcom.
10:58 Armed with that accreditation, Kudrow worked for her father for eight years.
11:02 She even has a credit on the 1994 research paper, Handedness and Headache,
11:06 which examined patients suffering from cluster headaches.
11:09 During this time, Kudrow balanced her drive for science
11:12 with the eternal nudge to follow acting,
11:14 taking part in comedy troupes before finding her way on screen.
11:17 In 2010, she returned to Vassar to give a commencement address.
11:20 Thank you, President Hill, for inviting me to speak.
11:24 And thank you, class of 2010, for not protesting.
11:27 [laughter]
11:28 Seriously.
11:29 What other celebrities do you know to be discreetly intellectual?
11:33 Drop their names in the comments section.
11:35 Sorry.
11:36 What are you doing?
11:37 Sorry.
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