Top 20 Smartest Celebrities Ever

With notable roles in Parks and Recreation, The Office, and The Social Network to name a few, Jones has more than her fair share of enviable accomplishments. She also has a considerable head on her shoulders as well. Yet another Harvard alum, Jones successfully graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in comparative religion in 1997. She actually had plans to become a lawyer, but the O.J. Simpson trial allegedly jaded her aspirations. Instead, 1997 saw her take her first step into the limelight with a role in the Mario Puzo miniseries The Last Don before catching her major break on Boston Public, and things have only been on the up and up ever since.

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#19: Emma Watson

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You may know her best as the incredibly intelligent witch Hermione Granger, in the Harry Potter series and Watson had plenty of inspiration to draw upon for her role. In 2011, she became a student along side her acting career, working towards a degree in English Literature from Brown University, while also studying for a time at Oxford. Watson is clearly quite well spoken, and her UN Women campaigns more than prove it. The only downside to all this? Trying to avoid imaginary points for Gryffindor from unruly classmates whenever she answers a question.

Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? A young Matt Damon may suggest the latter as his breakout work in Good Will Hunting told the story of an incredibly talented young man forced to face his past, and live up to his potential at MIT. Damon actually began working on the award-winning screenplay during a playwriting class he was taking at, you guessed it… Harvard University. This of course skyrocketed him to fame, and his light has hardly dimmed since then, but cut short his studies, technically making Damon just short of being a college grad. Take a look past the charisma and good looks, and you’ll find a well-spoken, very bright man as well.

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#17: Natalie Portman

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A globally admired film star, Natalie Portman is just as academically revered as well! Yes, she’s got an Oscar, a BAFTA, and two Golden Globes… But she’s also a Psychology graduate out of Harvard, and she’s fluent in Hebrew! At Harvard, she contributed to a paper entitled; ‘Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: data from near-infrared spectroscopy’… Which is hard to say, let alone write! Portman once famously said she’d, ‘rather be smart than a movie star’… As it turns out, she’s doing a seriously good job at being both!

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#16: Conan O’Brien

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Primarily known as America’s longest-working late-night talk show host, before being a celeb interview supremo, Conan O’Brien was also busy racking up intelligence at Harvard University. An esteemed Literature and History graduate, O’Brien was president of the Harvard Lampoon comedy magazine while he studied. His career as a writer was set out from an even earlier age though… He graduated high school as valedictorian in 1981, having won national awards for a short story of his titled, ‘To Bury the Living’!

“Black Panther” brought together one of the most gifted ensembles in the superhero genre. Howard graduate Chadwick Boseman became well-versed in Shakespeare while taking Oxford’s summer program. Shortly before winning her Oscar, Lupita Nyong’o graduated from Yale with a master’s in acting. She wasn’t the only Yale alumnus on set. In 2020, Angela Bassett became the first black recipient of the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award. The Oscar-nominated actress had already earned a B.A. in African-American studies, a Master of Fine Arts degree, and an honorary doctorate from the university. On top of all that, Basset met Courtney B. Vance, who she later married, at Yale.

Since playing Winnie Cooper on “The Wonder Years,” Danica McKellar has popped up here and there on a few shows and TV movies. One of her most notable guest spots was on “The Big Bang Theory.” In real life, McKellar could teach Sheldon Cooper a thing or two. Outside of acting, McKellar is best known for her knowledge of mathematics. She’s written several books on the subject, including “Hot X: Algebra Exposed,” “Kiss My Math,” and “Math Doesn't Suck.” It takes a brilliant mind to make math sound interesting and that’s precisely what McKellar has done. She’s helped to show a lot of blossoming minds, particularly young girls, that math isn’t for squares… unless we’re talking about geometry. See, that’s a little math humor.

A film star with a thing for foreign languages, Jodie Foster actually attended a French-language prep school during childhood. Consistently described as a ‘gifted child’, she could read at the age of three, and is at least competent at most major European languages. In 1985, Foster graduated magna cum laude out of Yale University, despite the fact that she was already a movie star by then! Too often, child stars suffer a well-documented fall from grace… But for Foster, there was less self-inflicted scandal and much more schooling!

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#12: John Legend

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Being one of the few artists to achieve EGOT status, we have to ask, is there anything John Legend can’t do? The short answer is no. The long answer is that music is only the tip of Legend’s resume. Skipping multiple grades, Legend attended high school by age 12 and graduated at 16. Although he could’ve gone to Georgetown or Morehouse on scholarships, as well as Harvard, Legend settled on the University of Pennsylvania. Upon graduating, Legend became a management consultant for the revered Boston Consulting Group. Although Legend learned a fair deal about business and probably could’ve built a successful corporate career, he kept reaching for the stars. On the side, he wrote, performed, and produced his own music, amounting to a legendary legacy.

An actor who is rumored to have listed his profession as ‘engineer’ on his passport, Rowan Atkinson can do that because he has a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Oxford! Which is something that’s almost impossible to believe considering his internationally acclaimed forays into ‘goofball comedy’, most notably as silent slapstick Mr. Bean, and chaotic secret serviceman Johnny English! A frequent political commentator and activist, as well as an automobile enthusiast, it turns out that beneath that famous turkey, there’s a marvellous mind!

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#10: John Cleese

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Widely listed as one of the great comic geniuses of all time, John Cleese was overflowing with more academic artistry as well! A graduate from Downing College, Cambridge, he was instrumental in making the university’s ‘Footlights Club’ a prime breeding ground for British comedy. In terms of his actual studies, Cleese left with a Law degree… But possibly his most important achievement at Cambridge was his befriending Graham Chapman. Beside a group of other highly educated blokes, the duo would go on to pen “Monty Python”, one of the most surreal success stories ever shown on TV!

Hailed as the Queen of Latin Music, this Colombian singer achieved international fame with hit songs like “Whenever, Wherever” and “Underneath Your Clothes.” While we all know that Shakira is a lyrical genius, she’s an all-around genius as well. A member of Mensa International, Shakira possesses an IQ of 140. To give you an idea, the average IQ is somewhere around 100. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Shakira is fluent in multiple languages, including Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian, and Arabic. Not every seven-year-old would want a typewriter for Christmas. Young Shakira, however, was intrigued watching her father use his typewriter, which was gifted to her. She used it to write poems, which led to songwriting, which led to fame.

On “Modern Family,” Alex was the resident academic while Manny was the precocious one. Luke, meanwhile, could be a bit on the slower side. Behind the scenes, though, actor Nolan Gould was the child prodigy. We guess now he’s an adult prodigy. With an IQ of 150, Gould was welcomed into Mensa. Skipping four grades, he graduated from high school by the time he was 13. He spent the following few years primarily focusing on his acting commitments, but he did get a headstart with some early college courses. Then in 2017, at age 18, he was accepted into the University of Southern California. Whatever the future holds for Gould, we’re sure he’ll excel at any path he takes.

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#7: Ken Jeong

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There’s probably a good chance your first introduction to this actor was his side-splitting performance in The Hangover. Is it a surprise to hear he would also be more then prepared to save your life on a minute’s notice? Ken Jeong studied pre-med at Duke University and got his M.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Not too many actors can transition to a 6-figure job at a hospital if the roles dry up. During his early days, Jeong actually would split his time between treating patients and taking comedy gigs before his big break as… a doctor, in Knocked Up.

They say if you say Beetlejuice three times in a row, a Mensa member who’s fluent in Swedish with an IQ of 140 will appear. While Davis may be most associated with Thelma & Louise and Beetlejuice, she has put her impressive intelligence to good use as well. Notably, Geena received an honorary Doctorate from Bates College in 2009 for research on gender studies in the media. Hey, it’s not easy to be an Olympic caliber athlete, Academy Award winning actress, and noted genius, but this triple threat has been accomplished.

Stone is an Academy Award nominated actress, and often remembered for her performance in Basic Instinct, but she’s also undoubtedly the smartest person in most rooms she walks in to. At age 15, while most of us were working on getting our learner’s permit, Sharon was awarded a college scholarship to Edinboro University where she studied creative writing and fine arts. With a whopping IQ of 154, Stone is comfortably in the top portion of the 99th percentile- qualifying for but never actually joining Mensa.

Don’t get any ideas, but Tarantino dropped out of high school and landed a job at a porn theater. This behavior may not be most typical of a genius, but he’s indisputably just that. Yes, a slew of films that are considered masterpieces may indicate his prowess, but the Pulp Fiction director had set himself apart from the rest of the world long before that with a nearly unheard of IQ of 160. For reference, this puts him squarely in the 99.996% isle, right next to legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Truly a poster child of structured education’s shortcomings, Tarantino was destined to shake things up from the very beginning.

The on-screen epitome of an all action hero, there are considerable brains to back up Dolph Lundgren’s brawn! Best known for playing Russian boxer Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV”, Lundgren may look tough on screen, but he’s actually a Master of Chemical Engineering, graduating from the University of Sydney in 1982! Before that, the Swedish actor had already accumulated a Chemistry degree from Washington State, and a degree in Chemical Engineering from Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology! Dolph Lundgren’s intelligence is an international affair!

She plays a neurobiologist on TV, and she has a Ph.D. in neuroscience in real life… Mayim Bialik’s is a ‘role vs. reality’ match unlike anything else in the industry! After gaining fame as a child star on “Blossom,” Bialik was brought back into the public eye when she starred as super smart Amy Farrah Fowler on the geek comedy TV series, “The Big Bang Theory”… Just a few years before her debut on the show, Bialik finished her studies, gaining particular note as a specialist on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in adolescents. It’s no wonder her on-screen brains are so believable!

Before we get to our top pick, here are some honorable mentions:

Lin Manuel Miranda
It Takes a Genius to Mix History With Hip-Hop



Shonda Rhimes
Writing About Doctors, Lawyers, & Politicians Requires a Sharp Mind


Lisa Kudrow
Phoebe Buffay Was on Her Father’s Medical Staff

Having earned fame and fortune as lead guitarist in Queen, Brian May attained an Astrophysics Ph.D. from Imperial College London in 2007, after cutting short his original studies in the mid-‘70s! Since then, he’s co-authored twice with Sir Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott on “Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe” and “The Cosmic Tourist”. In 2015, he was also introduced as a science team collaborator at NASA! He’s a specialist in zodiacal dust… Although that’s not what Freddie Mercury was famously referring to!