Blue eyes, dark hair, acting chops and smarts all run in the Gyllenhaal family. Both Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal attended Columbia University.
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Geena Davis is an actress, an archer and a MENSA member. Earth girls may be easy, but this Earth girl is a genius.
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Lisa Kudrow graduated from Vassar with a degree in biology, then went on to conduct clinical research on headaches. (No word on whether those headaches were caused by repeated listens to “Smelly Cat.”)
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Who says booze is bad for your brain? Seventeen reports that Kesha has an IQ of 140, got a near-perfect SAT score and took college courses when she was still in high school … for fun.
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David Duchovny got his bachelor’s degree in literature from Princeton, then his master’s from Yale. He almost went on to get a doctorate, but he got a beer commercial instead. It seems to have worked out for him.
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Ashton Kutcher famously said while accepting a 2013 Teen Choice Award, “The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart.” Though he usually plays dolts onscreen, he’s far from one himself: Before getting into acting and Silicon Valley investments, Kutcher almost nabbed scholarships to MIT and Purdue University … until a senior class prank caught up with him. The same penchant for “Punk”-ing later made him rich, so he’s really a genius.
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Steve Martin is an author, a philosophy graduate, an actor, a comedian and a MENSA member with an IQ of 142 (as told to the New Yorker). Not bad for “The Jerk.”
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Jodie Foster began her career as a child star. She took a break from acting and studied advanced French at Yale, then went back to show biz after graduation.
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Natalie Portman famously said she’d rather be smart than a movie star. Luckily, she’s both: She’s fluent in six languages, enrolled in Harvard and has been published in two scientific journals.
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Mayim Bialik isn’t just a genius on “The Big Bang Theory.” The “Blossom” alum also has a doctorate in neuroscience.
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Colin Firth called his two-year stint at Barton Peveril College in the UK the best two years of his life. He later became a co-author of an academic paper on human brain research.
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Cindy Crawford has beauty and brains for days. The legendary supermodel was the valedictorian of her high school class, then went on to Northwestern University to study chemical engineering. She eventually dropped out to pursue modeling.
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The talented Mr. Matt Damon penned “Good Will Hunting” while he was a student at Harvard. He later dropped out.
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Ken Jeong usually plays goofy roles, but he had a serious job before becoming a box office star: He’s a certified obstetrician.
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Jeff Goldblum plays scientists in movies convincingly. It’s not just because he’s a good actor; he’s also a certified genius and a member of MENSA.
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Edward Norton studied history at Yale, then went on to work as an analyst for his grandfather’s nonprofit organization in Osaka, Japan, where he became fluent in Japanese.
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Kate Beckinsale was a child prodigy, reportedly with an 11-year-old’s reading level when she was just 6. She went on to study French and Russian literature at Oxford’s New College. She’s also fluent in Russian, French and German.
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Conan O’Brien graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1985, where he also served as president of the Harvard Lampoon.
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Shakira
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Who needs high school? Not Quentin Tarantino. Business Insider reports that he dropped out, then used his IQ of 160 — the same as Stephen Hawking — in the movie business.
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Sharon Stone has a self-professed IQ of 148, per NNDB, and received a scholarship to Edinboro University of Pennsylvania when she was just 15 years old. She also unwisely claimed to be a member of MENSA, but the organization shot down her claims. Ouch!
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John Legend was offered scholarships to Morehouse, Harvard and Georgetown, but nixed them in favor of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English with an emphasis on African literature.
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“Modern Family” star Nolan Gould was advanced 10 grades in school, told Ellen DeGeneres on her show that he has an IQ of 150 and became a member of MENSA when he was 12. Kinda makes your baby-sitting gig look weak, right?
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