Celebrities, they're just like us!
Except some of them are smarter.
Like, way smarter.
From certified Mensa members to MIT scholarship offers, let's take a look at some celebrities
with surprisingly high IQs.
Conan O'Brien
A comic legend was born when a tall ginger took over for David Letterman and premiered
a show called Late Night With Conan O'Brien in 1993.
But before he cracked jokes for a living, O'Brien hit the books as a history and literature
major at Harvard.
He sharpened his communication skills writing for the Harvard Lampoon and graduated magna
cum laude from the Ivy League school in 1985.
Diploma in hand, Coco wasn't quite sure what his future would look like.
He told USC's second annual Comedy @SCA Festival:
"I didn't know what I was going to do.
I didn't know how I was going to do it.
But I remember thinking, 'It's not going to be medical school, it's not going to be law
school...'"
In the end, Conan obviously settled on a career in show business, putting that intellect to
good work.
"We have 14 kids!
Do something for this family, Conan!"
Geena Davis
Known for her diverse body of work, from the The Fly to Thelma & Louise to A League of
Their Own, Oscar-winner Geena Davis is also a member of Mensa International, a society
for those with IQs in the top 2 percent of the world.
Fluent in Swedish and with a reported IQ of 140, Davis is a certified genius.
Davis almost qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympics with the U.S. archery team, despite
having picked up a bow and arrow for the first time just two years prior.
"I'm Geena Davis, and this is how I arch."
Dolph Lundgren
You may know him best as Ivan Drago, the Terminator-like Soviet boxer who fought Apollo Creed in Rocky
4, but you can also think of Dolph Lundgren as the greatest chemical engineer who never
was.
With a degree in chemical engineering from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology and
a master's degree in the same from the University of Sydney, the 6'5" karate black belt received
the prestigious Fulbright scholarship to attend MIT.
Somebody cast this man as a Bond villain already.
Angela Bassett
Best known for her Oscar-nominated turn as the iconic Tina Turner in 1993's What's Love
Got to Do with It and more recently for her roles in American Horror Story, actress Angela
Bassett became the first person from her high school to be admitted into the National Honor
Society.
She went on to earn two degrees from Yale–a bachelor's in African-American studies and
a master's from Yale School of Drama.
Beauty, brains, and biceps.
Bassett has it all.
Cindy Crawford
Ten years before she became one of the most famous supermodels to walk the Earth, Cindy
Crawford graduated as valedictorian from DeKalb High School in Illinois.
"Because I worked so hard on my academics, I was able to graduate valedictorian."
She was offered an academic scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern
University, Crawford opted to drop out after one semester and pursue a brilliant modeling
career instead.
David Duchovny
Before he became everyone's favorite conspiracy theorist on The X-Files, actor David Duchovny
earned a bachelor's degree in English literature at Princeton and a master's degree in English
from Yale University to fulfill his dream of becoming a poet.
His doctorate from Yale was reportedly cut short after television came calling.
He told The Independent: "You have a fantasy when you're young, that you're going to be
Nietzsche, that you have access to the profoundest truths.
[...] I don't really have anything profound to say.
If I had, I imagine I would have been a philosopher.
But I don't, really.
On the other hand, I'm not an idiot, either."
Natalie Portman
After her breakout role in 1994's The Professional at age 14, Natalie Portman's acting career
wasn't going anywhere but up, and yet, she sought something more.
Portman enrolled at Harvard at the height of her fame.
She explained the decision to the New York Post by saying: "I don't care if college ruins
my career.
I'd rather be smart than a movie star."
She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology, which helped her hone her Oscar-winning performance
in Black Swan, according to former professor Alan Dershowitz, who told The Harvard Crimson:
"She's an actor who uses her academic background."
Emma Watson
She'll always be Hermione Granger to us, but in 2014, Emma Watson proved that she was also
a wizard at muggle schools when she graduated from Brown University with a bachelor's degree
in English literature.
But the road to pomp and circumstance wasn't without its challenges.
She told The Sunday Times:
"On the first day, I walked into the canteen and everyone went completely silent and turned
to look at me.
I had to say to myself, 'It's okay, you can do this.
You just have to take a deep breath and gather your courage.'"
Even though she had to take two semesters off due to work commitments, Watson's smarts
eventually earned her a place among Ivy League alumni.
John Legend
You know his music, but did you know hit-maker and philanthropist John Legend graduated high
school at the ripe old age of 16?
According to The New York Times, Legend "fielded scholarship offers from Harvard, Georgetown
and Morehouse before settling on the University of Pennsylvania."
While in college, he was introduced to Lauryn Hill and Kanye West, and the rest was history
for this musical prodigy.
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