There’s a lot of celebrities out there, so it makes sense a few would have crossed-paths
in the past, especially in college.
What stars knew each other back in the day?
What famous actor knew Mike Pence?
Keep watching to find out.
It's no secret that "Frozen" star Kristen Bell loves musical theater.
Years before she was a teen detective in "Veronica Mars," Bell played the spunky Becky Thatcher
on Broadway in a production of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," and she's been singing ever
since.
In the early 2010s, there was no bigger musical theater story in pop culture than the dominance
of "Glee," so it's only natural that Bell would have been a massive Gleek.
She once told Ross Mathews at a Sundance event that she likes to play "Glee" songs during
photoshoots.
She said,
"It's the only thing to jam to and everyone laughed at me, and I'm like, 'Really?
Really?
Put the songs on, try not to shake your hips.'"
However, it was more than her love of theater that drew her to the show.
She told Us Weekly,
"I actually went to college with Matty Morrison.
We actually dated very briefly, so I'll have to say maybe Matt Morrison is my favorite
part of 'Glee' for various reasons."
The two met at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts; Bell left school to be on Broadway,
and Morrison was still a student when he joined a parody boy band called Fresh Step.
As "Riverdale" fans know, Jughead romances Betty, while her best friend Veronica gets
with Jughead's BFF Archie.
Despite all the spooky relationship drama on the show, Jughead and Veronica haven't
spent much time together, just the two of them.
Turns out the actors have a past behind-the-scenes connection, though — even if it's more distant
than Camila Mendes, who plays Veronica, would have liked.
Mendes went to NYU at the same time as Cole Sprouse and his twin brother Dylan.
The two were already uber-famous from their years spent at the Tipton Hotel on "The Suite
Life of Zack & Cody," and a pre-fame Mendes kept an eye out for the stars around campus.
She told Office magazine,
"I saw [Cole] around, and there was a time when we had class in the same building, so
I would always see him outside.
He was a weirdo!"
She explained that she occasionally talked to Dylan at parties, but that Cole was the
shy twin, so they never really spoke much.
She added,
"Cole always laughs when I tell him that because I remember meeting him on certain occasions
and he doesn't.
I'm always like, 'Fine!
Whatever!
Sorry I'm not a child star!'"
"Does he not know who I am?"
Even still, they've been close ever since their "Riverdale" audition, about which Mendes
told Nylon,
"We bonded over the fact that we both sweat a lot before auditions."
Sounds like this friendship was destined to be!
A recording of John Mulaney and Nick Kroll's Broadway show, "Oh, Hello on Broadway" was
released on Netflix in 2017, but the quirky play was far from the first time the pair
have worked together.
In fact, they met long before Mulaney appeared on "The Nick Kroll Show" or "Big Mouth," while
both were students at Georgetown University.
Mulaney told CBS News,
"I was doing improv comedy in an improv group called The Georgetown Players Improv Group."
The name of the director of the group?
Nick Kroll, who was a senior that cast Mulaney after seeing his audition.
Kroll told NPR,
"I just immediately was like, 'Wow, this kid is funny,'"
The encounter meant a lot to John Mulaney, even years later.
"Had I not met Nick that day [my life] really would have been a different path."
Both comedians view that day as an influential one in their later career paths.
Kroll said,
"We just clicked and immediately enjoyed working together."
They have gone on to collaborate many times, and their friendship is so well-known that
the Bronx Zoo named two of its residents after the pair.
"There are two hissing cockroaches at the Bronx Zoo named Nick Kroll and John Mulaney."
In 2017, Glenn Close delivered a tearful speech to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation,
describing her memories on the set of "The World According to Garp", recounting the friendship
between late actors Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve.
She said that Reeve would fly in to set on Friday nights, quote, "scoop Robin up," and
take him away for the weekend.
"Their friendship, their connection, is the stuff of legend.
It not only endured, but became a life-giving force sustaining them both.
I am convinced that if Chris were still with us, Robin would be, too."
The "Superman" and "Mrs. Doubtfire" actors initially met when they were roommates at
Juilliard, both studying acting.
In his memoir "Still Me," Reeve wrote that Williams was the first person he met at school.
He remembered,
"I'd never seen so much energy contained in one person.
He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and immediately released.
[...] There was never a moment when he wasn't doing voices, imitating teachers, and making
our faces ache from laughing at his antics."
Williams shared his own favorite memory of Reeve at school during a Reddit AMA, writing,
"[Reeve was] literally feeding me because I don't think I literally had money for food
or my student loan hadn't come in yet, and he would share his food with me."
Tommy Lee Jones said at the Democratic National Convention in 2000,
"Al Gore has been one of my closest friends since the day we met on the first day of college
35 years ago."
This was during the speech that served as Gore's official nomination for the presidency.
Jones added,
"He is a good, caring, loving man."
The two met at Harvard and quickly became inseparable.
They initially lived across the hall and then moved in together, according to the Harvard
Crimson.
A friend recalled to The Washington Post,
"There was this funny little dynamic going, as if Tommy Lee was the occasion for Al to
assert his [Southern] roots."
At the DNC, Jones regaled the crowd with tales of what Gore was like to live with.
He explained,
"We shot pool, and we watched 'Star Trek' when maybe we should have been studying for
exams."
He added that one year they had Thanksgiving in their dorm, just the two of them, roasting
a turkey in the fireplace in their room.
He joked,
"I know from Tipper that that has been some of the most ambitious cooking that Albert
has done since then."
For his part, Gore told the Harvard Crimson in a statement that Jones is a great guy and
a wonderful, lifelong friend.
Gore would ultimately lose the presidency to George W. Bush, never moving into the Oval
Office.
He has that in common with his actor friend, who has never played a president on screen.
It's normal for friends from college to drift apart after graduation.
Somewhat less common, though, is having your college friend marry into the family of one
of the most controversial presidents in American history.
It’s even worse if that friend were to become a crucial part of crafting the policies that
made said president so divisive.
Well, that's what happened to Natalie Portman.
Man, would we love to get a peek at the Famous Harvard Alum group chats that must have been
going around during the Trump administration.
Natalie Portman told Stephen Colbert about her old pal Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka
Trump.
She said,
"We were friendly."
They were close enough college pals that Natalie attended Jared and Ivanka's wedding in 2009.
The Kushners went to Natalie Portman's own 2012 wedding to Benjamin Millepied.
Nowadays, though, they aren't exactly best friends.
After hesitantly agreeing with what Stephen Colbert heard — that Kushner wasn't that
great of a student — Portman continued,
"What can I say on TV ... I don't know.
Unfortunately...
there's not a lot funny to say about someone you were friends with becoming a supervillain.
So, you know, it's not funny."
"I would watch that movie, though."
The star didn't hold back, telling Colbert,
"Kushner said in some interview that the friends he's lost because of politics, it's like exfoliating."
Colbert joked that Portman is now just a dead skin cell to Kushner, and she emphatically
confirmed, saying, quote, "Proudly."
Stanley Tucci won a Golden Globe for best actor in a miniseries or a motion picture
made for television, recognizing his role in the HBO film "Winchell."
And who presented the award?
Legendary actor Alfre Woodard and "Pulp Fiction" star Ving Rhames, who was presenting because
he had won the previous year.
Rhames broke out into a grin when the winning name was announced.
After hugging his friend, he told the audience,
"We went to college together, and he gave me the name Ving.
My real name is Irving."
The two were roommates in college, having lived together while they studied drama at
the State University of New York's Conservatory of Theater Arts in Purchase, via Daily Beast.
They asked Tucci if he gets royalties any time someone uses the nickname "Ving," and
he joked,
"I should.
It's an outrage!"
Their alma mater seems proud of these former students.
In 2021, the college tweeted a link to an article about their relationship, which they
called "iconic."
"9-1-1" star Angela Bassett and "American Crime Story" actor Courtney B. Vance have
one of the strongest relationships in Hollywood, having been married since 1997.
They have two kids together and even starred opposite one another in Melvin Van Peebles'
1995 film "Panther."
While their romantic relationship dates back decades, the two have known each other even
longer, though they didn't actually get together for a while.
Vance told Wendy Williams that the duo first met at the Yale School of Drama, long before
they were romantic.
He said,
"She was leaving as I was coming in.
She was helping me, showing me around.
She was with somebody at the time, and I was with somebody at the time.
We were friends for 13 years."
It wasn't until years later that they tried a romantic relationship, but even that got
off to a rocky start.
"We went on a date, and it wasn't good."
Williams pressed him for details, and he explained,
"We were friends, and the transition to lovers is...tricky.
The first date was tricky."
Bassett, on the other hand, seems to have had her eye on Vance for a bit longer.
On "The Oprah Winfrey Show," she described her first memories of the man who would later
become her husband.
She said,
"I do, most definitely, remember him.
He was tallish, dark, skinny, and just alluring."
Actor Woody Harrelson has lived a life of, quote, "extreme hedonism," as he told Jimmy
Kimmel, which the actor said required him to put religion on hold.
In his younger days, however, Harrelson attended Hanover College in Indiana on a Presbyterian
scholarship, and he thought he might someday like to be a minister.
Future Vice President Mike Pence attended Hanover at the same time, and the two knew
one another.
Harrelson told Kimmel,
"I actually quite liked him.
I thought he was a pretty good guy.
He's very religious, very committed."
Harrelson expanded on their relationship when he appeared on WTF with Marc Maron.
He said,
"I did a [sermon] when I was at Hanover College, and in fact, this is kind of bizarre, but
Mike Pence was two years older at the same school [...] He was the guy who kind of led
me through it [...] mentored me through it."
Surprised, Maron asked if Pence was the same at the time as the host viewed him years later.
Harrelson responded,
"No, not at all.
We weren't buddies or anything, but he was very religious."
He explained that Pence was head of the student club for those who might be interested in
the ministry.
Harrelson said on "Jimmy Kimmel Live,"
"Seeing as how I'm not quite in that ballpark now.
I don't know how we'd get along."
"I think he’s still quite religious."
Owen Wilson has starred in a number of films directed by Wes Anderson, including "The Grand
Budapest Hotel" and "The Royal Tenenbaums."
However, their relationship stretches back even longer than "Bottle Rocket," their first
film.
The twosome met while they were students at the University of Texas at Austin.
They took playwriting classes together and ultimately became roommates because they got
along so well.
Texas Monthly asked them about their early collaborations in those days, and Anderson
joked,
"I wrote a term paper for Owen, although that wasn't exactly a collaborative effort."
They wound up writing "Bottle Rocket" together, in part inspired by a feud they were having
with their landlord.
Looking back at those early nuggets of friendship, Wilson can't believe how far they've come.
In 2021, he told IndieWire,
"I'll probably see Wes here in Cannes, and to think about us being roommates in Austin,
Texas, at University of Texas, you know, meeting in playwriting class.
It just seems wild that now we're attending the Cannes Film Festival together."
Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke
Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance weren't the only future celebs who met because one
showed the other around Yale.
Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke were first introduced to each other as co-stars.
On Showtime's "Desus & Mero," Nyong'o explained that she encountered Duke when he was still
a prospective student, in New Haven, Connecticut, for his callback audition for the School of
Drama.
She said,
"I was assigned to Winston to show him around campus."
Duke told Esquire,
"She and I became really close because we shared that immigrant experience.
We shared the idea of having really big dreams knowing that we'd left our own country."
Their friendship was one of destiny on several levels.
In addition to leading the Jordan Peele horror movie as spouses, Nyong'o and Duke also co-starred
in Marvel's "Black Panther."
The young friends even went and saw the original "Avengers" team-up together while in New Haven,
Nyong'o revealed on "Desus & Mero."
She said,
"We were dreaming together about, 'Oh, wouldn't it be nice to be in one of those.'"
Duke said to Esquire,
"We would always tell ourselves that they're going to [put a Black Marvel superhero on
screen] someday, but we could never tell who."
"Wakanda forever!"
Turns out the missing ingredient they couldn't visualize was each other.
While at Cambridge University, young acting student Dan Stevens met a fellow thespian
named Rebecca Hall when they were cast opposite one another in a production of Macbeth.
Rebecca's father is Peter Hall, legendary theater director and founder of the Royal
Shakespeare Company.
He was so impressed by Dan Stevens' performance that he cast him as Orlando in "As You Like
It" alongside his daughter as Rosalind.
The production received rave reviews, and the rest of their friendship is history.
After Cambridge, they remained close.
Stevens told Daily Mail,
"Rebecca and I lived together — but never romantically."
The two have stayed friends as both of their careers have taken off.
Hall told Film Inquiry,
"I'm godmother to his kid, and he used to live down the road from us in Brooklyn."
Stevens went on to star in "Downton Abbey," while Hall worked steadily as an actor and
moved into directing in 2021 with the release of her first film, "Passing."
When they starred in the film "Permission" together, Stevens told Collider that knowing
one another for so long helped them have, quote, "an instant shorthand" on set.
He said,
"I got a kick out of working with Rebecca [...] Feeling that creative electricity was
really lovely."
Hall agreed, commenting,
"I don't have anything salacious to say about it because it's fun.
We [are] so lucky to get to work with our friends, and to be so lucky as to have friends
that are really talented."
Brooke Shields' memoir "There Was A Little Girl" is a touching account of her lifelong
relationship with her controversial mother, Teri.
She was roundly criticized in the press for allowing her daughter to model and act at
a young age.
In the book, Shields includes a section about her college boyfriend, a Princeton football
star by the name of Dean Cain.
She wrote,
"We were instantly crazy about each other.
We were a golden couple and everybody loved us together."
She said that they shared the same sense of humor and that Cain — who would grow up
to be Superman in "Lois & Clark" — was not intimidated by the fact that she was already
famous.
She also describes the night she lost her virginity to Cain, writing that the experience
was beautiful and what you would wish for your daughter.
Unfortunately, she was wracked with guilt and shame afterwards, which led to the beginning
of the end for their relationship.
Cain confirmed to Meredith Viera that Shields asked him for permission to write about the
experience in her book.
He shared,
"We're still great friends.
What I said to her was, 'I trust you implicitly, and anything you're gonna write, I'm sure
is gonna be honest and straightforward.'"
He also said that they were in love, and they were college sweethearts and that he isn't
ashamed of anything that happened.
So, he told her, quote, "Write away."
When Busy Phillips filled in for Ryan Seacrest as co-host of "Live with Kelly and Ryan,"
the guest for the show was Colin Hanks.
Before Hanks came out on set, Philipps revealed that he was her college boyfriend, and that
they dated when they were both students at Loyola Marymount University.
She said,
"We dated for a long time, actually."
"We were young!
We were babies!
We were kids!"
They even attended the red carpet premieres of Hanks' father's movies "Toy Story 2" and
"The Green Mile" together.
Deflating any awkward tension, Philipps explained to an awestruck Kelly Ripa that it was totally
cool they happened to be scheduled on the same show.
He said that they're on great terms and their families go on vacations together.
Hanks noted on the talk show that he's grateful for their long-lasting friendship, revealing
that they were cast on their first TV shows the same exact week.
He said,
"We were able to go through all of these really special moments in young actors' lives together,
and now we also get to do, you know, morning school drop-off together."
The following year, though, Busy Philipps joked about having second thoughts about the
friendship on twitter.
She tweeted a link to an article titled, "If Your Ex Wants To Stay Friends, He Might Be
A Psychopath," tagging Hanks in the tweet and captioning it with three simple shrugging emojis.
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