17 Celebrities That Are Smarter Than Great Scientists

Famous Colombian singer, Shakira, was only 4 years old when she wrote her first poem. At the age of 13, she already had her first album. The average IQ is 100, and Shakira has 140, enough for her to get an invitation to Mensa, the world’s oldest high IQ society.

Any IQ score that goes over 140 is considered as entering a genius territory. She never went to college, but she had a dream of becoming an anthropologist, a person who studies people within the present and past societies. Shakira speaks Spanish, English, French, Arabic, Portuguese, and Italian.

Alicia Keys is an extremely talented musician and a Grammy winner. She started with classical piano lessons when she was 7, and after there was nothing left she could learn from her teacher, so she moved to study jazz when she was 14. At the age of 16, she already got a scholarship to Columbia University. Alicia was a straight-A student, but she left the university in the first semester because she wanted to work on her own music. It seemed like the right decision because at that point, her music adventure got to a whole new level — she got a contract with Columbia Records by the following year.

Natalie Portman was only 11 years old when she got a role in her first film — which was French. She appeared in theaters as well, won an Oscar for Black Swan. But, even though she’s very successful in it, an acting career has never been her first choice. She also got a degree in psychology from Harvard in 2003 and has been published in scientific journals — twice. Natalie can speak 5 languages [English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese] and has an IQ of 140.

Cindy Crawford, another extremely intelligent celebrity, was always an A student. She was even valedictorian as she was graduating from high school. She was specifically into Science, eventually even got a scholarship to study chemical engineering, but ditched school to start her super modeling career. Sharon Stone got to the second grade at the age of 5. Her teachers encouraged her to do so because they noticed how intelligent she was. With an IQ of 154 which means she’s in the top 0.1 percent of the world’s smartest population. She was only 15 when she got accepted to college — and got a scholarship too. She later studied creative writing and fine arts.

Ashton Kutcher was about to be accepted to both Purdue and MIT, where he was supposed to study engineering. But, he lost the scholarship opportunity since one of his pranks was breaking into his high school. He enrolled in the University of Iowa but left it when he was 19 to become a model. He has an IQ of 160 and used his intelligence to build himself as a truly hardworking individual — and he worked hard whichever job he had. He has gained valuable life experience through different positions. For example, he was a janitor, even ended up working as a butcher.

His high IQ puts him in the exceptionally gifted category — together with, for example, Einstein, who also had an IQ of 160. Even though he was a genius, Einstein’s success didn’t come all at once. After he had graduated, he struggled to find a job as a teacher for 2 years. Physics wasn’t the most important thing for him back then. He was actually passionate about music and couldn’t imagine life without it. Playing the violin and the piano helped him to clear his thoughts.

Stephen Hawking was another genius scientist with an IQ of 160 and one of the biggest theoretical physicists of our age. He was the one who claimed our Universe started as an infinitely dense and infinitely small point — which means the Big Bang, the way science today describes how the Universe was formed. He talked a lot about black holes, Hawking radiation — which is the thermal radiation science now believes is emitted by black holes — and many other intriguing things about space.

Writer, producer, podcaster, television host, and comedian — Conan O’Brien certainly juggles with lots of exciting professions. He graduated from Harvard and was a history and literature major. The school newspaper gave him the title of his class’s “pre-eminent jokester”. He’s also a part of the “I have a 160 IQ” club.

One of ’Friends’ stars, Lisa Kudrow, has an IQ of 154. She got a bachelor’s degree in Biology and worked with her father for a while since he was a physician. But, she eventually went in a different direction — a popular sitcom was the starting point in her acting career, but she’s also a talented award-nominee producer!

Kate Beckinsale was in many famous movies but is an academic overachiever too! At a very young age, she won the prestigious WH Smith Young Writers competition twice — once for poetry, another time for fiction. She studied French literature at Oxford, which she enrolled in when she was only 17. She dropped out to start building her acting career. But some time ago, she said she had run into her old French tutor, which made her reconsider going back to school to finish her degree 26 years later. Not just Hollywood, take a look at the sports!

Tiger Woods has an IQ of 145. He’s an American golfer and an extremely gifted player who became a prodigy at a very young age. He was the youngest winner of the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship — it happened in 1991, and he was only 15 years old. He dropped out of college to chase his dream to become a professional golf player — and later said the only thing he regretted was not spending another year at Stanford, where he had actually studied.

Quentin Tarantino — another famous person with an IQ of 160. He was only 14 years old when he wrote one of his first works — and started thinking about his next screenplay right away. He never liked school, so he didn’t go to college. The only thing he liked was his history classes because those were like the movies for him. Tarantino even dropped out of high school to dedicate his time to his filming career and work on some of the most awarded movies of all time. He won 2 Oscars.

Matt Damon began to write the script for Good Will Hunting while he was still at the college. In fact, he had an assignment from a playwriting course that helped him develop a rough version for that movie. He attended Harward University but never graduated. But, he did win an Academy Award in the category for Best Original Screenplay with his childhood friend Ben Affleck, who completed the project with him. Even though he left the college to pursue an acting career, the Crimson school still gave him the prestigious Harvard Arts Medal.

The opposite of giddy yet charming Mr. Bean, the character who made him famous all over the world, Rowan Atkinson was an excellent student with the best grades back at school. He has an extremely high IQ — 178. He went to Newcastle University, where he studied engineering, and then to Oxford to master Science. He spent some time in that field, but he transferred to an acting career. He managed to make the audience laugh in movie after movie while barely speaking.

Jodie Foster appeared on TV for the first time when she was only 3 years old. That’s when she learned to read. At the age of 12, she already had a role in the movie Taxi Driver. When she was 18, she took a break from her acting career and enrolled at Yale.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has gone through a transition from actor to actor-producer-director. But, between that, he went to Columbia University to study French poetry, history, and literature. He always thought the teacher was the one that matters, not which class you were taking. After three years, he dropped out of college because he wanted to return to acting but kept a reputation as one of the more intellectual actors in Hollywood.

Eva Longoria has always been pretty independent and earned her own money from a young age. She worked hard because she wanted to help her family. And during high school, she worked at a restaurant. She also has a master’s degree in Chicano Studies from Cal State Northridge University.