GRADE A-LIST CELEBS
Stars who proved they’re not just a pretty face
IT came as a shock. The Kardashians are famous for many things but academic achievement isn’t the first that springs to mind.
But for the past year, Kim Kardashian has been studying law. While her father, Robert, was a lawyer who successfully defended OJ Simpson at his 1995 murder trial, Kim has spent most of her life studying how to pout and break the internet with naked selfies.
She’s also a mother of three with her fourth, and second via a surrogate, on its way.
But she’s not the first Kardashian to show her brains rather than her boobs. Eldest sister Kourtney has a degree in theatre arts.
Here are more stars who aren’t just pretty faces and have gone on to academic glory after becoming famous. ● Emma Watson was a global superstar playing Hermione in the Harry Potter films.
She enrolled at Brown University in the US in 2009. She dropped out but returned, graduating with a degree in English literature in 2014.
● Jodie Foster found fame as a child star in Bugsy Malone and Taxi Driver before she went to Yale in 1981. While she tried to study, John Hinckley Jr stalked her on campus and shot US president Ronald Reagan in a bid to get her attention.
Jodie graduated in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in literature.
● After finding fame in the second wave of Star Wars films, Natalie Portman decided to study degrees in psychology and neuroscience at Harvard University in 1999. The actress continued to make films and graduated in 2003.
● James Franco is a workaholic who likes to juggle lots of different projects. In 2006 the actor who had found fame in Spider-Man as Harry Osborn enrolled at UCLA in the US for a English degree, graduating in 2008. He also enrolled in Columbia’s MFA writing programme, Brooklyn College’s fiction writing program, and NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts.
● There’s nothing desperate about Eva Longoria. A year after finishing Desperate Housewives in 2012 in which she played Gabrielle Solis, Longoria earned a master’s degree from California State University Northridge in Chicano and Chicana studies.
On her graduation day, she tweeted: “You’re never too old or too busy to continue your education.”
● Comedian Sir Lenny Henry proved that having brains is no laughing matter.
He enrolled in the Open University, graduating with a degree in English Literature (BA Hons) in 2007.
He went on to study for an MA at the University of London in screenwriting for television and film, receiving a distinction, and in 2010 began studying for a PhD, which he was awarded last year.
● Another child actress who went to college before going back to movies, Brooke Shields, was a huge star in the 80s thanks to films like The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love.
She was also a successful model but in 1987 she graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in French literature.
● Dakota Fanning was seven when she starred in I Am Sam in 2001, going on to star in films such as The Cat in the Hat, War of the Worlds and Charlotte’s Web. She acted in the Twilight franchise while studying from 2011 at the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study, majoring in women’s studies with an emphasis on the “portrayal of women in film and culture.”
● Steven Spielberg is one of film’s greatest directors, with three Oscars and a back catalogue including Jaws, Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, but in 2001 he went back to college and earned a BA degree at California State University 33 years after he dropped out.
● Her hips don’t lie but Shakira did, kind of, when she dressed in boyish clothes and called herself Isabelle to go to UCLA and study history in 2007. The Columbian took the short course over the summer.
● QUEEN guitarist brian May was already a brainbox before he became a musical riff legend in Queen. The guitarist had a bSc in Mathematics and Physics from Imperial College London and was studying for a PhD from 1970-4 before becoming a rock god came calling and writing hits like We Will Rock you and Fat bottomed Girls. He returned to academia in 2006 to finish off that PhD – in astrophysics.