25 surprising celebrity facts
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Angelina Jolie's uncle, James Voight, known by his stage name Chip Taylor, wrote the song "Wild Thing." He also wrote the song "Angel of the Morning." -
Matthew McConaughey sometimes has to stop eating because he claims to get too sexually aroused by the food. -
The title role of the 1971 movie "Dirty Harry" was originally intended for Frank Sinatra. After he refused, it was offered to John Wayne and Paul Newman, before finally being accepted by Clint Eastwood. -
Jack Nicholson was raised by his grandparents and thought that his mom June was really his sister. He didn't find out the truth until 1974 when a Time magazine reporter researched his life and uncovered his lie. -
Matthew Perry is missing part of his middle finger on his right hand due to a door-shutting accident in a nursery school. -
Jake Gyllenhaal got his first driving lesson from family friend and godfather Paul Newman. -
Before succeeding in the movie industry, director James Cameron was a truck and school bus driver. -
Taylor Lautner was a junior world karate champion several times years running and earned his black belt at age 8. -
"The Hangover" and "Community" star Ken Jeong played the doctor in 2007's "Knocked Up" but that's not where he got the nickname "Dr. Ken." The Michigan native is actually a physician. He got his M.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1995. -
Justin Timberlake won the 1991 pre-teen Mr. America Pageant at the age 10. The following year he was the first male to win America's Universal Charm Pageant. -
A childhood virus left Rob Lowe completely dear in his right ear. "No stereo for me," he once told an interviewer. "It's a mono world." -
Uma Thurman's dad is a Tibetian Buddist monk. Robert Thurman was the first Westerner to be ordained into the religion. He is also a professor of Indo-Tibetian Buddist Studies at Columbia University. -
Halle Berry was actually named after a department store. The actress was born Maria Halle Berry and her parents chose her middlle name a tribute to Halle's Department Store, a local Cleveland landmark. -
Brad Pitt once worked as a mascot for El Pollo Loco. He also worked as a chauffeur and had several other odd jobs before becoming famous. -
As a teenager, Matt Damon earned extra cash as a sidewalk break-dancer. -
Comic actor Jack Black is the son of rocket scientists. His mother worked on the Hubble telescope, and his father worked on "some stuff that I can't tell you about," as Black has joked in the past. -
As a child, Jim Carrey wore tap shoes to bed just in case his parents needed cheering up in the middle of the night. -
Actor Kurt Russell once played minor league baseball for two years before tearing a shoulder muscle. -
Former "Friends" star Lisa Kudrow has a degree in sociobiology, which she used to research headaches before she broke into acting. -
Madonna is related to both Gwen Stefani and Celine Dion. Stefani's great-aunt's mother-in-law shares the same last name as Madonna Ciccone. An ancestor of Madonna's mother was married to a distant relative of Dion's dad.
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Mariah Carey was nicknamed "Mirage" in high school because she never showed up for class. -
Both Olsen twins had to wear fake teeth during the later years of "Full House" because their smiles began to look different. -
He may not seem all that flexible these days, but Richard Gere was really good at gymnastics when he was younger. He attended the University of Massachusetts-Amherst on a gymnastics scholarship, majoring in philosophy, but he didn't graduate. -
Rihanna was an army cadet who trained with the Barbadian military and fellow singer Shontelle was her drill sergeant. -
Tom Cruise once enrolled in a Francisian seminary in Cincinnati to become a priest but dropped out early after one year.
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