# Surprisingly Deep Celebrities



## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 28, 2008)

Not all celebrities are as troubled or vacuous as the current crop of A-listers sometimes seems to be.  Some of them have more than just charisma, and are genuine intellectuals, or are prominent in fields other than what makes them famous.

I was reading this article about geniuses in Hollywood:
http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/celebrity/becksmith.jsp?p=bsf_notdumbblondes

Of course, it wasn't a comprehensive list...

Two celebs not on that list that spring to mind for me:

Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, guitarist for the Doobie Brothers & Steely Dan --> Defense Consultant & chairs a Congressional Advisory Board on missile defense.

Brian May, guitarist for Queen --> PhD in Astrophysics.

Any other (not neccessarily genius) celeb surprises out there?


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## jaerdaph (Jan 28, 2008)

I think the biggest surprise for me was Marilyn Manson when I first saw him interviewed in _Bowling for Columbine_. He gave a great interview on Henry Rollins' show too.


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## kenobi65 (Jan 28, 2008)

You beat me to Brian May, Danny.  He also built his own electric guitar (with help from his father) when he was a teenager -- a guitar that he still plays today.

Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe in "Friends") got her degree in Psychobiology from Vassar, and was going to go into medical research with her father (a doctor), when she got sidetracked into acting.  The irony, of course, is that she's now best-known for playing a complete ditz.

Curt Schilling, pitcher for the Red Sox, is a wargamer, and one of the founders of Multi-man Publishing, which puts out Advanced Squad Leader, among other games.


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## Zander (Jan 28, 2008)

I saw an interview with Morgan Freeman once that impressed me. I don't know if he's a genius per se, but he's certainly articulate and came across as very bright.

Hugh Grant has an upper second class degree in English from Oxford (my alma mater!). There are a number of other British actors who are very smart but perhaps not well known outside of the UK, Stephen Fry for example.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 28, 2008)

I knew about May's guitar- I've been trying to acquire an Burns' Guitars authorized Red Special for some time now...  

Rollins & Schilling I'd heard about as well.

I knew about Kudrow, and I also recall there were some similarly gifted "ditz-cast" blonde-bombshell actresses from the days of B&W film...unfortunately, their names escape me at the moment.


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## Barendd Nobeard (Jan 28, 2008)

Jayne Mansfield supposedly had a genius-level IQ (163), despite a career as a "poor man's Marilyn Monroe."  She is most famous today as the mother of Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU).


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## Barendd Nobeard (Jan 28, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> and I also recall there were some similarly gifted "ditz-cast" blonde-bombshell actresses from the days of B&W film...unfortunately, their names escape me at the moment.




See my previous post.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 28, 2008)

_THANK YOU!_

That is EXACTLY whose name I was trying to recall!


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## kenobi65 (Jan 28, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> II knew about Kudrow, and I also recall there were some similarly gifted "ditz-cast" blonde-bombshell actresses from the days of B&W film...unfortunately, their names escape me at the moment.




I've read that Gracie Allen (George Burns's wife), whose "in-character" persona was a ditz, was actually quite intelligent in real life.


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## bento (Jan 29, 2008)

When Peter Weller (Robo-Cop)'s acting career hit a wall in the mid-1990s he decided to go back and get a post-graduate degree in art history.  He's now a part-time lecturer at Syracuse University.

http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/01/robocop_phd.html


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## Yalius (Jan 29, 2008)

Hedy Lamarr patented spread spectrum communications during WWII.


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## Kahuna Burger (Jan 29, 2008)

Dolph Lundgren had been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to complete his PhD in chemical engineering at MIT when he met an acting coach in NYC and decided to give it a whirl.


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## Plane Sailing (Jan 29, 2008)

Barendd Nobeard said:
			
		

> Jayne Mansfield supposedly had a genius-level IQ (163), despite a career as a "poor man's Marilyn Monroe."  She is most famous today as the mother of Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU).




Oh, I don't know - I would have said that Jayne Mansfield is still most famous for being Jayne Mansfield (I've never heard of Mariska Hargitay )


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## Wulf Ratbane (Jan 29, 2008)

Plane Sailing said:
			
		

> Oh, I don't know - I would have said that Jayne Mansfield is still most famous for being Jayne Mansfield (I've never heard of Mariska Hargitay )




See, if you lived in the states, you'd be able to tune in to Law and Order at any hour of the day on dozens of different networks.

She's a looker. Now I know where she got it from!

http://images.google.com/images?cli...n&q=mariska+hargitay&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2


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## kenobi65 (Jan 29, 2008)

Yalius said:
			
		

> Hedy Lamarr patented spread spectrum communications during WWII.




That's Hedley!


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## Tonguez (Jan 29, 2008)

I would have said that Jayne Mansfield is still most famous for cleavage


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## kenobi65 (Jan 29, 2008)

Tonguez said:
			
		

> I would have said that Jayne Mansfield is still most famous for cleavage




That, and dying in a most grisly fashion.


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## DaveyJones (Jan 29, 2008)

didn't one of the recent playmates of the year speak like 7 languages and have a doctorate?


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## kenobi65 (Jan 29, 2008)

DaveyJones said:
			
		

> didn't one of the recent playmates of the year speak like 7 languages and have a doctorate?




Dunno...though, the doctorate strikes me as unlikely, given that, unless you're Doogie Howser and enter college at age 13, you aren't finishing your PhD before your late 20s, at the earliest, and, while Playboy has frequently featured "older" celebrities in pictorals, the Playmates are almost always around 20-22 years old.


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## DaveyJones (Jan 29, 2008)

kenobi65 said:
			
		

> Dunno...though, the doctorate strikes me as unlikely, given that, unless you're Doogie Howser and enter college at age 13, you aren't finishing your PhD before your late 20s, at the earliest, and, while Playboy has frequently featured "older" celebrities in pictorals, the Playmates are almost always around 20-22 years old.



she did enter school at a very young age. i think she graduated college at age 17 or thereabouts.


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## DaveyJones (Jan 29, 2008)

found her:

Victoria Zdrok

she has a JD from Villanova
and a PhD too from someplace else.


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## kenobi65 (Jan 29, 2008)

DaveyJones said:
			
		

> found her:
> 
> Victoria Zdrok
> 
> ...




Aha.  That explains it.  She was in Playboy in 1994, when she was 21/22 years old.  She apparently graduated from West Chester University at age 18.  She may well have gotten the advanced degrees (particularly the PhD) *after* appearing in Playboy....though, according to her entry in Wikipedia, she was also in Penthouse at age 30, in 2002 or so.

I got hung up in semantics...she wasn't a PhD who appeared in Playboy, she was a Playboy Playmate who later got a PhD.


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## Graybeard (Jan 29, 2008)

Peter Weller also hosts shows on the History Channel from time to time about ancient Rome.


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## Tewligan (Jan 29, 2008)

Graybeard said:
			
		

> Peter Weller also hosts shows on the History Channel from time to time about ancient Rome.



"Today, most historians believe that the fall of Rome was a direct result of that damn ED-209."


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## Thunderfoot (Jan 30, 2008)

Danny - I'm surprised at you...

You name Skunk Baxter and Brian May and *MISSED *Tom Scholz
Lead guitarist for Boston and creator of the Rockman - the personal guitar practice amp he built out of spare camera parts... Graduate and Masters (I think) from MIT in Electrical Engineering.


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## Zander (Jan 31, 2008)

*Sorry for the OT question...*



			
				kenobi65 said:
			
		

> Dunno...though, the doctorate strikes me as unlikely, given that, unless you're Doogie Howser and enter college at age 13, you aren't finishing your PhD before your late 20s, at the earliest....



Hello, Mike   

How late is "late"? I was only 26 when I completed mine.


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## kenobi65 (Jan 31, 2008)

Zander said:
			
		

> Hello, Mike




Hey, Zander!



			
				Zander said:
			
		

> How late is "late"? I was only 26 when I completed mine.




Hmm.  I may be thinking about it from a US-centric standpoint, and from my personal experience, and that of some friends of mine (which may not be typical).  Assuming one starts college at 18 or so, and goes "straight through"....
- 4 years for your Bachelor's degree
- Another year or 2 for your Master's
- Another 3 (at least) for your PhD

Add that all up, and that gets you 27, which, I suppose, isn't that far different from you.  YMMV, of course. 

What I was initially reacting to was the idea of a 21 (or so)-year-old with a PhD.  Even though she did whip through school, it sounds like she might have gotten the PhD after she was a Playmate.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Feb 1, 2008)

> Danny - I'm surprised at you...



_NoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo!_     

I must apologize to Mr. Scholz.

(FWIW, even though he's not technically a "celeb," good old Bruce R. Cordell has some alphabet soup behind his name, too.)

Geraldo Rivera has a J.D.- yet another reason to hate my profession- and was an investigator for the NYPD at one time.


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## LightPhoenix (Feb 1, 2008)

bento said:
			
		

> When Peter Weller (Robo-Cop)'s acting career hit a wall in the mid-1990s he decided to go back and get a post-graduate degree in art history.  He's now a part-time lecturer at Syracuse University.
> 
> http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/01/robocop_phd.html




I'm totally going to try and sit in on his class now, even though it has nothing to do with my grad work.


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## Justin (Feb 4, 2008)

Here are two that I happened to remember vague details about and IMDB confirmed:

Ilan Mitchell-Smith, who played Anthony Michael Hall's friend, Wyatt, in _Weird Science_, is a Professor of History at Texas A&M.

David Duchovny has a graduate degree in English Lit from Yale.


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## Zander (Feb 4, 2008)

Justin said:
			
		

> David Duchovny has a graduate degree in English Lit from Yale.



 Yup, and did his undergraduate studies at Princeton.

Masi Oka, the actor who plays Hiro Nakamura in _Heroes_, has a BS in computer science and maths from Brown. When he's not acting, he works as a digital effects artist. His digital work appears in such films as _SW_ I, II and III, _Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest_ and _Terminator 3_.

I don't know if John Astin who played Gomez in the original _Addams Family_ TV series counts as a celebrity, but if he does, he desrves a mention. He studied at Johns Hopkins and teaches there now.

Wes Craven is also a Hopkins graduate.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 4, 2010)

I necro my own thread because of new info I just found:

Robert A. Leonard, Ph.D., Professor of Linguistics at Hofstra University. His specialty is Forensic Linguistics as applied to U.S. law.

Never heard of him?  He was a founding member of Sha Na Na- the lineup that played Woodstock- singing & playing bass.

None of which is recorded in the group's Wiki...which reveals that these guys weren't a collection of knuckleheads!  Several former members of this band are professors or medical doctors.


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## Darth Shoju (Aug 4, 2010)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Geraldo Rivera has a J.D.- yet another reason to hate my profession- and was an investigator for the NYPD at one time.




Geraldo's a jerk now, but at one time he was a fairly respected journalist, wasn't he? (though I could be pulling that from my arse).


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## Joker (Aug 4, 2010)

Darth Shoju said:


> Geraldo's a jerk now, but at one time he was a fairly respected journalist, wasn't he? (though I could be pulling that from my arse).




It's only a matter of time before Evil™ takes over when you decide to keep a stache like that.


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## Starman (Aug 5, 2010)

Speaking of Brian May...

Freddie Mercury has a degree in Art and Design. Roger Taylor has a degree in biology. And John Deacon has a degree in electronics. 

Other smart celebs...

Mira Sorvino graduated Harvard _magna cum laude_ in PolySci.
Natalie Portman has a degree in Psychology from Harvard and has done some grad work.
Jodie Foster has a Lit degree from Yale where she graduated _magna cum laude_.
Dolph Lundgren has a Master's in Chemical Engineering.


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## Umbran (Aug 5, 2010)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Brian May, guitarist for Queen --> PhD in Astrophysics.




I didn't see anyone else mention it - let's get the full story...

May was working on his PhD back in the Early 70s.  When Queen hit it big, he left off that work.  He went back to it _30 years later_, caught up on what had happened in the field, put together a new thesis, and defended - when he was _60 years old_!

Imagine how many of his brain cells died during his career with Queen.  And after that, he still had the oomph to earn a doctorate in astrophysics.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 5, 2010)

That, man, is simply impressive.

I wonder if he defended his thesis defense as a concept album?  And if so, when will it be released?

That thesis...was it in _String Theory_, perhaps?


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## Redrobes (Aug 6, 2010)

Surprised that nobody has mentioned all of the Monty Python team and they were about at the same time as Dudley Moore at Oxford.

Quentin Tarantino dropped out of school but is supposed to have an IQ of 160 and a member of mensa as is Steve Martin and Geena Davis - not that I think being in mensa necessarily means your smart but I think these guys are.

and Matt Daemon was at Harvard.

I think the list would be quite long though I expect that many of them, like Brian May, substituted their academic careers for the entertainment one at the critical point when it mattered and only a few like May went back and got the grades on paper.

Talking about Brian May, astrophysics and entertainment, in reverse, Patrick Moore is a pretty accomplished glockenspiel player and Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden nearly made the UK Olympic fencing team and is now also a trained commercial jet pilot and a captain for a jet company flying 757's. I believe that Lars from metallica was a pretty hot tennis player before being a drummer full time.


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## Wolf72 (Aug 8, 2010)

Back to Peter Weller, he has an entire series "Engineering an Empire".  Both my wife and I teach Global Studies (World History) and it is a staple DVD set we both own.


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## Kaodi (Aug 8, 2010)

This may sound somewhat insulting, but I do not mean to be; I mean it as a serious question:

Is it not kind of " shallow " to drag up all these example of intelligent actors and to act surprised at the " deepness " of their intellect? Why is anyone assuming that actors are dumber than the population at large to begin with?

And secondly, what exactly does intelligence have to do with depth anyway? They are not synonymous qualities by a long shot.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 8, 2010)

Actors and other entertainers are already sterotyped as being "know-nothings" or shallow- some people even think they only do what they do because that is _all _they can do.

This thread is all about finding counterexamples.


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## Bold or Stupid (Aug 8, 2010)

Redrobes said:


> Surprised that nobody has mentioned all of the Monty Python team and they were about at the same time as Dudley Moore at Oxford.




Many British comedians have been to Oxford, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie for example, Footlights (Oxfords Am Dram group iirc) has churned out a lot of big names.


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## dravot (Aug 8, 2010)

Mayim Bialik, of Blossom, and now on Big Bang Theory as a guest star, has a PhD in neuroscience.


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## Herschel (Aug 9, 2010)

Asia Carrera is a member of Mensa.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 9, 2010)

One whose name I'm blocking on was a multiple Pro-bowl linebacker in the NFL back in the 1990s who retired at the top of his game.

Why?

Because he only joined the NFL to take advantage of his physical abilities to earn a lot of money...which he then used to pay for med school.  Cash.

He's now a Sports Medicine specialist.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 22, 2010)

Reported.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 22, 2010)

I don't think I ever saw here and it has been a while, but actress Hedy Lamar and composer George Antheil developed a secret communication system during the 2nd world war.:


			
				Wiki said:
			
		

> Avant garde composer George Antheil,  a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Lamarr, had experimented  with automated control of musical instruments, including his music for _Ballet Mecanique_, originally written for Fernand Léger's 1924 abstract film. This score involved multiple player pianos playing simultaneously.
> Together, Antheil and Lamarr submitted the idea of a _secret communication system_ in June 1941. On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey", Lamarr's married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam.
> The idea was ahead of its time, and not feasible owing to the state  of mechanical technology in 1942. It was not implemented in the USA  until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of  Cuba<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference">[6]</sup> after the patent had expired. Perhaps owing to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution.<sup id="cite_ref-EFF1997_0-1" class="reference">[1]</sup>  In 1998, Ottawa wireless technology developer Wi-LAN, Inc. "acquired a  49 percent claim to the patent from Lamarr for an undisclosed amount of  stock" (Eliza Schmidkunz, _Inside GNSS_);<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference">[7]</sup> Antheil had died in 1959.
> Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones.<sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference">[8]</sup> Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam's 1920 patent _Secrecy Communication System_ (1598673)  seems to lay the communications groundwork for Kiesler and Antheil's  patent which employed the techniques in the autonomous control of  torpedoes.
> ...


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