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Celebrities Who Are Secretly Geeks

Though their lives are always in the spotlight, these celebrities who are secretly geeks may shock you!

By Parag PatelPublished 8 years ago 8 min read
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Have you ever been tossing your polyhedral dice or mashing your video game controller buttons and suddenly wonder if there are celebrities who are secretly geeks somewhere out there doing the same thing? Chances are, yes, there is some celebrity with the same dorky past times. Life isn’t all red carpets and private jets, after all. They need something to pass the time between photoshoots, appearances, promotions, traveling, yachting, fundraising, and everything else those with a seemingly endless amount of money do! Here are a few celebrities who have some serious nerd cred, and some of these celebrities who are secretly geeks will likely surprise you!

Vin Diesel

Not only is he a well known face in action movies, he is also a D&D player and one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks. It's hard to imagine a better reflection of high testosterone manliness than Vin Diesel, he of Chronicles of Riddick, Fast and Furious and Saving Private Ryan (yeah, he was in that, look it up) fame, right? But, born Mark Vincent, Mr. Diesel is a hardcore Dungeons and Dragons player who’s been cranking up the Chaotic Evil for over 20 years. To prove he’s the real deal, he even has his character’s name, Melkor, tattooed on his body. And you thought going to that gaming convention made you a nerd! Vin Diesel laughs at your commitment in his sexy, raspy voice.

Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone is a well known actor and a lesser known fountain pen collector. Rambo, Rocky, Lincoln Hawk (okay, that one's a cheap shot); it’s not the names you associate with refined, cultured hobbies, right? Well, Sylvester Stallone is a bit of an enigma; while he tends to be typecast as the muscled-up action hero, on a personal level he’s definitely one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks, as he collects fine art and has a seriously geeky passion. How geeky? How about fountain pen fandom? Fountain pen collectors obsess over nibs, filling mechanisms and fancy materials in pens, eschewing your clickable, rollerball utilitarian writing tools. Stallone is a particular aficionado of Montegrappa pens and even has his own model, the Chaos, which will set you back a cool $65,000 in gold trim model.

Andrew Luck

Andrew Luck is an NFL quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts and a tabletop game player. Most of us don't think of jocks as being the cerebral type, but when you graduate from Stanford with a degree in architectural design, you aren't the usual locker room presence. Luck likes to play board games and read in his spare time. He says Settlers of Catan is a particular favorite tabletop game. He’s even co-opted his left tackle, Anthony Castonzo, into his gamer circle. If you’re a Colts fan, you probably don't have to worry about your QB getting in trouble for making it rain unless he loses at Monopoly, as he is one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks.

Michelle Rodriguez

Vin Diesel isn’t the only member of the Fast and Furious franchise to be one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks. Maybe one of your online battles in Call of Duty was with none other than the lovely Miss Rodriguez, who loves shooter games like Doom and Call of Duty. Her brother studied computer engineering, so it runs in the family a bit, you might say. Nobody wants to admit to getting owned by a girl in an online battle, but if M-Rod takes you out in Call of Duty: Black Ops III, at least you’ve got something to brag about.

Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp is an award winning actor and avid antique book collector. Stallone got famous playing Rambo, Johnny Depp collects books by Rimbaud (yeah, it’s pronounced the same way and David Morrell says the French poet was the eponymous inspiration for the disillusioned Green Beret). When not playing Edward Scissorhands or Donnie Brasco, Depp likes to spend some of his money on rare books and manuscripts. Depp was a huge fan of Jack Kerouac, so after getting some of the author’s letters and manuscripts, he branched out further into the hobby. Eventually amassing an impressive collection of Beat Poets, French writers like Rimbaud and others, Depp is a serious antiquarian book fan, one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks.

Megan Fox

The famous actress doubles as a comic book fan and triples as a celebrity who is secretly a geek. Megan Fox is what you might call a professional hot person. But, there's a very geeky brain lurking behind the cover girl exterior. There are lots of famous comic book fans, many of whom won’t surprise anybody (Kevin Smith, Patrick Stewart), but did you know that includes the Transformers star? Yes, Megan is capable of dropping names like Danger Girl and Midnight Nation in her casual conversation about her comic book hobby, so she’s the real deal.

Olivia Wilde

Image via Gazomg

What’s a list of geeks without a Trekkie? We shouldn’t be too surprised that Olivia Wilde turned out to be a nerd and one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks. With her mother Leslie Cockburn, who was a 60 Minutes producer and her father, Andrew Cockburn, who was a famous liberal journalist for publications like The Nation, Wilde was probably destined to be something of a geek. So, she ended up being a Trekkie, no shock.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Image via Bidness ETC

He's an actor, film producer, action figure collector and one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks. What to do if you’re a Gen Xer with a whopping pile of disposable income? The obvious answer is buy all the cool Star Wars toys nostalgia might compel you to own and that’s what actor DiCaprio has devoted some of his earnings towards. Being a nice guy, DiCaprio has parted with some of his collection for charity including selling off a valuable Jawa figurine worth over $3,000 to help environmental causes. Maybe that makes the fact that the most recent Star Wars installment kept The Revenant off the top of the box office charts sting a bit less.

Danica McKellar

This actress also doubles as a mathematician. A list of celebrities who are secretly geeks wouldn’t be complete without The Wonder Years child actress Dr. Danica McKellar. What happened Kevin Arnold’s object of obsession after the show? She only went on to get a Ph.D. in math and have a theorem with her very own name on it, the Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem, which, as you surely know deals with thermal equilibrium and magnetism.

Rod Stewart

What do you get when you mix a pop star with a model train enthusiast? You get Rod Stewart and one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks! Decades in heavy rotation of genres from classic rock to Lite FM gives you a small personal fortune to devote to whatever might tickle your fancy. Rod Stewart has the homes, the art and probably the groupies you’d expect, but he’s also got a killer model train. Taking up an entire floor of his rather large home in Beverly Hills, the layout provides a 1,500 square foot representation of post WWII Manhattan. Stewart is so dedicated to his model train hobby he built many of the pieces while he was in hotel rooms during his tours.

Tom Hanks

If there’s something out there, somebody probably collects it. Tom Hanks helps us prove this point with his collection of old typewriters. Hanks has over 50 of the things, mostly from the WWII era and uses them for his personal correspondence. So, yeah, if you somehow get a reply to your fan letter from the Bosom Buddies/Forrest Gump star, it might look like it came from the Zodiac Killer but don’t freak out, he’s just got a passion for old typewriters.

Brad Pitt

When you have six children, its a given that you'll have Legos around the house. But these are a "no kids allowed" collection of the iconic toy Brad Pitt and Andrew Luck have much in common: handsome, hirsute, architecture buffs. But Pitt makes his buildings out of Legos, something the Troy and Fight Club actor has made no real secret of, but if you didn’t know it, that probably makes him a celebrity who is secretly geeky, too.

Dolph Lundgren

The oiled-up monster from Rocky IV, Dolph Lundgren might be the last guy you’d suspect is possibly the highest IQ in Hollywood. But, yes, Dolph’s oft-reported Mensa cred rests on his 160 IQ score as well as having a Master’s degree in chemical engineering and being a former Fulbright recipient. So, yeah, don’t think the former He-Man is thick-accented dolt because he’s far from it.

Kylie Minogue

Kylie might be well into her fourth decade of inspiring boyhood crushes, but the former Aussie soap actress and pop star is a die hard Scrabble player and one of the celebrities who are secretly geeks. Not just the casual kind, either. Reportedly she’s a frequent combatant with her sister Danni and Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie. How’s that for a geek secret?

Trent Reznor

Trent Reznor is synonymous with the creation and popularization of industrial music. It might not be surprising then that Reznor has a fascination with the old 8-bit noises and feel of vintage arcade games. He supposedly has a large collection of such classics as Space Invader and Tempest. Maybe you’d write screeching, yelling noise rock if you were getting thrashed at Donkey Kong in your spare time. Nine Inch Nails makes more sense now, doesn’t it?

celebritiescollectibleslistpop culture
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About the Creator

Parag Patel

Born in the United Kingdom. He was conceived on a pot plantation and hasn't left since.

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