These Hollywood stars have earned major degrees in college

All Hollywood stars aren't necessarily airheads, as some would like to believe. Few, indeed, have an academic history as splendid as their filmography

Whoever said actors seek no education was clearly mistaken. After all, Emma Watson, best known for her work in the Harry Potter series, recently graduated from prestigious Ivy League school, Brown University with a bachelor's degree in English literature.


Emma Watson; (inset) She posted a photo on Twitter showing her wearing a mortarboard and gown 

Turns out she isn't the only member of the highly educated club. hitlist takes a look at Hollywood faces that shine in yearbooks of esteemed universities…

Meryl Streep

Often touted as the finest actress of her generation, Streep began her Oscar and Golden Globe-winning acting career at Vassar College where she earned a BA in Drama. Later on, she attended Yale School of Drama where she received a Master of Fine Arts.

Rowan Atkinson

The characters he plays aren't exactly blessed with a terrific amount of intelligence. However, in real life, he is a highly educated individual who, following his degree at Newcastle University, completed his Masters in Electrical Engineering at the globally-revered Oxford University.

Jennifer Connelly

Prior to her work in critically-acclaimed films, Connelly attended Yale for two years, where she studied English, before transferring to Stanford to complete her Bachelor's degree. It was only during the shooting of A Beautiful Mind (2001) that she happened to visit the campus of Princeton.

Elisabeth Shue

The Back to the Future star also earned a degree from Harvard University. So much so she attended both Wellesley College and Harvard, where she left to focus on acting in the mid-'80s but eventually returned 15 years later to complete her Bachelor's in Political Science.

Julia Stiles

Romantic comedies were her stairway to success but in real life, Stiles prefers subjects with a little more depth. She temporarily interrupted her fledgling film career by deciding to enroll at Columbia University in 2000, where she earned a degree in English.

Nicole Kidman

This Oscar-winning actress not only has a BA degree from Harvard University in Psychology, but she is also bilingual — she can speak six different languages. She took graduate courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been published in scientific journals twice.

James Franco

Who would have thought this selfie-uploading actor is a lover of knowledge? He took up more than thrice the course load in a quarter and got a degree in English from UCLA. Later, he enrolled in three schools: Columbia University, Brooklyn College and NYU for three different courses.

Ed Norton

While his onscreen characters are not usually known to be 'completely' sane, the real Norton's brain is pretty functional. So functional, in fact, that before he went on to carve his name with films such as American History X (1998) and Fight Club (1999), he had earned a degree in History from Yale.

Jodie Foster

One of the most vocal voices in the field of education, the Oscar-winning actress enrolled at Yale University and completed her Bachelor studies in English Literature. She was later awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the University for her achievements in cinema.

Hugh Grant

Before wooing the prettiest women of Hollywood, this charming star went for his BA in English Literature at the revered Oxford University. It was his interest in student drama that propelled him towards acting. Or else, he was happy considering a long-term career as an art historian.

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