Some celebrities seem to have it all. Fame, beauty, talent, and then a random skill that makes you question your own life choices. These stars go far beyond what put them on the map.
These are not rumors or fluff. These are real, verified facts about famous people with hidden skills. If you have ever felt bored, this list will not exactly help.
Geena Davis, almost an Olympian in archery
Geena Davis is an Oscar winning actress. At age 41 she picked up a bow on a whim after watching the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She trained every day for two years and made it to the US Olympic Trial semifinals for the Sydney Games in 2000.
She finished 24th out of 28 competitors at the trials. Only the top 16 moved forward. The sheer fact that a 41 year old actress even reached that level should make every gym avoider feel deeply embarrassed about their weekly step count.
Chris Evans, Captain America plays piano
Chris Evans has been playing piano since he was a kid. During the COVID pandemic in November 2020 he posted a video on Instagram playing a piece by Italian composer Fabrizio Paterlini. The composer himself noticed and thanked Evans publicly on Twitter.
Evans also plays guitar and says he can fake it on drums. He told E! News back in 2011 that music has always been part of his life. He owns a Bosendorfer upright piano at home, which is a concert-quality instrument that costs more than most cars.
Angelina Jolie, she actually throws knives
Angelina Jolie developed a real passion for knife throwing while filming Tomb Raider. She has spoken openly about her love of blades since childhood and trained seriously to become highly skilled at the craft. This is not a movie stunt. This is just her life.
She also holds a private pilot’s license and has flown her own aircraft. She is a licensed UN Special Envoy and a trained knife thrower who flies planes. Most people cannot parallel park without their heart rate jumping.
Pierce Brosnan, the fire eater
Pierce Brosnan learned fire eating as a teenager at an acting workshop in London and went on to perform the act with a circus for three years. He later used the skill on screen during an episode of Remington Steele in the 1980s. Most people cannot even light a barbecue without burning their eyebrows off.
He performed fire eating again on the TV show Muppets Tonight after GoldenEye came out in 1995. A prop crew member substituted an unfamiliar fuel and the flames came back into his mouth giving him blisters. He retired the act permanently after that and has not touched a flame since.
Harrison Ford, the carpenter who built his own career
Harrison Ford spent years doing carpentry in Hollywood before he got famous. When acting roles dried up in the late 1960s he became a working carpenter. His clients included writer Joan Didion and director Francis Ford Coppola.
It was a carpentry job at a film studio that put him in the right place at the right time for the Star Wars audition in 1977. He was installing a door when George Lucas noticed him. One properly hung door changed the entire history of Hollywood.
Nick Offerman, he woodworks for real
Nick Offerman plays a guy obsessed with woodworking on Parks and Recreation. In real life he is genuinely skilled at the craft. He actually founded his own woodworking shop in Los Angeles called Offerman Woodshop which produces real bespoke furniture.
The character of Ron Swanson was partly shaped around Offerman’s actual skills and passions. He builds canoes, chairs, and tables in his spare time. Most people struggle to assemble flat pack furniture without a mental breakdown and a leftover screw.
Andrew Garfield, the Spider-Man who does backflips
Andrew Garfield trained in swimming and gymnastics as a child. These skills helped him perform many of his own stunts while filming the Spider Man films. In 2017 he performed a clean backflip live on The Ellen DeGeneres Show as a charity stunt.
He did it without a warm up and landed it perfectly. The audience lost it completely. Andrew Garfield casually landing backflips on daytime television is the kind of thing that makes people close their laptops and go for a walk outside.
Aldis Hodge, he makes watches by hand
Aldis Hodge is best known for playing Alec Hardison in the show Leverage. Outside of acting he is a seriously trained watchmaker. He builds mechanical watches by hand which is one of the most technically demanding crafts that exists in the modern world.
Each watch involves hundreds of tiny parts assembled with precision tools under magnification. This is not a casual hobby. Horology as a craft takes years to learn. Most people cannot set the time on a microwave without checking YouTube.
Johnny Cash, Cold War code breaker
Before country music, Johnny Cash served in the US Air Force from 1950 to 1954. He was stationed in West Germany as a Morse code interceptor monitoring Soviet Army communications during the Cold War. In his own autobiography he wrote that he intercepted the first news of Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953.
Cash wrote about decoding that transmission himself in his memoir simply titled Cash. He described himself as the go to man for the hardest intercept jobs. The fact that the Man in Black spent his early twenties decoding Soviet military signals is the kind of detail that rewrites everything you thought you knew about him.
Viggo Mortensen, he does everything
Viggo Mortensen is an actor, poet, painter, photographer, and founder of his own publishing house called Perceval Press. He speaks multiple languages including English, Spanish, Danish, French, and Italian. He has been doing all of this alongside a full acting career for decades.
He is not dabbling. He has released books of poetry and exhibited photography work internationally. While most people struggle to maintain one hobby alongside a full time job, Mortensen runs an arts press and learns new languages between film shoots.
Featured Image: Photo by Gage Skidmore on Wikimedia Commons
