High school is an interesting and often stressful time in any teen’s life. Whether they’re worried about getting good grades or making the varsity team of their choice, there’s often a lot of pressure on students to carve out a niche for themselves to set them apart from their peers.
Even today’s most famous celebrities felt the same pressures back in their high school days. Check out these hilarious yearbook photos of well-known celebs. You’ll soon realize that even the biggest names had the same normal high school woes…
Cameron Diaz
Cameron actually attended the same school as Snoop and told George Lopez that he sold her some weed, which Snoop claims “probably happened.” She was a cheerleader and a model, donning the cover of Seventeen in 1990.
Emma Stone
Stone began acting at age 11, so it wasn’t totally surprising that she left high school after just one semester. She says she made a Powerpoint presentation at 14 to convince her parents to move to L.A. so she could further pursue acting.
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage had an interesting childhood. He was a straight-A student until he moved in with his famous uncle, Francis Coppola, following his parents’ divorce. “I was in this wonderful house with wonderfully generous people, but it wasn’t my stuff, it wasn’t my house. I didn’t know why I was there. I was frustrated beyond belief,” he said.
Natalie Portman
Natalie went to Syosset High School in Long Island. She wasn’t a partier, instead, she was a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search, a renowned research competition for high schoolers. All the while crushing school, she was also building her acting career–Natalie was a busy gal.
Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen attended Atlanta High School in Texas. While she wasn’t a fan of school, her classmates and teachers described her as quiet but positive and funny.
Jack Nicholson
Nicholson went to high school at Manasquan High in New Jersey. He was a self-proclaimed “trouble-maker” who hated authority. He made a name for himself by being in detention every day for a year.
Melissa McCarthy
McCarthy attended St. Francis Academy in Joliet, Illinois. She was involved in cheerleading, tennis, and student council. While at first she was a preppy student, during her junior and senior year she dressed in all black and pierced her ears with safety pins.
Kevin Spacey
Spacey moved around a lot as a kid, and he caught the acting bug while starring in the Arthur Miller production of “All My Sons.” His senior year he was co-valedictorian.
Renee Zellweger
Renee went to Katy High School in Texas. She was a popular cheerleader and a good student. She was voted “dream date” during her senior year.
Jamie Foxx
Foxx went to Terrell High School in Texas. He aspired to play football professionally but music was also a big part of his life. He played piano and led the choir at his Baptist church and even got a college scholarship for music.
Jessica Chastain
Chastain went to El Camino Fundamental High School in Sacramento, but she never graduated. She skipped school a lot and read Shakespeare in her car. She eventually got her GED years later.
Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. went to Santa Monica High School, but because he was often absent and had bad grades, he was told he was going to have to go to summer school to graduate. Instead, he dropped out and decided to pursue acting in New York.
Viola Davis
Viola got really into extracurriculars while attending Central Falls High in Rhode Island. She immersed herself in acting and the arts because her family was impoverished and she needed an escape.
Denzel Washington
Denzel went to an all-boys military academy in New Windsor, New York. He was an another school prior to his parents’ divorce, but when he began acting out his mother sent him to Oakland Military Academy and he says it changed his life for the better.
Elizabeth Banks
Elizabeth Banks went to Pittsfield High School in Massachusetts. While in high school she was involved in cheerleading, choir, and Latin Club and was a top-notch student.
Bill Murray
Bill Murray attended Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois. He had to work while in school to pay for his private school tuition. He took up jobs like caddying to make the money to pay for it. He also performed in theater productions and played music.
Robin Williams
Robin was well-loved in high school, much like his adult life. He went to Detroit Day School in Birmingham, Michigan and Redwood High School in Larkspur, California. He graduated summa cum laude and participated in football, wrestling, and track.
Macklemore
Macklemore switched high schools in Seattle when he started getting into drugs at his first school. He instead channeled those efforts into music and writing raps.
Kesha
Kesha went to Brentwood High School in Tennessee. She was into singing from a young age. In her yearbook, she was quoted saying, “I’ve been singing forever, and I write my own music that I sing.”
Paul Rudd
Believe it or not, Rudd graduated high school in 1987 after attending Shawnee Mission West in Kansas. He caught the acting bug in high school and also worked at the local mall.
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart Catholic School in New York. In her yearbook, she famously wrote that she wanted to headline Madison Square Garden, which she can now check off the bucket list.
Chadwick Boseman
Chadwick went to T.L. Hannah High School in South Carolina where he was a four-year varsity basketball player. When a friend was killed, it inspired him to start writing, which eventually turned into a play, and he began acting ever since.
Farrah Fawcett
Farrah was known for her beauty, and that started way back in high school. She was voted most beautiful three times at W.B. Ray High School in Texas. She was described as a stubborn and someone who didn’t let others walk all over her.
Alec Baldwin
Alec attended Berner High School in Massapequa, New York, where he played lacrosse and was voted class president. He graduated high school in 1976.
Brie Larson
Larson graduated at the age of 15 and was acting for almost a decade at that point. At age 9 she appeared in sketches with Jay Leno for “The Tonight Show.”
Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake went to Harvard-Westlake School in L.A. He was in a band and says he was constantly teased for being involved in the theater even though he was also an athlete.
Madonna
madonna went to Rochester Adams High School where she was a cheerleader and a straight-A student. She received a dance scholarship from the University of Michigan but later dropped out.
Patricia Arquette
In high school, Patricia Arquette donned an asymmetrical haircut. She attended Catholic high school and even had dreams of becoming a nun. Her high school aspirations are a far cry from her reality today.
Ted Danson
Ted attended a Connecticut boarding school and played basketball. He admittedly loves the game, but wouldn’t describe himself as an “athlete” rather he just claims that he has “the soul of an athlete.”
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry graduated from Massapequa High School in 1972. In school, he rocked a true 70s haircut and he and fellow Massapequa native, Alec Baldwin, recorded an episode of Jerry’s show “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” and returned to the town.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Julia was a theater gal in high school and never missed an episode of Saturday Night Live. Wildly, during her junior year in college, she was cast on her favorite show.
Stephen Colbert
Stephen attended a prep school in South Carolina, but he almost didn’t graduate when his dad and two of his brothers died tragically when he was just 10 years old. To cope he would just read all day, every day.
Karamo Brown
Karamo, the “culture” guy on the new Netflix revival of Queer Eye, attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the Parkland shooting. He attended the March For Our Lives in 2018 and said, “When I saw…that my alma mater was being called the site of the world’s deadliest school massacre, you all cannot imagine how much my heart broke.”
Bob Odenkirk
Bob Odenkirk grew up in Naperville, Illinois and was not a fan of school. His friends called him “Bobnoxious” and while he didn’t love school, Bob graduated at age 16, so clearly he was a pretty smart kid.
Chris Pratt
Chris fittingly earned the “class clown” superlative in high school. He was a likable guy, which is seemingly still true today. He wrestled, ran track, and played football at Lake Stevens High in Washington.
Anna Faris
Anna Faris was a self-proclaimed “late-bloomer.” She attended Edmonds-Woodway School in Washington and said she was a drama club “dork” who didn’t date anyone until her senior year.
Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey was voted “most handsome” at Longview High School in Texas where he played golf and tennis. His very first job was raking sand traps at a local country club starting at 3 a.m.
Halle Berry
Halle was the prom queen in highs school and was a good student. She cheerleaded, was in the honor society, and edited the school newspaper. It’s no surprise she’s the driven and successful actress she is today.
Reese Witherspoon
Witherspoon is a self-described “big dork” who read lots of books and got good grades. She went by her real name in high school, Laura Jeane, and participated in just about everything her school had to offer.
Will Ferrell
Will read the school announcements in the mornings at University high school in Irvine. He played lots of sports, was in the reptile club, and was voted best personality.
Tina Fey
Tina went to high school in Pennsylvania. She was in the choir and on the tennis team. The honor student also worked at the box-office at a youth theater program in 11th grade.
Amy Poehler
Amy attended Burlington High School in Massachusetts. She dabbled in a lot of extracurriculars like softball, basketball, soccer, cheerleading, and student council. She said she hung out with the popular crowd but just blended in with the group.
Will Smith
Smith attended Overbrook High School in Philadelphia and earned his name, “The Fresh Prince” when he started rapping at a young age. His first album with DJ Jazzy Jeff came out when he was a senior. His production company, Overbrook Entertainment, is named after his alma mater.
Blake Lively
Lively was an involved student at Burbank High School. She was a cheerleader, class president, and a member of the choir, just to name a few. She started filming “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” as a junior and senior and still found the time to keep up with her courses.
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan was raised in Vancouver, B.C. and attended Prince of Wales Secondary School. He actually failed his high school drama class, but if at first you don’t succeed, go and get yourself a start on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Bruce Willis
Bruce was a spirited student at Penns Grove High School in Carneys Point, New Jersey. He was student council president, played baseball, joined the drama club, and acted in school plays. He had a stutter for years and discovered that when he went on stage, it disappeared.
Amy Adams
Amy went to Douglas County High School in Castle Rock, Colorado. She was one of seven children. She was passionate about dance and worked at a dance company when she was young to pay for her dance lessons.
George Clooney
George played baseball and basketball at Augusta High School in Kentucky. He was in the drama club, was voted prince of his senior prom, and suffered from bell’s palsy as a freshman in high school, which forced him to learn to laugh at himself.
Brad Pitt
Brad was also a very involved student at Kickapoo High School in Missouri. Hep played tennis, golf, and was on the debate team. He dabbled in wrestling and diving, as well as school plays and musicals.
Oprah Winfrey
An East High School graduate in Nashville, Oprah was voted “most popular,” which was a big deal because it was the first year her high school was desegregated and was 80% white students. She was in the honor’s society, National Forensic League, and student government.
Ben Affleck
Ben was a smartypants in high school and got near-perfect SAT scores despite the fact that his grades were all over the map because he wasn’t a fan of school and was often absent.
Matt Damon
Matt Damon actually went to high school with his buddy Ben Affleck. Ben encouraged his acting and he said together they obsessed over honing their skills. Damon went to Harvard where he continued to star in the school’s plays.
Julia Roberts
Roberts attended Campbell High School in Smyrna, Georgia. She was in her school band playing the clarinet and didn’t consider herself popular by any means.
Sandra Bullock
Bullock was a cheerleader in high school and was voted “most likely to brighten your day” her senior year at Washington-Lee high school in Arlington, VA.
Tom Hanks
Tom said he was a “geek” in high school at Skyline in California. He was shy and stayed out of trouble. He participated in drama in high school and won the school’s best acting award in 1974.
Jennifer Lopez
J.Lo went to school in the Bronx, as most know. She had friends, but wasn’t popular, she says. While she was in high school she was cast in an Indie film called “My Little Girl.”
Alex Rodriguez
Rodriguez graduated from Westminster Christian Academy where he played football and baseball. He was a really talented quarterback and was recruited for both college baseball and college football.
Leonardo DiCaprio
DiCaprio left John Marshall High School in California after his junior year. He got his GED later in life.
Meryl Streep
Meryl went to Bernards High School in Somerset County, NJ. While in school she cheerleaded, starred in musicals, and did gymnastics. She was teased a lot as a child and so she used her acting skills to mold herself into the stereotypical “popular girl” with the help of “Vogue” and “Seventeen” magazines.
Snoop Dogg
Born Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Snoop attended Long Beach Poly High School where he played two years of football but his involvement in the drug scene had him in and out of jail post-graduation.