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10 Celebs You Didn’t Know Went To School Together

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Long before the red carpets, some of Hollywood’s biggest names were just classmates sharing lockers, lunch tables, and the same drama teacher.

It’s easy to forget that A-listers once sat through algebra and gym class like everyone else. But a handful of famous duos crossed paths in hallways years before anyone knew their names, and those early friendships quietly shaped some of the biggest creative partnerships in entertainment. A new rundown from TheThings Celebrity traces ten of those pairings back to the specific schools where they first met.

• Matt Damon and Ben Affleck bonded over acting at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Massachusetts before eventually co-writing Good Will Hunting.
• Cameron Diaz attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School alongside a young Calvin Broadus — better known as Snoop Dogg — whom she remembers as a tall, skinny upperclassman with ponytails.
• Adele and Jessie J were classmates at London’s BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology, where they sang together during lunch breaks years before either topped a chart.

The Damon-Affleck Origin Story

The most enduring pairing on the list started as two teenagers doing school theater together in Cambridge. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s friendship at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School predates their careers entirely, and it’s the connection most people already sense even if they don’t know the specific school. That teenage bond eventually produced Good Will Hunting, the script the pair wrote together that launched both of their careers into a different stratosphere. It’s the kind of story that makes the rest of the list believable — if two future Oscar winners can meet in a public-school drama class, anything’s possible.

Cameron Diaz’s Long Beach Poly Connection

Diaz has told the story herself more than once: Snoop Dogg was a few grades ahead of her at Long Beach Polytechnic High School in the late 1980s, tall and skinny with his hair in ponytails, long before “Doggystyle” existed.

Diaz has jokingly said she suspected Snoop was the one she bought marijuana from back in high school.

It’s a detail that sounds almost too good to be true, but it’s become a fixture of both of their retellings whenever the subject of Long Beach Poly comes up — a school that’s also turned out other notable alumni over the years.

BRIT School Alums, Newton South, and Notre Dame High

Adele and Jessie J crossing paths at the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon is one of the more fitting entries here, given that the school specifically exists to train performers — the two reportedly sang together at lunch before either had a record deal. Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts met even earlier, as aspiring actresses in Sydney, long before Hollywood knew either name. Kate Hudson and Zooey Deschanel overlapped at Santa Monica’s Crossroads School, while B.J. Novak and John Krasinski knew each other at Newton South High School years before they’d end up sharing scenes on The Office. Novak has talked about his friendships from that era in other public moments over the years. Rounding out the list, Rami Malek, Rachel Bilson, and Kirsten Dunst all passed through Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California, at various points before their careers took off.

Factors Contributing to Lasting Friendships

What separates this list from a typical pile of Hollywood trivia is how many of these pairs turned teenage proximity into actual professional partnerships. Damon and Affleck wrote a movie together. Krasinski and Novak ended up on the same sitcom set for nine seasons. It’s the rare case where the senior play or the lunch table turns out to matter more than anyone realized at the time — a pattern that shows up in other corners of Hollywood’s early-years trivia, too.

Diaz and Snoop never worked together professionally, but the story still gets retold every time someone brings up Long Beach Poly’s list of famous graduates — proof that even the pairings that never turned into a movie credit still make for the best two minutes of any celebrity-schoolmates video.