Typically, child actors work with a tutor or teacher on set. Other young celebs are homeschooled or take classes online. Some, however, continue attending regular, in-person school — but it's definitely not the norm.
The same goes for celebrities who decide to go to college. While the majority of people who find success in the entertainment industry at a young age don't pursue higher education, a lot of the ones who decide to go to college put their careers on pause while getting their degrees. Only some balance their careers with their classes.
Here are 17 celebs who attended "regular" high school or college while working in Hollywood:
1. While playing Jane in the Twilight movies, Dakota Fanning also attended Campbell Hall Episcopal High School, a private school in North Hollywood, where she was a cheerleader and homecoming queen.
She even snuck some of her celeb duties into her school day. For example, she did an interview to promote New Moon before the bell rang, telling Entertainment Weekly, "I’m hiding from any teacher that would see me on my phone right now. But technically it’s allowed because it’s before school has started."
2. When Taylor Lautner was a kid, he balanced acting in commercials and guest appearances on shows like The Bernie Mac Show with school and martial arts. However, in school, he faced bullies who teased him for being an actor.
He told Rolling Stone, "Because I was acting, when I was in school there was a little bullying going on. Not physical bullying but people making fun of what I do… I just had to tell myself I can’t let this get to me. This is what I love to do. And I’m going to continue doing it."
While he was filming the Twilight movies, he tested out of high school by taking the California High School Proficiency Examination and then enrolled in online community college courses.
3. While filming Sister, Sister, Tamera Mowry-Housley was a part-time student at Pepperdine University. She "would go to class, do a rehearsal or shoot and then come back to class" and "would do two classes every other day and then the show on Thursday and Friday."
She told Today, "I am happy I did; it taught me about prioritizing, and that education is important. It taught me dedication and hard work, too. If you put your mind to it, you can do it. It took me seven years to graduate."
4. Mila Kunis, who started acting at age nine, "always went to school" because her parents "were like the complete antithesis of stage parents." However, when That '70s Show got picked up her freshman year, she was kicked out of Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies over her filming schedule, so she transferred to Fairfax High School, which was willing to work with her.
She told Interview Magazine, "I didn’t want to be home-schooled. For my parents, I wanted to graduate on a stage with everyone else. So I was like, 'Look, I can’t go to class when I’m working. It’s impossible. But on my hiatuses, I will come to school. I have three teachers and I have other tutors.' And the school was very supportive. The only class that I had to attend every day was biology when we were doing dissections. I would take an 8 a.m. bio class, dissect my animal, and then run to work."
5. While filming the first two Descendants movies, Sofia Carson was enrolled in UCLA, so she'd "go in between whenever [they] weren't shooting."
She told Access, "[I] had to take a pause for a second with all of this [Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists], but I'm going to graduate. Maybe when I'm 45."
6. While working on her debut album, Taylor Swift attended Henderson High School in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
7. Euphoria actor Storm Reid is currently enrolled at the University of Southern California, where she's roommates with Kobe Bryant's daughter, Natalia.
She told Entertainment Tonight, "We've been rooming together for the first year and it's been amazing, We're going to room together sophomore year, so it's been exciting."
8. Kylie Jenner, who was only nine when her family began starring on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, originally attended Sierra Canyon High School before leaving to be homeschooled at 15.
On her reality show Life of Kylie, she expressed her disappointment in missing out on the typical high school experiences.
She said, "It was really sad, actually. I had to unfollow all my friends that I went to school with. They probably all thought I hated them, but I just couldn’t see it, you know? Because they would always post photos, and they were all at the prom, and I was like, I can't see it. It just made me sad."
9. Kendall Jenner, who was 11 when KUWTK began, also left Sierra Canyon High School in 2012. She was a cheerleader before starting homeschooling at 17.
On her website, she wrote, "I remember being really nervous for my first day of real high school. Right before I started, like the week before, is exactly when I started to get acne. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, it just started. I was so freaked out and just kept waiting for it to pass, but it never did."
10. Grown-ish star Yara Shahidi balanced the series and multiple movie roles with her Harvard education. In 2022, she graduated with her bachelor's in African American Studies.
Her application included a letter of recommendation from First Lady Michelle Obama.
11. While Julia Stiles was studying English literature at Columbia University, there were "some really funny, weird moments, like a limo for the MTV Movie Awards pulling up in front of [her] dormitory with [her] name on it."
She told People, "College, in many ways, insulated me from that huge change in anyone's life. And yeah, people would go, 'Oh, you're in that movie, right?' ... I think very quickly, I was able to focus on school. It would put things in perspective a lot. So my peers were all studying to become doctors, so that's humbling"
12. In 2021, Megan Thee Stallion graduated from Texas Southern University with her bachelor's in health administration. She even tweeted the link to the commencement live stream so her fans could watch her walk.
#MeganTheeGraduate WE DID IT HOTTIES
She told People, "I really wanted to be an administrator over a hospital, but I knew I still wanted to be Megan Thee Stallion. I was like, 'What can I do?' I was like, 'You know what, I'm gonna open an assisted-living facility and use the money that I make from rapping to open it. Then I'm gonna let my classmates run it.'"
13. Emma Watson balanced the last two Harry Potter movies and several other roles with her English literature studies at Brown University.
She told the Sunday Times Style Magazine, "It made me so sad when all this stuff [rumors] came out that I left Brown because I was being bullied. It made no sense at all. Brown has been the opposite. I've never even been asked for an autograph on campus. I threw a party for nearly 100 students and not a single person put a photo on Facebook. Anyway, even if I was being given a hard time, I wasn't going to wuss out of university because someone said 'Wingardium leviosa' to me in a corridor, or 'Ten points for Gryffindor.' I've been dealing with the media since I was nine. If I can't stand up to a few people giving me a hard time, it's a bit pathetic, really. I've had so much worse."
14. Ashley Tisdale started acting professionally at 10, but she was "always in regular school" and "worked in clothing stores growing up."
She told Parade, "I didn’t 'make it' until I was 18 [and got the role of Maddie on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody], so I had already graduated public school. I definitely feel like I had the best of both worlds."
15. While studying literature at Yale, Jodie Foster acted in five movies to fund her education, support her family back home, and "to squeeze it [her acting career] out" as long as possible.
She told Yale News, "Then I did The Accused. I saw the movie in a rough-cut form, and I thought, 'Wow this film's terrible, and I'm awful in it.' So I did my GREs, and I said, 'Okay, now I’m definitely going to go to grad school.' And then the movie came out, and I won an Oscar for it."
16. While filming movies like Beautiful Girls and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Natalie Portman attended Syosset High School on Long Island. She also made it to the semifinals of the Intel Science Talent Search, a prestigious research competition.
She also continued acting while studying psychology at Harvard.
17. And finally, while filming Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria went to night school to earn her master's degree in Chicano Studies from California State University Northridge.
On The Ellen Degeneres Show, she said, "I'd be on set all day and then I'd be in full hair and makeup, running to class."