1. Kit ‘Jon Snow’ Harington went to the same Sixth Form College as me, year below me. Super quiet and shy. Literally the last person you’d think would end up being famous.

2. I went to high school with Joe Keery. I wasn’t personally friends with him but had a few classes here and there and he was relatively well known in our class (then again, in a class of 150 people it’s more unusual NOT to know somebody). He was always very nice and friendly, the complete opposite of Steve at the start of S1 of Stranger Things. I’m really glad to see him succeed as much as he has and wish him all the best in his career (which we will watch with great interest).

3. I went to the same school as Dua Lipa for a year. Even back then she seemed very down to earth and friendly and she was always singing at our school events. I always had the feeling that sooner or later, she will get worldwide famous cause she just had that inner star in her.

4. I went to high school with Hayden Christensen before he was in Star Wars. He was artsy and seemed shy. Spent his time in the drama department, and was a nice guy from every memory I have.

5. Went to high school with John Legend. He was a year older than me. He was clearly very talented, lead role in most school plays, musical acts at talent shows etc. But he was basically just a really nice, humble guy. I wasn’t friends with him but I was an athlete who hung out with the theatre crowd. I helped on set construction and sound for shows. He was a basketball fan and came to most of our school’s games. His cousin was also on the team and a year younger than me.

6. Went to middle school with Raven-Symone (post-Cosby, pre-That’s So Raven). She was just a normal kid, but if you asked for an autograph/made a big deal about her you got detention.

7. I went to Northwestern w David Schwimmer. He lived with my best friend in a house after graduating. He’s an outstanding actor with a huge range — only actor ever to make me tear up in the middle of a play. Too bad he’s been so typecast now. Nice guy.

8. My Uncle went to the same High school as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. He rode the bus with Jamie Lynn because they both lived in Kentwood,La, but went to school in Mississippi. Apparently on the bus Jamie would hand out CDs of Britney’s when she was first getting started with music. Also one day he saw her crying on the bus because people were calling Britney a slut. I pretty sure he hung out her house one time too, I think their parents were friends.

My cousins and I use to beg him tell us stories about Britney lol.

9. Zack Efron went to a neighboring high school. He dated a girl from my school for a while, I remember him coming to some school dances. My wife was also in his grade at his school. He was a bit nerdy, but a nice guy. Pretty much just a normal dude from nowhere that ended up mega famous.

10. Went to middle and high school with Halsey. She was in the same grade as me. Didn’t really talk to her much but she was always very outgoing and artistic so it’s not a surprise that she became what she is now.

11. Timothée Chalamet was a year above me. He was pretty popular and was known for doing this hilarious rap/dance gig for our annual school talent show as “Tiny Tim”.

12. Kind of a new type of celebrity, I went to high school with theodd1sout, that famous YouTube animator dude. I think I still have the old school newspapers that featured his comics. I remember wondering if someone just stole his art and put it in the paper, but nope. The real deal. He even did an improv show at the school a couple years back.

13. I had a couple of classes in HS with the model Karlie Kloss. A bit stuck up but she at least faked being nice most of the time. Not really dumb bimbo like I assumed supermodels were back when I was in high school but I was (still kinda am) super jealous of her crazy life being that we took some of the same classes.

14. Ninja went to my high school and although I didn’t know him personally, it was funny the day we asked my math teacher senior year if she remembers Tyler Blevins and she said yes of course, and asked why does the entire class know who he is and why do they call him Ninja though?

15. Went to junior/high school with model Ashley Graham.

She was absolutely gorgeous then and now. Further, she was approachable, had a great sense of humor and down to earth. I was a geeky little guy, but she always was genuine and nice to me. That’s stuck with me.

16. James Corden. God was he a show-off. When a bunch of 10-11 year old kids are trying to get a school play together it helps if you don’t start making up your own lines and throwing everyone into a state of utter confusion.

17. Chloe Moretz is from my hometown but is a good bit younger than I am. She went to my ballet school briefly and her family was friends with one of my best friend’s family growing up, so I was around her a good bit. She would’ve been maybe 6-8 at the time and she was just a cute, polite, kind of shy kid. There was some drama that caused her family to move to Atlanta and then New York, and I remember her older brother was the ham of the family that wanted to get into acting first. I was surprised when I heard that she was the one who’d gotten famous out of them. The gaudy mcmansion her dad had built at the front lot of the local “rich people” subdivision still sits vacant and one time my friends and I got drunk and went skinny dipping in the Moretz’ pool in high school. I don’t mean to sound snarky, it really is a weird house.

18. In the words of my Year 12 Classics teacher:

“Kylie Minogue was really smart and lovely. Dannii Minogue was just lovely.”

19. I went to a really small Catholic school with Bill Hader. In the mornings he would get on the intercom and do impersonations of the Fathers and Brothers who were our teachers.

20. Went to school with the Youtuber Zoella. She was kind of shy and not very confident. She hung out with the popular girls but just sort of followed them around. I didn’t really know her because I’m two school years older but went to lots of parties etc where she was there with her mates.

Her younger brother went to our school too but he is so much younger than me that I don’t really remember him.

21. I have some friends who went to high school with Taylor Swift. They said she was a total jerk all through high school and was Ms. Popular Cheerleader. She tries to make it seem like she was bullied and everything, but it’s all one huge lie.

ETA: Her family was also loaded. Her dad was in the private jet business and her family lived in a nice house on the lake.

22. Avril Lavigne was the bat girl for my baseball team. She was a cute kid and respectful… it was years later when she had a hit song that I realized it was actually her.

23. I went to high school with Wayne Sermon, guitar player for Imagine Dragons. Quiet kid, but always very humble and kind. He could shred the guitar even then.

24. Rachel Mc Adams. My sister has her school pic that says “ have a great year.” My sister said she was really nice.

25. Graduated high school 2 years ago with the actress Morgan Turner (The one girl in the Jumanji movie that had orange hair).

She was cool, although very annoyed at me since I bugged her alot in elementary school.

I wanted to ask her more about the filming of the movie but I didnt since she probably heard the same 50 questions 100 times over.

26. I didn’t go to school during this time, but Will Forte went to my high school in the 80’s. Apparently he super nice and friendly, and was actually class president. Even now, he’s all those things, and still down-to-earth. He did an interview with my school’s newspaper, and was very humble. It’s pretty nice to see a guy so famous keep his roots.

27. Machine Gun Kelly went to my high school when I was there. I saw him in the hallways, he liked to wear big white t-shirts.

28. I went to high school with Priyanka Chopra (she came to the states for a year or two during high school). She was beautiful and confident and extra and she LOVED herself. And honestly, we loved her too. I’m am not at all surprised by her fame. Love you, Pri!

29. I went to high school with Pink. We had choir and theater together. I was shy so we didn’t talk much, but a lot of my extended group were close with her. She was OK.

30. Ed Sheeran was a year below me in High School. Generally OK kid, very good guitarist. Got really into looping and pedal effects.

31. I went to high school with Kanye. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t an asshole. He wasn’t nice either I’ll be honest. I had only about 1 or 2 real interactions with him even though we had a few classes together. He was just a straightforward, honest, but yet shy kid. He used to sell candy or some shit in the hallways. I’ll always have respect for him because he was always on the grind and trying to get money to support his family.

32. Frank Abagnale is my dad’s cousin. We were at a family wedding and he was telling us, “Yeah, they’re making a movie about my life. Leonardo DiCaprio is playing me.” He’s a professional liar, so we all just laughed at him. Then Catch Me If You Can came out.

33. I lived in the dorms with Andy Samberg at UCSC freshman year. I remember that he had a bunch of pretty cool hip hop and a record player in his room. He also had a girlfriend that went to another school come visit and he talked his roommate into leaving for the night and then took the two single beds in his dorm room, put them on the floor and prepared a ‘king size’ bed for the night. Our dorm was Cowell College and he performed a really bizarre rap at the talent show second semester. Really talented guy but his level of fame, especially when he made the jump from hustling comedy writer in LA to SNL sensation was shocking to witness.

34. The original “Footloose” was filmed at my high school, so I kind of went to HS with Kevin Bacon and Sarah Jessica Parker for a few months. They were at the very beginning of their respective careers and both extremely nice, fun people; many of us were extras in the movie and had a lot of casual interaction with the cast.

I always win Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon because I appeared in a movie with him.

35. Didn’t go to school with him but the youtuber Vitaly went to my school and had my multimedia class. Our teacher showed us the videos he made there.

Also Bhad Bhabie showed us her new nipple piercings in 6th grade.

36. I was in Drake’s class for grades 1-4. We weren’t super tight, but we got along okay. His mother was always taking him out of school to go to auditions, and TBQH, it never really seemed he was feeling the whole stage kid thing back then. Not that he seemed to hate it, just that to him it seemed more like an errand his mother often took him on. (Though he later seemed to grow into it, so good on him.)

I haven’t seen him since then, so I don’t know what he’s like IRL these days, and I hope he’s happy with whatever he’s up to. But I will say that I am totally incapable of buying his stage persona. I remember little Aubrey Graham as, if anything, kind of a goody-two-shoes. Quick to remind other kids of rules nobody else saw them breaking, inclined to take the teacher’s side if he overheard other kids complaining about her, that kinda thing. Assuming he wasn’t faking an accent the entire time he went to elementary school (I gather that is not, in his case, a safe assumption.), I can also confirm that buddy’s natural accent and dialect is indistinguishable from any other middle-class white kid from Toronto.

37. Lena Dunham was very, very unfunny in middle/high school but otherwise just sort of awkward. I don’t get the impression she changed so much as people started listening to her.

38. I was on the wrestling team with Rachel Brosnahan. She was always super chill and nice. Always treated me with respect. Much better actor than wrestler.

39. I went to high school with Emily Ratajkowski. She is a year older than me and was in a grade above me. We weren’t friends ourselves, but she was friends with a lot of people I was friends in. In no way did I know her well, but i remember she was always smiling and very nice. The most memorable thing though, is I had her dad as my art teacher for a semester when I was a sophomore. He had been with the school for SO many years and I think he retired the year after I had him. My high school was relaxed as fuck but he was the ultimate DGAF teacher. He would take attendance and then leave for the rest of the class, came back 5 minutes prior and would take attendance again. He was a super nice guy, very very talented.

Back to Emily though, the only thing I truly remember from her in high school is she was cute but not like DAMN! She had gnarly eyebrows, not in a bad way at all, they were just intimidating but also really cute in a way. Great girl (from what I could tell) and I’m happy she’s big and famous now.

40. I went to high school with Calista Flockhart. She was very nice, great student, great singer, nice, chill girl. All the crap in the media about her weight and all of that? Nonsense. She was always slender build, athletic. She looks the same today as she did at Shawnee High School in 1983. Good for you, Calista.

41. Kylie Jenner was a couple grades above me at a k-12 school we attended in SoCal. This was in the late 2000s.

Around 2008 when I was in fourth grade, KUTWK had already launched by then and the Kardashian sisters were universally famous, but Kendall and Kylie were still quite young and no one knew them.

I actually didn’t even realize the Kardashians existed until 2011 when Kim got divorced from Kris Humphries, and i began to read up on them. I started to watch a few episodes of their show on TV and quickly realized that the older girl I frequently saw hanging around my school was actually on the show: Kylie Jenner.

A few days later, I ran into Kylie in the school and was amazed that she was this famous. We chatted for a few minutes, and she was extremely kind and friendly.

For the next few months, we’d frequently run into each other and exchange smiles and greetings.

Suddenly, after a bit, she all but vanished from the school, and I never saw her again. It turns out she switched to home schooling at that point.

Looking back, it was all so surreal to me.

42. Not a personal one but my mothers friend circle was involved with Eminem obviously far before he was famous. Uncle also was friends with him, and was there for his first tape he tried to get local shops and people to listen to and pick up during his young/teenage years.

From what I was told, it was very bad lmao. But being a master doesn’t happen overnight.

43. I went to high school with Shawn White. He wasn’t ever around because he already had a bunch of contracts and was already traveling. He also bought his mom a house at 15.

44. She’s not suuuuper famous yet but she’s on the brink. Olivia Cooke (she recently played the lead girl in Ready Player One and she was the love interest in Bates Motel) sat next to me for five years in school because our surnames are very similar. She was my high school crush but I had no confidence, chubby, lame blah blah you know the drill. She was super nice and well liked by everyone. Once we played a school talent show gig together, the highlight of my performance career! Absolutely thrilled that she’s doing so well for herself. Our town is notorious for being kinda shitty so I’m glad someone from there made something of themselves.

45. Bo burnham. Literally the same person.

46. My husband knew Kevin McHale from Glee when he was a kid. Said he was the quiet, artsy type but super talented.

47. Tom Hanks was in this midwestern theater troop (way before he got famous) that visited my mom’s high school. I believe it was a specific workshop for the school’s theater department, where the students got to work with the visiting actors. She and her friend both thought he was the best one in the troop and also thought he was insanely nice.

48. My grandma went to the same high school as James Dean. Said he was chill and charismatic. Was kinda cocky as a result though because he KNEW he was hot stuff.

49. My ex-mother-in-law was close friends with Johnny Knoxville, except everyone around here calls him PJ. He absolutely adores her father. So anytime he came into town, he’s visit my ex-wife’s grandfather, who happened to live next door to my ex-mother-in-law. She said he was just a sweet, goofy kid growing up who was always doing stunts even back then. He used to wear a football helmet around for his stunt work or something like that.

Anywho, he came in town for his parents’ 50th and we were all invited. Then we hung around outside and walked around and I gotta say, I don’t know any celebrities, but I’ve heard they can be dicks to fans (looking at you Daniel Craig, you Bondly SOB, you). This just cannot be said about PJ. He’s just as friendly after 3 hours of fans stopping him as he was the first fan of the night. He smiles from ear-ear, gives each fan a great big hug, takes pictures with them, gives them that Johnny Knoxville laugh, and just genuinely appreciates their support. He’s just an all around nice guy from the sticks.

50. My dad went to school with Vanilla Ice, he said he was nice.