Channing Tatum
Cullman, Alabama

The studly model-turned-actor spent a rural childhood in Alabama and Mississippi before going on to star in films like Step Up and G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra.

Jennifer Garner
Charleston, West Virginia

Though she was born in Houston, Texas, her father's job at Union Carbide soon relocated the family to West Virginia. Before becoming an actress Garner reportedly wanted to be "a children's book author and a librarian," and in 2008, she helped raise money to expand Charleston's public library.

Hilary Rhoda
Chevy Chase, Maryland

Before becoming an internationally successful model, Hilary had a slightly rougher hobby—playing competitive field hockey and lacrosse for her Maryland high school. 

Emma Stone
Scottsdale, Arizona

The Golden Globe-nominated actress started her acting career as a member of the Valley Youth Theatre in Phoenix, before heading to Hollywood to star in films like Superbad and Easy A.

Nicole Kidman
Honolulu, Hawaii

The statuesque star of Moulin Rouge! actually has dual citizenship in America and Australia—she was born while her parents were studying in the Aloha state on educational visas. 

Julia Roberts
Atlanta, Georgia

While growing up in Georgia, Julia originally wanted to be a veterinarian. The Oscar winner had her first brush with superstardom as southern belle in Steel Magnolias, but it was after playing a Hollywood prostitute in Pretty Woman that Julia shot to legend status (and gave thigh-high boots an insurmountable cultural reference point).

Christina Hendricks
Twin Falls, Idaho

The voluptuous bombshell, who is a natural blonde, began dying her locks crimson at the age of ten. She started her acting career doing musical theatre as a child in Twin Falls before eventually becoming TV's hottest office manager as Mad Men's Joan Holloway.

Jennifer Hudson
Chicago, Illinois

It's surprising to remember that the Grammy- and Oscar-winning songstress didn't even win American Idol (she came in 7^th ). The charming singer/actress got her musical start at the age of 7, singing in her church choir and doing Chicago-area community theatre.

Janet Jackson
Gary, Indiana

As the youngest member of the Jackson family, Janet was a musical super star from a young age, spending much of her childhood performing with the Jackson 5. The family lived in Indiana until a record deal with Motown enabled them to relocate to a mansion Los Angeles.

Michelle Monaghan
Winthrope, Iowa

The former class president of East Buchanan High School also starred in several plays there, before going on to study journalism in Chicago. After modeling internationally, the brunette beauty moved to New York to pursue an acting career. 

Janelle Monáe
Kansas City, Kansas

Janelle, an exhuberant singer, songwriter, and performer, has said that another famous (if fictional) Kansan had a great influence on her musically—Dorothy, from The Wizard of Oz. 

Jennifer Lawrence
Louisville, Kentucky

Before Jennifer Lawrence made her breakout performance as Ree Dolly in Winter's Bone (and sent jaws dropping in that slinky red Calvin Klein dress), she was acting in church plays in her hometown of Louisville. 

Reese Witherspoon
New Orleans, Louisiana

A thoroughly modern Southern belle, the Oscar winner spent most of her childhood in Louisiana and Tennessee, thanks to her parents' careers in medicine, which she has said helped her develop "a sense of family and tradition." 

Anna Kendrick
Portland, Maine

Anna began her acting career on stage, appearing in the Broadway musical High Society when she was just 12 years old. She says she caught the acting bug at the age of 10, thanks to her parents allowing her and her brothers to hop a bus from Portland to New York City, where she attended auditions.

Valerie Plame
Anchorage, Alaska

Plame's rise to fame was a result of the end of a career—her outing as an undercover CIA operative by the Washington Post. The memoir of the comely clandestine agent was turned into a movie, Fair Game, in which Valerie was played by the lovely Naomi Watts.

Kate Bosworth
Cohasset, Massachussetts

The blonde beauty moved around a lot as a child, thanks to her dad's job as a Talbot's executive, but became a champion equestrian during her adolescence in coastal Massachusetts. Her horsey talents helped her land her first major role, in the 1998 film The Horse Whisperer. 

Jessica Biel
Ely, Minnesota

The fresh-faced actress left her native Minnesota far behind when she began her modeling and acting career—she went on to act in several major projects associated with other places—namely, 7th Heaven and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Dita von Teese
Rochester, Michigan

Dita's noted fondness for retro glamour began early—growing up in Michigan, her mother, who loved all things Golden-era Hollywood, would supply a young Dita with special clothing for playing dress up, perhaps leading to the burlesque star's current love of elaborate and dramatic costumes, including designing her own corsetry and lingerie. 

Britney Spears
McComb, Mississippi

The pop princess still has the drawl she developed growing up in rural Mississippi and Louisiana, where her rise to stardom began after landing a role on The Mickey Mouse Club. Now that she's the first female artist to have six albums debut at number one on the charts, its seems she did manage to leave behind the mouse ears. 

Michelle Williams
Kalispell, Montana

The petite Academy Award-nominated actress is also a financial whiz—Michelle won the Robbins World Cup Trading Championship in 1997, an echo of her father's earlier victory in the same competition (he's a stock and commodities trader professionally). 

Jon Hamm
St. Louis, Missouri

Everyone's favorite `50s womanizer (or at least, he plays one on TV) was quite the jock growing up—at his high school in rural Missouri, Jon played football, baseball, and competed on the swim team. 

Lauryn Hill
East Orange, New Jersey

The gorgeous former Fugee grew up in musical family, listening to her parents' Motown recordings at their East Orange home. Though she still performs regularly, the soulful singer rigorously avoids publicity, instead choosing to keep her life with her partner, Bob Marley's son Rohan, and their 6 children private. 

Hilary Swank
Lincoln, Nebraska

Hilary Swank might have some major mantle decorations now—with two Oscar trophies to her name—but she came from humbler beginnings. Born in Nebraska, she moved often, and spent a large part of her childhood in a trailer park.

Brandon Flowers
Henderson, Nevada

The sexy, bad-boy frontman of The Killers got the dreamy rock star gig after replying to an ad that the band's guitarist, Dave Keuning, placed in a local Las Vegas newspaper. 

Sarah Silverman
Bedford, New Hampshire

Sarah's performances entered the shock-comedy genre pretty early in her career—after appearing in local television shows and community theatre projects, at just 17, she started performing stand-up, singing a song called "Mammaries" in a local New Hampshire restaurant.

Demi Moore
Roswell, New Mexico

By the time Demi was 14 years old, her family had left the UFO-associated area of Roswell and moved nearly 40 times, finally settling in Hollywood, where her high school classmates included Anthony Kiedis and Timothy Hutton.

Scarlett Johansson
New York City, New York

The Lost in Translation stunner has kept close ties to the place of her birth, spending much of her free time in NYC. She recently won a Tony award for her Broadway performance in A View from the Bridge. 

Evan Rachel Wood
Raleigh, North Carolina

Known for edgy roles (Thirteen, Running With Scissors) and an edgy personal life (she was engaged to Marilyn Manson from 2007 until 2010), her career started with more traditional endeavors—a young Evan starred in her director/playwright father's productions of A Christmas Carol and The Miracle Worker.

Josh Duhamel
Minot, North Dakota

Before Mr. Fergie became Transformers hero William Lennox, the former model was a gridiron hero, playing quarterback for the Minot State University football team. 

Amber Valetta
Tulsa, Oklahoma

 The statuesque former host of MTV's House of Style got her start in the fashion world when, at 15, her mother signed her up with the Tulsa-based Linda Layman modeling agency. 

Katie Holmes
Toledo, Ohio

Katie Holmes grew up the quintessential good girl, earning a 4.0 grade point average, scoring a 1310 on her SATs, and getting accepted to Columbia University, before going on to play another good girl as Dawson's Creek's Joey Potter. 

Courtney Love
Portland, Oregon

Though she's known to oscillate wildly between "hot" and "hot mess," the Hole frontwoman is still a designer's darling, claiming Karl Lagerfeld and Ricardo Tisci as close friends. 

Mena Suvari
Newport, Rhode Island

The model-turned-actress, famous for her role in American Beauty, was born in Newport, and later discovered by a casting agent at her all-girls school in Charleston, South Carolina.

Johnny Whitworth
Charleston, South Carolina

The Empire Records hottie was born on Halloween—that was surely all treat, no trick, for his hometown of Charleston.

Taylor Swift
Wyomissing, Pennsylvania

Swift wrote a national poetry contest-winning poem in the fourth grade at her Wyomissing elementary school. Since then, she's been keeping up the good work, having written and recorded three albums that have won a cumulative four Grammys, seven American Music Awards, and six CMT Music Awards.

Beth Ditto
Searcy, Arkansas

The Gossip frontwoman and model once caused a stir during an interview when she told NME that people in her home state of Arkansas eat squirrels. "People in Arkansas just do—they'd think you were a freak if you ate squid there!"

Megan Fox
Oak Ridge, Tennessee

The outspoken bombshell was born in Oak Ridge, but shortly thereafter moved to Kingston, Tennessee, where she began training in drama and dance at the age of five.

January Jones
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

On a visit to The Daily Show, Jon Stewart once asked the Mad Men star and Versace muse which Dakota she was from. Her answer? "Does it matter?" But lest you fear she's forgotten her roots, Jones later launched into a vigorous encyclopedic break-down of her state's Super Bowl allegiances. (For the record: she's a Steelers gal.)

Beyoncé
Houston, Texas

The Grammy-winning diva, who just release her fourth studio album, 4, this week,  was discovered in her dance classes (she studied ballet and jazz) at Houston's St. Mary's Elementary School, where her instructor overheard her humming a song and hitting the high notes on the nose. The rest is the stuff of music legend.

Jason  Bateman
Salt Lake City, Utah

The Arrested Development actor, who stars in Horrible Bosses opening on July 8, grew up in Utah before his family planted themselves in California, where his father founded a Hollywood repertory stage.

Miranda July
Barre, Vermont

The celebrated author and indie filmmaker, whose upcoming The Future hits theaters on August 17, was born in Vermont, where he parents, both writers, taught at Goddard College. (So that's where she got it from.)

Sandra Bullock
Arlington, Virginia

Oscar-winner and all-around American sweetheart Bullock was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia, where she attended high school. There she was a cheerleader and discovered her knack for acting in school theater productions.

Anna Faris
Edmonds, Washington
 
Born in Baltimore, Faris and her family moved to Edmonds, Washington when she was six. The funny woman, who stars in What's Your Number? on September 30, attended University of Washington and earned her undergraduate degree in English literature before moving to London to star in the 1999 indie flick Lover's Lane.

Taraji P. Henson
Washington, D.C.

Before the stunning Southeast-D.C. native was nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, she proved her singing chops were just as hot, providing vocals on "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," from the film Hustle and Flow (in which she also starred).  The track won an Academy Award for best original song.

Mark Ruffalo
Kenosha, Wisconsin

The Oscar-nominated actor (for his supporting role in The Kids Are All Right) left his hometown in his teens, but is known to still revisit the community for local charity events.

Drew Barrymore
Culver City, California

The quintessential California golden girl, Drew grew up as part of Hollywood's royal Barrymore family, and began acting at the age of 5.

Chloë Sevigny
Darien, Connecticut

The indie darling spent her childhood in the rather posh community of Darien (where she often babysat actor Topher Grace), spending her summers attending theatre camps and acting in various YMCA plays, before landing a leading role in the controversial 1995 film Kids.

Aubrey  Plaza
Wilmington, Delaware

Aubrey's unusual look and deadpan comedic delivery have been winning her fans on Parks and Recreation for several seasons. The comedian, who is half Puerto Rican, has said she was "like, the only diverse kid in my [Wilmington] high school," and often bases her Parks character on her real life experiences.

Amy Adams
Castle Rock, Colorado

Though the Julie & Julia star was actually born to military parents in Vicenza, Italy, she spent her childhood and adolescence singing in the choir and training as a ballerina in Colorado.

Leighton  Meester
Marco Island, Florida

The Gossip Girl star had an unusual early childhood—when she was born, her mother was serving a federal prison sentence in Fort Worth on drug charges—the family moved to Marco Island after her release, and Leighton spent the remainder of her childhood there with a relatively normal upbringing. Inauspicious beginnings for the stylish star, who went on to attend the Professional Children's School in NYC and book a Wilhelmina modeling contract by age 13.