Stars Who Went To High School Together

we take a look at celebrities—who took classes together as teenagers 

Lady Gaga and Nicky Hilton

When asked in a 2008 interview about hanging out with the Hilton sisters at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City, Lady Gaga (Class of 2004) admitted that she barely knew them—but they remained influential for her. "They're very pretty and very clean. Very, very clean. You know, I never saw Paris; she was older than me, and it's funny that the press always write that I went to school with the Hilton sisters, but I actually only went with Nicky.... But, you know, it's impressive to be that perfect all the time, these girls. I was always a weird girl in school, who did theater and came to school with lots of red lipstick on or my hair perfectly curled, or whatever I was doing to get attention. It's funny as it's almost like they were there to make me aware, because so much of what I do now is that I try to twist my world into the commercial community. So I guess they've been quite an influence on me. Not them in particular, but the idea of the self-proclaimed artist."

Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts

Although she was born in Hawaii, Nicole Kidman moved to Australia at four and later became classmates with Naomi Watts at North Sydney Girls' High School. The two have been best friends ever since. The duo often acted together and did a little modeling, and as Kidman revealed to CBS's Harry Smith in 2007, Watts also "dated my sister's boyfriend." (Which really is so high school.) Then in 1991, Kidman helped Watts get cast in Flirting alongside Thandie Newton and herself. And when Kidman became the first Australian actress to win an Oscar in 2003, one of the first calls she made was to Watts.

Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond

Forget Glee. Can you imagine how good the chorus at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School was in the mid-1950s when both Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand were singing in it? Although the two didn't really know each other back in those days, they collaborated decades later on the duet "You Don't Bring Me Flowers (Anymore)," which became a No. 1 hit in 1978.

Charlie Sheen, Rob Lowe, Robert Downey Jr., and Sean Penn

Talk about a brat pack. In the early 1980s, Rob Lowe, Charlie Sheen, Robert Downey Jr., and Sean Penn were all friends at Santa Monica High School. Also in their crowd? Holly Robinson—and, of course, Emilio Estevez. Lowe wrote about those teenage years in his best-selling autobiography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, and talked about his old pal Sheen on Access Hollywood last year. "We went to a big high school, and I can remember Charlie, for some reason, was wearing a bulletproof vest to school because he thought the gangs were going to get him. Charlie has some thoughts—there's no two ways about it." And then Lowe added this somewhat unbelievable memory: "We were both nerds, man. I am telling you—he wanted to be a baseball player."

Cameron Diaz and Snoop Dogg

While promoting Bad Teacher last year on George Lopez's talk show, Cameron Diaz revealed that she was no angel as a student at Long Beach Polytechnic High School in California. When Lopez asked whether Diaz knew Snoop Dogg when they both attended the school, she recalled the rap star fondly. "He was a year older than me...I remember him; he was very tall and skinny. He wore lots of ponytails," Diaz confessed. "And I'm pretty sure I bought weed from him." A few months later, when Snoop was a guest, Lopez asked if Diaz's revelation was true. "I might have sold her some of that white-girl weed," he joked.

David Duchovny and John F. Kennedy Jr.

According to an episode of the X-Files, the first word that David Duchovny's character, Fox Mulder, uttered as a child was "JFK." It's fitting for an actor who became best friends with John F. Kennedy Jr., at New York City's Collegiate School in the late 1970s. And there was a third musketeer in their high school scene— actor Jason Beghe, who now stars with Duchovny on Californication.

Jennifer Aniston and Chaz Bono

Back when she was attending New York City's High School of Performing Arts, Jennifer Aniston was best girlfriends with Cher's daughter, Chastity Bono—but not anymore. But that's only because Chastity became a man and is now Chaz Bono. And based on a photo of the two that surfaced last September, the pair definitely had one thing in common in high school: big '80s hair.

Josh Hartnett and Rachel Leigh Cook

"I remember thinking he was really cute," Rachael Leigh Cook told People about Josh Hartnett, who was two years ahead of her at Minneapolis South High School. Hartnett may have been all that in high school, but just three years after graduating, movie audiences thought Cook was in her breakout movie, She's All That. And in 2001, the former high school classmates played love interests in Blow Dry, but there just wasn't on-screen chemistry. "When Cook and Hartnett sneak into a funeral home to test her coloring techniques on the coffin inhabitants, it's a nice macabre touch. Dying, dyeing—why not? But once again there is little follow-through on the darkly humorous situation," USA Today wrote. "Despite much ado about hairdos and relationships, Blow Dry is basically a washout."

John Krasinski and B.J. Novak

Somewhat astonishingly, Office mates John Krasinski and B.J. Ryan were actually classmates back at Newton South High School in Massachusetts. They were even on the same Little League team, a fact they love embellishing. ''There's a large oak tree in the Newton Centre park playground that is legendary because only a few humans have hit it with a baseball from home plate. And B.J. Novak is among them," Krasinski joked to the Boston Globe in 2005. "And I was there that day." In the same interview, Novak revealed, "'I think John started acting as a direct result of my casting him in the senior show. Technically, he has me to thank for all of this, right?" As for what Krasinski was like in high school, Novak told Playboy: "He was popular and smart, and if he liked a girl he would just ask her out. I was at home, meanwhile, writing to my local TV affiliates, telling them they should air more sitcoms."

Kevin Spacey and Val Kilmer

In the new documentary Shakespeare High, Kevin Spacey confesses a breakthrough moment he had in the auditorium of Chatsworth High School in California. "It changed me," the two-time Oscar winner says. "The first little bits of confidence and self-esteem that I began to obtain happened in this room. I can actually pinpoint the moment I realized I no longer wanted to be an actor; I was an actor." But Val Kilmer, Spacey's classmate at Chatsworth, might disagree. In a 2005 interview with Esquire, Kilmer said that his friend Spacey is "proof that you can learn how to act. Because he was horrible when he first started, and now he's so good." Then again, it was Spacey (and not Kilmer) who starred as Captain von Trapp in the senior-year production of The Sound of Music—opposite another famous Chatsworth classmate: Mare Winningham as Maria.

Neil Patrick Harris and Freddie Prinze Jr.

When Neil Patrick Harris was attending La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he had a very high-profile side job—starring as TV's precocious doctor Doogie Howser. And three years behind NPH at La Ceuva? Freddie Prinze Jr., who wasn't much of a student but discovered he loved acting. And just a few miles away, at Saint Pius X High School in Albuquerque, was future Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Lauryn Hill and Zach Braff

How close were Scrubs star Zach Braff and singer Lauryn Hill when they attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey? The class of '93 friends lived in the same neighborhood, and "Lauryn Hill did go to my bar mitzvah," Braff revealed in a 2006 magazine interview. "There was a game called Coke and Pepsi. You'd have a partner, and one person was Coke and the other Pepsi. Depending on what the DJ would yell, you had to run and get on that person's lap. And Lauryn was my Coke and Pepsi partner."