8 Famous Actors Describe What They Were Like As Teenagers.

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By Waleed Ahmed

Sept. 14, 2024

High school is difficult. Despite the fact that every school usually seems to have a "cool" or "popular" crowd, many kids uncomfortably struggle to determine whether or not they fit in. Some even face bullying. Unfortunately, life may be difficult even for high-profile students.

Some of these aspiring A-list actors were already well-known while they were still in school, while others went on to become adored celebrities in later years. Others were the targets of bullies, while some of them were viewed as troublemakers. Many future stars also rebelled—against convention, authority, and/or their parents—like many of the young people who didn't go on to discover success. Many well-known actors struggled before they became well-known, despite the fact that it may look like they are living the ideal life now. These tales show, if anything, that the rest of your life is not defined by these years.

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Below, some film and television stars talk about what they were like as teens. Can you relate to any of their stories?

1. Winona Ryder Was Beaten Up In The Girls Bathroom

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Winona Ryder was just 14 when she made her film debut in Lucas (1986). She began taking acting classes at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater at age 12, but also attended regular school. During her first week at Petaluma's Kenilworth Junior High School in California, she found herself the target of bullies.

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In a 2000 interview for Harper's Bazaar, Ryder recalled that incident, and what happened when she ran into one of her tormentors years later:

"I was wearing an old Salvation Army shop boy’s suit. I had a hall pass, so I went to the [girls’] bathroom. I heard people saying, “Hey, f*ggot.” They slammed my head into a locker. I fell to the ground and they started to kick the sh*t out of me. I had to have stitches. The school kicked me out, not the bullies.

Years later, I went to a coffee shop in Petaluma, and I ran into one of the girls who’d kicked me, and she said, “Winona, Winona, can I have your autograph?” and I said, “Do you remember me? I went to Kenilworth. Remember how, in seventh grade, you beat up that kid?” and she said, “Kind of,” and I said, “That was me. Go To Hell!”

In a 1994 interview with Life magazine, Ryder claimed that being put on home study for a while was “great,” because it led to her beginning classes at ACT and later getting an agent. The bullies, she claimed, “gave me my career.”

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2. Harrison Ford Was Bullied, But Got Sympathy From Girls

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It wasn't until Harrison Ford was a college student that he started to take an interest in acting. He tried to discover his thing while going to Maine East High School and growing up in the Chicago suburbs:

"I was a kid who never found a niche. I wasn't an athlete, I wasn't a student leader, I wasn't anything. I was a late bloomer, I think."

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Amazing as it might seem, considering Ford is known for his action hero roles, when he was younger he got picked on by the bullies at his school. He recalled in a 2016 interview for GQ an incident when he was about 12 years old:

"I was the new kid, and I was kind of short and geeky, I guess. I don't know—I must have pissed somebody off, and we fought, and he f*cking pushed me off the side of the hill... [This became a daily ritual.] I'd come up the hill, and then they pushed me down the hill, and I'd come up the hill, and if there was enough time they'd push me down the hill again."

Ford denied being all that upset about this treatment. Maybe because he found a silver lining to it:

"I suppose it did upset…well, yes and no. What I noticed is that the girls were beginning to have a certain amount of sympathy for me. That's what I noticed."

3. Jake Gyllenhaal Was A ‘Nerd’ With Thick Glasses

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Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jake Gyllenhaal's older sister, and his mother are actors, screenwriters, and directors, respectively. It therefore comes as no surprise that he made his acting debut at the young age of 10, playing Billy Crystal's son in City Slickers (1991).

But attending high school wasn't any easier for him because he was a child actor. In a 2016 Magic Radio interview to promote his movie Demolition, the actor claimed that he was "sort of a nerd" and also somewhat tormented as a teenager:

"I've always had really bad eyesight so I always had really thick glasses, which inevitably always made people kind of treat me a certain way, you know?… I just remember really, really not obviously being sure of who I was and trying to copy a lot of different people to define myself… Kids are brutal, you know… I was constantly made fun of that I was a performer. I played sports, but the fact that I loved to sing, or that I loved to act was constantly made fun of."

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The actor added that he found it interesting that since he's grown up he's run into some of the people who had teased him as a kid and that those people understood how ridiculous their behavior had been and now supported his career.

4. Ryan Reynolds Was Kicked Out Of School For A Prank On A Teacher

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Since he was 13 years old, Ryan Reynolds has worked as a professional actor; his debut appearance was in the Canadian adolescent drama Hillside (known as Fifteen in the US).

Reynolds wasn't always considered the "Gorgeous Man Alive" by People Magazine, despite being a seasoned leading man. The actor revealed on Conan in 2017 that he had absolutely no strategy for attracting the attention of his female classmates in school:

"I remember, it took me a while to learn that you could actually talk to girls. I remember during elementary school, I used to “accidentally fall” on [girls] during volleyball practice. And just a few years later, that's illegal. That's straight up inappropriate."

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Not knowing how to talk to girls was only one of the young Reynolds' problems. During a 2012 appearance on BBC, he talked about following in his brothers' footsteps of getting into trouble with school administrators:

"I was a bit of a pariah at school. I have three older brothers, all of whom were kicked out of this very same school, so from the moment I got there, I was a marked man. I was kicked out for something I think you'd appreciate. I was kicked out for stealing a car. But wait - I didn't actually steal a vehicle! … "

We had a teacher that was just completely horrible, and he had this tiny automobile. One of those little Volkswagens. So, as an April Fool's joke on him, my buddies and I simply picked it up, hoisted it, and carried it down the block. There were around eight of us. In Canada, it is illegal to transport something more than 10 feet. I was unaware of that. One city block was entirely burglarized!

5. Cameron Diaz Bought Weed From Snoop Dogg And Got Into Fights

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Cameron Diaz made her film debut in The Mask when she was just 21 years old (1994). She signed a modelling contract when she was just 16 years old and a student at California's Long Beach Polytechnic High School.

But as Diaz explained on Lopez Tonight in 2011, life at school was often rough, as fighting was commonplace:

"Anytime you heard the locker slam and you’d turn and there was a girl taking off her earrings, she's pulling her hair back in a ponytail and she's taking all her friends' rings and coming at you like this…

I used to get in fights with boys more than girls, for some reason boys liked to fight me... But one time in junior high I had this girl come up to me in the locker room from behind and pull my hair back… I had to shut her down!"

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Diaz also went to high school with another future star from Long Beach: Snoop Dogg, though back then he was known as Calvin Broadus:

"He was a year older than me… I remember him, he was very tall and skinny. He wore lots of ponytails… I'm pretty sure I bought weed from him."

6. Chad Michael Murray Said He Was The Poor Kid At A Rich School

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In the first season of Gilmore Girls, Chad Michael Murray, who had started his career as a model while still a teenager, played Tristan Dugray, a well-off high school student.

While Tristan and Murray's own history were very different, Lucas Scott from One Tree Hill, who played the character that catapulted Murray to stardom, was a perfect fit for Murray. Murray, whose mother left the family when he was a toddler, recalled in a 2007 interview with Seventeen magazine about his years attending Clarence (NY) High School: "Lucas was from the "wrong side of the tracks" and had been abandoned by a parent.

"It was kinda like a rich school, but I was poor. So it was a lot harder than a regular school would be. You know, everyone else has the coolest clothes and the greatest cars. They would get a beautiful new Lexus for their birthday, and I was driving a 1979 Cougar."

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7. Dwayne Johnson Had Been Arrested Eight Or Nine Times By Age 17

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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson first rose to stardom as a professional wrestler before playing collegiate football for the University of Miami. The celebrity, though, could have experienced a very different outcome given his turbulent upbringing and several run-ins with the authorities. In a 2006 NPR interview, Johnson recounted that by the time he was 17, he had already had eight or nine arrests:

"I was getting in trouble; I was doing a lot of things I shouldn't have been doing, getting arrested. That started happening when I was 13 years old. And, you know, I could've easily been one of these kids in lockup and in jail. I was fortunate and I was lucky that I had a couple of people in my life who cared about me. I had good, loving parents. It wasn't until I got older that I realized the importance of that consistent love at home, and that's something you realize that a lot of these kids don't have."

Johnson explained that his arrests were primarily for theft and for getting into fights:

"I wouldn't have changed anything that happened because it certainly shaped me. But you talk about making the wrong decisions and bad choices, you know, I know what it's like to fail. And frankly, I know what it's like to expect to fail too, especially at that age."

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8. Jennifer Aniston Rocked A Mini-Mohawk

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Jennifer Aniston, the daughter of two actors (her father John Aniston has played Victor Kiriakis on the daytime drama Days of Our Lives since 1985), has been named People magazine's "Most Beautiful Woman." She has also introduced hair care and perfume lines, endorsed skin care goods, and launched her own clothing line. However, the Friends star said to People in 1997 that she wanted to become "Most Rebelliously Unattractive" while she was a high school student at New York City's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts:

"High school was tragic. Just not well-informed. You know, you're experimenting. It was the '80s and I looked like a goth nightmare. "

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Of her teenage hair 'dos, Aniston said:

"I didn't take good care of my hair, and I had some of the worst hairstyles you can imagine, with some of the worst [colors]… There was a cheap deep burgundy that faded out to orange. Then there was the day I got a mini mohawk from a place in downtown New York that did $6 haircuts."