Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis may be best known for her films like Beetlejuice and Thelma and Louise, but she is also a champion of many other artistic fields. Davis played piano, flute, drums, and the organ throughout her early years and became fluent in Swedish as an exchange student in Sandviken. Though the Massachusetts native initially enrolled at New England College, Davis eventually transferred to Boston University, where she worked part-time for the Media Group. The six-foot-tall Mensa member, whose reported IQ score is 140, eventually graduated from BU with a bachelor’s degree in drama in 1979.
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Acclaimed novelist Joyce Carol Oates was the first in her family to complete high school, but went far beyond the secondary school level in terms of her academic achievements. Oates earned a scholarship to Syracuse University, which she called “a very exciting place academically and intellectually,” in The Paris Review. She also said, “I doubt that I missed more than half a dozen classes in my four years there, and none of them in English.” During her college experience, Oates began reading the work of D. H. Lawrence, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka and eventually graduated as the Class of 1960’s valedictorian. She received her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin Madison the following year. Oates became a National Book Award winner for her 1969 novel them and a decade later, became a professor at Princeton University, where she’s remained for the past 30 years.
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As an army brat, Norman Schwarzkopf obtained a global education. At 12, he joined the rest of his family to live with his father stationed in Tehran, Iran and attended the city’s Community High School. Schwarzkopf went on to the International School of Geneva at La Châtaigneraie and later attended Valley Forge Military Academy. Followed by the United States Military Academy. Though Schwarzkopf graduated 43rd in his class in 1956, he later received a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Southern California and became a member of Mensa with a reported IQ of 168.
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Though Quentin Tarantino didn’t graduate high school, he was able to gain admittance to Mensa with an reported IQ score of 160. Not only did the Kill Bill director reportedly teach himself how to read by the age of three, but he used his stint working at Los Angeles’ Video Archives in the mid '80s to turn a passion for movies into a bona fide career. Less than a decade after serving as a video store clerk, Tarantino released his debut film Reservoir Dogs at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. Though he didn’t earn a degree, Tarantino’s intelligence and drive may have gotten him further than a diploma from Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California would have.
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Two-time Academy Award nominee James Woods is known for his dark and dramatic performances and his intelligence is certainly no joke either. The son of an army intelligence officer, Woods had been accepted into the United States Air Force Academy, but, several weeks before he was scheduled to depart, Woods severely injured the tendons in his hands in an accident involving a plate glass window, resulting in a retraction of his exception. Instead, with an reported SAT score of 1580, Woods chose to pursue an undergraduate degree at MIT, where he majored in political science. But just before his graduation, he left to pursue an acting career. And though it’s been reported that Woods boasts an impressive IQ of 180, worthy of Mensa admittance, the high IQ society says he is not a member.
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Comedic actor Steve Martin is known to wear many media hats, but not one with the letter D-U-N-C-E. The Texas-born, California-raised actor attended Garden Grove High School and enrolled at Santa Ana Junior College, where he majored in philosophy. He later transferred to UCLA and switched his major to theater. Though seemingly not the academic type, Martin took to The New Yorker to discuss his efforts in becoming part of the society for the world’s smartest. “Joining Mensa means you are a genius,” Martin said, “and enables you to meet other members who will understand what the hell you are talking about when you say, for example, ‘That lamppost is tawdry.’”
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As a teen star of Pennsylvania’s pageant circuit, Sharon Stone was hiding something beneath her crown. Not only was she also slaving away on the grill at McDonald’s but she was also part of an accelerated study program at Saegertown High School, which worked in conjunction with Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Though she briefly attended Edinboro after graduating high school at 15, Stone soon moved to the tri-state area to pursue modeling and was signed by Ford within four days of her arrival. Her career eventually went the acting route and the Basic Instinct star, fed up with her reputation as a bubbly blonde, told reporters that she belonged to Mensa. Several years later, however, Jim Blackstone, Mensa’s national marketing director, called her out. After admitting that she wasn’t actually a member, Stone claimed that she did, however, go to a Mensa school. But Blackstone says that’s also a fallacy because no Mensa schools existed until the early 1960s and Stone was born in 1958. Nevertheless, with a reported 156 IQ, Stone could still qualify.
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Two-and-a-half-year-old Oscar Wrigley is giving “Baby Einstein” a whole new meaning. The British toddler became the youngest boy to be accepted into the society of geniuses, scoring 160 on his IQ test. Wrigley’s score is the highest IQ the test can measure and is equal to that of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. According to his parents, Wrigley was talking at nine months and by 18 months he could recite the alphabet. Six months later, the toddler could count thousands of words making up his vocabulary, while most his age had mastered about 50. “Every parent likes to think their child was special but we knew there was something particularly remarkable about Oscar,” said his father Joe Wrigley told The Daily Mail. “I’m fully expecting the day to come when he turns around and tells me I’m an idiot.”
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New Jersey-born Asia Carrera was a piano prodigy, having performed at Carnegie Hall twice before reaching the age of 15. The following year, she taught English at Tsuruga College in Japan, but was reportedly pressured by her parents to succeed academically herself, causing her to flee home at 17. Carrera was a member of the National Mathematics League and Spanish National Honor Society and placed in the National Geography, Language Art, and Mathematic Olympiads. She earned a full scholarship to Rutgers University, where she double majored in Business and Japanese. But Carrera never graduated after a stripping side job turned into a career as an adult film star, which reportedly made her more money and was more fun than earning her degree. Though she’s now retired, Carrera has since appeared in hundreds of pornographic pictures and described herself as the nerd of the industry. With an alleged IQ of 156, it seems like a fitting title.
