Celebrities Who Were Childhood Friends

Credit: Clockwise from top left: Jeff Vespa/WireImage; Kevin Mazur/WireImage; Stephen Lovekin/WireImage; Scott Gries/Getty Images

Celebrities Who Were Childhood Friends

Friends before fame! Celebrities including Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were childhood pals before becoming Hollywood stars. Affleck and Damon both grew up in Massachusetts and proceeded to climb the entertainment ladder side by side throughout their decades-long friendship. In March 2020, the Argo star joked that his success as a child star inspired Damon to act as well. “When I was really young, my mom’s friend [was] a casting director in Boston. She was casting a kids’ science and math, adventure, sort of pre-Dora the Explorer kind of show for PBS and had me come in to audition and worked with me on it,” Affleck said on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. “I was 7 or 8 and ended up getting the part. It instilled in me a deep sort of love and affection for this art and craft and line of work. And it made Matt Damon so incredibly jealous [that] it drove him into a career in cinema. So I really take credit for that.” Jonah Hill and Adam Levine have their parents to thank for their close bond. “Our dads met in the principal’s office in junior high,” the 22 Jump Street actor told Howard Stern in June 2014. “We were in carpool. We lived at each other’s houses.” The Los Angeles natives have remained close throughout their careers, with Hill serving as the officiant at Levine’s July 2014 nuptials to Behati Prinsloo. "Adam knew that he was putting himself [in] good hands by having Jonah officiate," a source exclusively told Us Weekly at the time. "He and Behati set out to make this the most fun wedding that anybody had ever experienced, and they truly did just that." [jwplayer 4Opr1Txq-zhNYySv2] The Wolf of Wall Street star’s little sister, Beanie Feldstein, is also a master of making school friends into lifelong companions. After meeting Ben Platt in middle school, the Lady Bird actress and the Dear Evan Hansen star’s careers have skyrocketed almost in tandem. “At 12, we met at a bat mitzvah. At 14, we became best friends,” Feldstein captioned a June 2017 Instagram post with her BFF after his Tony win. “At 16, I gave him cufflinks to wear when he wins his first Tony. At 23, we are on Broadway at the same time ... and he wore the cufflinks.” The Pitch Perfect actor gushed about his childhood bestie at the 2020 Golden Globes after they were both nominated for awards. “That’s the more exciting one for me. I’m obviously, very grateful that The Politician got included, and I’m excited for my whole cast,” he told E! News in January 2020. “But to hear about Beanie, it kind of makes it feel like a home event. It brings it all into reality for me, because I’ve known her since we were in braces.” Scroll down to see what other stars were pals in their youth, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. [podcast_block]

Credit: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock

Beanie Feldstein and Ben Platt

The Booksmart actress met Platt at a bat mitzvah as children, but they didn’t become best friends until they attended the same high school. "The second week of school he got his braces off, and he texted me like 'I got my braces off,' and I left my class to come see his teeth," Feldstein told Seth Meyers in 2017. "I'm such a goody-goody and I love school, so he was like, 'I must mean a lot to you.'" The pair have remained close, dressing up in matching Halloween costumes, traveling the globe together and sharing heartfelt Instagram posts for each other’s birthdays.

Credit: Eric Charbonneau/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck

The actors became pals while growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They met when Damon was 10 and Affleck was 8 and never looked back. The pair have worked together on multiple film projects including, School Ties, The Battle of Shaker Heights and Field of Dreams. When writing their Oscar-winning screenplay for 1997’s Good Will Hunting, the duo lived together. Damon spoke about his longtime friendship with Affleck in 2016, telling Entertainment Tonight, “I’ve known him for 35 years, and we grew up together. We were both in love with the same thing — acting and filmmaking. I think we fed on each other’s obsession during really formative, important years and that bonded us for life.”

Credit: Paul Buck/EPA/Shutterstock

B.J. Novak and John Krasinski

Before starring on The Office together for nine seasons, Krasinski and Novak were childhood pals. "John Krasinski and I have known each other our whole lives in the weirdest, most coincidental way," Novak said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in April 2014. "We played Little League together." The duo later played coworkers, Jim Halpert and Ryan Howard, from 2005 to 2013 on the NBC comedy.

Credit: Broadimage/Shutterstock

Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens

The High School Musical costars met before they played rivals in the Disney Channel musical film franchise. “We actually worked together a year before in a Sears commercial, and from that day on we were super close,” Tisdale exclusively told Us Weekly in August 2019. “So people don’t really — I think some people know that, but they think it was that movie that brought us together and it really wasn’t.” The two later had their own E! special, Vanessa & Ashley: Inner Circle, in 2013. Hudgens then stood up for Tisdale as a bridesmaid when she married Christopher French the following year.

Credit: Nbc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock

Maya Rudolph and Gwyneth Paltrow

The Bridesmaids actress and the Goop founder have known each other since elementary school. Their fathers, Dick Rudolph and Bruce Paltrow, met in college and after they both moved to Los Angeles their daughters became school friends. Gwyneth opened up about the duo’s bond when she hosted Saturday Night Live in 2001. "I hosted once before, but this week has been really extra-special to me because one of my best friends is on the show now, and I'm so proud of her," she said in her monologue. "We've known each other since we were 7 years old, and she's super-funny and talented, and I'm so glad she's in the cast. Her name is Maya Rudolph."

Credit: Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection

Ryan Gosling and Justin Timberlake

Gosling and Timberlake first met while starring on the Mickey Mouse Club in their tween years. In fact, when Gosling first moved to Orlando, Florida, in the early 90s, to appear on The All New Mickey Mouse Club, he lived with Timberlake. The Man of the Woods singer's mom, Lynn, signed on to be Gosling's legal guardian for six months while his own mother, Donna, returned to Canada for work.

Credit: Courtesy of Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian and Nicole Richie

Kardashian reminded everyone that she was buddies with fellow Hollywood kid Richie during their teen years by sharing a throwback photo via Instagram. The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star posted a picture of the pals with the caption, "#ThrowbackThursday @nicolerichie and I being oh so cool at 13 years old." The girls grew up near one another, running in the same circles with powerful dads Lionel Richie and Robert Kardashian.

Credit: Victoria Will/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio

Maguire and DiCaprio were buddies long before starring in The Great Gatsby together. During an interview with Huffington Post, DiCaprio revealed, "After I met Tobey at an audition, I felt like I wanted this guy to be my friend. I remember driving back from school and he was doing Hot Rod Brown Class Clown with Whoopi Goldberg outside Hollywood High. It was a high school. And I jumped out of my car in the middle of the scene, as they were shooting, practically. I was like, `Tobey! Tobey! Tobey! Give me your number.' He was like, `Yeah, who are you again?'"

Credit: Courtesy: Everett Collectio

Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez

Lovato and Gomez met on the set of Barney & Friends as kid actors in the late 90s and became fast pals. During an interview with Seventeen magazine in January 2014, Gomez revealed despite a falling out while Lovato was in rehab in 2010, they remain close friends. "I've known her since we were 7, and we did fall apart for a while. She was going through things and I was so young and it was confusing. I processed it saying, 'OK, I don't understand what she's going through so I'm just going to do this.' I don't think it was fair, and I'm so happy that I have her back in my life now."

Credit: KMazur/WireImage

Courtney Love and Drew Barrymore

Barrymore and Love bonded during their party girl phases. The musician revealed to TimesOnline that she met the Never Been Kissed actress "in a bathroom, smoking. I was 19 and she was like 8." They remained such good pals, Barrymore was even crowned the godmother of Love and her late husband Kurt Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean.

Credit: Ramey

Jonah Hill and Adam Levine

Hill and Levine have been pals way before they became household names. In an interview with Playboy, the Wolf of Wall Street actor said growing up, "Adam was like family, and he still is... I don't see him as a rock star. He's just a great person to me... Adam has been there for me and my family, and his family has been there for my family more than anyone else. That guy has all my love and respect forever." When the Maroon 5 frontman married Prinsloo in July 2014, Hill was the officiant.

Credit: Stephen Lovekin/WireImage

Kate Hudson and Liv Tyler

Hudson and Tyler grew up running in the same famous circle thanks to their parents, Goldie Hawn and Steven Tyler, but they become super close while attending the same high school together, Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in the 1990s. The BFFs then went on to star in Dr. T & the Women together, where they shared an onscreen kiss!

Credit: J. Vespa/WireImage

Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman

These two Aussie A-listers have been friends since high school. "Naomi Watts and I are very, very good friends and have maintained that through many things…I think that's really rare, particularly for actresses, and I take a lot of pride in that," Kidman told the Telegraph. "We share a naughty wicked sense of humor," Watts told Jane magazine.

Credit: Jeff Vespa/WireImage

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie

These two socialites go way back. After growing up together in the posh Bel-Air neighborhood, Richie and Hilton then documented their wild early years on reality show The Simple Life. Despite not remaining as close as they once were, Richie said in 2014 on Watch What Happens Live, "Paris is somebody that's been in my life since day one. I haven't spoken to her in a while technically, but, if you really want to get into it, my view of a friendship is someone that you don't necessarily have to talk to you every day."

Credit: Scott Gries/Getty Images

Cameron Diaz and Snoop Dogg

Diaz and the rapper shared the same hallways in high school at Long Beach Polytechnic High School. The Sex Tape actress once admitted on Lopez Tonight, "I'm pretty sure I bought weed from him!"