Celebrities who are related
Family trees are often full of surprises, but nowhere more than with celebrities. Join us for a surprising look at which stars have other stars for cousins, uncles, aunts and beyond.
Family trees are often full of surprises, but nowhere more than with celebrities. Join us for a surprising look at which stars have other stars for cousins, uncles, aunts and beyond.
Family trees are often full of surprises, but nowhere more than with celebrities. Join us for a surprising look at which stars have other stars for cousins, uncles, aunts and beyond.
Genealogists at Ancestry.com recently announced they had traced pop star Justin Bieber's bloodlines back to where they could connect him with several celebrity relatives.
According to Ancestry.com, Bieber is 11th cousins once removed with fellow Canadian Ryan Gosling. But the singer's famous bloodlines don't stop there. Do you know who else he's related to?
Bieber is also a 12th cousin to Canadian punk-pop singer Avril Lavigne, with each star's family tree tracing back to a married couple, Mathurin Roy and Marguerite Bire, who were born in France and lived in Quebec.
To wrap up Bieber's celebrity bloodlines, he's also related to Canadian superstar Celine Dion. If you're wondering, the two singers are 10th cousins three-times removed.
Besides her distant relationship to Justin Bieber, Celine Dion also is distant relatives to another singer, this time a well-known American pop star.
According to Canadian historical records, Dion and Madonna are distant cousins, sharing a common relative named Zacharie Cloutier, a carpenter who settled in New France, Quebec, in 1634.
Director Spike Lee is well known as a super fan for the New York Knicks. And a Knicks' free agent signing in 2011 made each game that season pretty much a mini family reunion for the movie director.
Point guard Baron Davis, whose 2011-12 season with the Knicks was limited by injuries, is second cousins with Lee.
Simon Cowell is related by marriage to a famous British singer.
Robbie Williams' cousin's brother-in-law is none other than Cowell.
Actor Ralph Fiennes, the star of such movies as "Schindler's List," "The English Patient," "The Reader" and the "Harry Potter" series, is eighth cousins with ...
... Prince Charles.
But Fiennes is hardly the only celebrity who can claim a royal celebrity. Consider film director Guy Ritchie, for instance. The director of such movies as "Sherlock Holmes," "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is related to ...
... Kate Middleton, better known these days as Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Ritchie and Middleton are fourth cousins, which explains how he scored an invite to her wedding to Prince William.
But, according to the New England Genealogical Society, Middleton also has another famous cousin, this one more distant.
Middleton is 15th cousins with talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.
Nicolas Cage's real last name is Coppola, so it's not too hard to figure out his celebrity relatives.
Cage is first cousins with actress/director Sofia Coppola and nephew to her father ...
... "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now" director Francis Ford Coppola.
Jenny McCarthy has a famous comic actress for a cousin who shares her last name. Do you know who she is?
Jenny McCarthy's cousin is "Bridesmaids" and "Mike and Molly" star Melissa McCarthy.
Emma Roberts, the star of movies such as "Hotel for Dogs," "Valentine's Day" and "Scream 4," has a famous father in Eric Roberts, but she also has a famous aunt.
Roberts' aunt is none other than Eric Roberts' sister, fellow actress Julia Roberts, who co-starred with her niece in "Valentine's Day."
Glenn Close is a six-time Academy Award nominee, holding the record with Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter for most nominations for an actress without an Oscar win. Given her famous cousin, that could make family reunions awkward.
Close and Meryl Streep, who has three Oscars and holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actress or actor with 17, are 15th cousins once removed. But Streep also has another celebrity relative who's a bit closer.
Streep is a second cousin once removed with actress Brooke Shields.
You'll never guess who's cousins with rocker/actor Lenny Kravitz.
Kravitz is third cousins with Al Roker, as the "Today" show weatherman was a cousin of Kravitz's mother, the late actress Roxie Roker.
Researchers at the New England Genealogical Society discovered that movie star Brad Pitt has a distant presidential relative.
It turns out that Pitt is a distant cousin of President Barack Obama.
The society also discovered that Pitt's fiancee, Angelina Jolie, also has a family link to a famous political family.
Jolie is a distant cousin to former first lady and current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Clinton, who is of French-Canadian descent on her mother's side, is also a distant cousin of singers Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette.
Like Brad Pitt, two-time Oscar winner and well-known history buff Tom Hanks also has a distant relative who once sat in the Oval Office.
Hanks is third cousins four-times removed with President Abraham Lincoln. Their common ancestor is John Hanks, who was the great-great-grandfather of Lincoln and the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Tom Hanks.
Singers Ray J and Brandy (real names: William Ray Norwood Jr. and Brandy Norwood) are brother and sister, but they also have a famous first cousin in their family. Do you know who he is?
The singing siblings are first cousins with rap star Snoop Dogg. Brandy has even collaborated with her rapping cousin on his song "Special."
Actor and stand-up comedian Bill Bellamy, a Newark, N.J., native, is a huge New York Knicks fan. But he has a famous cousin who won one of his four NBA titles with one of the Knicks' biggest rivals.
Bellamy's cousin is former NBA star center Shaquille O'Neal, who won a title in 2006 with the Miami Heat to go along with his three earlier NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers.
The late singer Whitney Houston had a famous singer for a cousin to look up to when starting out in the 1980s.
Houston was first cousins with Dionne Warwick. The signers' mothers were sisters who sang together in the gospel singing group the Drinkard Singers.
Everybody knows that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are childhood pals who won an Oscar together for the script to their breakthrough hit "Good Will Hunting." But ...
... according to the New England Genealogical Society, they are also 10th cousins once removed, linked by their common ancestor William Knowlton Jr., a bricklayer who came to the U.S. from England in the 1630s and settled in Ipswich, Mass.
Electropop duo LMFAO members Redfoo (left) and SkyBlu (right) are actually uncle and nephew, respectively. But their real names, Stefan Kendal Gordy and Skyler Husten Gordy, give a hint to their musical pedigree.
Redfoo's father is music mogul Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records. That also makes him SkyBlu's grandfather.
In 1990, Christopher Martin was a huge star, better known as "Play" from the hip-hop and comedy duo Kid 'n Play. When the duo made their movie debut in "House Party," Martin (left) helped his cousin, an up-and-coming comedian named Martin Lawrence (right), land a spot in the film.
Many people have played the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game, but the actor and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, discovered in 2011 that they share a link other than just marriage. The acting couple learned via their appearance on the PBS TV show "Finding Your Roots" that they are actually 10th cousins once removed.
