Celebrities love to tell tales of “before they were famous”.
Working as waiters or baristas, driving from audition to audition, almost giving up before that one phone call that changed their life, there’s no denying Hollywood loves a good story of struggle.
A big part of making it on the journey to success and fame is having a celebrity roommate. A fellow would-be or established star to share scripts, give audition tips and get annoyed with when they leave their dirty dishes in the sink.
From Brad Pitt’s Beverly Hills, 90210 roommate, to Jamie Dornan’s duo of famous roomies, here are 20 celebrity roommates…
James Corden and Dominic Cooper
The host of The Late Late Show and the Mamma Mia! actor are long-time friends who used to live together in London. Corden credits Cooper with introducing him to his wife, and the pair have reminisced about their time together in a flat in the British capital, on Corden’s show.
“We only had one piece of cutlery, which was a spatula,” Cooper said. “And I remember a really depressing evening where he caught me. He came home and I was just eating baked beans with the spatula.”
Jamie Dornan and Eddie Redmayne
“Eddie's been one of my best mates for a long time, and now we've got, you know, five kids between us and we're very much more sort of together people and stable people, probably,” said Belfast star Jamie Dornan about his former flatmate Eddie Redmayne. “But we had a lot of fun then.”
The pair shared an apartment in Los Angeles and have revealed how they would often be sent the same scripts for roles.
Justin Long and Jonah Hill
The Die Hard 4.0 actor has spoken about living with the Superbad star in Hollywood during the mid-2000s.
“We're still great friends but it got to be like an old married couple,” said Long. “We started getting in little fights like that he left the bathroom door open, didn't clean up after himself. Little things like that.”
Sienna Miller and Poppy Delevingne
The actress and Cara Delevingne’s socialite sister shared an apartment in New York in 2008 after they both moved from London to the Big Apple.
“She was totally my heroine at the time,” Delevingne has said of the Alfie star. “She doesn't take herself too seriously, which isn't as common as you'd think.”
Jason Segel and Kevin Hart
The two comic actors found themselves living together back in 2001, after writer and director Judd Apatow asked them to be roommates while they shot a TV pilot, in a move aimed at helping the future stars bond.
“None of us had really had that much success yet, and Judd Apatow, in a weird move, made Kevin Hart live with me for like six months,” Segel told Jimmy Kimmel Live!. “I lived in a one-bedroom apartment and all of a sudden, Kevin Hart was living with me, and he'd be like, ‘Hey man, are you making breakfast? I want some, too.’”
Brad Pitt and Jason Priestley
The Ocean’s Thirteen actor and the Beverly Hills, 90210 star were roommates back in the late 1980s.
Priestley has revealed the pair used to have competitions over who could go the longest without showering or shaving, and that Pitt once gave him a monogrammed Bible for Christmas.
Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter
The pair of Oscar winners were roommates in New York in the early 1980s, moving in together after breaking up with their boyfriends.
“Fran’s as fabulous as she seems,” Hunter told Vulture. “We had a blast. We stayed up there for a couple years.”
Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas
The Hollywood stars have been friends for decades, and have starred in three films together. They first met when they moved into an apartment together in New York, back in the 1960s.
“He was a great roommate,” said Douglas about his time spent living with DeVito. “It was a magical time. We were getting paid to act!”
Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow
Before they both made it big, the Happy Gilmore actor shared an apartment in LA with director Apatow.
“Adam always had a rental car. He never bought a car for literally 12 years,” Apatow said, adding the actor’s vehicle was filled with empty Mcdonald's bags.
Sandler moved out after joining the cast of Saturday Night Live and relocating to New York.
Dianna Agron and Lea Michele
They may have been enemies on their hit show Glee, but the actresses were so close off the set, they moved in together during filming.
“We’d have these smackdowns at work and come home and be like, ‘Wasn't it so funny when we were fighting today? Let's make cookies!’” Michele told New York Magazine.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck
The Oscar-winning pair’s decades-long friendship is the stuff of Hollywood legend, and as well as being best friends, the pair also used to live together in Venice Beach, California.
“We rented this house on the beach in Venice and 800 people came and stayed with us,” said Affleck. “Then we ran out of money and had to get an apartment.”
Connie Britton and Lauren Graham
The Friday Night Lights actress and Gilmore Girls star lived together in the late 1990s, although perhaps “squatting” is a more appropriate term.
Admitting the pair were living in an “empty house we weren’t supposed to be living in”, Britton said: “We had no furniture and all we ate were Rice Krispies Treats.”
Jamie Dornan and Andrew Garfield
Part of a friendship group of British actors that includes Daredevil’s Charlie Cox and Batman star Robert Pattinson, Dornan also shared an apartment with Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield.
“We've known each other 17 years and there were times when we weren't really working that much and it wasn't happening for us,” Dornan said of his friendship with Garfield.
Raven-Symone and Lindsay Lohan
Back during their Disney days, That’s So Raven actress Raven-Symone and Mean Girls star Lindsay Lohan shared an apartment. However, the two actresses didn’t exactly spend that much time together.
“She paid rent, and she was there probably three times,” Symone told Us Weekly. “She had her clothes in the apartment, we were supposed to live in together.”
Ryan Gosling and Justin Timberlake
Although not roommates in the traditional sense, Ryan Gosling moved in with Justin Timberlake’s family when the tweens were working on Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club.
“Ryan’s mother had to keep her job in Canada the second year that we were on the television show and my mom was his guardian for like six months," Timberlake told Ellen DeGeneres. “So we actually lived together when we were that age.”
Penn Badgley and Milo Ventimiglia
Gossip Girl and You actor Badgley shared an apartment with This Is Us star Ventimiglia, back when Badgley was 18 and his roommate was 28. And the actor made sure the age gap worked in his favour.
“When I was 18, my roommate was Milo Ventimiglia, who was 28 at the time,” he told Bullett. “I used to borrow his ID to get into bars. I've still got it somewhere.”
Robert Downey Jr and Kiefer Sutherland
After meeting on the set of the movie 1969, the two actors moved in together, sharing an apartment in LA for three years in the 1980s.
Downey Jr has spoken about Sutherland consoling him after he split from Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker. The Iron Man actor also praised his former roommates work ethic, saying: “He is, and remains, a very disciplined guy.”
Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson
The quirky pair met in a script writing class at the University of Texas in Austin. The French Dispatch writer and director has said that although he and Wilson didn’t speak to one another in class, they later became friends and roommates.
“I wrote a term paper for Owen,” said Anderson, “although that wasn’t exactly a collaborative effort.”
Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore
The Oscar-winning actor and the former US vice president roomed together for four years during their time at Harvard.
The pair hit of off from the start with Gore calling The Fugitive star “a great guy and a wonderful, lifelong friend”.
Ed Westwick and Chace Crawford
After they both won lead roles on the hit TV show Gossip Girl as Chuck Bass and Nate Archibald, the two actors decided to move in together into an apartment in New York, where the series was being filmed.
“Ed had never lived away from home, let alone in a different country,” said Crawford. “We got along and figured it would be a smart move financially.”
