Famous Faces Don't Wear Caps with Gowns
College degrees are not something Hollywood's top earners need to succeed.
July 5, 2007 Special to ABCNEWS.com — -- Onscreen, Legally Blonde's Reese Witherspoon is a Harvard-educated lawyer. Offscreen? She's a college dropout.
In most professions, that might be a problem. But life is different in Tinseltown. Of the 20 best-paid actors and actresses on our Most Powerful Celebrities list, who collectively raked in $529 million over the course of the year, only two -- Adam Sandler and Cate Blanchett -- have a college degree. Witherspoon? She earned $7 million last year.
But for non-actors on our list, it's a different story. For these authors, directors and talking heads, a college education proves far more common. For these folks, communications, broadcasting and psychology have been among the more popular majors. Among the high-profile grads: Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Donald Trump hold degrees in speech, film and economics, respectively.
Check out what your favorite star majored in.
There's a simple reason for this, argues James Houran, a clinical psychologist who researches celebrity worship. A college education is an increasingly unnecessary item on celebrity résumés, and may actually be a liability. Rather than rely on skills and ability, as stars once did to get noticed, he says there exists a trivialized process by which celebrities are made today. The way Houran sees it, reaching stardom now has less to do with who has the best skills or ability than who has the best marketer or promoter. And taking time for college risks disrupting that process.
So while the absence of a degree is hardly a new phenomenon in Hollywood -- bold-faced names like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Tom Cruise never donned a tassel -- it is even less of a priority for today's rising stars. Among the newest cadre of degree-impaired celebrities: Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.
"They're earning fantastic sums by the time they're teenagers, so the obvious question, no matter how smart they are, is why take time off to go to school?" says Tyler Cowen, author of What Price Fame?. "You can always go later--not that most of them do."
