15 Celebrities You Didnt Know were Bilingual
Celebrities have a lot of talents in many different aspects of life, but there are many who speak more than one language. Though it’s not something they typically list on their resume, many celebs have a second language. Some, such as Sofia Vergara, everyone’s favorite Modern Family step-mother, don’t use English as their first language. However, there are some celebrities who speak English all the time and often times we don’t know that they’re perfectly capable of speaking different languages. Read on to find out which celebrities are bilingual that you might not have otherwise known about.
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Jodie Foster
There are a few things most people don’t know about Jodie Foster, and that includes the fact that she speaks fluent French. She’s not French. She wasn’t born there or raised there, nor did she ever live there for any length of time. She happened to attend a prep school in Los Angeles when she was growing up and that school was a French school. Lycee Francais de Los Angeles was the school at which Foster learned to speak fluent French, which is a feat most of us only wish we could master because the language is so lovely.
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Ben Affleck
The Boston-born and bred actor has a great Boston accent, but did you know he also speaks Spanish? When he and his brother, Casey Affleck, were children, they spent a little bit of time living in Mexico with their parents. While they were there, they learned to speak the language. In fact, the actor gave his interviews in Spanish while he was on a press tour for the movie The Town. He promoted a great deal of the movie in Spanish, which came as a bit of a shock to some of his costars in the film.
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Gwyneth Paltrow
She’s known for her big opinions and her outlook on life. She’s also known for sometimes saying the wrong thing, so it might come as a surprise to many to hear she has the ability to put her foot in her mouth in two languages. She spent a year as a foreign exchange student when she was in high school during which she learned the language well enough to use it fluently when she is in Spanish speaking countries. She also wrote a book with Mario Batali about Spanish cooking in which she used her Spanish speaking abilities to help her.
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Kim Cattrall
We know her and love her for her role as Samantha in Sex and the City. She’s fun, vibrant, gorgeous and always seems to play the role just right. When she was married to her second husband, Andre J. Lyson, the couple lived in Germany for a while. While they were living there, the blonde actress learned to speak German so well that she’s now fluent in the language. Living in Frankfurt will do that to you, however, since most people there don’t bother with any other language than their own. You live there, you learn to speak the language so you can get through your day.
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Natalie Portman
Most people are aware of the fact that Natalie Portman is a smart girl – she did graduate from college after making millions in the movies. What people don’t know, however, is that Portman was actually born in Jerusalem. She’s not only bilingual, she speaks five languages in addition to Englis.! Portman is fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, German, Japanese and she’s very good when speaking in French, though she claims she’s not quite fluent in the last language. She’s also learning to speak Arabic, which means she’s going to be fluent in seven, yes, seven languages.
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Johnny Depp
Not only is his bilingual, he has two bilingual kids. That’s what happens, though, when you live in a different country for more than a decade. Depp spent many years living in France with is former partner and the mother of his children, Vanessa Paradis, who is a model. The couple lived in France for more than 10 years in which he learned to fluently speak the language, and so did his children. English might be his first language, but most of us assume he’s from the UK thanks to his awesome accents in his awesome movies, but he’s actually a Kentucky-born bilingual.
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Joseph Gordon-Levitt
He went to Columbia University, which means he’s clearly intelligent. He would actually attend classes at Columbia that were spoken entirely in French because he loves the language so much. He’s been known to say that he prefers French to any other language, and that he likes to speak the language as often as possible. The actor does just that, too, especially because he finds it so interesting. Even if someone is saying something ridiculous in the language, he prefers to hear it to English.
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Leonardo DiCaprio
He’s famous for playing some of the most iconic and amazing roles in Hollywood, and he’s a very talented actor. His mother is German, in fact, she was there when the World War II bombing raid occurred. Because she is German and her heritage is important to her – and she is very close with her son as evidenced by the fact that she is often his date on the red carpet – she taught her son to speak German. He’s now a fluent German-speaking actor who spends a great deal of time conversing with his mother in her native language.
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Bradley Cooper
The Hangover star actually spent some time in France when he was in college. He took part in a program that allowed him to become an exchange student, living in France for some time. When he was there, he learned to speak the language so well he became fluent in French. It’s a beautiful language, and he sounds wonderful when he does interviews in French. When he was promoting the second movie in the Hangover series, he gave an entire interview in French, shocking listeners all over the world, but it’s something he’s been able to do for many years.
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Mila Kunis
What we know about Mila Kunis is that she’s pretty, she’s talented, she’s engaged to her former That 70s Show co-star Ashton Kutcher, and she’s going to have a little girl with him sometime in the next few months. What we don’t know about Mila Kunis, however, is that she’s fluent in Russian. In fact, she was born and raised in Russia and lived there until she was 7-years-old. Russian is actually her first language, despite the fact that she’s so good with her English and her accent that you’d never know the Russian beauty didn’t speak English as her first language.
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Viggo Mortensen
With a name like Viggo, you might expect that he’s not American, but he is. He was born in New York and English is his first language. However Mortensen is not only an English-speaker. He’s also a fluent speaker of Danish, Italian, French, and Spanish. He’s best at Spanish and often says he prefers the languages because he feels he can get to the point of the matter faster when he’s speaking Spanish than he can in any other language. He’s fluent in five languages, but he does admit that Italian and French he’s not as fluent in as the others.
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Will Smith
While Smith has done a lot of things in his considerable career, he’s most famous for playing the role of Will in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. His crazy, fun-loving, and always troublesome antics in the show made him famous, and people love him. However, they also feel that this is probably what he’s like in real life, so people are always shocked to find out Will Smith is actually fluent in Spanish. He speaks the language regularly, and it shocked people when he spoke Spanish fluently in the movie Seven Pounds. He also gives interviews in Spanish on a regular basis.
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Sandra Bullock
She’s one of the most All-American women in the world, and most people assume that she’s nothing more than a pretty face and a great actress. However, she’s also bilingual. Bullock speaks fluent German. Her mother was actually a German opera singer who met her father when he was in the military, stationed overseas. She spoke her entire acceptance speech in German in 2000 when she won a Bambi Award, which is Germany’s version of the Academy Awards. She was never raised in Germany, but that didn’t stop her mother from teaching Bullock to speak her native language, and it paid off.
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Charlize Theron
Some people know that the beautiful blonde is from South Africa, and some don’t. It always comes as a shock to people who don’t know that she’s not from the US, especially when they find out she’s from South Africa. Her English is so good that people just don’t realize any different. However, the gorgeous actress isn’t just from South Africa, she can speak one of the many languages they speak over there. She’s been known to speak Afrikaans, which is actually her first language. She did it once in an interview with Piers Morgan, no doubt shocking and confusing him all the same.
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Colin Firth
He’s an English-born actor who won an Academy Award for his role in the movie, The Kings Speech, which is about a speech-challenged monarch. He is also fluent in Italian, which is considered the language of love. When he was in Venice in 2010 at the Venice film festival, the actor actually gave an interview to the media in which he spoke only Italian, which is just perfect for the interview since he was in Italian. He learned many years ago and has not been shy in speaking the language and letting people know he’s fluent.
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