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If we don't put much thought into it, it's easy to walk around believing that actors are all incredibly normal people. That just can't be true though. The law of averages tells us that at least some of them have to be weirdos. Hell, it might even be true that most of them are strange. But what classifies as strange can be tough to nail down precisely. Yet, when an actor speaks publicly about their whacko beliefs, it's like holding up a giant sign that says, "Yep, I'm an oddball." That's what this list is about. The stars who have come out and spoken about their quirky little beliefs. Truthfully, it takes a lot of courage to speak boldly about something that makes you look nutty. But sometimes where there's courage there may not be much intelligence. Those two things are often at odds in a person. It might be seen as courageous to fight a grizzly bear with your fists, but the intelligent thing to do would be to slowly back away from the damn thing before it rips your face off.
On this list we have plenty of courage, stars who aren't afraid to voice their beliefs, no matter how silly, or disproven they may be. Some actors have used their fame as a platform to shout out or even sell these feelings, while others just refuse to listen to reason. Oh well, what can you do? These people are actors, not scientists. If the general public wants to take medical advice from the bagger at the grocery store or learn about the cosmos from someone who went to school for drama, who are we to tell them different? All we can do is react in a way that will help them come to the realization that their belief system is hysterically flawed, by shaking our heads furiously and laughing at them, shaming them into changing their ways. Here are 15 actors who believe in some really weird things.
15. Russell Crowe – UFOs
When Russell Crowe posted a video on YouTube showing some weird glowing lights above the Sydney Botanic Gardens, the Internet was alive with discussion. Crowe stated, "A friend and I set camera to capture fruit bats rising from Botanic Gardens. This was a big surprise." He thought he got the first ever footage of an alien craft. Turns out, the truth wasn’t as exciting as Crowe hoped it was. There was no UFO. First of all, the footage wasn't a time-lapse video, as Crowe claimed, but a timed exposure, a shot that tends to stretch images and overcompensate for bright objects. This would explain why a passing sailboat in the water in the distance would appear like a glowing UFO. Perhaps Crowe should have either realized or explained to others that there was water in the background and not sky. That would have helped clear things up quicker.
14. James McAvoy – Superstitions
James McAvoy has a superstition that probably seems pretty strange to North Americans but is somewhat fashionable in England. For many years throughout places in England, there have been people who say some variation of "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" or "white rabbit" for good luck. For McAvoy, it's no different: "On the first of every month, I have to say 'White Rabbit' to the first person I see. My grandmother taught me that it's good luck to say it." Since McAvoy resides in England, he probably doesn't get much of a reaction from the people he shouts this at, but, whenever he's filming in the U.S., he almost certainly gets some sideways glances on the first of every month.
13. Mark Ruffalo & Charlie Sheen – 9/11 Truthers
There are a number of 9/11 "truthers" out there, so we won't be addressing them all here, but Mark Ruffalo makes the cut because he seems like a smart fellow. After all, he plays a doctor in the movies. Ruffalo's issue with 9/11 was in the investigation that followed. He said, “My first reaction was that buildings don’t fall down like that… The fact that the 9/11 investigation only went from the moment the planes hit to the moment the buildings came down, and nothing before or after, I think, makes that investigation completely illegitimate.” Charlie Sheen also believes 9/11 was an inside job, but he also said he has tiger's blood flowing through his veins, so we won't even entertain his views. A simple name mention is enough.
12. Randy Quaid & Wife – Hollywood Star Whackers
Oh, Randy Quaid. Whatever happened to the lovable guy who saved the world from aliens in Independence Day? Nowadays, it seems like Quaid has become exactly like his character in the Vacation films. If you haven’t heard already, Quaid and his wife sought refuge in Canada because they believe there is an all-powerful organization that goes around killing actors for some reason, dubbed the "Hollywood Star Whackers." This group has already got Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger and David Carradine and others. Since Quaid and his wife are, ahem, stars, they too are in danger of being whacked. So yeah, this is a real thing for them. These are the types of things they think about. They even made a film about it called Star Whackers.
11. Mayim Bialik – Attachment Parenting
Mayim Bialik, the star of the 90s hit Blossom and current hit The Big Bang Theory, has a few parenting techniques she'd like to pass on to people around the world. It's called "Attachment Parenting," and, though it's not her own technique, she is one of the most vocal proponents of the parenting style. Remember when Alicia Silverstone made a video of her chewing up food and spitting it down her kid's throat? Yeah, you're right; that was super gross, and Bialik has done it too. There's other stuff as well, the weirdest of which involves breastfeeding until your child self-weans. For Bialik, the self-weaning didn’t take place until one of her kids was four-years old. Luckily, the toddler was homeschooled because lunch break would have been pretty awkward for the rest of that kid's class. The argument is always, well we did it that way for thousands of years. Yeah, yeah. We also used to leave our bare asses uncovered in public but it made people uncomfortable, so we stopped. Here's a tip: if your child's beard tickles your nipples while you're breastfeeding, give him a bottle.
10. Fran Drescher – Alien Abductions
You might think that Fran Drescher's laugh is the weirdest thing about her, but nope; it isn't. Drescher admitted in an interview with Huffington that she was abducted by aliens. She said, “You know, it’s funny because Peter (Fran’s ex-husband) and I both saw [aliens] before we knew each other, doing the same thing, driving on the road with our dads. We were both in junior high. A few years later, we met, and we realized that we had the same experience. I think that somehow we were programmed to meet. We both have this scar. It’s the exact same scar on the exact same spot.” It's the scar that is meant to be proof of the abduction, but Drescher's ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, says she got the scar from a drill bit or a hot cup of water. Drescher denies this, saying "that’s what the aliens programmed us to think. But really, that’s where the chip is.”
9. Jim Carrey – Anti-Vaxxer
Jenny McCarthy, Rob Schneider, Alicia Silverstone, there are plenty of anti-vaxxers out there, but Jim Carrey often positions himself as the loudest voice, perhaps because he's also the most famous. Well, over the last several years, Carrey has rallied against vaccines, often under the guise of being "pro-vaccine but anti-toxins," which is another way of saying he's a misinformed anti-vaxxer.
Here's a Tweet of his to give you a picture: "California Gov says yes to poisoning more children with mercury and aluminum in mandatory [sic] vaccines. This corporate fascist must be stopped." Carrey argues that the mercury and aluminum in vaccines is dangerous, especially the mercury, but he always neglects to identify the specific type of mercury that is present in vaccines. Ethylmercury is the type of mercury in vaccines. It breaks down in your body after several days and it also breaks down thimerosal (only present in some vaccines), another thing Carrey hates. Methylmercury is the bioaccumulative type, meaning it builds up over time. This is not in vaccines. Get the facts straight, Ace.
8. Emma Stone – Ghosts
Emma Stone seems like she's got her head squarely on her shoulders, but when she starts talking about her grandfather, things change a little bit. Sure, plenty of people believe in ghosts. Why we don't have one single piece of video evidence of ghosts is another story altogether, but it's not that crazy that Stone believes in ghosts. It is crazy, however, that whenever she finds a quarter in her house she thinks it's been left there by her deceased grandfather. Stone said on Letterman, “My grandfather leaves quarters. It’s just amazing. It is absolutely him.” Weird right? That's the best part of it for Stone. The mystery, she said, "that’s the joy of it. It’s not a logical thing; it’s magical. It’s like ectoplasm. It's a milky substance… That indicates someone has been there.” If this happens so frequently, why not install cameras and become doubly famous for filming magically appearing quarters?
7. Megan Fox – Leprechauns
Is a leprechaun a figure from an age-old morality tale, warning people against the desire to get rich quick or do these little creatures have roots in reality? While most people would agree to the first suggestion, actress Megan Fox would have us believe they are real. Fox has said, “I believe in all of this stuff. I believe in all of it…. I like believing. I believe in all of these Irish myths, like leprechauns. Not the pot of gold, not the Lucky Charms leprechauns. But maybe was there something in the traditional sense? I believe that this stuff came from somewhere other than people’s imaginations…. We should all believe in leprechauns. I’m a believer.” Now Fox has said some other weird things in the past. She's said she's seen people healed in church and has herself spoken in tongues, words only God can understand, but leprechauns are by far the weirdest.
6. Lady Gaga – Creative Sexual Organs
Yeah, we're considering Lady Gaga an actor, not because of her Golden Globe win but because we need a way to get her whacko beliefs on this list. It's a given that everyone knows she's weird. That's her shtick. She's sold countless records and kept her name in the press for her weird antics, clothing and beliefs, but when she came out and said, "I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they're going to take my creativity from me through my vagina," people kind of went quiet. What could we say to that? What in the world is she going on about?
5. Marion Cotillard – Faked Moon Landing & 9/11
Marion Cotillard's skepticism is about as ripe as any actor out there. For her, seeing is believing. Well, actually, not really because she doesn't always believe what she sees either, so really it's, seeing is believing unless she doesn't want to believe it. Take the moon landing, for example. Of that momentous occasion Cotillard said, “Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don’t believe all they tell me, that’s for sure.” Great reasoning. The French actress also doubts the validity of the 9/11 attacks in New York. Her primary gripe there is that buildings have reacted differently in other incidents: “We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes. Are they burned? There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [in New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed.”
4. Steven Seagal – Manufactured Gun Violence
Steven Seagal is a major proponent of the right to bear arms, which puts him in a massive group in the United States, not weird at all. That he believes that the government is conspiring to generate gun violence in order to make the American population fear guns enough that they will, in turn, vote to disarm the population is weird. If you had trouble following that logic, his exact quote was, “I believe that, and I hate to say this, a lot of these mass murders and all this funny stuff that’s going on, I believe a lot of this is engineered.” By engineered, he means that the government is behind the mass shootings. Not mental illness, not lackadaisical gun control, it's the government. Thanks, Obama.
3. Richard Belzer – Everything
Richard Belzer, best known for his work playing John Munch on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, is also a well-know conspiracy theorist, a term he hates but we're using it because that's exactly what he is. Belzer has written or co-written four books regarding everything from UFOs to the JFK assassination to the deaths of stars like Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. He believes that he has the facts that prove that there is more to all of these things than what meets the eye. Basically Belzer is a proponent of the stuff discussed on Ancient Aliens and Beyond Belief. In fact, his co-author, George Noory, the host of the radio show Coast to Coast AM, was "an expert" on both those shows.
2. Dan Aykroyd – Aliens
Maybe you don't know yet, but Dan Aykroyd is huge into aliens. This guy has made a DVD discussing them, he's appeared on TV shows about it and has discussed it just about everywhere he can. When asked blatantly if he believed in UFOs, Aykroyd said, “I do. I have seen four, and I can’t say that they are alien craft and neither can the Air Force. The Air Force has been very interested in this. They don’t deny the existence of these hyperdynamic, super aerodynamic craft. They don’t deny… Their anguish comes in that they can’t tell you. They want to tell you anything but that they are extraterrestrial. Any excuse at all, even if they are unknown or unsolved. The Air Force cannot just come out and admit that there are extraterrestrial beings far in advanced of our culture that have built these machines.”
1. Terrence Howard – Terryology
Terrence Howard is a talented actor, but the star revealed to Rolling Stone that he's also an amateur mathematician. At home, in his spare time, Howard has created a mathematic system of symbols called Terryology. While there are many strange claims made by Howard, he claims that, "If Pythagoras was here to see it, he would lose his mind. Einstein, too! Tesla!" The weirdest of all has to be his suggestion that 1 X 1 = 2. You're thinking, there's no way he believes that, this is children's math. It's true though. Here's what this grown man had to say, "How can it equal one? If one times one equals one that means that two is of no value because one times itself has no effect. One times one equals two because the square root of four is two, so what's the square root of two? Should be one, but we're told its two, and that cannot be." Um, Terrence? Where in the world did you hear that the square root of two is two? The square root of two is 1.41421356237. Is that where all of this stemmed from? Poor guy.
Sources: Wikipedia; Suggest, IMDB
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