Stars—they're just like us! But are they, really? Sure, they eat, sleep, and fall in and out of love like the rest of us. And, by all accounts—perhaps Tom Cruise notwithstanding—we all appear to be aging in the same direction. But just because Britney Spears buys her own Grande latte on occasion, Ben Affleck will melt into the crowd of a Red Sox game, and Taylor Swift hits boutique exercise classes doesn't necessarily mean that they're anything like the rest of us.
[For more ways to live your best life, check out these 100 Amazing Summer Buys Under $100!]
Case in point: Have you ever gotten in a bidding war with Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio for some Mongolian dinosaur bones? Or wanted to wear your lover's blood in a vial around your neck as a sign of your devotion? What about spending $1,168,000 annually on just your hair? If the answer's "no," then guess what?! You're not like the stars! For all of the quirky and downright zany ways that celebrities distinguish themselves from normal people, read on.
1 | They believe in leprechauns.
Kathy Hutchins/Shutterstock"I believe in all of these Irish myths, like leprechauns," Megan Fox said in an interview with Esquire. "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."
2 | They hire people to remove the cardboard sleeve from their coffee.
Shutterstock"I hate the sleeve on a Starbucks cup," Kim Kardashian once admitted on her website, as spotted by StyleCaster. "I leave the room for someone to take it off for me because I cringe from the sound. It's like nails on a chalkboard for me. I hate cardboard."
3 | They get into bidding wars over dinosaur skulls.
Andrea Raffin/ShutterstockWho wants a Mongolian dinosaur skull more, Nicolas Cage or Leonardo DiCaprio? Turns out, it's Cage, who, according to Vanity Fair, bested the Revenant star in a bidding war for the privilege of paying $276,000 for the world's most expensive paperweight. Take that, Leo!
4 | They feed their babies like birds.
On her health food site TheKindLife.com, Clueless star Alicia Silverstone posted a video of the surprising way she feeds her son, Bear. "I fed Bear the mochi and a tiny bit of veggies from the soup…from my mouth to his," she wrote. "It's his favorite...and mine." To be fair: Some have claimed that pre-chewing food for an infant has health benefits, like boosting a baby's immune system, and is the norm in many non-Western cultures.
5 | They own solid gold bathtubs.
ShutterstockAmong other outrageously poor money decisions too numerous to reveal here, Mike Tyson once reportedly dropped an estimated $2.2 million on a 24 karat gold bathtub for his mansion in Ohio.
6 | They give each other tickets to outer space.
ShutterstockFor Russell Brand's 35th birthday, in 2010, his then-girlfriend Katy Perry bought him a $200,000 ticket on Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's suborbital spaceflight. "We are very excited to have him on board," a rep for the company told E! News. Unfortunate for both of them, Virgin Galactic is still in test-flight mode years later.
7 | They buy their children entire rooms of candy.
We're not talking about a standard playroom, where kids can keep their toys and games. We mean a room devoted exclusively to candy. That's what Mariah Carey and Nick Cannoncreated for their twins: a room that physically contains every type of candy they could possibly want, from gigantic lollipops to their very own cotton candy maker.
8 | They have ghost-detecting machines.
ShutterstockLady Gaga is afraid of some ghosts. Specifically, a ghost named Ryan that she's pretty sure is haunting her. So she spent a whopping $50,000 on an electromagnetic field meter designed to detect poltergeists.
9 | They have a fly species named after them.
ShutterstockThe Grammys weren't enough for Beyoncé, who now gets an insect named after her. It happened in 2012, when researchers in Northern Queensland, Australia, discovered a new species of horse fly. So they named it "Scaptia beyonceae," apparently because of the golden hairs on the fly's abdomen. Researchers even claimed that the rare horse fly is the "all-time diva of flies."
10 | They rent out entire theaters to watch a movie.
ShutterstockAs rapper/actor Ludacris admitted in a 2016 Instagram post, "Sometimes you have to rent the entire movie theater out for your fam and babies to yell and disrupt the movie in peace #nowthatsludicrous." Sure, knock yourself out. It's like how we leave a jacket on the chair next to us in the movie theater so nobody sits down and… okay, never mind, it's nothing like that.
11 | They wear necklaces filled with each other's blood.
When Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton were still a couple, there were rumors of their vampiric tendencies. And recently Thornton confirmed it, explaining that Jolie "thought it would be interesting and romantic if we took a little razorblade and sliced our fingers, smeared a little blood on these lockets and you wear it around your neck just like you wear your son or daughter's baby hair in one."
12 | Their dogs have mini-mansions.
Shutterstock/FREEDOMPICSocialite Paris Hilton thinks her dog should sleep in luxury, so in 2009, as reported in Curbed, she spent $325,000 for a two-story, 300-square feet villa. It's got a black crystal chandelier, designer furniture, and a balcony. Yes, a balcony. For when they want to do their all-barking version of the Evita song "Don't Cry For Me Argentina."
13 | They have their own fire department.
ShutterstockGeorge Lucas owns his own fire truck and employs 14 full-time firefighters. But hey: If you created Star Wars, we guess it's okay to buy anything you want.
14 | They'll buy plane tickets for their hats.
ShutterstockWhen U2 lead singer and activist Bono arrived in Italy for a charity concert in 2003 and realized he left his favorite hat, a black trilby, back in London, he did what any reasonable person would do. He did the concert without the hat. Ha, no, just kidding! According to a profile in The Telegraph, he paid $1,200 for the hat to be flown to him, on a first class seat on British Airways. Because obviously Bono's hat needs more legroom than you.
15 | They think an octopus and two cobras sound like great pets.
Is there anything we could add to make this sound more ridiculous? Yes, as CNBC reported, Nicolas Cage one dropped a cool $150,000 on a pet octopus He also reportedly owned two Albino King Cobra snakes as pets. He also bought an antidote, since King Cobras are an especially venomous species of snake and he didn't want to die immediately if he ever got bit. He eventually gave them to a zoo.
16 | Their bodies are haunted.
ShutterstockPop singer Kesha claimed she was "very serious" when explaining her haunted body to talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in 2013. "It's a problem," she explained. "I was told I had dead people in me so I called my hypnotherapist. So then she said she had to exorcise my body. And then I got a ghost meter to read it, just beeped at my [privates]."
17 | They insure their body parts.
Denis Makarenko/ShutterstockRihanna's legs are both insured for an alleged $1 million. But that's nothing compared to Julia Robert's smile, which is reportedly insured for a staggering $30 million. Also: Dolly Parton's breasts are insured for $600,000, while Kylie Minogue's butt is insured for $5 million.
18 | They tailor their diets to their bodily smells.
ShutterstockThe late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs wasn't just a vegan; he was a vegan who thought his diet gave him superpowers. As revealed in Steve Jobs, the landmark biography by Walter Isaacson, Jobs believed that eating only vegetables and grains flushed his body of mucus, which meant he didn't have body odor.
19 | They spend a lot of money on humidifiers
You can buy a basic humidifier for around $20. But pop diva Celine Dion insisted on getting one that cost $2 million. That's a $1,999,980 markup. Sure, she made the investment while in Las Vegas—during a three-year residency—and she definitely needed to protect her vocal cords from the dry desert air. But there's no reason a device that puts moisture in the air should cost more than a Manhattan condo.
20 | They think the Illuminati is trying to kill them.
ShutterstockRandy Quaid, who you may recognize from movies like Independence Day and National Lampoon's Vacation, has reason to believe that "star whackers" working for the underground organization the Illuminati have been offing celebrities like Heath Ledger and David Carradine, and he's next on their hit list. "They follow us, they tail us, they tag our cell phone, they hack our computer," Quaid once insisted. Why do they want him dead? "In order to gain control of my royalties," he said.
21 | They buy entire towns.
ShutterstockWhy buy just one house when you can own the entire town? That was Kim Basinger's reasoning in 1989, when, as originally reported in the New York Times, she decided to spend $20 million cash to buy Braselton, Georgia, a 2,000-acre town with around 7,500 residents. Her original idea was to make it a tourist destination, with movie studios and a film festival. But just five years later, she let it go for just $1 million.
22 | They fill their private jets with gold.
ShutterstockIt's no big secret that Donald Trump likes gold, but you should get a load of the interior of his Boeing 757. As seen in this Business Insider deep-look, it's got 24-carat gold-plated seat belts, a gold-plated shower and sink, and a master bedroom with gold silk-lined walls.
23 | They believe their deceased family members visit them to pass out coins.
Denis Makarenko/Shutterstock"My grandfather leaves quarters," Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone once toldDavid Letterman, also mentioning that her grandfather has been deceased for years. "It's him! It's absolutely him. It's such a long story that you'd have to go to commercial five times and roll to a clip and then come back and I'd still be telling the story. But it's him, you guys, it's him!" We'll just take your word for it, Emma.
24 | They tried (and failed) to catch the Loch Ness Monster.
ShutterstockYou can't blame a guy for trying, right? Well, maybe you can a little. Charlie Sheen was positive he could finally catch the elusive Scottish legend using only a leg of lamb and a large hook. "Something happened," he toldJay Leno on the Tonight Show. "There was an event at the top of the water that was crazy." It didn't lead to a capture, however, but Sheen still believes in the beast. "Why not? If people talk about something for, like, 200 years, it's got to be there, right?"
25 | They believe they can control time.
Willow Smith, the daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, announced during an interview with T: The New York Times Magazine, without even a trace of irony, that she can make time "go slow or fast, however I please. That's how I know it doesn't exist."
26 | They buy their own sonogram machines.
ShutterstockSure, they have hospitals with sonogram machines and they're more than happy to let you look at your baby. But that wasn't enough for Tom Cruise. When his (then future wife) Katie Holmes was pregnant, he spent $200,000 on a sonogram machine so he could watch Suri in the womb every day. You know how kids are, if you aren't constantly keeping an eye on them, they'll just take off running!
27 | They love their soul mates because they, too, have been abducted by aliens.
ShutterstockHow did The Nanny star Fran Drescher know that beau Peter Marc Jacobson was "The One?" Well, obviously, they both had scars from when they were abducted by aliens and implanted with electronic tracking chips. "I think that somehow we were programmed to meet," she claimed in an interview. "It's the exact same scar on the exact same spot."
28 | They spend millions on their hair.
ShutterstockHow much would you guess Rihanna spends every year on making sure her hair is super pretty? If you guessed "more than four years at Harvard," you would be totally right! The exact annual price tag is $1,168,000, according to sources close to the pop star.
29 | They get angry when their paramour publishes sexy photos of them in a best-selling book and don't ask permission.
ShutterstockRobert Van Winkle, or "Vanilla Ice" as he was once known, had a brief relationship with pop superstar Madonna, which ended in 1992 when he flipped through a copy of her newly published book SEX and recognized his own backside. "I was hurt to be an unwitting part of this... package," he said, claiming the book was "disgusting and cheap." Sure, but $120 for a coffee table book? That's anything but cheap!
30 | They think their creativity can be stolen sexually.
ShutterstockOh, Lady Gaga. "I'm quite celibate now," she once revealed in a Vanity Fair cover story. "I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they're going to take my creativity from me."
31 | They started their own band that only does songs about pizza.
ShutterstockIt's tough to be an actor with rock-star ambitions. Macaulay Culkin just wanted to be in a band without people criticizing him, saying "Hey, isn't that the kid from Home Alone?" Or "Why are they only singing Velvet Underground parodies about pizza? This is weird."
32 | They see a taxidermied pony and think, "I need that."
Actress Amanda Seyfried didn't go to Britain looking for a taxidermied miniature horse named Antoine. She was there for the British premiere of her movie Red Riding Hood. But she wandered into a taxidermist and saw the dead miniature horse, which was indeed named Antoine, and said, "I'll take it." The horse was shipped back to the States to live with Seyfried's other companion, an Australian shepherd named Finn. "It's going to be Finn's new best friend," she said. "Unless he tries to eat it."
33 | They think people being mean is a war crime.
ShutterstockNobody likes Internet trolls. But Gwyneth Paltrow's feelings on the subject are probably a little more intense than yours. When people write unkind things about her and her family online, it's "almost like how in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing," she said.
34 | They're willing to pay people for very strange things.
You don't become a successful rapper like Waka Flocka Flame by doing all your own grunt work. So in 2014, he put out an ad for a personal "blunt roller," offering an annual salary of $50,000 for basically just rolling joints for Flame.
35 | They own the Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane.
ShutterstockSpoiler alert if you haven't seen the Orson Welles classic yet, but the "Rosebud" in Citizen Kane was the sled. It sure did look like that sled was burned at the end of the movie, but not so fast. It's actually owned by filmmaking icon Steven Spielberg, who, as reported by The Washington Post, dropped $55,000 to own this amazing piece of movie memorabilia.
36 | They run diamond mines.
You get some extra cash, like global R&B sensation Akon, and you want to invest it somewhere. Why not a diamond mine in South Africa? Akon hasn't explained much about his mine, other than that it's "complicated," but there's got to be an easier way to get some bling.
37 | They believe that hip-hop is controlled by a "gay mafia."
"The hip-hop community is most likely owned by gay, to be honest with you," Fat Joe once said. "They're owned by gay." If you're confused why he's using "gay" as a noun, he elaborated: "I happen to think there's a gay mafia in hip-hop. Not rappers. You know, the editorial presidents of magazines, the PDs at radio stations, the people who give you awards at award shows. This is a... gay mafia, my man."
38 | They take driving lessons from Paul Newman.
ShutterstockWhen a 15 year-old Jake Gyllenhaal was ready to learn how to drive, there was only one person for the job: Family friend and Cool Hand Luke star Paul Newman. So who taught you how to drive?
39 | They've slept with ghosts.
"Some sort of spirit came down from God knows where and made love to me," said Charlie's Angels actress Lucy Liu in an Us Weekly interview from 1999. "It was sheer bliss. I felt everything. And then he floated away."
40 | They're always prepared for demons.
If you think Evan Rachel Wood, star of HBO's Westworld, is going to show up not ready to cast away demons, you'd be sorely mistaken. As she's said in an interview, she never goes anywhere without some sage and tiger's eye—a gem that supposedly wards off witchcraft—because it's the best way to clean "demons out of places."
41 | They wear a mink coats made of polar bear.
ShutterstockWhile visiting New York in July before his big fight with Floyd Mayweather, Conor McGregor arrived for a press conference wearing a white fur coat that he claimed was made of polar bear fur. "I'm a cold [expletive]," he elaborated, and explained that he doesn't care how boiling hot New York is in the middle of July.
42 | When they buy a toy car for their kids, it's covered in diamonds.
When rapper The Game invests in a remote control Bentley GT for his son, he wants something special. Like, say, a car with the entire exterior covered in diamonds. As he explained on his Instagram, the toy is decorated with "almost $100,000 in diamonds... $98,376 dollars if we gettin technical." That's a lot of diamonds.
43 | They only write while blindfolded.
ShutterstockDid you type your last email without looking at it with your eyes? That might explain why you're not as famous as best-selling author Jonathan Franzen, who wrote The Corrections, among other novels. As revealed in a profile in The Guardian, when he writes, he wears earplugs and a blindfold, so he never gets distracted. (Here, I tried it: "JS;Djdjijfrwp00f'??KOJFmnn7&%l0030985." Thanks, Franzen!)
44 | When they were younger, they believed they could live on sunlight alone.
We've all done crazy things during college. We stayed up too late, drank too much, slept with the wrong people, and briefly thought we could live just on sunlight. Does that last one not sound familiar? Then you weren't hanging out with Michelle Pfeiffer, who spent her youth in a cult that "believed that people in their highest state were breatharian," she said. Meaning: they didn't need food or water to survive, just air and the healing rays of the sun.
45 | They really, really, really, really like flowers.
Featureflash Photo Agency / ShutterstockIn a court case against his former manager, music superstar Elton John revealed that he spent £293,000 (that's $395,400 in U.S. dollars) on flowers in just two years. "I like flowers," he said. "I don't have any people to leave my money to, I'm a single man, I like to spend money. It's my money to spend." Makes sense, but it's still a lot of flowers. Like a looooot of flowers. If you visited John's house, there's a pretty good chance you could open a door to a room that's filled with nothing but petals.
46 | They have met, and were spared by, Bigfoot.
ShutterstockWhile Rob Lowe was promoting his new show, The Lowe Files—in which he and his son investigate unsolved mysteries—the former Parks & Rec star told of his "incredible encounter" with a huge, hairy cryptid sometimes called Bigfoot. "I was lying on the ground thinking I was going to be killed," Lowe recalled. Why he wasn't actually smashed into a fine paste by a gigantic foot, while Leonard Nimoy narrated in the background, we may never know. But Lowe is at least aware that "I sound like a crazy, Hollywood kook right now."
47 | They don't always spend $55 million on a jet, but they want you to think they do.
ShutterstockRapper Soulja Boy, real name DeAndre Cortez Way, dropped some serious hints in 2011 (via his assistant, his management team, and himself) that he bought a Gulfstream G5 jet as a 21st birthday present to himself, at a low-cost of just $55 million. On a radio show, when asked about the rumors, Soulja would only say that he was "G5 status," which sure sounds like he was confirming it. But as it turns out, he may have been.... what's the word?... Not being totally honest. Soulja's publicist issued a statement admitting that the "elaborate rumors" are "not true." Hopefully somebody told Soulja.
48 | They're scared of alien abductions.
Grammy-winning country star Kacey Musgraves fully admits that she has a "very irrational fear of spiders." But what else scares her? "Alien abductions."
49 | They know they're a god, and they wish you'd accept this too.
ShutterstockKanye West didn't title an album Yeezus because he was being funny. And the song "I Am A God" was meant quite literally. As he explained in an interview, "I made that song because I am a god. I don't think there's much more explanation. I'm not going to sit here and defend [it]. [This] is rock 'n' roll, man. [This] is rap music. I am a god. Now what?"
50 | They're obsessed with typewriters.
Tom Hanks doesn't just enjoy vintage typewriters, he's an ardent collector. He has 250 typewriters, in almost every make, style and year, and he makes sure to type on one of them at least once a day. He loves typewriters so much that he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about all the cool sounds that typewriters make and he once gave a typewriter to a fan, which is a thousand times cooler than a signed photo. And for more crazy celebrity stories, don't miss The 30 Most Outrageous Celebrity Interview Moments.
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