Celebrities Who Were Roommates Before They Were Famous

Aubrey Plaza & Patti LuPone

As Aubrey Plaza  was gearing up to make her Off-Broadway debut in the revival of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, she revealed that her roommate was none other than Broadway legend Patti LuPone.

In an interview with Vulture, she said she was living with LuPone on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where the three-time Tony Award winner makes her soup and does her laundry.

“She insisted. She’s trying to whip me into shape,” Plaza told the outlet.

Matt Bomer & Lee Pace

In addition to being longtime friends, Matt Bomer and Lee Pace also once shared an apartment. In an interview with GQ, Bomer said he and Pace split a one-bedroom apartment while both were aspiring actors.

“I’ll tell you how long I’ve known Lee Pace, I’ve known him since he was shorter than me, when he was 14 and I was 15,” Bomer said of the 6’5″ Pace, per the outlet.

Paula Abdul & Whoopi Goldberg

While celebrating the premiere of The Color Purple at The Academy Museum, Paula Abdul revealed that she lived with a star from the book’s original 1985 film adaptation: Whoopi Goldberg!

Abdul told ET that after seeing The View cohost on Broadway, the two became “roommates.”

Jennifer Coolidge & Eddie Kaye Thomas

Jennifer Coolidge revealed that she and her former American Pie costar, Eddie Kaye Thomas, lived together for a year or two in the early 2000s.

“I wasn’t the love of his life,” the White Lotus star joked during an interview with British GQ, noting that they were platonic roommates. 

“[Thomas] had girlfriends,” she said. “My bedroom was across the hallway from his.” 

Storm Reid & Natalia Bryant

Storm Reid isn’t just enjoying her time at the University of Southern California — she’s also loving her living situation. Speaking on the Jennifer Hudson Show, the young actress revealed that she’s bunking with Kobe Bryant’s eldest daughter Natalia as they both study for their undergraduate degrees. According to Reid, the two first met at the premiere of her 2018 film A Wrinkle in Time and stayed connected via Instagram.

“I saw that she got in, and I got in, so we started talking and congratulating each other,” Reid told Hudson of her interactions with the late basketball legend’s daughter. “She was like ‘Girl, do you want to room together?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ I was stressed out about a roommate situation anyway. I was like, ‘Let’s do it.'”

If their respective Instagram tributes for each other’s birthdays are any indication, the pair have gotten quite tight as roommates. In January 2022, the Euphoria star celebrated Natalia on her birthday with photos of them together and with friends. “Happy birthday to the most beautiful spirit in the world. The brightest smile and the kindest heart. The funniest person. The best rommie [sic] a girl could ask for,” Reid wrote. “So grateful for you. So glad we get to do life & school together! I love youuuuu!”

For her roommate’s birthday in July, Bryant posted a photo of herself and Reid embracing on the beach and a photo of them grinning on an evening out. Bryant addressed her birthday shoutout to “sweet storm storm,” and added “love you forever roomie” in the caption.

Jason Segel & Kevin Hart

The How I Met Your Mother star recently revealed that he and the comedian had shared a space for a few months in 2001 at the request of Judd Apatow, for whom they were shooting a TV pilot.

“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 recalled on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “I lived in a one-bedroom apartment … So, 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.’ ”

Rashida Jones & Oliver Hudson

In addition to their perfect bone structure and great senses of humor, Rashida and Oliver have one key thing in common: famous families. (Her parents are Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton; his are Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson.)

So it’s no wonder they totally hit it off when they lived together: Rashida commented on a silly Instagram post of Oliver singing around the house, “[Oliver’s wife Erinn] walking by unbothered is a reminder of how often this happens but as your former roommate I really miss this.”

Brad Pitt & Jason Priestley

Before they were two of the most A-list ’90s heartthrobs, the duo were roommates in L.A. In Jason Priestley: A Memoir, the Beverly Hills 90210 star recalled that they used to have competitions over who could go the longest without showering or shaving.

Clearly, Pitt thought Priestley could use some religion in his life — because for Christmas in 1989, Pitt gave Priestley and their other pals monogrammed Bibles. (You’ll want to hear Priestley tell it.)

Rachel Bloom & Ilana Glazer

Before hitting it big with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (for Bloom) and Broad City (for Glazer) they were just two aspiring actresses, bunking together in Brooklyn — and the two are still tight. “6 years ago we were roommates in Brooklyn and now we have tv shows,” Bloom captioned a collage of photos of the two on Instagram. “@ilanusglazer is just the best.”

Jamie Dornan & Eddie Redmayne

The two handsome U.K. expats crossed the pond together and shared a flat in L.A. while trying to hit it big. Dornan recalled their “desperate” early years while on The Late Late Show with James Corden, joking about the fact that they would often be sent the exact same scripts.

Jamie Dornan & Andrew Garfield

Andrew Garfield was also in their rotating cast of roommates, living with Dornan, Redmayne and Charlie Cox. Garfield and Dornan reunited at the Oscars in 2022, weeks after Dornan dished on their fifth close pal back then, Robert Pattinson, who was experiencing a very different level of fame at that time.

“We were not working and he’s working all the time,” the Belfast actor shared. “He did Twilight and was suddenly in a different stratosphere than us … We’ve sort of, not caught up, but we all started working more consistently.”

Connie Britton & Kirsten Gillibrand

For a summer when they were both Dartmouth students studying abroad in Beijing, the actress and the U.S. Senator from New York shared a place. The two have remained close, with Britton calling Gillibrand “fearless” and Gillibrand commending Britton for only taking on parts that she felt were role model-worthy. When Gillibrand competed for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Britton was vocal in her support.

Connie Britton & Lauren Graham

Gillibrand was just one of Britton’s famous roommates. When the actress was just starting out in Hollywood, she and Gilmore Girls’ Lauren Graham camped out together in an empty house. “We lived in an empty house that we weren’t supposed to be living in,” Graham told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. “We had no furniture and all we ate were Rice Krispies Treats.” Hey, life could be a lot worse.

They’re clearly still pals: Graham wished Britton a happy birthday with an epic throwback photo of the two of them from 1999.

Holly Hunter & Frances McDormand

The Oscar-winning actresses also struck gold when they decided to be roommates in the early ’80s. They were introduced through their boyfriends, who were best friends at the time.

“The four of us hit it off, and we all moved to the North Bronx,” Hunter told Vulture. “We got two apartments, one for each couple. Then we broke up with our boyfriends and Fran moved in with me … Fran’s as fabulous as she seems. We had a blast.”

Penn Badgley & Milo Ventimiglia

Perks of having an older roommate? Taking advantage of the privileges your age won’t allow you to use. For Badgley, that was using his 10-years-older roommate Ventimiglia’s ID to get past bouncers. “When I was 18, my roommate was Milo Ventimiglia, who was 28 at the time,” Badgley reportedly told Bullett magazine. “I used to borrow his ID to get into bars. I’ve still got it somewhere.”

Raven-Symoné & Lindsay Lohan

Back in their Disney darling days, Raven-Symoné and Lohan signed a lease on an apartment together. Though they were roommates on paper, they weren’t exactly living with one another in practice. “She paid rent, and she was there probably three times,” Symoné told Us Weekly about her former roomie. “She had her clothes in the apartment we were supposed to live in together.”

Adam Sandler & Judd Apatow

The two famous funnymen shared a $900-per-month apartment in L.A., and in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes Overtime, Apatow ribbed Sandler for some of his stranger roommate habits, including sleeping on a mattress without sheets and renting a car instead of buying one “for literally 12 years.”

They enjoyed living together (and making monthly roomie trips to Red Lobster), but when Sandler got cast on Saturday Night Live, he relocated to N.Y.C. — though continued to pay rent on the off chance he would get fired and have to return. “He just left, like he was going to come back, but he just didn’t come back,” Apatow said.

Danny DeVito & Michael Douglas

The duo were roommates in N.Y.C. in the 1960s and have stayed close pals ever since. Douglas recalls it as “a magical time,” though jokes that DeVito was a slob.

“Danny was sloppy,” he said. “No, really, he was a great roommate. It was a magical time, We were getting paid to act!”

Dianna Agron & Lea Michele

Glee co-stars Agron and Michele were so tight on set that they decided to hang together off-set, too. The two lived together while filming the hit series, but they didn’t allow any workplace drama to affect the way they felt about one another at home. “We have these smackdowns at work and come home and are like, ‘Wasn’t it so funny when we were fighting today? Let’s make cookies!’ ” Michele told New York Magazine. “It works out. We’re both vegans. Well, I was. I slowly dipped back into cheese.”

Matt Damon & Ben Affleck

Everyone knows that Affleck and Damon go way, way back. So it’s no surprise that in their early years of fame, the two split the rent to make ends meet. However, their first endeavor as roommates ended in debt. “We rented this house on the beach in Venice and 800 people came and stayed with us and got drunk,” Affleck said. “Then we ran out of money and had to get an apartment.”

Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson

Another pair in the running for coolest college roommates of all time? Wilson and Anderson, who first met in a script writing class at the University of Texas at Austin. According to Anderson, they never spoke in the class, but hit it off later and went on to be roommates. They then worked on the script for the movie that would eventually become Bottle Rocket, which Wilson starred in alongside his brother Luke.

Ryan Gosling & Justin Timberlake

When you’re a child star who needs to be in L.A., but your parents need to be back home, what do you do? Get your co-star’s mom to adopt you, naturally! Timberlake’s mom served as Gosling’s legal guardian for a few months while the two were filming The Mickey Mouse Club, which meant they had a few months as roommates.

“[Gosling’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 explained to Ellen DeGeneres. “So we actually lived together when we were that age. So we were probably a little closer that the rest of the kids that were on the show just because we had to share a bathroom.”

Tommy Lee Jones & Al Gore

The future Oscar winner and vice president hit it off as freshmen at Harvard and lived together in the university’s Dunster House with a group of friends. According to the Washington Post, “Gore competed with Jones in the telling of down-home tales, and was regarded by most of their friends as the funnier of the two.”