6 Celebrities You Might Be Surprised to Know Are Geeks

You may have guessed Wil Wheaton and Steve Jobs were geeks, but not all geeks wear their pocket protector on the outside. Some of them are actually pretty cool, so cool you’d never guess the geek is strong in them. Here’s a list of celebrities who are not only cool, but also geeks.

1. Christina Applegate – Christina earned her fame by playing the super-sexy and super-stupid daughter Kelly Bundy on the sitcom Married With Children. In real life, she’s still super-sexy, but not so dumb. She’s big into video games, and has an XBox, Wii, and a PS3. She once played Guitar Hero for so long that she got an ocular migraine. Now that’s hardcore.
2. Nicolas Cage – Nick Cage has become known as an action hero, a cool guy, a goofy nutcase. He’s also one of the biggest comic book fans in Hollywood. He had an awesome comic book collection (including the original first appearance of Superman) that he was forced to sell off at auction for $1.6 million. His real last name is Coppola, but he adopted the last name “Cage” after superhero Luke Cage (a.k.a. Power Man). He named his first son Kal-El. Having attempted to convince my wife to name our first son after X-Men, I’m most impressed by that last one.
3. Vin Diesel – Vin Diesel is one of the coolest actors in Hollywood. His smoky voice, his imposing physique, and his street-smart attitude make him one of the icons of machismo. That’s why it would probably surprise you that Diesel’s a big fan of the board game Dungeons and Dragons. How big? He’s been playing the game since the 1970’s. One of his tattoos in xXx is “Melkor,” the name of one of his D-and-D characters. He wrote the foreword for the book 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons and Dragons. That’s how big.
4. Rosario Dawson – Rosario Dawson is a very popular and sexy actress who’s appeared in cool geeky films like Men in Black II and Sin City. She’s also a geek. She kept it a secret by going to Comic-Con in masks so no one would recognize her while she buys comics and sits in the audience on panels. But Rosario came out of the closet when she started a Twitter campaign to get a cameo role as a Klingon in the next Star Trek movie. She also said she’s a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica, and said a couple of Klingon phrases on the The Conan O’Brien Show. She’s earned her geek cred from that alone.
5. Curt Schilling -It’s a cliche that geeks aren’t good at sports, unless it’s a sport played with joysticks. One geek who proves that’s not the case is major league pitcher, Curt Schilling. Not only has Schilling made a huge career in baseball, including winning four World Series rings, but he’s also big into another game – videogames. In 2001, it was revealed that Schilling played EverQuest and World of Warcraft while he was on the road. It also turns out that Curt’s a longtime board gamer, including Dungeons and Dragons, and Advanced Squad Leader. He even formed his own tabletop game company, Multi-Man Publishing, and is working with comic artist Todd Farlane to create their own MMORG.
6. Robin Williams – Comedian Robin Williams has carved out a niche for playing wacky characters, from Mork on Mork and Mindy to the genie in Aladdin. He also loves video games. He’s known to play online multiplayer games like Battlefield 2, Half-Life: Day of Defeat, and Quake III. He even named his daughter Zelda, after The Legend of Zelda. He also has a son named Zachary Pym Williams. Is that Pym as in Henry Pym, a.k.a. Ant-Man? Dunno…couldn’t find any proof of that. But that’s what I think, because Pym is an unusual name and it’s typically a last name, not a middle name. So I’m giving him the geek point.

Were you surprised to find out these celebrities were geeks? Any other celebrities you were surprised to find out were into geeky stuff?