Privacy Policy » 12 Celebs Who Admit They Dropped Out Of School

Find out why these celebs left school early…

When Kate Winslet was 16, she took her GCSE exams and decided to cut her education short. She dropped out of school and got a job at a delicatessen so she could afford train tickets to go to auditions in London.

“I had finished my school exams, and you see…people often think I must have all these, you know, diplomas and things and rubber stamps next to my name and crests and things and training and all this pedigree. I left school at 16 and I went to work in a delicatessen to save money to get the train to London to go on auditions,” she said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

Johnny Depp attended high school in Florida up until he was 15 but ended up dropping out to pursue his music career. Just a few weeks later, he started having second thoughts about his decision — but the school’s dean encouraged him to keep pushing forward with his dreams of being a musician.

“I spoke to the dean of the school and he said, ‘Johnny, we don’t want you to come back.’ He was really sweet actually. He said, ‘You have this music thing that you should run with. If that’s your passion, you should go with that.’ So I did,” Johnny said on Inside the Actors Studio.

Jennifer Lawrence dropped out of school before she even hit high school. She left middle school when she was 14, explaining that she had “struggled through school” and “never felt very smart.” She realized that when she was reading a script, she accessed a part of her brain she didn’t know existed.

“It’s something that I could be confident in, and I didn’t want to let it go,” Jennifer said on 60 Minutes. “It’s so hard to explain, it was just an overwhelming feeling of, ‘I get this. This is what I was meant to do.’ And to get people to try to understand that when you’re 14-years-old, wanting to drop out of school and do this and your parents are just like, ‘You’re out of your mind.’”

She continued, “I dropped out of middle school. I don’t technically have a GED or a diploma. I am self-educated. I don’t [regret it]. I wanted to forge my own path. I found what I wanted to do and I didn’t want anything getting in the way of it.”

Gisele Bündchen left her home in São Paulo, Brazil when she was just 14-years-old to pursue a career in modeling. She dropped out of school and didn’t return but Gisele says she feels like she earned an education through her unique life experiences.

“I didn’t go to high school but I feel like I have a diploma on the ‘school of life’ in so many ways. I think when you go out in the world and you figure it out. You learn pretty quickly when your parents are not there to protect you. You know how to make decisions and you have to take accountability for your decisions because there is nobody there to protect you,” she said during the Wisdom 2 Summit.

Robert Downey Jr. admits he was a “hot mess” in high school and was there “as infrequently as possible” — even scaling a massive fence to escape on occasion. He ended up dropping out when he was 16 to pursue acting full time. He explained that at the time, he was incredibly jealous of his Santa Monica High School classmate Rob Lowe, who was able to manage school and a career at the same time.

“I want to say I was jealous, but that’s not deep enough,” Robert said on Rob’s Literally podcast. “I didn’t understand how anyone could get where you were, let alone still have attendance in school. It just seemed like there was something so high-functioning going on that there was no point for me to even attempt to understand it.”

Jessica Chastain didn’t have the most traditional schooling experience. While she did attend high school, she dropped out because she had too many absences. Although she wasn’t able to receive her degree, she was able to land an audition at the Juilliard School and was accepted at age 22.

“I dropped out of high school,” she told EW. “I was not a hard worker. I was a terrible student. Eventually I got my adult diploma, but I did not graduate. And it wasn’t that I just dropped out and never went back — at the end of the year I had too many absences to graduate…I would cut school and sit in my car, reading Shakespeare.”

Seth Rogen always knew he wanted to pursue comedy so he decided to drop out of school when he was still in high school. But looking back, he says he didn’t use it as an excuse to slack off. He says he immediately got to work.

“I worked really hard. It’s not like I dropped out of high school and just did nothing,” Seth explained to CNN. “I dropped out of high school and went and worked on a TV show. We were writing a script all throughout high school. I probably worked harder than most people who were just doing high school stuff, honestly. I did stand-up comedy all throughout high school. I think, honestly, if you have a career in mind that isn’t academically oriented, then high school is probably not going to lead you to what you want to be.”

Avril Lavigne was still a teenager when she signed her first record deal and ended up dropping out of high school in 11th grade to pursue her career. She moved to New York and was supposed to keep up with her school work, but she chose not to.

“It was awesome. I remember talking to my friends on the phone and they’re, like, getting ready for exams and I’m like, ‘Haha!’ I was supposed to do homeschooling — I had books — but I didn’t do it. So basically, I’m a high school dropout,” Lavigne said on an episode of Private Sessions.

Hilary Swank admits that she’s not proud to be a high school dropout. She left school at 16 to pursue acting but had already been struggling with rules. Looking back, she says she often got in trouble for talking too much in class.

“I’m not proud to say I’m a high school dropout,” Swank told the Today show. “I’m not proud that that’s something that happened, but it happened.”

Tracy Morgan left high school in order to pursue his dreams of being a comedian and looking back, he says he’s glad he didn’t continue on with his education. In fact, he thinks it might have held him back.

“I’m glad I dropped out of high school, man,” he told the New York Post. “I wouldn’t be where I’m at. I would have had a net. I’m glad I didn’t have anything to fall back on, man, because that made me go for my dreams that much harder.”

Jude Law’s parents may have been teachers but they allowed him to drop out of school when he was 17. At the time, Jude had landed a role in the soap opera Families and had been asked by production to move to Manchester for filming. Reflecting on the time, Jude says he’s surprised his family was so accepting.

“I can’t believe that now. It was so cool, and trusting of them,” told The Telegraph.

Jay-Z had already attended three different high schools by the time he dropped out during his sophomore year at Trenton Central High School in New Jersey. At the time, he fell down a dark path of drug dealing but was eventually able to turn his life around — and now understands the value of an education.

“Education is super important,” he said. “I don’t have a high school diploma or a college diploma, but still for me to articulate, I had to have some form of schooling to articulate my thoughts.”