Famous People Who Used to Be Roommates

In expensive megacities such as Los Angeles and New York, sometimes even famous folks live together as roommates to cut down on costs or just to have a friend nearby.

Some celebrities live together before one or both of them were even famous, while others, such as Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, shared housing while filming a movie together on location to get into character.

For whatever reason, the following famous people once lived as roommates and probably had to have conversations about dishes in the sink, overnight guests, and noise. Can you imagine any of the following odd couples living together?

1. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams play a married couple stuck in a dreary, deteriorating relationship in the 2010 romantic drama Blue Valentine. Director Derek Cianfrance suggested that Gosling and Williams live together for a week to develop a sense of realism, but the two actors cohabitated for a full month along with the child actor who plays their daughter.

According to NPR, Gosling and Williams lived together during the day, but Williams returned at night to be with her daughter.

“During the month, we tried to dismantle this thing that we had been building,” said Gosling. “[Originally,] we all worked really hard to create this love story portion, when they’re falling in love. We wanted it to feel genuine and real and true. And we spent all of this time building it up, and then we had to tear it down.”

2. David Hasselhoff and Paul Reubens

David Hasselhoff and Paul Reubens, the actor best known for playing Pee-wee Herman, live together when they were classmates at California Institute of the Arts. After Reubens passed away in 2023, Hasselhoff posted a heartfelt message on X about his former roommate.

“Paul Reubens was a great, great friend,” wrote Hasselhoff in the post. “He gave me the Muppets for my birthday and never forgot anyone’s birthday from our class. He was always kind to me and to everyone. He will be missed.”

3. Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve

Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve had a friendship that lasted decades. The two even lived together as roommates when they studied acting at New York’s Juilliard. Both actors joined Juilliard’s Advanced Program in 1973.

In his 1998 memoir Still Me, Reeve wrote about Williams, “I’d never seen so much energy contained in one person. He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and immediately released. I watched in awe as he virtually caromed off the walls of the classrooms and hallways. To say that he was ‘on’ would be a major understatement.”

Reeve, best known for playing Superman in four big-screen movies, passed away in 2004. Funnyman Williams took his own life in 2014.

4. Emma Stone and Bradley Cooper

While filming the 2015 movie Aloha together in Hawaii, Emma Stone and Bradley Cooper shared a house together for a short period of time toward the end of the shoot.

“We barely saw each other,” said Stone to E! News in a joint interview with Cooper. “We were at totally different ends of the island, which was actually kind of far.”

“I did live in your house the last week,” said Cooper.

“You had your own little section… your little enclave,” added Stone.

5. Oliver Hudson and Rashida Jones

Oliver Hudson, Kate Hudson’s brother, and Rashida Jones, Quincy Jones’ daughter, are good friends who once lived together as roommates.

After Oliver Hudson posted a silly video on Instagram of him singing around the house, Rashida Jones commented, “[Oliver’s wife Erinn] walking by unbothered is a reminder of how often this happens but as your former roommate I really miss this.”

6. Laura Dern and Marianne Williamson

Jurassic Park star Laura Dern once roomed with former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson when Dern was 17 and Williamson was 31.

“She needed a roommate at the time I had just moved out and started my acting career and we ended up roommates,” said Dern on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2019.

Dern said that Williamson never yelled at her for not doing the dishes and even kept her cool after Dern accidentally almost burned down the apartment.

“I was running to an acting class ’cause that was my priority and left rice on,” said Dern. “That wasn’t great, but she was even loving during even that. It was shocking but true.”

7. Raven-Symoné and Lindsay Lohan

Former Disney stars Raven-Symoné and Lindsay Lohan once shared an apartment in the early 2000s but didn’t see each other very often, at least according to Raven-Symoné. It almost sounds as if Lohan treated the apartment like a strategically located closet.

During a backstage segment for The Drew Barrymore Show, Lohan said, “It’s crazy that Raven and I were roommates. We had a lot of fun together. I remember we got ready for the Kids’ Choice Awards together, something happened where the power went out in the house, and we were both getting ready at the same time, and it was just really funny. Total girl moment!”

In 2008, Raven-Symoné said to Us Weekly, “[Lohan] paid rent, and she was there probably three times. She had her clothes in the apartment we were supposed to live in together.”

8. Gwyneth Paltrow and Winona Ryder

Winona Ryder and Gwyneth Paltrow were roommates and often photographed out and about together in the early 1990s, but the pair had a falling out toward the end of the decade.

Ryder was reportedly under consideration for the part in Shakespeare in Love that Paltrow ended up getting and for which she won a Best Actress Oscar. Some have suggested that Paltrow pilfered the script from Ryder’s home, but only two people know the truth about how Paltrow got the part. The only thing we know for sure is that photos of the former roommates together ceased right after Paltrow gave her teary Oscar acceptance speech.

9. Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand

Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand, who starred together in Raising Arizona, once lived together as roommates in the early ’80s.

In an interview with Vulture from 2018, Hunter said that she met McDormand because their boyfriends were friends.

“The four of us hit it off, and we all moved to the North Bronx,” says Hunter. “We got two apartments, one for each couple. Then we broke up with our boyfriends and Fran moved in with me.”

Hunter continued, “Fran’s as fabulous as she seems. We had a blast. We stayed up there for a couple years, and then she did Blood Simple. After that, [writer-director] Joel Coen sort of moved in with us and they eventually got married. It was a great chapter.”

10. Justin Long and Jonah Hill

Justin Long and Jonah Hill, who both appeared together in the 2006 comedy Accepted, lived together as roommates around the same time period in the mid-aughts.

In an interview with Andy Cohen, Long said that the best part about living with Hill is that they made each other “laugh like hyenas.” According to Long, the worst part is that they were “both equally pretty messy.”

Although the two funnymen remain friends today, Long said that they were like an “old married couple” when living together and their friendship needed a little break when they each got new addresses.

11. Andrew Garfield, Jamie Dornan, and Eddie Redmayne

Before they were famous, Fifty Shades of Grey actor Jamie Dornan and The Theory of Everything actor Eddie Redmayne rented an apartment together, which became a frequent gathering spot and crash pad for them and fellow up-and-coming actors Andrew Garfield and Robert Pattinson.

During an interview on The Jess Cagle Show, Dornan said, “I mean, there’s loads of us who actually ended up going on to do pretty well for ourselves. But at the time, we weren’t. We were pretty, pretty messy.”

Dornan added that there was no competition between him and his friends even though they were often up for the same parts.

“They’re all really great guys and really good actors,” said Dornan. “It’s cool that it kind of all happened for us, in a way.”

12. Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito

Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito — who appeared together in movies such as Romancing the Stone, The Jewel of the Nile, and The War of the Roses — roomed together in 1968.

“We met at school in ’66 and then we were roommates in 1968,” said Douglas about DeVito to The Talks. “I still have a lot of my old college friends because it’s tough when you get into show business and try to find good friends. People are goofy about the movie business, so you end up counting on friends you knew before you were successful. It is harder to make new friends because you are a little more cautious.”

13. Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling

When they were both still teenagers in the early 1990s, Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling lived together when they starred in The All-New Mickey Mouse Club.

During a 2011 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Timberlake said, “[Ryan’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. So, we actually lived together when we were that age.”

Timberlake continued, “We were probably a little closer than the rest of the kids that were on the show because, ya know, we had to share a bathroom.”

14. Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore

Actor Tommy Lee Jones and politician Al Gore were once roommates at Harvard and remain tight to this day.

“Al Gore has been one of my closest friends since the day we met on the first day of college,” said Jones at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. “I lived with him for four years, and what did we do? We shot pool and we watched Star Trek when maybe we should have been studying for exams.”

Jones continued, “One time in college, neither of us could make it home for Thanksgiving, so we made a fire in the venerable old fireplace in our room and we wrapped a big turkey in a couple of rolls of tin foil and rustled it right there in the dorm. I know from Tipper that that has been some of the most ambitious cooking that Albert has done since then.”

15. Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow

Long before funnyman Adam Sandler and filmmaker Judd Apatow collaborated on the comedy Funny People, the two rented a place together in Los Angeles.

On a 2012 episode of 60 Minutes Overtime, Apatow said that the twosome’s roommate situation came to end when Sandler packed up his things and moved to New York to begin his stint on Saturday Night Live. Apatow said that Sandler continued to pay rent on their shared apartment in case he got fired from SNL, but he never came back.

16. Lea Michele and Dianna Agron

The characters played by Lea Michele and Dianna Agron might have locked horns on Glee, but the actresses actually lived together for a short time in 2009.

“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!'” said Michele to New York magazine at the time. “It works out. We’re both vegans. Well, I was. I slowly dipped back into cheese.”

17. Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson

Before they collaborated on movies such as Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson were roommates at the University of Texas at Austin. The longtime friends met in 1989 during their sophomore year in a play-writing class.

In a 1999 interview with L.A. Weekly, Anderson said that the apartment he shared with Wilson had broken window cranks and the landlord refused to fix them. After staging a break-in didn’t motivate the landlord to resolve the issue, the roommates stopped paying rent.

“We ended up moving in the middle of the night, and [the landlord] hunted us down with a private investigator,” said Anderson.

18. Penn Badgley and Milo Ventimiglia

One advantage with living with a friend who looks like you but is a little older is that you can use the friend’s ID to get into clubs and bars before you’re 21. This is what happened when Penn Badgley roomed with the older Milo Ventimiglia when they were filming the short-lived The Bedford Diaries TV series.

“When I was 18, my roommate was Milo Ventimiglia, who was 28 at the time,” said Badgley to Bullett magazine. “I used to borrow his ID to get into bars. I’ve still got it somewhere.”

19. Hillary Clinton and Janet Hill

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Janet Hill, the mother of NBA player Grant Hill, were roommates at Wellesley College in the 1960s. Their families remained close over the years.

“I met one of the smartest, kindest, shrewdest, and most remarkable women I’d ever known,” said Clinton about Janet Hill. “Several things happened in 1968, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and war protests on campus. While the administration was overwhelmed by what was happening, Janet was the most level-headed person in any room when we were called in to discuss what we should be doing and how we should try to move forward.”

Hill passed away in 2023 at age 74.

20. Kiefer Sutherland and Robert Downey Jr.

Kiefer Sutherland and Robert Downey Jr. each have a history of taking a walk on the wild side, but the actors supported each other through dark times when they roomed together in the 1980s.

During an interview with Howard Stern, Downey Jr. said that Sutherland was “a shoulder [to cry on]” when Downey Jr. was going through a breakup with then-girlfriend Sarah Jessica Parker.

“Better him than some stranger,” said Downey Jr. to Stern about Sutherland.

21. Connie Britton and Lauren Graham

Long before they played TV moms, Connie Britton and Lauren Graham lived together in Los Angeles in the empty house of their friend who was going through a divorce.

“We were in the same acting class [in New York City],” Britton said to the audience at New York Magazine’s Vulture Festival in 2017. “We were in class together, became friends, and then we both decided to make the big move and give Los Angles a shot.”

Graham told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, “We had no furniture and all we ate were Rice Krispies Treats.”

Britton added, “Those are actually really fond memories. You know, it’s that time when everything’s a possibility and we were just trying to live our dream.”

22. Ilana Glazer and Rachel Bloom

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom and Broad City star Ilana Glazer used to room together in Brooklyn before they each got their own shows.

In 2016, Bloom posted a collage of cutesy, kissy pictures of her with Glazer on Instagram. The caption reads, “[Six] years ago we were roommates in Brooklyn and now we have TV shows. @ilanusglazer is just the best.”

23. Ving Rhames and Stanley Tucci

Ving Rhames and Stanley Tucci roomed together at State University of New York’s Conservatory of Theater Arts in Purchase.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Tucci acknowledged that he is the one responsible for giving Rhames the nickname “Ving.” Rhames’ full first name is Irving. How did we not know that?

24. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are childhood friends who share an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting. The two also roomed together for years in the 1990s.

On a 2023 episode of The Late Late Show With James Corden, Affleck opened up about his time sharing a roof in Los Angeles with his BFF.

“Matt’s a beautiful guy,” said Affleck. “I love him. He’s my best friend. He’s been great to me my whole life. He’s a brilliant guy. I would not suggest living with him.”

Affleck went on to say that Damon “never paid a bill” and “has the ability to block things out,” adding, “One of the things he blocks out is that when you finish with something, it has to be washed or thrown away.”

25. Ewan McGregor and Jude Law

Longtime friends Ewan McGregor and Jude Law shared a home together in London before either of them became the A-list stars they are today.

It seems that famous roommates whose friendship survives living together end up going into business together later in life. McGregor and Law created and own the British film company Natural Nylon together.