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It would be nice to pretend that if famous people are going to be as beautiful as they are, at least they could be dumb or something to make up for it. But not all of them are. In fact, a few of them are downright geniuses or, at the very least, incredibly smart. We think some of them might even surprise you.

Natalie Portman
Maybe it's not exactly a secret that Natalie Portman's a smartypants, but in case you weren't in the know, she graduated from high school with a 4.0, then went to Harvard. She wrote a paper in high school titled "Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen," which was entered into the Intel Science Talent Search. As if that weren't enough, she's also got a few languages under her belt. Sheesh.
James Woods
Attending M.I.T. and having an IQ of 180 is almost enough to make us want to watch "Videodrome" again ... almost.
Cindy Crawford
Cindy's more than a pretty face -- she was her high school valedictorian and received a scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University. She dropped out to become a model, and thank goodness, otherwise she might never have made that hilarious Charlie commercial with Little Richard.


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Julie Newmar
Newmar is best known for her role as the Catwoman in the original "Batman" series, but women the world over have Newmar to thank for better-looking butts -- she's the holder of three patents, including two for butt-shaping pantyhose.
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy was one of those foxy bombshells from the 1940s who starred in movies like "White Cargo" and "Tortilla Flat." But in addition to burning up the screen, she was granted a patent for a frequency-hopping spread-spectrum device to make it more difficult for enemies to jam torpedoes. In fact, the patent was so ahead of its time that it took technology 20 years to catch up with it, so by the time the U.S. government figured out how to make her patent a reality, it had already expired, and she never made any money from the idea.

Shakira
Shakira reportedly has an IQ of 140, which makes her one smart cookie.
Kate Beckinsale
Although she has made some incredibly bad movies, Kate Beckinsale is no dummy. She twice won the W. H. Smith Young Writers competition, once for poetry and once for short stories. She also attended Oxford University, where she studied French and Russian Literature. So maybe "Underworld" was just a joke that went over everyone's head.

James Franco
Calgon, take me away! Not only is James Franco smoking hot, he is also getting an MFA in writing from Columbia University, and while at UCLA his work load ranged from 20 to 62 credits per quarter.

Ashton Kutcher
He may seem like a dodo, but Ashton had big plans to attend M.I.T. to study biochemical engineering until he accidentally punk'd himself and lost his scholarship. He ended up going to the University of Iowa until he won a modeling contest, and the rest is history.

Charlie Korsmo
OK, maybe he's not a celebrity anymore, but he was in some of our favorite childhood movies -- "Dick Tracy," "Hook," and "What About Bob?" After he "retired" from acting at the age of 13, he went on to graduate from M.I.T. with a 4.0 GPA and a degree in physics. He also got a degree from the Yale University of Law, and has spent some time working on missile defense for the government. Who knew?
Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys graduated from high school at the age of 16 as class valedictorian. She ultimately gave up a scholarship to Columbia to pursue her music career. Does this mean her music doesn't have to be a guilty pleasure anymore?