Celebrities: beauty and brains

Thursday is A level results day. All these celebrities went into further education before swapping academia for a glitzy and glamorous lifestyle

From Spider-Man to Jane Austin

With not long to go before the A levels results, we take a look at celebrities who pursued further education before starting their career in showbiz. Some even went to college despite already having a promising showbusiness career, like Eat Pray Love star James Franco. Franco has been working solidly in Hollywood since the mid 90s yet he decided to go to university. The Spider-Man star has an English degree from UCLA, attended a MFA Writing Programme at Columbia University and studied film-making at the prestigious Tisch School of The Arts and he's about to embark on a Ph. D. in English at exclusive Yale University.

Beauty and brains

Who said that models can't be smart? Lily Cole should have a word. The redhead fashion darling is in her final year at King's College, Cambridge, studying History of Art and she's been getting a First mark in both her first and second year.
90s supermodel Cindy Crawford won a scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University, but only attended for a few months before her catwalk career took off. After years in the modelling industry, Christy Turlington went back to university and last year she studied for a master's degree in Public Health at Columbia University.

Plan B

Madonna, Alicia Keys, Courtney Cox, Maggie and Jake Gyllehaal, Brad Pitt, Ashton Kutcher, The Olsen twins and Susan Sarandon all went to university, and some of them finished their degrees too.

And did you know that Mick Jagger was accepted to the London School of Economics to study accountancy and finance? Of course Jagger found his calling elsewhere, but it looks like many stars, even the rebels, have a plan B.