These Celebs Have Unusual Talents You Wouldn’t Expect

News By TooFab Staff | 12/27/2021 1:17 PM PT

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For actors, having extracurricular skills on their résumé can come in handy. Whether it’s a musical hobby or an athletic ability, these unique talents can make all the difference when it comes to auditions. That special skill can set them apart from other actors — and can actually help them land the job! From tap dancing to knife handling, these unusual capabilities certainly make these celebrities stand out. Find out what talents these celebs have been hiding below…

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Conan O'Brien

Conan O'Brien is a trained tap dancer, which he picked up as a child because he thought it would be handy in the entertainment industry. His parents agreed and hired a world renown tap dancing instructor named Stanley Brown, who had been the protégé of Bill Bojangles Robinson. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be in show business. I was this goofy kid living in Boston with orange hair and I told my folks, ‘I’m going to be in show business someday and in show business you have to tap dance’...I literally did think I had to tap dance. So I took lessons, and it’s like 1979 at this point. No one tap dances!” Conan said on his show.

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Susan Sarandon

Susan Sarandon is a skilled ping pong player and even turned her love of the sport into a business! In 2009, she helped found a ping pong bar called Spin which now has locations all across the United States. While she admits she’s not as talented as some of the pros, she says she was drawn to the sport because it appeals to so many different kinds of people. "Ping pong cuts across all body types and gender – everything, really – because little girls can beat big muscley guys. You don't get hurt; it is not expensive; it is really good for your mind. It is one of the few sports that you can play until you die,” she told The Guardian.

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Mark Ruffalo

Mark Ruffalo learned to ride a unicycle when he was a preteen and continued to practice the sport into adulthood. While he cut back on his unicycle riding when he began his acting career, he’s retained his skills to this day. During an appearance on “The Graham Norton Show” he proved that the old adage that you never forget how to ride a bicycle also applies to unicycles when he hopped on and took off! “I think it’s been almost 25 years since I’ve done this!” Mark said on the show.

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Neil Patrick Harris

Neil Patrick Harris has been a fan of magic since childhood, falling in love with the art while watching David Copperfield and Doug Henning on television. He learned how to perform tricks by checking out magic books from the library and practicing them at home. Then, when he moved to New Mexico, he discovered his first magic shop where he finally had access to more elevated tricks that required props. He still has his skills, which he says draws a lot from acting, and has even showed off his talent on “The Late Late Show.” “There's a big connection between magic and acting...Because if you think about it when you're watching a magician perform a trick, he's explaining the facts of what's happening...Those may not be the actual facts. And so in enacting there are facts of a script but you're able to act around it and fill it in. There are facts of things that happen and it's our job as humans to process what those facts mean to you and embellish upon it,” he told wbur.

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Andrew Garfield

Andrew Garfield was an accomplished gymnast before his acting career took off and at one point, he even ranked third in the south of England for his floor routines and vault skills. He called it quits as a preteen but has maintained his ability to back handspring, which he once showed off on “The Ellen Show.”

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Terry Crews

Terry Crews became a talented flute player after receiving the instrument for Christmas as a child. He went on to take lessons for about seven years, from age nine until he was in high school. He even got the chance to show off his skills on an episode of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” when his character wanted to audition to be a flutist for the NYPD marching band. “When I was a little kid, about eight years old, [my great aunt] said, ‘What instrument do you want to play?’ My brother said guitar, and I was just trying to get out of the house, so I said, ‘Flute! I want to play the flute.' For Christmas, there it was under the tree: A guitar for my brother and a flute for me. And my mother made me play the flute for like seven or eight years. I play the flute. I’m a flutist!” Terry said on “The Late Late Show.”

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Jeremy Renner

Jeremy Renner is actually a talented makeup artist and made a career out of it while he was trying to make it as an actor. He says his background in theater gave him his knowledge of makeup and practicing his skill on the job left him with a lot of free time for auditions. ”[I was] a makeup artist. I could do makeup because I did theater…I could paint and I could draw, so I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll do makeup on girls all day.’ It bought me a lot of free time to go audition when I needed to because I only had to work a few hours a week. I didn’t have to wait tables, so it was actually a great gig,” Jeremy told Access Hollywood.

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Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie has some talent when it comes to using knives, a hobby that stemmed from a childhood trip to a Renaissance fair. She began collecting knives at a young age and practiced her handling skills with a butterfly knife, even into adulthood. She once shared her skills on “Conan.” “I’ve collected weapons since I was a little girl. I went to the Renaissance fair when I was a little girl and...it reminds you of history and there’s something beautiful and traditional about them. Different countries have different weapons and blades and there’s just something beautiful about them to me,” Angelina said.

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Jason Statham

Before Jason Statham was a leading man in action films, he was a professional diver. He was actually a part of the British National Diving Team for almost 10 years and even competed in the 1990 Commonwealth Games. During that time, he began modeling and his acting career took off from there, taking him away from diving. “I spent 12 years on the national squad. And it was a great experience, you know, to travel the world and compete at a certain level. It teaches you discipline, focus, and certainly keeps you out of trouble,” Jason said of his diving career.

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Geena Davis

Geena Davis is an exceptionally talented archer and even competed in the U.S. Olympic semifinals back in 1999. While she didn’t make the team, she did place 24th out of 300 — which is impressive considering she had only been practicing archery for two years beforehand. She says she became fascinated with the sport after watching the 1996 Olympic Games and decided to pick it up herself. “They had a lot of coverage of archery because America was winning all the gold medals, and I was like ‘Wow! It’s very dramatic and beautiful’ and just thought casually, ‘I wonder if I’d be good at that?’ I thought ‘I want to take up a sport in the real-life way and not the movie version...I want to see if I can really learn something real.’ I found a coach and became utterly obsessed. Yeah, I took it up at 41 and it became my life for a couple of years,” Geena told People.

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Ed O'Neill

Ed O'Neill is black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a sport he didn’t try out until he was 42-years-old. He originally wasn’t interested in attempting the martial art but a friend convinced him to join for just a class. While there, an instructor convinced Ed to stay by showing the skills that he could learn and he was so inspired, he started practicing the following week. In 2007, he finally earned his black belt, almost two decades after first signing up.

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Christina Hendricks

Christina Hendricks is a talented accordion player, picking up the instrument only a few years before she debuted her talents on an episode of “Mad Men.” She says she felt drawn to the accordion because it reminds her of all the things she loves. “I started taking lessons four or five years ago. It is such a rich instrument for one person. You can get so much out of it, like a one-man band. I also think it's a very romantic instrument, and it channels all the things I love—French culture, Tom Waits—and all the things I try to make my house look like,” Christina told LA Times Magazine.