Yahoo Lifestyle 21 Wild, Weird, And Wacky Facts I Bet You Didn't Know About Famous Celebs
Hollywood is filled with so many accomplished and talented Asian and Pacific Islander (API) performers who all deserve their flowers.
Here are 21 interesting facts about API celebs:
1.Simone Ashley is a self-taught amateur tattoo artist. On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she said, "I've tattooed myself. I've tattooed castmates I've worked with before."
She followed an inmate's YouTube tutorials for prison tattoos and gave herself this ankle tattoo of a sphynx cat:
Here's the full clip, with this part starting at the 5:18 mark:
2.Jameela Jamil's first "big splurge" was a three-day trip to Paris with her roommate — but she made a surprising fashion choice. She told Elle, "But sadly, at the time, I had agreed for charity to wear a chicken costume for 30 days...For every £1,000 I raised, I was gonna wear a chicken suit for that £1,000. And so, unfortunately, on my first, like, trip to Paris, I had to go dressed fully as a chicken."
"And they could not be snobbier. Like, they couldn't be, like, less up for a chicken suit in, like Paris," she said.
Here's the full video where she talks about the chicken suit, with this part starting at the 1:40 mark:
3.In 2022, KJ Apa was designated the matai title Savae of Moata'a, the Samoan village where his family is from. He followed the legacy of his father and grandfather, who also held the chief title.
When KJ appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! back in 2021, he discussed the possibility of one day holding a matai title. At the time, he said, "I would think it’s a huge responsibility. I don’t really feel adequate, to be honest, but I doubt myself in almost everything that I do."
4.Dev Patel's film Monkey Man was largely filmed on an island in Indonesia with the crew in a "bubble" during the pandemic. Such a location challenged him to do a lot of creative problem solving, such as occasionally using GoPros and his cellphone to film. He also attached a camera to a rope to swing it over a crowd.
On the day he used the rope, a studio exec was visiting set, so Dev tasked Jomon Thomas, his producing partner, with distracting him.
Dev told Rolling Stone, "[It] wasn’t something that I think that person would have signed off on."
5.On The Ellen Show, Simu Liu shared that, long before he was cast as the lead in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, his first job involved dressing up as another Marvel hero.
Here's the full clip, with this part starting at the nine-minute mark:
6.Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was born in the US, but he lived in New Zealand for a while as a kid. He also reportedly got dual Canadian citizenship in 2009.
He lived in New Zealand alongside his mom's family. He attended primary school and played rugby.
He was able to get Canadian citizenship through his dad, who's from Nova Scotia.
7.Auli'i Cravalho has a rescue cat named Rocco, whom she walks on a leash. She's also allergic to cats.
8.On The Jennifer Hudson Show, Nicole Scherzinger revealed that the worst thing that's ever happed to her while performing was when she split her pants seconds before performing on The X Factor with Justin Bieber.
Thankfully, her talented seamstress was able to do a super quick repair.
Here's the full clip, with this part starting at the 1:25 mark:
9.It's been reported that Jason Momoa won Hawaii's Model of the Year contest in 1999, but he actually "made that shit up." He told Square Mile, "When I was in Hawaii, I went to a casting call for Baywatch Hawaii – it was basically like a cattle call for 1,300 people. I got there, and seven hours later, when I finally got to the front of the line, they said, 'Oh, you've got to have a resume.' I was like, 'Oh yeah, well, I don't have one.' They were like, 'Dude, have you ever acted?' I was like, 'No,' and they were like, 'Have you modeled?' I was like, 'Yeah, yeah, I'm a big model. I do Gucci and Louis Vuitton."
He continued, "And I'm looking at my friend, and I'm like, 'You did Prada, right?' And he's like, 'Yeah, yeah, we did that in Japan.' So we were just kind of making it up on the spot...Yeah, we just kind of bullshitted our way in, and then I met some managers down there; they kind of made up some stuff for me like, 'Hawaii Model of the Year'. We basically just did head shots of me and said, 'Hey he's the model of the year.' We just made it up...Well, it kind of stayed on there. It's like, when I finished Baywatch, all I had was Baywatch, and you've got to have something more credible. So we just left it on."
10.When Mean Girls (2024) hit theaters, Avantika, who played Karen Shetty, watched it in theaters on her own so she could see what other people thought of it.
She told Vogue India, "I'm going for a 7.30 p.m. show all by myself because I want to know how the audience reacts to my role in real-time."
11.Ambika Mod sleeps with her eyes open. On The Graham Norton Show, she said, "Mostly, it's not fully. It's usually just like..." then she demonstrated.
She said that she's slept that way since she was a baby.
Here's the full clip:
12.When Ali Wong first moved to New York City to pursue a stand-up comedy career, she regularly performed up to nine times in a single night.
Between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., she'd her set, head to the next venue, then repeat.
13.In a YouTube video, Bretman Rock and Bella Poarch revealed that they're cousins.
Here's the full video, with this part starting at the 2:50 mark:
14.Hayley Kiyoko's parents have really interesting jobs. Her mom is a figure skater-turned-ice skating choreographer, and her dad is an actor/comedian who was one-half of the comedy duo Mack & Jamie.
Hayley's mom, Sarah Kawahara, won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Choreograph – the first in 1997 for Scott Hamilton: Upside Down, and the second in 2002 for the Opening Ceremony of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. She was also Margot Robbie's skating coach for I, Tonya.
Hayley's dad, Jamie Alcroft, is known for his voice acting works in video games, TV, and movies.
15.Accepting the role of Eliza Schuyler in Hamilton led Phillipa Soo to meeting her husband, Steven Pasquale.
Steven is close friends with Hamilton writer Lin-Manuel Miranda. Phillippa met Steven while in rehearsals for the musical.
They got married in 2017.
16.On Call Her Daddy, Zayn Malik said he has "a lot of animals" — three turtles, six chickens, three cats, and three dogs.
He also said that he adopted the first chickens he had to rescue them from being slaughtered.
17.When Barbie made Fifth Harmony dolls, Dinah Jane's doll was the first modern Polynesian Barbie.
Larry Marano / Getty Images, Mattel / Via ebay.com
On the Real Gems With Erin Ashley Simon podcast, she said, "All my first cousins, all my girl cousins, were like, 'Oh my gosh, I have a Dinah Jane Barbie. I wanna be Dinah!' And just hearing that made me so proud to be Tongan, just to be an Islander. I knew it wasn't just me, but other younger Islander girls who were proud to be like, 'That's me.' Just to see that for myself and hear it for myself, it made me realize, 'Damn. I definitely have responsibility here, and I'm sticking to it.'"
18.Olivia Munn was born in the US, but she spent the majority of her childhood and teen years in Tokyo because she was in a military family.
She told Rogue Magazine, "I was there from age eight to about 16. The hardest thing for me was going from Japan to Oklahoma. I was so used to my life. In Japan, we lived on a military base, but I spent my youth running around the streets of Tokyo with my brothers and sisters and friends, from Roppongi to Harajuku."
19.Bella Hadid is actually a natural blonde, but she dyed her hair brunette, partially to separate herself from her famous sister, Gigi.
In 2016, she told Allure, "I just have a darker personality. And my sister being blonde and me being brunette, it's a good separation. I put a blonde wig on and think it would be fun to go back, but I'm happy with my hair. Blondes are so angelic. My sister can get away with anything."
However, Bella has temporarily gone back to blonde on occassion.
20.Vanessa Hudgens belives she has the ability to see and hear the paranormal. On The Kelly Clarkson Show, she said, "I've accepted the fact that, like, I see things and I hear things."
Here's the full clip, with this part starting at the 6:55 mark:
21.And finally, Michelle Yeoh's Oscar-winning role in Everything Everywhere All at Once was originally written for Jackie Chan.
She told CNN, "It was written for a man when [directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert] set out to do this. They wrote it that way, with Jackie, and me as the wife. So, the roles were completely reversed. I remember Jackie texting me and saying, 'Congratulations! You know your boys came to see me first. I'm like, 'Thank you, bro, you did me a huge favor.'"
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