10 *More* Famous People and Their Hobbies
We’ve told you about the hobbies of Oprah Winfrey and Ryan Gosling. But we’re just getting started. The fact is, per a new federal-government survey, 96 percent of Americans age 15 and older engage in a leisure activity every day — so, yes, that’s pretty much everyone, celebrities included. So, here are the passions of 10 more bold-faced names.
1. Tom Hanks: Typewriters
The Oscar-winning actor, 62, picks up old Smith Coronas and the like at swap meets. The machines are “essentially worthless,” he said on a podcast in 2012, per Collectors Weekly, “but I love them.” He told NPR he finds them “reassuring, comforting [and] dazzling in that here is a very specific apparatus that is meant to do one thing, and it does it perfectly.” He even worked a typewriter reference into each of the stories in his 2017 fiction collection, Uncommon Type
2. Gina Rodriguez: Boxing
The Jane the Virgin star, 34, told Good Morning America that “boxing runs in the family”: Her father boxed, and then taught her and her sisters the sweet science. In recent years, the actress has expanded her ring repertoire to include the combat sport of Muay Thai boxing. “Life knocks you down and it can hurt but that has never stopped me before and so I repeat no pain, no Muay Thai,” Rodriguez wrote on Instagram.
3. Aisha Tyler: Video games
The 48-year-old is a comedian, actor (Criminal Minds), cult favorite (Archer) and talk-show host (formerly of The Talk). She’s also a gamer. In a 2012 declaration on Facebook, Tyler wrote that she’s been into video games since before she “missed the start of Return of the Jedi playing Tempest in the theater lobby.” In 2014, she told Mashable her only complaint about gaming was that she didn’t have enough time to do it.
4. Niall Horan: Golf
A lot of stars golf, but this star’s love of the game is so serious that he’s in the golf business via a golf-management agency he helps run. The 24-year-old former member of One Direction told the Ladies European Tour’s Website that he fell in love with golf as a child, when he watched the game on TV with his father. “It’s a great way to escape for a bit, to turn my phone off and relax,” Horan said. “I enjoy playing and meeting new people and the challenge of working hard to try and improve my game.”
5. Geena Davis: Archery
The Thelma & Louise star, 62, took up archery “on a whim” at age 41. Within a couple of years, she was at the U.S. Olympic trials. She didn’t make the team, but remembers the experience as “fabulous.” “I’m not competing currently,” Davis said in 2016, per Entertainment Tonight. “There’s always 2020 in Tokyo!”
6. Kaley Cuoco: Horses
When she was 15, the future Big Bang Theory star landed her first TV series gig, a short-lived Alfred Molina sitcom named Ladies Man. Tennis, which she’d played as a child, no longer fit into her schedule, and she needed a new hobby, Cuoco said in Sidelines. “My mom said, ‘Take a riding lesson, you will love it!,” she told the magazine. Cuoco’s mother was right, and the actress, now 32, rides to this day.
7. Kelley Deal: Knitting
The 57-year-old alternative-rock stalwart of the Breeders has led knitting sessions, published a book of patterns and sold her work online. Deal says she always enjoyed making things, but became an obsessive knitter when she went on her first tour after getting sober. “Not only did it … help me stay occupied, but it kind of changed my life,” she told The Creative Independent. “It got me involved in creating all sorts of different things.”
8. Mike Tyson: Pigeons
The former heavyweight boxing champ has been raising and caring for pigeons since his hobby made the “little fat kid with glasses,” as he described his younger self, the target of bullying. In time, Tyson, now 52, fought back against the bullies, as well as his own demons. Through it all, pigeons have remained a calming constant. Tyson’s love of the aviary avocation was the subject of the Animal Planet series, Taking on Tyson.
9. Steve Vai: Beekeeping
For the Grammy-winning guitar icon, 58, hanging with the insects at his Encino, California, home is, he told Classic Rock magazine, “an opportunity to get away from everything–because nobody’s going to come near me when I’m with the bees.”
10. Rod Stewart and Neil Young: Model trains
A 73-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend, Stewart is also a self-described proud railway modeler. As of 2007, according to Model Railroader magazine, the third floor of the Grammy-winner’s Beverly Hills home was devoted to a 1,500-square-foot, model-train setup. Fellow Hall of Fame inductee Young, 72, is so serious about the hobby himself that he once owned Lionel, the famed toy-train manufacturer.
