Celebrities Who Are Surprisingly Related to Historical Figures
Family trees have a way of producing surprises. Go back far enough, and almost everyone is related to almost everyone, which is the kind of mathematical inevitability that sounds profound until you remember it mostly means you share ancestors with your neighbours as well as with royalty.
But then there are the connections that feel genuinely unlikely — the ones where a genealogist traces a line from a modern celebrity back through the centuries and arrives somewhere that makes you stop and reconsider everything you thought you knew about how history connects to the present. Some of these relationships have been discovered through formal genealogical research, some through television programmes dedicated to the subject, and some through DNA testing services that have made this kind of discovery increasingly accessible.
What they all share is a quality of strange resonance — the sense that the past is closer to the surface than we usually assume, and that the people who shaped history left more traces than just their monuments.
Barack Obama And Brad Pitt
Former US President Barack Obama and actor Brad Pitt are ninth cousins, a connection traced through Edwin Hickman, who lived in Virginia in the 1600s. The connection was discovered by genealogists at Ancestry.com and made headlines when it was announced in 2012.
Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was from Kansas, and the shared ancestry runs through her side of the family — specifically through the English and Scottish settlers who established themselves in colonial America. The discovery prompted inevitable jokes about family reunions, but it also illustrated something genuinely interesting about American genealogy: the country is old enough now that its founding settler population has dispersed into family trees that connect in ways nobody expected.
Hillary Clinton And Angelina Jolie
Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie are ninth cousins twice removed, connected through Jean Cusson, a French settler who arrived in Quebec in the 17th century. The connection runs through the French-Canadian branch of both women’s ancestry, and was uncovered by researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
The two women have, to put it mildly, occupied very different corners of public life, but the shared lineage places them within the same web of colonial migration that brought French settlers across the Atlantic and eventually produced descendants spread across North America. The discovery made for a pleasingly improbable headline, and both women are, so far as anyone is aware, yet to acknowledge their distant cousinhood publicly.
Celine Dion And Justin Trudeau
Canadian singer Celine Dion and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are distant cousins, connected through their shared French-Canadian heritage. Genealogical research has traced a common ancestry running back several centuries through Quebec’s founding families — a group of settlers small enough that a significant proportion of modern Quebecers can trace connections back to them if they look hard enough.
The connection between two of Canada’s most internationally recognised figures is perhaps less surprising when you understand the relatively contained nature of early French-Canadian settlement, but it remains a satisfying coincidence. Both Dion and Trudeau are, in their respective fields, about as Canadian as it is possible to be.
Ellen DeGeneres And Kate Middleton
This one caught genealogists slightly off guard. Ellen DeGeneres and Catherine, Princess of Wales, are 15th cousins. The connection runs through a common ancestor named Sir Thomas Fairfax, an English nobleman who lived in the 15th century.
The discovery was made during research for a television programme, and it placed DeGeneres — an American comedian from New Orleans — in the same extended family tree as the British royal family. The genealogical line runs through colonial America, where several of Sir Thomas Fairfax’s descendants settled, eventually giving rise to DeGeneres’s American ancestry.
As distant cousin connections go, 15th cousins is admittedly a long way out — but the shared surname appearing in both family trees gave researchers the thread they needed to follow.
Johnny Depp And Queen Elizabeth II
Actor Johnny Depp and the late Queen Elizabeth II were 20th cousins, connected through King Edward III of England, who reigned in the 14th century. The connection was uncovered by genealogists at Ancestry.com and is, at 20 generations, on the outer edges of what most people would consider a meaningful family relationship.
Edward III is, however, a sufficiently prolific ancestor in European genealogy that connections to him tend to show up across a surprising range of people — anyone with significant English ancestry stands a reasonable chance of being a very distant descendant. What makes the Depp connection notable is the specificity with which it was traced, and the pleasing contrast between his public image and the idea of British monarchical lineage.
Brooke Shields And Princess Diana
Model and actress Brooke Shields and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, were distant cousins — connected through the 8th Duke of Richmond, Charles Lennox, who lived in the 18th century. The Lennox line branches into both European aristocracy and, through emigration, American families whose descendants include Shields.
The connection is perhaps less surprising when you consider that Diana’s aristocratic English ancestry connects to a wide range of European and American family trees, but the specific line to one of America’s most recognisable 1980s figures gives it a particular quality. Both women were, in their very different contexts, subjects of intense public scrutiny — a shared experience that their distant genealogical connection does nothing to explain and perhaps makes feel slightly more poignant.
Al Gore And Richard Nixon
Former US Vice President Al Gore and former President Richard Nixon were distant cousins, both descending from the same line of colonial American ancestry. The connection runs through families that settled in the American South and Midwest in the 17th and 18th centuries, and was identified during genealogical research into the extended family trees of prominent American politicians.
The United States has a sufficiently long history at this point that its political class — drawn disproportionately from families with deep roots in the country — overlaps in ways that formal genealogy can trace but which would never be apparent from the surface. Gore and Nixon occupied almost opposite positions in American political mythology, which makes the connection feel more surprising than perhaps it should.
Humphrey Bogart And Princess Diana
The late Princess Diana and Hollywood legend Humphrey Bogart were eighth cousins, connected through a shared line of English ancestry. The connection was traced through Edward Scrope, a 15th-century English nobleman, with one branch of the family eventually producing Bogart’s American lineage and another remaining in England and feeding into the aristocratic lines from which Diana descended.
Bogart — the archetypal tough-guy American screen icon — and Diana — the most photographed woman of her era — make for an improbable genealogical pairing, which is precisely what makes the discovery interesting. Both are cultural icons, both are gone, and both turn out to be traceable back to the same medieval English family.
Tom Hanks And Abraham Lincoln
Actor Tom Hanks is a third cousin four times removed of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. The connection runs through Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who shares ancestry with Tom Hanks.
The Hanks surname is the connecting thread — Nancy Hanks came from a Virginia family, and the genealogical line from her to the actor runs through several generations of American migration westward and then back east. Hanks has spoken about the connection with apparent pleasure, noting that it links him to one of the most consequential figures in American history through a family name he shares.
Lincoln himself is a sufficiently towering historical figure that most connections to him feel significant regardless of how many generations removed they are.
Hillary Clinton And Madonna
In addition to her distant cousinhood with Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton is also a distant relative of Madonna — the two are connected through French-Canadian settler ancestry, running through Quebec’s founding population.
The same web of 17th-century French migration that links large numbers of North Americans to each other also, it turns out, connects one of the most powerful politicians in American history to one of the best-selling musical artists of all time. Madonna’s family roots in Quebec — her father’s family is from the Ciccone family, but her mother’s ancestry includes French-Canadian heritage — provide the link.
It is the kind of connection that family tree software produces with algorithmic efficiency and that still manages to feel unlikely no matter how many times you see it.
Cate Blanchett And Geoffrey Chaucer
Australian actress Cate Blanchett has been traced as a distant descendant of Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14th-century English poet widely regarded as the father of English literature. The connection runs through Chaucer’s son Thomas and then through several generations of English nobility before eventually reaching the colonial Australian families from whom Blanchett descends.
Chaucer is a sufficiently well-documented historical figure that genealogists have been able to trace his line with some reliability, and the discovery places one of the most acclaimed actresses of her generation in a direct line of descent from the man who wrote The Canterbury Tales. Whether Blanchett’s facility with language owes anything to her literary ancestor is a question genealogy cannot answer, but the temptation to suggest it is strong.
Kylie Jenner And King Edward I Of England
Reality television personality and businesswoman Kylie Jenner has been traced back to King Edward I of England — known as Edward Longshanks — who reigned from 1272 to 1307. The connection runs through Jenner’s European ancestry and was identified through genealogical research that traced the royal line across centuries of English, then American, descent.
Edward I is a significant figure in English history, known for his campaigns in Wales and Scotland and the construction of a series of castles that remain standing today. The distance between the medieval English court and a 21st-century American social media mogul is, measured in years, about 700.
Measured in cultural distance, it is considerably further, which is perhaps why discoveries like this one continue to feel startling.
Ben Affleck And William The Conqueror
Actor and filmmaker Ben Affleck is a distant descendant of William the Conqueror, the Norman duke who invaded England in 1066 and whose victory at the Battle of Hastings remains one of the most consequential moments in English history.
The connection was traced through Affleck’s New England ancestry — colonial American families with English roots that stretch back far enough to intersect with the Norman line. William the Conqueror’s descendants are numerous enough that the discovery is perhaps not as surprising as it sounds, but the specificity of the genealogical trace — following the line from 11th-century Normandy to 20th-century Massachusetts — gives it a satisfying concreteness.
Affleck has played a range of historical and quasi-historical figures on screen; he has yet, so far as anyone knows, to play his own ancestor.
Celine Dion And Camilla, Queen Consort
In addition to her connection to Justin Trudeau, Celine Dion has been identified as a distant relative of Camilla, now Queen Consort of the United Kingdom. The connection again runs through the French-Canadian founding families whose descendants spread across North America and, through earlier European lines, connect back to British aristocracy.
The French-Canadian genealogical record is unusually well-preserved, having been maintained by the Catholic Church with considerable thoroughness from the earliest days of settlement, which makes connections like this one traceable with a degree of confidence that isn’t always possible in genealogical research.
Dion’s extended family tree, it seems, reaches in more directions than most.
Barack Obama And Cheney
The genealogical connections produced by American political history are sometimes more pointed than anyone might expect. Barack Obama and Cheney — arguably the two figures from recent American political life with the most sharply contrasting public images and political legacies — are eighth cousins.
Both descend from Mareen Duvall, a French Huguenot who settled in Maryland in the 17th century. The connection was discovered by Cheney’s wife, Lynne Cheney, while she was researching her husband’s family history for a book — a discovery she subsequently disclosed publicly.
Obama, informed of the connection during a press conference, responded with characteristic dry wit, noting that it was probably not something the Cheney family would be publicising. It remains one of the more improbable and delightful footnotes in recent political history.
The Long Thread
What these connections reveal, taken together, is something both obvious and easy to forget: that the past is not a separate country but a continuum, and that the people we think of as historical figures — the kings, the presidents, the poets — left descendants who left descendants who eventually, through the ordinary processes of migration, marriage, and time, became the people we see on cinema screens and magazine covers today.
The famous tend to be connected to the famous, not because celebrity is hereditary, but because both groups drew from the same relatively small pools of early settlers, founding families, and documented lineages. The further back you go, the more the tree narrows, and the more inevitably the living and the historical begin to share roots.
The surprise, in the end, is not that these connections exist. It’s that we never imagined they wouldn’t.
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