“Stay in school!” That’s the advice celebrities usually give young fans, but you’d be surprised how many Hollywood heavyweights never graduated high school.

Seth Rogen
Seth Rogen dropped out of Vancouver's Point Grey High School—in order to play a high school student on TV! That's exactly what happened when Rogen landed the role of a stoner student (which, as we later learned, wasn't much of a stretch) in Judd Apatow's groundbreaking dramedy Freaks and Geeks. Seth ditched school, moved to Los Angeles and never looked back. "I worked really hard," Seth told CNN. "It's not like I dropped out of high school and just did nothing. I dropped out of high school and went and worked on a TV show. We were writing a script all throughout high school. I probably worked harder than most people who were just doing high school stuff...I think, honestly, if you have a career in mind that isn't academically oriented, then high school is probably not going to lead you to what you want to be."
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Hilary Swank

Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey's childhood was rough, his cash-strapped family even living in a VW van for a while. Jim and his sibings even had after-school jobs as janitors in a factory until their mother became ill, forcing Jim to drop out of school in order to take care of her. When his family eventually moved to Toronto, Jim began performing at local comedy clubs and wound up being cast in a TV series at age 18. He later moved to LA to pursue his dream of stardom, famously writing himself a $10-million cheque in 1983, post-dating it for 10 years in the future as a reminder to never lose sight of his goal.
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Ryan Gosling
School was not a great fit for Ryan Gosling, who told The New York Daily News that when he saw Sylvester Stallone's Rambo the young method actor actually became Rambo. “So much so, that one day, I took a bunch of steak knives to school and threw them around at recess time because I thought we were in the movie!” It was not surprising when, at age 17, he dropped out of Toronto's Lester B. Pearson High School to pursue an acting career, quickly landing a spot in the revamped Mickey Mouse Club alongside the likes of youngsters Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
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Mark Wahlberg

Charlie Sheen

Nicolas Cage

John Travolta

Robert Downey, Jr.

Johnny Depp
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