Mental Floss

The Quick 10: 10 Famous People Related to Other Famous People

By Stacy Conradt

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I tried to stay away from the really obvious here "“ like Kate Hudson is Goldie Hawn's daughter and that sort of thing. I think a couple slipped by me anyway"¦ what's obvious to everyone else is not always obvious to me (I bet a lot of you already knew #3 and #7).

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loren /

5. Jason Patric from The Lost Boys (and other things, but The Lost Boys is my favorite) has a couple of famous relatives. His dad was Jason Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Academy Award nominee. If you've seen The Exorcist, you'll remember him as Father Karras. Patric's grandpa was Jackie Gleason "“ his mother was Gleason's daughter, Linda.

6. Jean-Paul Sartre was first cousin, once-removed to Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer. His mother, Anne-Marie Schweitzer, was Albert's first cousin.

7. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister. They grew up in Virginia where Warren was a star football player. He decided to try acting once he saw Shirley's success.

8. Val Kilmer is second cousins with American poet Joyce Kilmer, best remembered for his piece Trees ("I think that I shall never see A poem as lovely as a tree.").

9. Helena Bonham Carter's great grandfather, H.H. Asquith, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916.

10. Richard Gere's forefathers came over on the Mayflower. His ancestors include Francis Eaton, John Billington, George Soule, Richard Warren, Degory Priest, William Brewster and Francis Cooke. President James Garfield was also a descendant of John Billington. Richard Warren is known to have thousands of descendants, as he had seven children who all survived to adulthood. Some of his famous relatives include Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Franklin Roosevelt, Alan Shepard, the Wright Brothers and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Similarly, Degory Priest's descendants include FDR, Orson Scott Card, Maria Mitchell, Pete Seeger and Dick Van Dyke. Seth MacFarlane is one of Brewster's descendants and Francis Cooke has a ton of notable relatives: Orson Welles, Julia Child, Wild Bill Hickok, Grandma Moses, Johnny Carson, Dane Cook, Kris Kristofferson, Pete Seeger, William Washburn, and the Wilson brothers from the Beach Boys.

OK, a lot of us probably come from passengers on the Mayflower, but it's pretty interesting to read about anyway. At least I think it is. Do you have any famous relatives in your family? I heard once that my family was related to Grover Cleveland somewhere but have never seen the proof.