45 Celebrity Friendships That Go Way Back To The Times None Of Them Were Famous Yet

Back in 1993, Sarah Paulson was handing over her per diem so Pedro Pascal could afford to eat. Actual grocery money, from her paycheck to his pocket, so he could feed himself while he tried to get his acting career off the ground. Paulson had an established friend group in New York and took the struggling young Pascal under their wing when he had nothing.

Fast forward thirty years and he's the Mandalorian, one of the most in-demand actors on the planet. The two have stayed close through all of it, which says something about both of them.

Before one became Iron Man and the other became Jack Bauer, Robert Downey Jr. and Kiefer Sutherland were broke, young actors sharing an apartment in Los Angeles. Both were trying to crack Hollywood in the early 1980s, riding the same wave of young talent that would define the Brat Pack era.

Two kids from famous Hollywood families (Downey's father was a filmmaker, Sutherland's was Donald Sutherland) trying to step out of their fathers' shadows at exactly the same moment. They managed it, just took a few years and a shared rent bill first.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire have been best friends since they were teenagers auditioning for the same roles in early 1990s Hollywood. Just two kids from broken homes, grinding through auditions together before either had a real credit to their name. DiCaprio was raised by a single mother in East LA, Maguire by parents who divorced when he was two.

They were so close that when DiCaprio started booking bigger roles, he'd reportedly lobby casting directors to consider Maguire too. Spider-Man and Jack Dawson, looking out for each other before either had any clout to throw around.

Kate Hudson and Liv Tyler grew up moving in the same circles as teenagers in the 1990s, both navigating the particular strangeness of being famous people's kids before becoming famous themselves.

Hudson was Goldie Hawn's daughter, Tyler was Steven Tyler's daughter, which put them both in that odd in-between world of celebrity children who are recognized but not yet known for anything they've actually done themselves.

Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas met on a beach in 1967. Two young men with serious Hollywood ambitions crossing paths in the most casual setting possible, hitting it off immediately, and then spending the next several decades proving the friendship had legs.

By 1975 Douglas was producing One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and found a role in it for DeVito, which is the kind of thing you do for someone you actually like. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Not a bad return on a beach conversation from eight years earlier.

They grew up two blocks apart in Cambridge, Massachusetts, met when they were eight and ten years old, and ended up winning an Academy Award together. Not a bad return on a childhood friendship.

Affleck and Damon spent their teenage years doing what most aspiring actors do, grinding through auditions and small parts, except they were doing it together and occasionally writing their own material on the side. That side project turned into Good Will Hunting, a script they'd been working on for years and shopped around Hollywood before anyone bit.

Scarlett Johansson and Jack Antonoff both attended the Professional Children's School in New York City, a school designed specifically for young people already working in the entertainment industry. It's the kind of place where your classmates are child actors and teenage musicians instead of regular kids, and where nobody thinks twice about you missing school for an audition.

Johansson was already doing films, Antonoff was playing guitar and figuring out what kind of musician he wanted to be. They went to prom together before either had any real profile to speak of. Antonoff would go on to become one of the most in-demand producers in pop music, working with Taylor Swift, Lorde and Lana Del Rey among others. Not a bad person to have taken to prom.

Same Mickey Mouse Club cast as Britney and Christina, Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling became close enough that Gosling's mother let Timberlake's mother become Ryan's legal guardian so the two boys could live together while filming. Gosling had moved from Canada alone and needed somewhere to stay. Timberlake's family took him in.

Two kids, one from Memphis and one from a small town in Ontario, sharing a home in Orlando while they learned to sing and dance for a children's TV show. One would go on to sell out arenas, the other would win awards for playing a jazz pianist in a movie about following your dreams. In 1993 they were just two boys sharing a bedroom.

This pair of Australia's most successful exports met as teenagers at the same high school and theater company in Sydney, long before Hollywood had any idea either of them existed.

It wasn't until they starred together in the 1991 film Flirting that the friendship really clicked into place. Both would leave Australia for Hollywood around the same time, too. There's something that bonds people who make the same terrifying leap together, and Kidman and Watts have been close ever since, two girls from Sydney who both ended up with Academy Award nominations.

Ving Rhames wasn't always Ving. He was Irving until his college roommate Stanley Tucci shortened it, a nickname that stuck so completely that most people have no idea his actual name is Irving.

Rhames revealed the whole story at the 1998 Golden Globes when he presented Tucci with the award for Winchell. Two future character actors sharing a dorm at SUNY Purchase, only ending up on screen together once, despite decades of parallel careers.

Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were both mouseketeer kids on the Mickey Mouse Club in the early 1990s, a cast that also included Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling. Two little girls from the South grinding through choreography and vocal rehearsals together before either had any idea they'd both become the biggest pop stars of their generation.

When they both exploded onto the charts in 1999 with debut singles released within months of each other, the media immediately turned them into rivals. But they'd been in the same room, doing the same work, long before any of that. The rivalry was a music industry narrative. The shared history was real.

Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler were broke roommates in Los Angeles in the late 1980s, two young guys from New York trying to crack the comedy world from a shared apartment.

Sandler was doing stand-up at clubs, Apatow was trying to write his way into the industry, and neither had any money or any real traction yet. Sandler got there first, landing on Saturday Night Live in 1990 while Apatow kept grinding. Twenty years later, Apatow directed Sandler in Funny People, a semi-autobiographical film about a famous comedian facing his own mortality.

Chelsea Peretti and Andy Samberg grew up together in the Bay Area, which is the kind of thing that sounds made up until you realize the writers of Brooklyn Nine-Nine actually wrote it into the show. Their characters share a childhood connection on screen, a quiet nod to the real history between the two actors.

Samberg is better known for his early friendships with the Lonely Island guys, the creative partnership that eventually got him onto Saturday Night Live, but Peretti was in the picture long before any of that. Years later they'd end up on the same hit television show, playing colleagues who'd known each other forever. Which, in a way, they had.

They were the most recognizable child actors of the 1990s who met on the set of The Good Son in 1993, when both were at the absolute peak of their childhood fame. Wood had done several other films, and Culkin was arguably the most famous kid on the planet after Home Alone.

On set, they played enemies, with Culkin as the disturbed villain and Wood as his unfortunate cousin. Off set, they became genuine friends. Both would go on to navigate the notoriously difficult transition from child star to adult actor, a road that derails most people who attempt it.

Two of Hollywood's most enduring actresses were classmates together at the Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey before either had any serious career to speak of.

Shields was already a controversial figure by then, having done Calvin Klein ads and Pretty Baby as a child, while Linney was quietly working toward what would become one of the most respected acting careers of her generation. They moved in the same circles through their New Jersey school days before both ended up at Ivy League universities, Shields at Princeton and Linney at Brown.

Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez met as seven-year-olds on the set of Barney and Friends, where they played best friends on screen before becoming best friends in real life. Both were Texas kids navigating the strange world of child acting, doing the purple dinosaur circuit while their peers were playing Little League.

They grew up together through the Disney machine, each getting their own shows and movie deals around the same time. For a while, they were Hollywood's most visible best friend duo. The friendship eventually faded as their lives and struggles took them in different directions, but for a stretch, they were inseparable.

Courtney Love was 19 and sneaking a cigarette in a bathroom when an 8-year-old Drew Barrymore walked in and joined her. That's how they met, which tells you everything you need to know about both of them.

Barrymore was already notorious by then, the former child star who'd been drinking since she was nine and would hit rehab before most kids hit middle school. Love was just getting started on what would become one of rock's most spectacularly chaotic careers. Somehow it made perfect sense that they found each other in a bathroom, underage and already operating by their own rules.

Eddie Redmayne and the future King of England played rugby together at Eton, which is a sentence that works perfectly well as its own argument for why British boarding schools produce such strange social dynamics.

Redmayne has been gracious about the experience, noting that he felt sorry for William because every opposing player on the field had an obvious target. Nobody wants to miss the chance to legally tackle royalty, which meant the future king absorbed considerably more punishment than his position probably warranted.

Wes Anderson wrote Owen Wilson's Edgar Allan Poe paper in exchange for the better bedroom in their University of Texas apartment. That's the foundation on which one of American cinema's most celebrated creative partnerships was built.

While they were sorting out who got which room, they were also co-writing Bottle Rocket, which would become Anderson's directorial debut and launch both of their careers simultaneously. Wilson brought the script to his brother Luke, Anderson brought his already fully-formed visual obsessions, and somehow the whole thing worked well enough to get them out of Texas and into Hollywood.

Before Weekend Update, before Mean Girls, before Baby Mama, before hosting the Golden Globes and making it look effortless, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were just two young women doing improv at the ImprovOlympic theater in Chicago.

That's where it started, in the mid-1980s experimental comedy scene that was producing some of the sharpest comedic talent in the country. Both ended up at Saturday Night Live, where their chemistry translated immediately to a wider audience. The collaborations kept coming after that.