Role-Playing And Taxidermy: 5 Unexpected Celebrity Hobbies
Having a hobby is swell. It can provide stimulation, it can curb everything from anxiety to boredom, and it usually keeps us out of trouble — unless, of course, your hobby involves terrorizing the neighbors by learning how to play the bagpipe. That is not a hobby. That is a torture method, people.
Luckily, no person on this list learned that they were 0.1% Scottish from their Ancestry.com test and celebrated their newfound knowledge by buying an insufferable sticks sack (we think). No, their hobbies are harmless but unexpected nonetheless. For instance, did you know that …
Post Malone Is Super Into Magic: The Gathering
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America’s favorite rapper who got his moniker by using a rap name generator, is all about the modern world’s first trading card game. This may be unexpected to those unfamiliar with the tabletop game, but totally makes sense when you realize he kinda looks like a shroom-eating wizard anyway.
He’s played with some YouTube folks online for all the fans to watch:
And he’s even partnered with MTG to promote the game, releasing this ad in August this year:
Yeah, Malone is no casual fan, folks. He’s reportedly spent as much as $800,000 on one of the rarest (and mostly banned) MTG cards out there — an Alpha Black Lotus Card signed by Chris Rush. And when he’s not throwing out cash for cards or making videos, he’s designing new decks for the franchise. Of course, his sets are all limited edition because even wizards in the Multiverse are dependent on supply and demand.
Amanda Seyfried Is Super Into Taxidermy
While most people prefer framed photos or sketches and prints of fluffy creatures as part of their interior feng shui, the actress who went from Mean Girls to Mank likes to surround herself with the very real and the very dead. She once quipped during an ES Magazine interview: “Of course, I have a stuffed raccoon — who doesn’t?”
She apparently has her own little museum stuffed (ha) with all kinds of roadkill, each with their very own pet names. Oh, and she also has a miniature zebra gifted by (of all people) Seth MacFarlane, as well as a baby horse because “that’s the biggest I’ll go to” she told InStyle back in 2020. No word on whether she has since upgraded to a stuffed buffalo.
Her love for dead animals filled up with God knows what apparently comes from the time she visited a taxidermy store in Paris in the late 2000s, proving that nothing good ever comes from visiting France. All jokes aside, Seyfried considers these preserved animal corpses to be works of art. We guess it’s a simpler way to be surrounded by animals without having to worry about things like food or poop.
And before you suggest that Seyfried just go ahead and buy herself a zoo, she totally did the next best thing and bought a farm in the Catskills to accommodate around two dozen live animals, from goats to turtles. The thing about farms, however, is that most of the animals are, you know, very much alive.
Hollywood Men And Their Ceramics
Those of you on Twitter surely know by now that Seth Rogen has acquired another hobby besides sprouting, smoking, and selling some weed. That hobby, bless him, is the art of pottery. And some colorful pottery, no less.
Of course, as one does when enjoying multiple recreational activities, Rogen doesn’t shy away from combining his two favorite things in the world:
Rogen told Interview magazine back in 2019 that he didn’t think he’d enjoy sculpting clay as much as he does. “I have a busy mind, so I’m always looking for ways to keep myself occupied. The work I do is very intangible in a lot of ways, so being able to create something you can hold in your hands is very appealing.”
Good for you, Ro-Ro. Ceramics as a hobby has definitely caught on these past few years, and Rogen isn’t the only Hollywood dude knuckle-deep into some clay play. Brad Pitt is another A-lister who seems to have found pleasure in sculpting some. It’s been reported that, during the production of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Leonardo DiCaprio joined Pitt in his home studio, where they unleashed their inner sculptors and ate some sandwiches (and probably got high). We’d like to think there was at least one moment where they re-enacted that scene from Ghost.
Pitt told GQ Style during a 2017 interview that Picasso’s approach to art — “the moment of looking at the subject, and paint hitting canvas, and that is where art happens” — is what inspires him when he’s sculpting. “For me I’m having a moment of getting to feel emotion at my fingertips. But to get that emotion to clay … I just haven’t cracked the surface. And I don’t know what’s coming. Right now I know the manual labor is good for me, getting to know the expansiveness and limitations of the materials. I’ve got to start from the bottom …”
Idle hands, folks. Idle hands.
Redman Is Now A Licensed Skydiver
Yep, the rapper who taught us how to roll a blunt — and who most people might forget starred in Seed of Chucky — has now made enough jumps to earn him his skydiving license.
Sure, skydiving is not the most unexpected hobby a person can think of, but we sure don’t know a lot of rappers who enjoy jumping out of planes and floating through the air like they’re the stingrays of the sky. Also, Redman’s been pretty busy. He co-founded the National Cannabis Political Party earlier this year. We guess it’s just a matter of time before he drops a campaign video flying (high) through the air and telling us why we should all vote green.
Joe Manganiello Loves Him Some Dungeons & Dragons
The Magic Mike and True Blood star is otherwise known for hosting D&D games in his basement with the likes of Tom Morello, Vince Vaughn, James Gunn, and Game of Thrones guy D.B. Weiss. To say that Manganiello is a mega-fan doesn’t even cut it. He has a D&D-inspired clothing line, his dungeon (where he’s the Dungeon Master of his own campaign) is named “The Gary Gygax Memorial Dungeon” after the tabletop game’s founder (and is a thing of beauty), and his campaign itself is so impressive that it’s been mentioned in Netflix’s You series. Conan the Barbarian's comic artist Juan Cabrera and Public Enemy’s Chuck D both produced art pieces for the campaign's characters.
Tom Morello told Variety that the group takes their gaming nights pretty seriously. “It’s similar to what a high-stakes poker game might be. It’s a game where friends gather that’s taken deadly seriously and is a lot of fun. But it’s serious. It’s very serious! We’re on an adventure that I think about a lot during the week.”
With Manganiello being a high-profile and trendsetting celebrity of the roleplaying game, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Hasbro has teamed up with the actor to make a D&D documentary, with Manganiello set to write and co-director. The doc will be released in 2024 when the popular game turns 50. Pretty cool for a guy who, after all, got his Hollywood breakthrough by playing a werewolf.
Zanandi’s hobby is reading about other people’s hobbies on Twitter.
Thumbnail: Tore Sætre / Wikimedia Commons, Toglenn / Wikimedia Commons
