Celebrities With Strange Royal Connections You Didn't Know About

The older we get, the more important it is for us to understand where we come from, studies have found. In recent years, tracing family trees has become one of the most popular hobbies in the United States and further afield, and created an entertainment genre all its own. TV shows such as "Finding Your Roots" and "Who Do You Think You Are?" focus solely on celebrities, providing a double whammy of audience interest. Some of the stars discover their pilgrim roots or ancestors who played a part in historical events, while a few others hit the genealogical jackpot: They learned they were descended from European royalty.

Beyoncé, Brad Pitt, Hilary Duff, Richard Gere, and Hugh Grant are just a handful of big names who can lay claim to being a distant cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, but they are far from being the only celebrities with strange royal connections you didn't know about. For instance, when Ozzy Osbourne agreed to allow scientists to sequence his genome, it revealed that Osbourne was related to Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, and Great Britain's King George I, who ruled from 1714 to 1727. "I'm sure the royal family will be over the moon with that news," Osbourne said, per The Sunday Times. From Oscar-winning actors to pop superstars, here are a few other surprising celebrities with blue blood flowing their veins.

Much has been made about Kit Harington's connections to royalty — the actor who played Jon Snow, the secret heir of the Iron Throne in "Game of Thrones" is related to Charles II on his father's side. But less attention has been paid to his wife, Rose Leslie, who also counts the English monarch among her forebears. What makes Leslie's ancestry special is that her tangled and bloody family history actually forms part of the "Game of Thrones" lore. 

The royal connection comes through Leslie's mother, Candida Mary Sibyl Leslie, whose great-grandfather Simon Fraser, the 13th Lord Lovat, was descended from King Charles II, but his father played a key role in the family history too. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which was a series of 17th-century conflicts that reportedly helped inspire "Game of Thrones," Clan Leslie and Clan Lovat ended up on opposite sides. Eventually they joined forces in support of Charles I, but were defeated in 1651 by Oliver Cromwell's parliamentary forces.

The Lovats went on to reportedly switch sides several times in the ensuing years, including fighting for and against Bonnie Prince Charlie, and taking up arms on both sides fighting in the American Civil War. Another of Leslie's ancestors, the 11th Lord Lovat — also known as "The Fox" — went down in history as the last man in London to be executed by beheading.

Countless actors have played real people on stage and screen, digging deep into their histories to produce an "authentic" performance. But the number of stars who have trod the boards as their own relatives is considerably smaller. "Dr. Strange" and "Sherlock" star Benedict Cumberbatch, however, is one.

In 2016, he played the much-maligned King Richard III in the BBC production "The Hollow Crown: The War of the Roses." What Cumberbatch didn't know when he took the gig: He was related to the Tudor monarch, thanks to connections with Richard's mother Cecily Neville. "I was literally dressed as Shakespeare's version of Richard III when I received the email from Leicester University saying that I was a not-altogether-ridiculously-distant descendent of Richard III," the actor said, per The BBC. "I'm a third cousin, 16 times removed, which is still distant but puts me ahead of an awful lot of other people."

For most celebrities, that would be the end of the story. However, just a year earlier, Cumberbatch was among the guests and recited a poem honoring Richard III at his reburial within Leicester Cathedral. The ceremony followed confirmation in 2013 that bones found in a nondescript car park were those of the lost Tudor king. 

Katherine Matilda Swinton — better known as Tilda — is a favorite among movie lovers for playing the White Witch in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," and her many collaborations with directors Derek Jarman, Jim Jarmusch, and Wes Anderson. Yet the Oscar-winning actor's regal poise isn't just part of her day job; it's also down to her upbringing and ancestry.

At boarding school, Swinton was in the same class as Lady Diana Spencer — later the Princess of Wales — but her connections with royalty run a lot deeper than that. Her dad was a major general and ex-head of the queen's Household Division, which has guarded the monarch for centuries. 

The Swinton lineage can also be traced back, via the male line, to a time before the Norman Conquest in the 11th century. That long genealogy includes several Scottish kings, including James I and James II, who reigned in the 15th century, and three kings all named Robert. The family tree also directly links Swinton with arguably the most legendary royal bearer of that name: Robert the Bruce, who helped William Wallace take on King Edward I before securing Scottish independence from England. 

He shot to fame playing brooding heartthrob Edward Cullen and has since gone on to carve out a movie career that showcases more than just his chisel-jawed good looks. But it seems brooding "Batman" actor Robert Pattinson not only has connections to royalty, it turns out there's a historical link to vampires too.

In a 2011 episode of "The Graham Norton Show," Pattinson recounted how, when he first went over to Los Angeles after a few years out of work, when people asked him what he'd been up to, he quipped that he'd been studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with Prince William. All joking aside, it transpires the actor is genuinely related to the heir to the English throne and his brother Harry — they are distant cousins. According to genealogists at Ancestry, the link dates back to 16th-century Yorkshire family the Pickerings, on Charles III's side.

Oddly enough, Princes William and Harry, and Pattinson, are also connected to Vlad the Impaler, a medieval warrior who earned the nickname in 1462, after impaling thousands of Ottoman enemy troops. It is commonly believed that Vlad's bloodthirsty ways provided the inspiration for Bram Stoker's gothic novel "Dracula."

There are a lot of conspiracy theories swirling about Taylor Swift, but Swifties know all too well the singer loves to play with numbers, and 13 is a particular favorite. However, that could change, thanks to a previously unknown royal connection. In 2024, MyHeritage broke the news that Swift is a distant relation to none other than King Louis XIV of France — also known as the Sun King. 

It all begins with Michael de la Pole, the 14th-century second Earl of Suffolk. His descendants were among those who travelled to the New World in the 17th century, initially making their home in Massachusetts before subsequent generations put down roots in Swift's home state of Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, Michael de la Pole's granddaughter Margaret married a 15th-century French count, creating a bloodline that eventually led to Marie de' Medici, the paternal grandmother of Louis XIV. The "Life of a Showgirl" singer and the Sun King may be distant relations, but they share a love of singing and playing the guitar. While Swift has lots of Billboard records and 14 Grammys to her name, Louis founded what would become the Academy of the National Opera of Paris and created the magnificent Palace of Versailles.