Barack Obama’s Unexpected Link to Hollywood
Barack Obama has a surprising genealogical connection to a major Hollywood star—one that many people found astonishing. It turns out family histories can reveal some truly unexpected relationships, showing just how interconnected people can be.
Celebrity Family Surprises
Unusual familial ties in the entertainment world are more common than you might think. For instance, Madonna discovered she shares ancestry with Pope Leo XIII, while Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick’s family trees have an unexpected twist. Barack Obama, it seems, has his own Hollywood link that rivals these examples.
Obama and Brad Pitt: A Distant Connection
During a 2008 appearance on The View, Joy Behar brought up a rumored celebrity relative of Obama. With a chuckle, he revealed the truth: Brad Pitt. The two are reportedly ninth cousins. Obama joked, “He definitely got the better-looking side of the family,” making light of the connection.
Genealogical research traced both men back to a common ancestor, Edwin Hickman, who passed away in Virginia in 1769. This shared lineage formally makes them ninth cousins, a distant yet fascinating tie. Genealogist Christopher Child told The Guardian that such remote connections are fairly typical among families originating from the same region—in this case, the American South.
Other Political–Hollywood Links
Obama isn’t alone in having surprising ties to Hollywood. Hillary Clinton, for example, is also ninth cousins with Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt’s former spouse, through Jean Cusson, who died in Quebec in 1718. Clinton’s French-Canadian ancestry further connects her to musical icons Madonna, Celine Dion, and Alanis Morissette.
As Child noted, “Many of us are connected in ways we could never imagine,” a reminder that even the worlds of politics and Hollywood can overlap in the most unexpected ways.