32 Celebrities You Didn't Know Were Bilingual

Some of our biggest actors have a secret (or not-so-secret) skill: they're fully conversant in another language. Some of them mastered it for a role, some of them grew up bilingual (or even trilingual), and some of them just have an "ear" for languages. Interestingly, there's often debate about the level of these celebrities' "fluency," with native speakers analyzing their proficiency and accent work in movies and interviews, but most define "fluency" as being able to conduct an interview in the language. You'll be surprised: some of these actors have fluency in five languages, and the most impressive celebrity polyglots know eight or nine.

Below, 32 celebrities who can speak (at least) another language fluently.

Heidi Klum

Heidi Klum is German...so, she speaks German fluently in addition to English as a second language (even hosting Germany's Next Top Model!). She's used her language skills often, including a German words quiz with Jimmy Fallon, and has appeared on the cover of German Vogue.

Timothee Chalamet

While Timothee Chalamet's exact level of Frenchness has been debated, he can speak the language (and has conducted interviews in French). He also learned to speak Italian for his breakout film, Call Me by Your Name, so his linguistic skills aren't in doubt!

Chris Hemsworth

Chris Hemsworth can speak some Indonesian and one sentence of Spanish (lol). He also learned how to speak very basic Georgian for Extraction 2, although Hemsworth admitted he also relied on cue cards and said, “The other Georgian actors were giving me advice."

Mira Sorvino

While Mira Sorvino was at Harvard University, she pursued East Asian studies and even spent a year at CIEE in Beijing studying Mandarin Chinese. She admits that she doesn't practice it as often as she wants to; she also, according to her actor bio, speaks French fluently.

Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck went viral in 2023 for a two-minute clip where he speaks fluently in Spanish. (Apparently he spent a year traveling around the country with his mother and brother Casey and then briefly studied it at the University of Vermont.) He calls himself "passively fluent."

Nelly Furtado

Nelly Furtado has two Portuguese parents and started singing in that language as a child. She can speak Spanish and also sing in Spanish (even releasing a Spanish album, Mi Plan, in the 2000s). "I get a lot of joy in singing in Latin languages. It expresses the Latin side of me," she said.

Salma Hayek

The Mexican-American actor, naturally, speaks Spanish; her father is Lebanese, so she apparently does speak some of that language. And because François-Henri Pinault, whom she married in 2009, speaks French, she apparently speaks a little of that language too.

Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper loves French, even conducting interviews in the language. "When I was a kid, I remember watching 'Chariots of Fire,' and French is the official language of the Olympics," Cooper told People in 2009, as reported by ABC. "So there's a scene where a guy was speaking French and I thought, 'Man, that sounds so cool. I want to learn French.'"

Rita Ora

Rita Ora was born to two Kosovar-Albanian parents, which means she speaks Albanian fluently. You can see her speaking the language a little in this The Voice Australia clip with one of the contestants, and she's talked about how proud she is to be a famous face from Kosovo.

Anya Taylor-Joy

Most fans of Anya Taylor-Joy might be surprised to learn that, being raised in Argentina to Argentinian, Spanish, and English parents, her first language is technically Spanish. She has conducted interviews in Spanish and said that she learned English by watching film.

Colin Firth

While it's a running joke that Colin Firth's character can barely speak another language in Love Actually, the actor apparently learned Italian to impress his in-laws (he was married to then-wife Livia Giuggioli until 2019). In that interview, he laughed that his accent needed work.

Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock's mom is an opera singer from Germany, and the family spent a chunk of her young life in Germany and Austria, so Bullock also speaks the language. She doesn't use the skill often in her American interviews, but you can see her doing international acceptance speeches in the language.

Jodie Foster

Jodie Foster apparently attended a French language school, so she can count herself fluent in that language (she's spoken French at awards ceremonies and even dubs herself). Apparently she also learned Spanish and Italian at a young age and became fluent in those languages too.

Roger Federer

Roger Federer hails from Switzerland, so his first language is Swiss German. He's also apparently fluent in German, French, and English, and speaks a little Italian, Spanish, and Swedish. His mother, who's Afrikaner, also taught him some Afrikaans. So thats eight languages!

Zoë Saldaña

Zoë Saldaña was born to a Dominican dad and a Dominican mom who also had Puerto Rican ancestry. Saldaña was raised bilingual but explained that Spanish was what she spoke at home. She has also said her children with Marco Perego will grow up multilingual (Spanish, Italian, and English).

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leo is apparently "conversational" in German and Italian (his dad is Italian and German and his mother is German). On family trips, he was able to build his language skills in German, and his love of Italian started later in life and led to him becoming fluent.

Alicia Vikander

Alicia Vikander is a Swedish actor who is also (obviously, given her acting roles) fluent in English. She learned Danish for A Royal Affair; she told IndieWire, "I understand a bit of French; I would love to learn some more French when I get the time."

Shakira

Born in Colombia, Shakira's first language is Spanish. She's fluent in English (singing and speaking!). and apparently she also speaks Portuguese, Italian, French, Catalan, and Arabic. Did you know: Gloria Estefan taught her how to speak English for her first album?

Charlize Theron

Theron grew up in South Africa (where the predominant language is Afrikaans), and only learned English when she came to the United States before age 20. She still conducts interviews in her first language, and jokes that she uses it to talk sh*t about people.

Sandra Oh

Sandra Oh has Korean parents; she has used her language skills in The Chair, saying it was "fulfilling" to have "the richness of having to speak another language other than English to our parents and then having to bridge from our parents to our children." According to her actor bio, she also speaks Spanish.

Gwyneth Paltrow

"When I was 15, I went to a small town outside Talavera de la Reina and I had the most wonderful experience. It really changed my life," Gwyneth Paltrow has said; she visits at least once a year and has made sure her children speak the language. Paltrow speaks French, too.

Lupita Nyong'o

Lupita Nyong'o was born to Kenyan parents and lived in Kenya and Mexico during her young life. She's also learned Swahili and Luo later in life; she said that the opportunity to speak Spanish in the second Black Panther "was just a straight gift...I've always wanted to work in Spanish, and never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that that opportunity would come in Black Panther."

Tom Hiddleston

A classics major at the University of Cambridge meant that Tom Hiddleston had to learn ancient Greek and Latin, but he's also picked up Spanish, French, Italian, and Greek (and is conversant in Russian, Korean, and Mandarin). This video in which he switches between languages (sometimes in the same interview!) is impressive.

Serena Williams

The reason Serena Williams became fluent in French is cool as heck: she explained, “One of the reasons I learned French was I wanted to win the French Open, and I wanted to speak French when I won...The second was because in most African countries, the main language outside of their local language is French or English. So I figured: I know English, maybe I can learn French.” She also knows Italian!

Diane Kruger

Diane Kruger, born in West Germany, speaks German fluently. Living in London as a teen meant she also picked up English; becoming a Parisian model meant she also learned French. She studied Latin in school, and learned Russian for a film. She does her own dubbing!

Penelope Cruz

The Spanish actor speaks Spanish, obviously, and learned English later in life. She also learned Italian for a film role, but interestingly, contrary to popular misconception, she actually didn't learn French but instead had to learn her lines phonetically for a role (which is still very cool).

Christoph Waltz

If you're familiar with Tarantino films, you already know Christoph Waltz is gifted with languages. (Fun fact: while he speaks Italian in Inglourious Basterds, apparently he doesn't speak it IRL.) But he does speak English, French, and German fluently.

Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman can speak a whopping six languages: Hebrew, English, French, Japanese, German, and Spanish. "Spanish is one of the languages most useful in the world. I went to shoot a Milos Forman movie in Spain, in Madrid and I fell in love with the culture, the language, the lifestyle," she said.

Audrey Hepburn

Apparently, in addition to being chic as heck, Audrey Hepburn had a talent with languages: she was fluent in English, French, Dutch, and Italian, and had some familiarity with Spanish and German (the latter apparently acquired during World War II). The above video shows her speaking each, impressively so.

Christopher Lee

An actor who's basically the definition of polygot is the late Christopher Lee (Saruman from Lord of the Rings). Apparently, he was fluent in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish, and had passing knowledge of Swedish, Russian, and Greek. Which, if you're counting, is eight languages.

Jackie Chan

Coming in at nine, Jackie Chan can speak Spanish, English, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese, German, and Mandarin. In this video, you can see that his fluency varies in between the languages (he jokes about his lack of Spanish knowledge), but it's still deeply impressive.

Viggo Mortensen

Fellow Lord of the Rings alum Viggo Mortensen is apparently fluent in six languages and conversant in nine total: English, Spanish, French, Danish, Italian, Swedish, Arabic, Catalan, and Norwegian. Apparently, "I grew up bilingual, in Spanish and English primarily, and also I would hear my father who was speaking Danish with his friends. So when I as a teenager, I made a conscious effort to learn Danish."