12 celebrities you didn't know dropped out of school

At 16, RiRi left her high school in Barbados to sign with Def Jam Recordings —but not before she won her high school's beauty pageant and talent show. The star's mum told Rolling Stone that Rihanna had always been a straight-A student prior to leaving school.

Ellen dropped out of the University of New Orleans after only one semester to work at her cousin’s law firm. She worked multiple odd jobs—from waitressing and bartending to shucking oysters—while trying to make it as a comedian. Worth it.

When he was 15, the rapper left high school to star as Jimmy Brooks in Degrassi: The Next Generation. But at 25, Drizzy proudly earned his GED. Back in October of 2012, he tweeted, “97% on my final exam. 88% in the course. One of the greatest feelings in my entire life. As of tonight I have graduated high school!”

J Law was discovered by a modelling scout during a visit to NYC and decided to drop out of middle school. Though she was only 14 years old at the time, she has zero regrets. She told 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker, “I wanted to forge my own path. I found what I wanted to do and I didn’t want anything to get in the way of it.”

Because Daniel played Harry Potter since he was only 10 years old, he worked with tutors on set. However, he told The Telegraph he never finished high school because he “figured university is something you do to find out what you want to do, and [he] knew what [he] wanted to do, and [he] was already doing it."

Jude Law dropped out of school aged 17 after he landed a role in daytime soap Families. A few years later, he landed a main role in Gattaca, before making a name for himself in The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1999.

Long before he rose to fame and fell in love with Queen Bey, the rapper was in and out of various high schools in downtown Brooklyn and New Jersey, before he eventually dropped out. Though Jay-Z had a difficult childhood growing up in the drug-ridden Marcy Projects, he’s now one of the world’s best-selling musicians.

The College Dropout rapper attended both the American Academy of Art and Chicago State University before dropping out to concentrate solely on his music career. According to MTV News, he told high school students at a 2005 concert, “It is true you can be successful without [college], but this is a hard world, a real world, and you want every advantage you can have.”

As a child star, Drew had a pretty atypical childhood and was emancipated at just 14 years old. In her memoir Wildflower, she wrote, “I decided to create my own school, to self-educate… I decided right then and there I would not be defeated. I would create my own curriculum. And so I did just that: I read, I cleaned, I worked.”

Though Iggy did end up getting her GED, she dropped out of school at 16 against her parents' wishes. After leaving Australia to move to Miami, she worked as a maid before she released her hit single, Fancy. She said on Chelsea Lately in 2014, “I felt like Florida was for me. I had heard about the craziness and I felt like that was the state I should go to.”