Celebrities Who Used to Be Cheerleaders

Publish date: 2024-09-15

The Super Bowl always brings a day of great celebrations — and not always for the football. Sure, you might be rooting for your favorite NFL team, but there are also those of us who are in it for the spectacle. We’re the ones who want to see the celebrity cameos in the commercials, the halftime show with Rihanna, and yes, we love the snack offerings the big game delivers. We also can’t forget how important cheerleaders are to sports, especially for the game of football.

It’s often a rite of passage to be on the cheerleading squad in high school, but some celebrities have gone on to cheer in college or even for a professional sports team. Several former U.S. presidents even spent time rooting on their classmates along the sidelines, including George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But there’s one thing we would like to remind everyone of when they watch this year’s professional squads hyping up the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs — cheerleaders are athletes.

If there’s anything that Netflix’s Cheer docuseries taught us, it’s that a lot of hard work, sweat, and tears go into practice, and making it on the mat for the competition is the ultimate goal. The teams may spend time riling up the crowds at sporting events, but they look forward to showing off their real flair in national competitions. There’s so much heart in what they do, and that’s why we celebrate everyone who has ever grabbed a pom pom or a megaphone and cartwheeled along the sidelines.

Read on for stars who were once cheerleaders — some of these names might surprise you!

A version of this article was originally published on Feb 2021.

Meryl Streep
When Meryl Streep was a high school student, she was one of the cheerleaders at Bernards High School in New Jersey!
Megan Fox
Megan Fox was not only a cheerleader for Morningside Academy in Port St. Lucie, Florida, she also played one in the 2009 film, Jennifer’s Body. Somehow we think her experience on her high school squad was different than the “man-eating, cannibalistic lesbian cheerleader” she played on-screen.
Eva Longoria
Not only did Eva Longoria cheer in high school, but she continued her cheering career in college too while attending Texas A&M University.
Cameron Diaz
That’s right: Cameron Diaz cheered during her time at Long Beach Polytechnic High School!
Alicia Silverstone
It’s no surprise that Alicia Silverstone was a cheerleader back in the day, and we can only imagine how much fun she had while in the San Mateo High School’s cheer squad.
Miley Cyrus
It’s hard to believe that Miley Cyrus was a cheerleader for the local Premier Tennessee All-Stars cheerleading team, but it’s true!
Kirsten Dunst
Not only was Kirsten Dunst a cheerleader in the Bring It On movies, she revealed she was a cheerleader in real life. “When I was 16 and did ‘Bring It On,’ I was that girl,” Dunst said. “It was like me being in high school as myself. It wasn’t a stretch at all. I was a cheerleader, my best friend was a cheerleader. I wasn’t in competitions, but I watched them on TV,” she said to Gotham.
Dakota Fanning
Back when Dakota Fanning was a child acting tike, she attended Campbell Hall School, where she was on the cheerleading squad.
Teri Hatcher
Before she starred on the small screen in Desperate Housewives and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Teri Hatcher could be seen on the small screen on NFL game days — as a cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers in 1984.
Michael Douglas
While it might be hard to imagine Michael Douglas as a cheerleader, he was a part of the team at his prep school, Choate. It was a tradition started by his dad, Kirk Douglas, who also cheered at Amsterdam High School in Amsterdam, New York. It was clearly a great way to hone their performance skills in their youth, considering that father and son both went on to successful acting careers in Hollywood.
Blake Lively
Blake Lively hasn’t shied away from her cheerleading past. She was still going to Burbank High School when she starred in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and she’s proudly shared photos of her days on the squad with her Instagram followers.
Sandra Bullock
Sandra Bullock was a cheerleader at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia. A 1982 yearbook from her school surfaced online and it shows the actress proudly wearing her uniform quite a bit during her pom-pom days. Bullock admitted to Glamour that she still owns the uniform and joked, “I don’t know who I’m saving it for. I want to be buried in it.”
Melissa Rycroft
Before she joined the Bachelor nation and won a mirrorball trophy on Dancing with the Stars, Melissa Rycroft got her start as a part of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, where she cheered for three seasons. She hasn’t left her high-flying kick line days entirely behind, either, because she regularly mentors and judges each new squad on CMT’s Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team. The best part about her love of cheer is that her daughter, Ava, 9, is already following in her mom’s footsteps as a part of the Dazzlers squad.
Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence didn’t take her personal cheerleading career at Kammerer Middle School in Louisville, Kentucky, too seriously, but she does go to bat for every critic who says cheerleaders aren’t athletes.
“I was a cheerleader and I don’t like it when people say it’s not a sport,” she told Moviefone in 2013.
Chrissy Teigen
Chrissy Teigen is the first one to admit she was a mediocre cheerleader at Snohomish High School. After watching Netflix’s Cheer in 2020, she shared a throwback photo on her Instagram page and hilariously wrote, “Truly no idea how I made this team. The best part is they claimed there was no JV/varsity but one squad got to cheer for basketball and football and the other (mine) got volleyball and wrestling.”
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson might have had the best plan of all when he joined the cheerleading team at the all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta. “I became a cheerleader so I could travel to all of the places the team went to meet women,” he revealed on The Graham Norton Show. “It was totally dope!”
Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon got started early as a tiny cheerleader at Harding Academy in Nashville. She posted a black-and-white photo of her days as “proud General” as she stood with her arms out to the side while standing on the shoulders of her teammates. Even though her acting career took her away from her budding interest in cheer, we bet she could still rock a routine out there on the field.
Kelly Ripa
It doesn’t surprise us at all that Kelly Ripa was once a cheerleader at Eastern Regional High School in Camden County, New Jersey. Her perky personality has served her well as a talk show TV host on Live with Kelly and Ryan. In 2014, she showed off her cheer skills on the Halloween episode dressed as Taylor Swift — she can still do a split and hit her stunts.