Anjelica Huston grew up on film sets before she ever chose acting as a career. Her father, John Huston directed The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen, and her grandfather, Walter Huston won an Oscar acting in his son's film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Anjelica won her own Academy Award in 1986 for Prizzi's Honor, directed by John himself. Three generations, three Oscars, one family name on all of them. | © NBC
Liv Tyler didn't know Steven Tyler was her father until she was eleven years old. She grew up believing musician Todd Rundgren was her dad, until a resemblance to Aerosmith's frontman got too obvious to ignore. Her mother Bebe Buell confirmed it in 1988, and Liv later took the Tyler name herself. She went on to play Arwen in The Lord of the Rings trilogy without a single family connection to Hollywood royalty pulling strings there. | © Cinépix Film Properties
Zoë Kravitz spent part of her childhood around Lenny Kravitz's recording sessions and Lisa Bonet's sets from The Cosby Show. Her parents split when she was young, but both careers left fingerprints on hers. She's since played Catwoman in 2022's The Batman and led HBO's High Fidelity. Bonet was 20 years old when she had Zoë, a fact Zoë has spoken about openly in interviews. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Judd Apatow cast his own daughter Maude in Knocked Up back in 2007, when she was barely nine years old. Maude Apatow and her sister Iris kept showing up in their father's films through Funny People and This Is 40, both times playing versions of themselves. The setup could have gone nowhere past childhood cameos. Instead she landed a lead role in HBO's Euphoria in 2019, built entirely apart from her dad's productions. | ©HBO Entertainment
Ron Howard was already a former child star himself by the time his daughter Bryce was born in 1981, having grown up on The Andy Griffith Show. Bryce Dallas Howard took her middle name from the city where she was born, not from any industry branding exercise. She debuted in her father's film Parenthood as an uncredited extra before later leading his 2006 film Lady in the Water. Two generations of Howards, one still working mostly for the other. | © Summit Entertainment
Jack Quaid's parents met on the set of Innerspace in 1987, three years before he was born. Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan split in 2001, and Jack has said he grew up mostly with his mom in New York. He broke through playing Hughie Campbell on The Boys starting in 2019. His last name rarely comes up in interviews about the show, which he says was intentional. | © Prime Video
Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman named their daughter Maya, born in 1998 during their marriage. Maya Hawke got her start modeling before landing the role of Robin in Stranger Things in 2019. She's spoken about auditioning under her own name without hiding who her parents were. Casting directors recognized the surname immediately, she's admitted, but the part still required a screen test. | © Netflix
Vanessa Paradis gave birth to Lily-Rose Depp in Paris in 1999, a year before marrying Johnny Depp was ever legally official between them. The two never actually married, staying together as partners for 14 years instead. Lily-Rose modeled for Chanel starting at age 15, well before her acting career took shape. She later starred in The Idol on HBO in 2023, a role that put her, not her father, in the tabloids. | © Universal Pictures
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell never married, but they have been together as a couple for over four decades, since 1983. Kate Hudson is their daughter, born in 1979 from Hawn's earlier marriage to Bill Hudson. She earned an Oscar nomination for Almost Famous in 2000, her first major film role. Russell raised her as his own despite no legal adoption ever taking place. | © Jimmy Kimmel Live / YouTube
Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh were both established stars by the time Jamie Lee Curtis was born in 1958. Janet Leigh had already filmed Psycho's shower scene by 1960, a sequence that made her a horror name. Jamie Lee followed a similar path, starring in Halloween in 1978 at age 19. She won an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023, 65 years after her parents first made her famous by birth alone. | © Jimmy Kimmel Live / YouTube
Dakota Johnson has two actors as her parents, Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and an actress as her grandmother, Tippi Hedren. Hedren starred in Hitchcock's The Birds in 1963, decades before her granddaughter's name showed up anywhere. Johnson's break came with Fifty Shades of Grey in 2015, a role that made her famous well past her family's circle. Four generations of the same industry, one surname that keeps changing. | © Universal Pictures
Gwyneth Paltrow grew up with a director for a father, Bruce Paltrow, and an actress for a mother, Blythe Danner. Steven Spielberg was her godfather, a detail she's mentioned in interviews without much fuss. She won the Best Actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love in 1999, beating Cate Blanchett's performance in Elizabeth. The award came 20 years before she pivoted almost entirely into running Goop. | © Vogue / YouTube
The Coppola surname belongs to Sofia long before she ever picked up a camera herself. Her father Francis Ford Coppola cast her as baby Michael Rizzi in The Godfather in 1972. She won the Original Screenplay Oscar for Lost in Translation in 2003, becoming the first American woman nominated for Best Director. Her cousin is Nicolas Cage, which makes Thanksgiving at that family's table a fairly stacked affair. | © Paramount Pictures
Nicolas Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola in 1964, nephew of Francis Ford Coppola and cousin to Sofia. He changed his last name early in his career specifically to avoid charges of nepotism. It didn't fully work, but the performances did the rest of the talking eventually. He won Best Actor for Leaving Las Vegas in 1996, under a name nobody in his family gave him. | © Walt Disney Pictures
Riley Keough is Elvis Presley's granddaughter, daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough. She inherited a controlling stake in Graceland and the Presley estate after her mother's death in 2023. Her acting career includes Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015 and the lead in Daisy Jones & the Six in 2023. Few names in Hollywood carry as much weight before an audition even starts. | © Prime Video
Talent helps, but a famous last name and family fortune never hurt, and plenty of today's stars had a serious head start. Here are 15 Hollywood nepo babies born into wealthy dynasties.
