Actors Who Speak Multiple Languages

Stars of many tongues

Some celebrities are well-known for their multilingual abilities while others keep their knowledge of numerous languages under wraps. Most of them learned languages due to their cultural background, while others polished them out of pure interest. 

Lupita Nyong’o

Lupita Nyong’o was born and raised in Mexico till she turned 16 and later returned to Mexico to learn Spanish. While talking with Entertainment Weekly’s “Around the Table” about the opportunity to speak Spanish as a multilingual Wakandan spy, Nakia, in the Black Panther movies, she said it represented different sides of her heritage. 

Daniel Benavides, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Jack Black

By watching Spanish movies and practicing Spanish in the mirror, Jack Black mastered Spanish. Later in life, he picked up an interest in learning French and has mastered both French and Spanish as well as English, all by himself.

Renan Katayama, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper’s French learning started in high school which later inspired him to attend French classes at Georgetown University. In an interview with People in 2011, he said that while seeing Chariots of Fire, he was amused by a scene in which a guy spoke French and decided to learn it. To improve his French skills, he spent six months as an exchange student in Aix-en-Provence and immersed himself in French culture.

Carlos González Santos, Wikimedia Commons

Natalie Portman

Being a Harvard graduate with an Israeli American background, Natalie Portman is fluent in Hebrew, English, French, Japanese, German, and Spanish. While talking about Spanish with America Reads Spanish, she said that she finds learning to be beautiful and finds Spanish to be one of the most useful languages in the world. 

Wikimedia Commons, Siebbi

Renée Zellweger

Renée Zellweger was born to a Norwegian-based former nurse and a Swiss-based engineer. As she embraced her roots, she learned Norwegian, German, and English. In 2022, in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she disclosed having learned Norwegian with the help of an app on her phone but was not specific.

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Ben Affleck

When he was 13, Ben Affleck spent a year living in Mexico with his family while shooting a television series, which he claims has made him “passively fluent” in Spanish. Moreover, his daughter’s Spanish-speaking skills have inspired him to brush up on the language.

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Timothée Chalamet

Since Timothée Chalamet’s father is from France, he grew up speaking French and English. He also has dual US and French citizenship.

Elena Ringo, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Colin Firth 

Colin Firth decided to learn Italian after he met his ex-wife Livia Giuggioli, on the set of the British-Italian drama Nostromo. He even holds citizenships in both the US and Italy and, in an interview with BBC in 2017, added he was married in Italy and had two children born in Rome.

Nicogenin, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Mila Kunis

Being born in Ukraine in the then-Soviet Union, Mila Kunis grew up speaking Russian. When she was seven, her family moved to Los Angeles, where she learned English. 

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Céline Dion

Céline Dion was born and raised in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada, where the major language is French, resulting in her first albums being sung in French. Later in the 1980s, she learned English, and her first English album was Unison. Since then, she has performed in English, French, Napolitano, Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese, and Mandarin.

celebrityabc, Flickr

Shakira

Shakira was born in Colombia and grew up speaking Spanish. Her managers, Emilio and Gloria Estefan, helped her learn English. Later, she learned Portuguese, Italian, French, Catalan, and Arabic. Her music tops the charts in both English and Spanish.

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Penélope Cruz

Growing up speaking Spanish, Penélope Cruz later learned English and then Italian for her role in the movie Don’t Move, which helped her win the equivalent of the Oscars in Italy for the best actress. A common misconception is that she can speak French, as she did in the French film Fanfan. However, she only learned the lines phonetically and cannot speak French.

Carlos Delgado, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Jodie Foster

By the time she was 14, Jodie Foster was fluent in French and later learned Spanish by the time she was 18. In some French versions of the movies she has performed in, she has dubbed herself in French. She also had the honor to host the French equivalent of the Oscars, the César Awards, in 2011.

Denis Makarenko, Shutterstock

Zayn Malik

Zayn Malike knows Urdu, Arabic, and English. He was born to a Pakistani father and a British mother, so he can speak the national language of Pakistan, Urdu, fluently. Knowing Urdu, he has incorporated Urdu in his songs, namely Intermission: Flower and Tightrope. 

First Access Entertainment, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Gwyneth Paltrow

In 2009, Gwyneth Paltrow revealed in an interview with the Associated Press, which was shared on Today.com, that she fell in love with Spanish as a teenage exchange student and visits the country at least once a year. She speaks Spanish to her children and hired a nanny who would speak Spanish to them. Additionally, she also knows French and has shared that speaking more than one language is a profound experience.

Andrea Raffin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Anya Taylor-Joy

Most people are surprised to know that Anya Taylor-Joy’s first language is Spanish. She was born in Miami and raised between Buenos Aires, Argentina, and London until the age of six, where she spoke Spanish. 

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“I love French culture, the French language, and especially French movies, Joseph Gordon-Levitt said in an interview with The Toronto Sun in 2015. At Columbia University, he took some classes in poetry which were entirely in French. When he got the opportunity to play high-wire artist Phillipe Petit in The Walk, he insisted on replicating the Frenchman’s accent.

TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Diane Kruger

Diane Kruger was born in West Germany and learned German growing up. Later as a teenager, she learned English in London as an exchange student. Then when she was 15, she pursued a modeling career in Paris where she picked up French and later in life, learned Latin over eight years. For the Russian film “The Tiger Brigades” released in 2006, she learned Russian and did her voice dubbing in German, French, and English for the foreign versions of her movies.

Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock’s late mother, Helga Mathilde Meyer, went on many European concert tours with her daughter. As a result, Sandra Bullock spent most of her childhood between Germany and Washington, DC. She also presented the Best Foreign Language Film Award in German at the 2012 Oscars.

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Rita Ora

When Rita Ora was just a toddler, she moved to England from Kosovo as a refugee and grew up speaking the native language of Albania to her Kosovar-Albanian parents, who did not speak English. She said that she will forever be a true Kosovan at heart, will never forget her roots, and will be forever proud of her heritage. 

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Sandra Oh

Born in an Ottawa suburb of Canada to Korean parents, Sandra Oh grew up learning Korean and English. While studying at the National Theatre School of Canada, she learned French and was later able to use Korean in a single-mom role in The Chair. Sandra Oh is also very fluent in Spanish, which is an inspiration from her love of Barcelona, Spain in particular.

DFree, Shutterstock

Johnny Depp

Considering his years of acting experience and his adoption of various accents, it may come as no surprise that Johnny Depp is bilingual in French and English. His two children, Lily-Rose Depp and Jack Depp, with his former partner and French model Vanessa Paradis, are also bilingual.

Vahan Stepanyan, Shutterstock

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio was born to a half-Italian, half-German father, and a German mother. When his mother would often take him on trips to Germany to visit his maternal grandmother, he built up his fluency in German and enjoyed some aspects of the German culture. Later, his interest in Italian inspired him to learn the language, which he then used to hold a conversation with the Pope.

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Viggo Mortensen

Viggo Mortensen grew up in a bilingual environment, learning Spanish and English while living in Argentina, and later learned Danish from his father. For a film role, he re-learned French and learned Arabic. He also speaks Italian and some other Scandinavian languages like Norwegian and Swedish. 

nicolas genin, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Barbie Ferreira

Although born in the US, Barbie Ferreira’s family is from Minas Gerais, Brazil. In a recent feature with Vogue Brazil, she said she grew up around Brazilian food and culture in Astoria, Queens, and proudly stated she can speak Portuguese.

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Alexis Bledel

In an episode of Back Home, Alexis Bledel explained her father was from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and her mother was from Guadalajara, Mexico, which explains why her first language was Spanish. She grew up in Texas, however, where she learned English.

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Camila Mendes

Most people know Camila Mendes as the Riverdale star who grew up in the US. However, her family is proudly Brazilian, and she speaks Portuguese at home. In an interview with People, she stated she feels like an American in Brazil and a Brazilian in the US and connects with her culture through her family.

Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Zoe Saldaña

Avatar star Zoe Saldaña’s father was Dominican, and her mother was from Puerto Rico. She grew up in New York and learned to speak Spanish and English as her first languages, making her bilingual.

Dick Thomas Johnson, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

John Cena

Although John Cena has little acting experience until now, he claimed in an interview in The Straits Times that he has been studying Mandarin for five years and still speaks like a third grader. According to him, he wanted to learn Mandarin so he could get WWE to be a truly global company but later became fascinated with the language and became obsessed with trying to learn it.

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Salma Hayek

Actress and film producer Salma Hayek was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2021. Besides speaking her native language Spanish, she also speaks English, Arabic, and Portuguese. Her daughter is also fluent in Spanish, French, and English.

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Audrey Hepburn

Old Hollywood actress Audrey Hepburn grew up bilingual, speaking English and Dutch. At a private school in Belgium, she learned French and later picked German, Italian, and Spanish.

Anefo, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL, Wikimedia Commons

Monica Bellucci

Monica Bellucci, the model, and actress from Umbria, Italy, learned the endangered Aramaic language. She can also speak Italian, French, Spanish, and English.

Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Tom Hiddleston

Tom Hiddleston learned ancient Greek and Latin in the process of studying classics at the University of Cambridge. From most of the interviews he participated in, it appears he has learned Spanish, French, Italian, and Greek, and he can also hold conversations in Russian, Korean, and Mandarin, a language many find difficult to learn.

Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Charlize Theron

Growing up in South Africa, Charlize Theron spoke Afrikaans, the most widely spoken language there. She later learned English when she moved to the US at the age of 19. Following an episode on the “Smartless” podcast, she was criticized for saying her mother tongue is a dying language and “not a very helpful language” when the statistics shared by the Pan South African Language Board proved it is the third most-spoken language in their country.

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