Jewel with Chill and Double Helix.
Photo: Shane Drummond/BFA.com
These Celebrities Have Found Their Second Calling as Artists
Hollywood stars like Lucy Liu, Sylvester Stallone, Jewel, and others have found success inside the creative studio
The last few years have seen a surge among celebrities who have revealed their art practices. Numerous A-listers have made the headlines not with a new blockbuster or an album, yet rather with an exhibition. Romantic landscapes and punchy portraits are noticeably common subject matters. The art world has reacted with both excitement and scrutiny. The immediate attention raised by their star power in an industry in which many struggle to exhibit their work raised a few eyebrows—while the interviews have proven that most actor-turned-artists have in fact been making work behind closed doors for decades. Many Hollywood fixtures even admitted that painting was their first love.
Below are eight celebrities who have revealed their artistic sides in recent years.
Double Helix by Jewel. Photo: Shane Drummond/BFA.com
Chill by Jewel. Photo: Shane Drummond/BFA.com
1. Jewel
Like many celebrities who chose to publicly express their fine art practices later in life, the four-time Grammy-nominated musician Jewel has in fact been painting for three decades. Around the time she reached to the notepad to pen her first lyrics as a teenager, the Alaska-raised artist was also intrigued by drawing. Besides yodeling, the singer—born Jewel Kilcher into a musician family—had dabbled in sculpture modeling to pay for her education, which in fact ignited her interest in marble carving. Then also came portraiture and art therapy. Today, Jewel might be best known for her hits such as Intuition and Foolish Games, but she also grabbed the art world’s attention last year with The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which was an installation of music, hologram, and meditation, as well as paintings from the Arkansas museum’s collection.
2. Sylvester Stallone
Similar to masterpieces gloriously associated with their artists—think Scream by Edvard Much or Klimt’s The Kiss—a few actors are inseparable from a character that they intricately built. Rocky is a similar case for Sylvester Stallone. When the legendary actor was struggling to shine in New York’s equally competitive art and stage industries in 1970s, he initially painted the infamous boxer as his imaginary muse. Little did he know that he had also illustrated the protagonist which would eventually not only grant him two Oscar nominations but also bring a lifetime fame. In 2021, Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany held a survey of Stallone’s painting practice which featured around 50 works which blend influences from 1980s’ vibrantly figurative masters such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel with Rocky’s bruised yet relentless persona.
3. Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt is far from being a stranger to the art industry. Besides occasional sightings at mega art fairs, the Oscar-winner has made numerous headlines with his art collection which includes heavy-lifters Neo Rauch, Nacho Carbonell, Charles Ray, and his close friend Thomas Houseago. It was in fact his friendship with Houseago, as well as with the legendary Australian musician Nick Cave, which carved the path to his first outing as a sculptor at Finland’s Sara Hildén Art Museum in 2022. The nine allusive mixed-media sculptures which the A-lister explained as “radical inventory of self” included those that depicted humans and totemic forms. The standout however was a wall-spanning relief titled Aiming At You I Saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time which captured the trauma of gun violence in an almost biblical juxtaposition.
4. Seth Rogen
Unlike most names in this roundup, Seth Rogen found his passion for art-making years after his claim to fame as a sought-after actor of blockbuster comedies. The Knocked Up star embarked on his pottery-making journey upon an encouragement of his potter wife. Rogen’s familiarity with the ashtray came in handy and he found himself dabbling with clay. In 2019—before the pandemic prompted many to seek new indoor hobbies—Rogen had already unveiled his newfound passion’s fruits in the form of vases and ashtrays. The creations in brightly-washed glazes in fact reflect the actor’s comic sensibility with their quirky forms and accessible aesthetic.
5. Sharon Stone
The pandemic was the door that re-invited Sharon Stone into the endless world of painting. She had in fact studied painting at the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania before moving to New York to model. Decades later, the Oscar-nominated legendary actress’s acrylic abstractions on canvas had their East Coast debut at Connecticut’s C. Parker Gallery at the end of 2023, showcasing nineteen works of floral dreamscapes. Fittingly titled Welcome to My Garden, the paintings embodied contemplation and daydreaming with unrestrained brushstrokes in powdery spring hues.
6. Lucy Liu
Among lauded Hollywood stars, Lucy Liu perhaps maintains the most unconventional and therefore intriguing material palette. The New York-born and raised actor has for decades been collecting various kinds of debris off of streets for her paintings. Only recently, however, the Kill Bill star abandoned her Chinese name Yu Ling and has begun exhibiting her mixed-media practice under her stage name. In January of 2019, Liu had the joy of opening her first institutional show at National Museum of Singapore, titled Unhomed Belongings. The paintings and installations not only trace the actress’s trajectory through the objects she has gathered—her arrestingly corporal paintings also explore the self through the multitude of growing up in an immigrant family as the first generation member.
Work by Jim Carrey. Photo: Courtesy of Maccarone
7. Jim Carrey
After decades of a prolific career as a leading comedic actor, Jim Carrey stepped down from Hollywood’s hamster wheel over a decade ago. It was in 2017 when the Mask star returned to spotlight, yet this time with his Pop Art-infused psychedelic paintings. Carrey’s second act was anchored by a solo exhibition at Signature Galleries’ Las Vegas location, titled Sunshower. The moment was also supported with the surprise release of the six-minute documentary I Needed Color which chronicles the actor-turned-painter’s commitment to the canvas as a form of self-discovery and survival. “What you do in life chooses you,” states Carry in the documentary which shows him surrounded by large scale brightly-hued paintings at his Los Angeles studio.
8. Jemima Kirke
Art and life have long imitated each other for Jemima Kirke who is best known for starring as Jessa in HBO’s era-defining TV series Girls. The British-American was born into a rock musician father and fashion designer mother, and although wider recognition founded her through acting, she holds a degree in painting from RISD. Kirke’s romantically arresting portraits have been the subject of two solo shows at the Lower East Side gallery Sargent’s Daughters where the figures carried hints of the artist’s own life as well as her circle of downtown creatives in detailed attires.
Cover: Jewel with Chill and Double Helix.
Photo: Shane Drummond/BFA.com
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