special guest post by Patricia Duggan: Top 10 celebrity atheists

Including some unexpected atheists.
Right now I’m reading Ingrid Ricks’s Hippie Boy, her memoirs of growing up in a religious Mormon family. More on that later.

1. Paul Giamatti – Giamatti is known for his outstanding roles as a supporting actor. In a 2006 interview, Giamatti stated that he is an atheist. Although his wife is Jewish and his son is being raised Jewish, he noted in the interview that he might influence his son’s beliefs: “I’m waiting for my time to step in and tell him how things really are but I’ll do that when he’s a teenager. I figure he’ll be ripe for atheism when he’s a teenager.”

2. Sir Ian McKellen – Known for his outstanding work on the stage and in film for diverse roles such as King Lear, Gandalf, and Magneto, McKellen is noted for saying, “I’m an atheist. So God, if She exists, isn’t really a part of my life.” He came out in 1988 and has been a prominent LGBT rights activist.

3. Eva Green – She is best known as the smoldering Bond girl of Casino Royale. Eva is actually a French actress who speaks English fluently. She was raised as an atheist and starred in the film, The Golden Compass, which is based on a young adult novel by atheist author Philip Pullman.

4. Mark Zuckerberg – The co-founder and CEO of Facebook has “atheist” listed for his religious views on Facebook, although he was raised Jewish. He was named Time magazine’s person of the year in 2010 and is the world’s youngest billionaire.

5. Hugh Laurie – Like his cynical TV character, Dr. Gregory House, Laurie is a self-proclaimed atheist. In a 2007 interview, he said, “I don’t believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he’d take it away. So he’ll be like: ‘You think this is going pretty well?’ Then he’ll go and send down some big disaster.”

6. Woody Allen – The neurotic director is of Jewish ethnic descent but declares himself as an atheist. He has made numerous witticisms on the subject, such as, “Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.”

7. Julianne Moore – When asked what God would say to her when she appeared before him in heaven during a 2002 interview on Inside the Actor’s Studio, she said, “Well, I guess you were wrong, because I do exist.” She is also a pro-choice and LGBT activist.

8. Roger Ebert – Perhaps the most famous of film critics, Ebert is slowly dying of thyroid cancer, but has stated the he does not fear death. In an article about his beliefs in 2009, he wrote, “I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist–which I am. If I were to say I don’t believe God exists, that wouldn’t mean I believe God doesn’t exist. Nor does it mean I don’t know, which implies that I could know.”

9. Stephen Hawking – Hawking has been a longtime proponent of the extraneousness of a belief in God. He first raised the prospect of a self-creating universe in his best-selling book, A Brief History of Time, which was published in 1988. In his 2010 book, The Grand Design, he wrote, “The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second.”

10. Angelina Jolie – Jolie has stated that she does not identify with any religion because she doesn’t feel the need for a God and dislikes authority-based religion. Her equally good-looking partner, Brad Pitt, has been noting as saying he is 20% atheist and 80% agnostic. In another interview, Angelina mentioned that she and Brad are raising their six children to respect all religions and they have a bookshelf in their house with a Bible, a Torah, a Koran, and other religious books.

Patricia Duggan has a Masters in Psychology and has been in practice for 12 years. She runs the site Psychology Degree Finder. She writes about various subjects within psychology.