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6 Superfans-Turned-Celebrities To Remind You Nerd Dreams Really Do Come True

By Vivian Kane | Lists | July 20, 2015 |

By Vivian Kane | Lists | July 20, 2015 |



Kumail Nanjiani
Kumail boosted internet nerd levels this weekend when he tweeted a picture of himself sandwiched between his two favorite alien hunters.



Kumail has made no secret of his X-Files obsession. In fact, he’s built it into his career with his crazy awesome podcast The X-Files Files. It’s a nerd dream come true.

Luna Lovegood
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Evanna Lynch was a Harry Potter superfan before she was cast in the movies. In fact, it’s why she was cast. She says she was obsessed with reading the franchise fan sites, which is how she learned about the open casting she attended. In fact, she’s such a fan that three years earlier, when she was only 11 and hospitalized with anorexia, she wrote a letter to J.K. Rowling because Harry Potter was “the only other thing [she] really cared about.” She says she never expected to hear back, but the two ended up writing back and forth for years, through her recovery.

Ryan Reynolds
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Reynolds, famously, was such a big comic book fan that right before filming, he caught a mistake in the script’s Green Lantern Corps Oath. Of course, that would have been the least of that movie’s problems, but it’s good to see RyRey get another chance to live out his fandom with Deadpool.

Lena Dunham
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Over a year before she was able to actually make it happen, Dunham said that appearing on Scandal was her “life’s great passion.” She even hired the real-life Olivia Pope to, uh, manage her crises, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. This past March she finally appeared on (and prematurely spoiled) an episode of the show.

David Tennant
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David Tennant was about as big of a Doctor Who superfan as they come. As a kid, he carried around a Tom Baker doll; he wrote essays about the show (and not much else) in school; hell, the show is what made him want to be an actor in the first place. He’s such a fan, he married the Fifth Doctor’s daughter, for crying out loud. A few years before he was cast as The Doctor (which, by the way, is how the character was officially credited— as opposed to “Doctor Who”— at his insistence), he saidDoctor Who is the finest piece of television that has ever been made anywhere.” And then he got to be the Doctor. How cool is that?

Peter Capaldi
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If we’re talking about superfans-turned-Doctors, Tennant doesn’t necessarily have first place in that category locked down. Peter Capaldi has talked at length about his mega obsession. Okay, he didn’t go out and marry the offspring of any of his past heroes, but he was pretty infamous at the BBC. He spent his teenage years pestering the production staff for show secrets, and at one point he was passed over for the role of Official Doctor Who Fan Club president, and made such a fuss over it that one BBC producer’s secretary told the kid who held the position she wished “Daleks or someone would exterminate him.”