HOLLYWOOD - Yelling at the TV, wincing at a wobbly dismount, getting vaklempt as the Olympiad lifts their neck to reveal a shiny new medal...Yup, they're "just like us"--stars are glued to the Olympics too!
In the name of helping you get to know them more, Hollywood.com asked your fave' Summer-Olympics-watchin'-celebs, what gets their blood pumping? Olympics fan, Nick?
Hollywood.com: What are you looking forward to seeing this Olympics?
Nick Lachey: I love the Summer Olympics. I’d love to see the basketball team fight for the Gold and finally win the Gold again. Baseball. I love track and field. I think some of the more inspirational moments in sports you see during the Olympics. Obviously I’ll be watching Michael Phelps and see how he does, and his quest to break that record [swimming]. There’s a lot of great stories and a lot of great drama to expect there in the games this year.
HW: What Olympic event would you excel in, real or not?
NL: [Laughs] I would win the gold medal in Olympic television watching, should that become an eligible event!
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Olympics gal, Kerry?
Hollywood.com: Favorite Olympic sport?
Kerry Washington: “[Basketball] has never been my favorite event before, but I’m really enjoying The “Redeem Team.” I love that they are called the “Redeem Team,” cause we can be so cocky as a nation, and the fact is the “Dream Team” failed--well, not failed, exactly, a bronze medal is great, but you know. So now these guys have been pushed into a corner and are being asked to show up this time. They are playing with a different synergy and it’s really fun to watch. I also like the fact that throughout the year, these guys are enemies but now they are all really coming together. It’s kind of what this country’s all about.”
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Beijing ready, Leighton?
Hollywood.com: If you could be an Olympic athlete, what sport would you choose?
Leighton Meester: I’m not really sure. I want to be some obscure one--like basket weaving.
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Olympics watcher, Sam?
Hollywood.com: So what's your favorite Olympic event?
Samuel L. Jackson: “The one I’m watching at the time, [i.e.] the one that’s on. I keep discovering stuff, like last night, I hadn’t seen trampoline. It was off the hook! These little girls on these trampolines, going 30 feet in the air. They get some major air on these trampolines! And watching stuff like badminton--it’s not the backyard game we played. I just love the Olympics because I ran track when I was in high school and was a swimmer in college. I understand the events on another visceral kind of level.”
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Olympics follower, Abigail?
Hollywood.com: Are you a fan of the Olympics?
Abigail Breslin: I think I’ve watched some of the gymnastics in the Olympics before. I think that’s cool to watch because it’s something I could never do. I can’t even figure out how to do a hand stand. I think it’s really cool and I like to see them flip around and all that stuff.
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Olympics ready, James?
Hollywood.com: What type of Olympic sport would you want to participate in?
James McAvoy: Curling, which is a winter Olympic sport which was invented in Scotland and it involves throwing huge tablets of stone on ice. It used to be played on lakes and basically it is like playing like lawn bowling…with massive slabs of granite sliding across a 100 feet of ice and you’ve got to try to knock your opponents slabs of granite out of the target area. I have never played the sport in my life, but I really enjoy watching it.
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Olympics watcher, LC?
Hollywood.com: What was your favorite Olympic Sport growing up?
Lauren Conrad: What was my favorite Olympic sport growing up? It was actually gymnastics because my little sister did it so we would always watch it every year.
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Tuned in to Beijing, Keke?
Hollywood.com: Especially with your new movie [where you play a girl quarterback], which Olympic sport has been the most enthralling that required female strength?
Keke Palmer: I can’t say I’ve been watching all the way, ‘cause I was just recently on a little tour; but I did see, when we were in a restaurant—me and my publicist, and my dad and stuff—we turned around and saw what was on the TV, and it was the Olympics of course. And this girl, I believe, was jumping on the trampoline doing all these back-flips [breathlessly imitating], in a row, in a row, in a row, in a row. And I was just like, Oh my God!? How did she get up the stamina to do that? Or how did she not get dizzy? It was just so captivating; we were sitting there watching like, Oh my gosh…because it was just NO breaks in between. [Dazzled] She just flipped, flipped, flipped, flipped all at once. It was just crazy, but really cool though.
HW: That’s funny. I believe that’s the one that appealed to Sam Jackson most too.
KP: Oh great. Hahaha. Cool.
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*Additional Reporting by: Emily Christensen, Kit Bowen and Brigid Brown