6 Celebs Who Struggled With Student Loan Debt

Find out what these stars said about their student loans…

Miles Teller studied acting while attending New York University and while he was a senior when he landed his big break, he still ended up with student loan debt. At one point, he told Vulture he’d racked up $100,000 in loans. Although he was eventually making enough money to pay off his debts, he decided to put it on the back burner because of the low interest rates.

“That is true. My business manager says the interest is so low, there’s no sense in paying them off. I can, if I want to have that badge of accomplishment, but until then I still very much have my NYU loans,” Miles shared with Vulture.

Gina Rodriguez also attended NYU and didn’t pay off her loans for over a decade. While discussing her education during an appearance on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Gina shared that she had only recently paid off her education debt at the age of 32. While Stephen appeared shocked that it took a TV star 11 years to pay it off, Gina said it was totally true.

“Yeah, dude! NYU is so expensive. College education is so expensive but so necessary,” Gina shared on the show.

Jon Hamm spent a decade paying off his student loans. Looking back, Jon says he transferred between three different schools over the course of four years and while he had financial aid at all of them, he still spent years in debt. It wasn’t until he began to get steady work as an actor that he was able to pay it off in 2004.

“I went to three universities in four years, and I had financial aid at all,” he said while speaking at a political rally at the University of Minnesota Duluth. “It shouldn’t be that way; it really shouldn’t. It should be easier.”

Kate Walsh attended the University of Arizona where she studied theater but she didn’t actually graduate. Despite dropping out early, Kate says she still ended up with thousands of dollars in student loans that she wasn’t able to pay off until she turned 37.

“I am a person who came out of college with, oh, jeez, just thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in debt. And the only way I was, honestly, able to pay off my student loans was at age 37, because I happened to get on a big, fat TV show called Grey’s Anatomy, and I was able to finally pay my student loan debt,” she told Refinery29. “And that’s insane — it was just interest accruing and accruing and accruing. And that just shouldn’t be the price tag of trying to get an education in this country.”

Kerry Washington studied anthropology and sociology at George Washington University — an accomplishment that wouldn’t have been possible without student loans. While making a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, Kerry even called herself “a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans.” She later shared that it wasn’t until she was cast in Scandal that she was actually able to pay off those loans.

Leslie Odom Jr. accrued thousands of dollars in student loan debt while attending Carnegie Mellon University. Looking back, Leslie says that college was “a financial sacrifice” for his family, especially after his father got laid off when the actor was a junior. While he had taken out loans and gotten financial aid, Leslie was left with mounting student loan debt. But before his senior year, he was recommended to apply for the Princess Grace Awards — and he actually won a scholarship, eliminating some of his debt.

“My teacher told me the Princess Grace Awards helps emerging artists still in college,” he shared with People. “Compiling the list of recommendations sometimes felt like we were submitting for the Nobel Peace Prize! When I got the phone call I’d won the award that summer, I was working at the Public Theater in West Virginia. It was a huge help to my family and it changed my life.”

He continued, “That’s money that would have added to my debt and would have been multiplied by thousands of dollars because I would have had to pay it back over time. So that’s life-changing money. And it was a real vote of confidence going into my final year of education because it gave me the belief in myself that I could finish, that there was somebody in New York who believed in me.”