8 Celebrities that Love to Swim

Swimming is something people do for fun and for their health from childhood to old age, and there aren’t too many other activities that go in that column. It makes some sense, then, that celebrities love to swim: After all, they need to keep their bodies beautiful, and also to be seen once in a while splashing around in mega-pools living the beautiful life that we want them to. Here are eight famous folks who head to the water when searching for their bliss.

• Hugh Jackman - While in training to reprise his most famous screen role as Wolverine in this summer’s sure-to-be-smash Deadpool and Wolverine, Jackman took to swimming in the cold ocean by himself. ("Sleep. Train. Eat. Recover. Repeat. #becomingwolverineagain” was the hashtag he posted with an Instagram video of one workout dive.) Jackman was a high school athlete long before his theater and screen career made him world-famous.

• Kerry Washington - Washington’s character on the iconic Scandal often was shown swimming laps to relieve stress, which the activity does in multiple ways. In fact, Washington was on her swim team in high school, and credits her parents for encouraging her: they told her if she was a good swimmer, she might save someone’s life someday.

• Jennifer Aniston - The beloved Friends fave gets in three sessions of freestyle swimming a week, in workouts ranging from twenty to forty minutes. Friends say the secret to her longtime fitness regimen is to do everything for fun, so swimming is of course a staple.

• Jon Hamm - As a young man, Hamm swam for John Burroughs School in Missouri. The actor showed great form during his classic Mad Men run, swimming laps during one episode of the show sans goggles and with a stroke popular in the 60s.

• Julia Roberts - Julia stays in shape and prepares for roles at her home pool in Malibu, via laps and a bevy of water-related training: underwater skiing, running on the deep end with a flotation device, and weighted arm exercises.

• Nicole Kidman - This much-honored (and always slender) actress credits swimming for her physique and her health, specifically a daily 30-minute swim with her sister. Kidman says swimming is her favorite way to stay in shape.

• Natalie Portman - Portman, an in-demand actress now for 30 years after her debut as a child star, credits swimming with helping her focus in on the role she won an Oscar for, as a psychologically fraying ballet dancer in Black Swan. She called her swimming workouts a valuable, impact-free, cardio and endurance building alternative to ballet training.

• Jason Statham - England’s hard-kicking action star originally came to prominence representing his native land in the 1990 Commonwealth Games. Statham credited swimming with saving his life on the set of Expendables 3, when a truck he was driving crashed through a barrier and sank 30 feet underwater. Co-star Sylvester Stallone told the press that anyone else in the situation “would have been dead… But because Jason is an Olympic-quality diver he got out of it.”