For such a small city, Charlottesville sure has an insane amount of celebrity connections. Ask any townie and you’ll hear so many conflicting tales it can be hard to sort fact from fiction. Take the late playwright Sam Shepard, who lived in Scottsville with Jessica Lange in the mid-’80s. Rumor has it he did his writing at The Virginian, got banned from Miller’s, and had a standing squad car ride home from Dürty Nelly’s. Here’s a breakdown of some more of our favorite celeb rumors buzzing around town.
Does Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson live in Charlottesville?
Well, not quite. The wrestler-turned-actor actually owns a large farm in Orange County, about 30 minutes outside the city—and he’s there more often than you’d think. In 2019, Johnson tweeted that “the great state of Virginia has quietly become my home for years now,” and he and his family frequently visit the farm to “recharge, recalibrate, and reset.” Social media posts show Johnson fishing for bass, hanging with thoroughbreds, and working out in perhaps the greatest home gym to ever exist—talk about a staycation. Back in 2017, before Johnson’s home gym, aka the Iron Paradise, was built, he could be found pumping iron at the old Gold’s Gym, where he recorded a viral video of himself chatting with a few lucky fans who spotted him post-workout.
Did Jennifer Aniston get married at Pippin Hill?
In 2013, rumors began swirling on celeb gossip sites that Jennifer Aniston got married on the DL to then-fiancé Justin Theroux in a quickie wedding at Pippin Hill Farm & Winery. An elusive comment from a Pippin Hill employee at the time that neither confirmed nor denied the claim fueled gossip, and the unnamed tipster even claimed to know who the caterer was. Though the picturesque vineyard is certainly the perfect place for a private and exclusive celebrity wedding, turns out there’s no truth to this rumor. Jen and Justin actually tied the knot two years later in an intimate Malibu ceremony ordained by Jimmy Kimmel.
Russian royalty?
Does the name Anastasia Romanov sound familiar? You probably know the Russian Grand Duchess from the Disneyfied version of her story, as told in the 1997 film, Anastasia. Her real life is far more tragic. The youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Imperial Russia, Anastasia was murdered, along with her entire family, by a group of Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1918. Rumors immediately began circulating that Anastasia had actually escaped the murder attempt and was in hiding. Two years later, a woman now known by the name Anna Anderson came forward and declared herself the lost grand duchess. Long story short, Anderson was actually a Polish woman who was institutionalized in a mental hospital in Berlin at the time she made her claims, and she would go on to become the world’s most notorious Anastasia imposter. With the help of her supporters, Anderson made her way to America, and in 1968 settled down in Charlottesville, where she married history professor J.E. “Jack” Manahan, and lived until her death in 1984. You can still visit her grave at the University of Virginia Cemetery and Columbarium—just look for the tombstone labeled H.I.H. Anastasia of Russia.
Did Tina Fey write Mean Girls about Western Albemarle High School?
It’s common knowledge that the comedian and actress was at least partly inspired by her alma mater, UVA, when she wrote the Mean Girls script—the name Cady comes from her college roommate, Cady Garey. There’s also a lesser-known rumor that one of Fey’s old roommates (who still lives in Charlottesville) went to Western Albemarle, and the roommate’s tales of cliques at the local school are what partly inspired Fey. We’re not sure how well this word-of-mouth whisper holds up, especially when Fey has admitted to drawing from her own experiences as a mean girl, and from the nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes. It would be so fetch if it were true, though.