Celebs With The Most Ridiculous Daily Routines

Celebrities — actors, musicians, tycoons, multi-hyphenates, and barons of industry included — are just like everybody else, in the way that time affects them the same way that it does not-famous people. Regardless of status, wealth, or notability, every person on this planet gets 24 hours each day to do with as they please. It's just that some people — rich, successful people, for example — seem to have more time than others, or at least they possess an uncanny knack for how to make the best of it. They also happen to have the means to pay for a support staff to help them accomplish mundane day-to-day tasks, but there still must be a link between setting goals, establishing a strict routine, and adhering to it (no matter what), and success.

Here are some famous people of the present and the past who have had their eyes on the prize and set a mind-bogglingly intense, heavily-scheduled regimen for themselves, planning out and utilizing almost every moment of their day. 

While 5 a.m. is suitably early for most early birds, actor, producer, and former rapper Mark Wahlberg is well into his day by then. According to his "typical daily schedule," which he revealed on his Instagram Stories in 2018, he wakes up at 2:30 a.m., and starts his prayers at 2:45, followed by breakfast at 3:15. 

Per Men's Journal, that meal consists of "steel oats, peanut butter, blueberries, and eggs." That first breakfast powers his first workout of the day, which runs about 90 minutes until just after 5 a.m. After that comes second breakfast at around 5:30, which includes "a protein shake, three turkey burgers, and five pieces of sweet potato." After a shower and some quick golfing, he enjoys another snack at 8, a substantial protein hit of "10 turkey meatballs."

Wahlberg's physical recovery in a cryogenic chamber arrives promptly at 9:30, but then he needs to eat again at 10:30: a large "grilled chicken salad with two hard-boiled eggs, olives, avocado, cucumber, tomato, and lettuce." Properly exercised and fed, Wahlberg likes to take the two-hour block from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to take meetings, answer phone calls, and have "family time." Then it's the first of two lunches, a "steak with green peppers," and after more business and picking his kids up from school, Wahlberg eats chicken and veggies. Around 4 p.m., he's scheduled another hour-long workout and a shower, and after a 5:30 fish dinner and some time with the kids, he's in bed by 7:30 p.m.

Orlando Bloom is a busy guy — actor, devoted partner of pop star Katy Perry, and a new dad as of 2020, according to CNN. Juggling all that requires a lot of maintenance, and Bloom goes about his day adhering to a strict regimen of holistic body health, aggressively filling his body with essential nutrients. 

The first thing he does in the morning upon waking at 6:30, according to an interview with The Sunday Times, is pore over the app associated with his wearable sleep-tracking device to see if he slept well and to check his "readiness." After that comes 20 minutes of Buddhist chanting to get his spirit right, and then it's on to a before-breakfast ingestion of food-like substances, but which is not technically breakfast because he likes to "earn" that meal. 

"I'll just have some green powders that I mix with brain octane oil, a collagen powder for my hair and nails, and some protein," the Lord of the Rings star explained. Properly fueled for the time being, Bloom then goes for a hike while he listens "to some Nirvana or Stone Temple Pilots." By that point, it's 9 a.m., and Bloom has suitably earned that breakfast, which "usually" consists of a porridge with mix-ins like "a little hazelnut milk, cinnamon, vanilla paste, hazelnuts, goji berries, [and] a vegan protein powder," along with a nice cup of tea.

It seems like a lot of successful people are also early risers. That's no coincidence — it's the simple equation of more time in the day means more opportunities to get stuff done. And Tim Cook, the man who heads up Apple, a company that offers its customers numerous gadgets to help them stay productive and punctual, is no exception. 

"The thing about it is, when you love what you do, you don't really think of it as work," Cook said in a 2012 Time profile. "It's what you do. And that's the good fortune of where I find myself." According to the same interview, Cook gets out of bed each day at 3:45 a.m. in order to tackle a huge virtual stack of email correspondence. As he lives in California, all that messaging is done well before people on the East Coast arrive at their offices. After that, Cook takes a break of sorts from work, heading to the gym to work out and then to Starbucks to fire off another round of emails. 

Only after he's put in a few hours working independently, the outlet notes, does Cook head into the office at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

Perhaps the couple that works out together stays together, because former President of the United States Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama enjoyed a daily ritual during their Oval Office years, wherein they'd worked out together well before dawn. She'd wake up at 4:30 a.m. and head to the gym, and he'd join her "either in the middle of [her] workout or right at the end," she told Us Weekly in 2012.

After watching some SportsCenter together, the Obamas would go off in their separate ways for most of the day. According to Newsweek, the former POTUS would start work at about 8:30 a.m. and labor consistently until 6:30 p.m. It was important to Barack to carve out some time in the evening for family, so he'd have dinner with his wife and two daughters, Malia and Sasha, and just be present until sending the kiddos to bed at about 8:30 p.m. And then, it was back to work — reading briefings, finishing paperwork, or writing things until just before midnight, followed by reading time, and then bed, which happens "sometimes a little later" than 12:30 a.m. 

That's certainly a full day, as one might expect for a former president, who admitted to being "a night owl" to Newsweek.

Oprah Winfrey was once the ruler of the TV talk show world, but she's since retired from The Oprah Winfrey Show to host and produce content for the OWN TV network and her websites, a lot of which focuses on spirituality, gratitude, and mindfulness. Winfrey's schedule, day in and day out, reflects those themes, too.

Winfrey wakes up naturally around 6 a.m. "I put the number in my mind and I wake up before that," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, "because the dogs are trained to go out around that time." She gets up, brushes her teeth, and takes out the dogs to do their business. By 7 a.m., and with a chai tea or cappuccino providing a caffeine boost, Winfrey's in her home gym to work out and watch her best friend, Gayle King, on CBS This Morning. After hitting the elliptical and treadmill for 20 and 30 minutes, respectively, she does sit-ups, and finishes off with a meditation session. 

Following a light breakfast of eggs and toast at 8:30, Winfrey starts work at 9 a.m., which is a wall-to-wall block of business that lasts for four hours or more. After lunch — consisting of "soup and a big salad" — it's back to work for the star, with multiple teleconferences and meetings taking her into the early evening. After dinner, hanging out with partner Stedman Graham, and two hours of reading, Winfrey crawls into bed at 10 p.m. for some "gratitude" journaling.

Dwayne Johnson is also known as "The Rock" for a reason — he's a muscle-bound mountain of a man. And that takes work! He wakes up "before the sun," sometimes as early as 3 a.m. "I often sacrifice two hours of sleep just so I can have the quiet two hours that I need before the whole house wakes up," he told Variety. Johnson uses this time to center himself, which enables him to work long hours and focus on his early morning training time. 

After a cup of coffee, according to Bodybuilding, Johnson gets in at least 30 minutes of cardio, either on an outdoor run or an elliptical cross-trainer machine. Breakfast — or rather, the first of about "five meals" he'll eat that day — comes after, which includes beef, oatmeal, casein protein, and any number of his other go-to foods, like chicken, egg whites, and veggies. "I'm very prepared and organized, and everything is planned out in advance," he explained. "It's all measured depending on what I'm training to achieve."

Johnson then begins his second workout, and if he's on location shooting a movie, he gets that done on the "Iron Paradise," a portable strength-training gym comprising 45,000 pounds of equipment. He works out six days a week with a different focus for each day, be it legs, shoulders, chest, biceps, triceps, or back. Then it's off to shoot a movie for the next 12 hours or more, interspersed with one of his four other protein-rich meals.

Being a secondary member of the British royal family — meaning someone related to Queen Elizabeth II but with only a scant and remote chance of ever ascending to the throne — brings with it perhaps the cushiest lifestyle status on the planet. Princess Margaret, Elizabeth's younger and only sibling (who died in 2002) got to enjoy the lavish spoils of royal family life and residency in Buckingham Palace with very little of the responsibilities, duties, burdens, and public appearances facing the actual monarch.

According to Craig Brown's biography, Ma'am Darling (via Harper's Bazaar), Princess Margaret had settled into a pretty casual morning routine by 1955, two years after her sister's coronation as Queen of England. Margaret would wake up a little before 9 a.m., because that's what time her breakfast in bed would arrive. After dining, she'd hang out in bed for two hours or so, "listening to the radio, reading the newspapers ('which she invariably left scattered over the floor') and chain-smoking."

At 11 a.m., her prepared bath would be ready for her, and that would kill an hour. At noon, Margaret reported to her dressing table for hair and makeup, then threw on some clothes and left her bedchambers for a 12:30 p.m. vodka cocktail. She was thus prepared for her 1 p.m. standing lunch date with her mother, the Queen Mother, for a four-course meal served on silver platters, which included "half a bottle of wine" and six kinds of European cheese.

As of April 2021, per Forbes, Kim Kardashian is a billionaire, thanks in large part to her shapewear company, Skims, and KKW Beauty line, as well as multiple endorsements, investments, and starring on the long-running Keeping Up With the Kardashians reality TV franchise. But all of that is possible only with meticulous planning, and that strategy is evident even in the tycoon's daily schedule. 

According to Harper's Bazaar, Kardashian rises at 6 a.m. and is outside for a run on a local horse trail or inside on her treadmill by 6:15. She aims to have breakfast ready for herself and any number of her other immediate family members by the end of her hour-long workout session (which also includes focusing on her abs and legs). "I'll usually have scrambled eggs or oatmeal, or a protein shake with fruit," she said.

After some morning time with the kids, it's time for a 9 a.m., hour-long bath, and, if she's taping something that day, she's ready for her hair and makeup team to get her ready. That process takes an hour and a half, and Kardashian uses the time to respond to emails, video-chat with her kids or her nieces and nephews, or engage in the ongoing text-chain with her famous sisters. "I can't live without talking to my family," the star said. "I'm obsessed with them." Filming, or business meetings, then commence at noon.

The late Hunter S. Thompson was an iconic writer who lived life in a "gonzo" style similar to that depicted in his works, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. According to E. Jean Carroll's biography, Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson (via Boss Hunting), the man kept a meticulous schedule of drug-taking and writing. 

Something of a night owl, Thompson greeted the day at 3 p.m. — and with some blended scotch whiskey and cigarettes, as he read his favorite daily newspapers. Just before four, he'd take his first dose of cocaine, followed by another scotch, a cup of coffee, cocaine, and then a glass of orange juice. Between 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m., Thompson administered cocaine three or four more times, along with some cigarettes, coffee, and scotch, only to smoke some marijuana "to take the edge off the day." Around 7 p.m., he'd head to his favorite bar in his hometown of Aspen, Colo., the Woody Creek Tavern, for a large meal that included a taco salad, coleslaw, onion rings, a fritter, carrot cake, ice cream, margaritas, beer, and scotch. 

Back home by nine, Thompson would help himself to more cocaine, acid, alcohol, and marijuana, and was "ready to write" by midnight. Then he'd work all night, bolstering himself with more drugs, booze, coffee, and a grapefruit. At daybreak, he'd cool down with champagne, ice cream bars, and fettuccine alfredo, before going to bed just after 8 a.m. with the assistance of sleeping pills.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse and mental health, please contact SAMHSA's 24-hour National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Martha Stewart personally directs so many projects — a magazine, multiple TV shows, a website, and books — that to do it all means she couldn't sleep much even if she were so inclined. According to The New York Times, Stewart needs only about four hours a night. She's out of bed around 5 a.m., with Harper's Bazaar reporting that the first things Stewart does is take her dogs "out into the courtyard" of her working farm in Bedford, N.Y., and then check emails and see that pre-written and pre-scheduled blog posts have gone live. 

After a walk through her extensive network of greenhouses and gardens, which house hundreds of plants, Stewart meets her trainer at 6:30 a.m. for a regimen of "aerobic exercise — maybe a mile and a half on the treadmill or StairMaster — then weights, stretching, a little yoga." Breakfast comes at 7:30: a green drink composed primarily of vegetables grown on her property. At 8 a.m., Stewart is driven into her offices in New York City, and she uses the hour-long trip to read newspapers and magazines, and when she gets to the office at 9 a.m., she spends 90 minutes "responding to several hundred emails" before a daily operations meeting with her executive board. 

The rest of the working day is spent shooting scenes for TV shows and attending more meetings, and then it's back home for an elaborate dinner around 6:30 p.m. Stewart then spends the rest of the evening writing memos and "switching between" the late-night TV talk shows.

Thomas Edison, the world famous inventor and patent wielder of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reprogrammed the human internal clock. According to Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, he popularized electric, artificial light, which — because nighttime no longer meant the end of the day — reduced the average amount people sleep each night. Personally, per James Maas' Power Sleep, Edison thought sleeping all night was pointless, a habit that was "a heritage from our cave days" that humanity ought to have outgrown, and he held great disdain for sleep and over-sleepers. 

"The person who sleeps eight or ten hours a night is never fully asleep and never fully awake," Edison once wrote in 1921 (via BrainPickings). "I never found need of more than four or five hours' sleep in the twenty-four," he added. Edison just had so much work to do, so much to accomplish, that he refused to sleep more than he felt was absolutely necessary. So while he'd only bed down for a few hours at night, he strategically placed cots for napping throughout his workspace, including in laboratories, offices, and libraries. Edison would take one or two naps during the day, apparently getting enough sleep with this setup that he could sometimes work for 72 hours straight.