Vin Diesel, Drew Barrymore, Kristen Bell, and more stars love to relax by playing board games and video games with friends and family.
Los Angeles may be filled with wild parties and red carpet premieres — but it turns out that celebrities love a wholesome game night just as much as everyone else. Quite a few stars have admitted that they love spending their evenings rolling the dice and strategizing their next move. Whether they’re playing Chutes and Ladders or Settlers of Catan, these celebs can’t resist a night of friendly competition and family fun.
Find out which stars love playing games…
Vin Diesel
Vin Diesel has played Dungeons & Dragons with friends for almost four decades and has been very open about his love of the game. In fact, he actually wrote the foreword for 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons. Vin says D&D even influenced his career as an actor, and long before he was working in Hollywood, he enjoyed getting into character whenever he was playing. He even based a lot of his movie, The Last Witch Hunter, on the game.
“If you would’ve told that 17-year-old kid playing Dungeons & Dragons that one day that piece of graph paper with chicken scratch on it and a really pathetic portrait of a — take your pick, a ranger or a magic user or whatever — was going to have a movie like this made, I would’ve thought you were crazy. It’s kind of crazy. It’s kind of insane,” he told ScreenRant.
Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore loves playing board games, especially with her two daughters, Olive and Frankie. On game nights, Drew says the family love a game of Life as well as some other games meant for a younger audience like Operation and Chutes and Ladders.
“I’ve been playing Life with the girls, I love that game,” Drew shared with Apartment Therapy. “We also do Operation, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, and a lot of cards. But our favorite game is Catopoly, and Olive seriously takes me down.”
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Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard
Kristen Bell and her husband Dax Shepard are big fans of gaming, particularly Settlers of Catan. The couple have shared many social media posts dedicated to their love of gaming, including a photo of the pair playing Settlers of Catan after attending the Golden Globes instead of going to an after party. They’ve taken their passion of gaming to the small screen too as the hosts of their short-lived show, Family Game Fight.
Kate Hudson
Kate Hudson has been known to host game nights with her famous friends, with major stars like Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio in attendance. She once shared that Mafia is a favorite for game night — but admits she can get a little bit competitive. In fact, she says her competitive nature has broken up most of her relationships. In an interview with her brother Oliver, he revealed that he doesn’t go to game nights anymore because Kate always accuses him of cheating and it can get too intense.
“She’s the one who is screaming at game nights and stuff. I mean, I’m like, ‘Kate, it’s a game night, we’re supposed to have a good time,’” Oliver said on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
Joe Manganiello
Joe Manganiello is another big fan of Dungeons & Dragons and plays with a group of his celebrity pals, including Game of Thrones co-creator D.B. Weiss and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. He’s so devoted to the game that he actually created a D&D-inspired clothing line, works as a consultant for the game’s publisher Wizards of the Coast and has a room in his house decked out for game nights.
Vince Vaughn
Vince Vaughn is also a member of Joe Manganiello’s D&D campaign. He hadn’t played since he was a kid, but when Tom Morello started playing with the group, he got curious. Eventually, Tom began to recruit him to join — and he couldn’t say no.
“In an interview, [Tom] had talked about playing Dungeons & Dragons and that this group, this mysterious group, that plays in Hollywood had reached out to him to go play,” Vince told Variety. “And at first, I said, ‘That kind of seems a little crazy. Are you actually going to go do it?’ And then Tom did, and he came back and said he had a blast and it was a lot of fun. We were hanging out, and he was kind of luring me in. I didn’t really realize it, but he was kind of giving me books and talking to me, like, ‘I think you should check this out.’”
Darren Criss
Darren Criss admits that he’s a big fan of playing chess, but when he’s with a larger group of friends, they all like playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf. The fast-paced game requires players to determine who among them is secretly a werewolf by using their special abilities to uncover clues about everyone’s true identity.
“It’s really popular in my group of friends and that’s something you can bring around everywhere we go,” Criss told Apartment Therapy.
Busy Philipps
Busy Philipps grew up playing board games with her family, and she’s now passed that love of gaming down to her two children, Birdie and Cricket. In particular, Busy says they all enjoy playing Sorry together.
“We have a lot of games the girls love. Sorry is a favorite, and when I was a kid my sister and I loved it,” Philipps shared with Apartment Therapy.
Jonathan Scott
Jonathan Scott says his favorite board game of all time is Scrabble, and he regularly beats his family during their game nights. In fact, during one of their recent game nights, he beat all the other players’ scores by over double.
“I will point out that I happened to destroy my whole family at Scrabble the other night,” Jonathan told Apartment Therapy. “Not only did I go out with all my letters, which got me an additional 50 points, but I also doubled the next closest score… just saying.”
Henry Cavill
Henry Cavill has been a longtime fan of playing the tabletop game Warhammer. In fact, he’s played Total War: Warhammer 2 six times, as six different races. He also spent much of his spare time during the pandemic painting Warhammer miniatures.
“One of my almost lifelong hobbies, that I’ve been following but not actively doing, is this. A company called Games Workshop…or plastic crack as ‘we’ call it. Genuinely can’t get enough of the lore they have built over the decades. They have been some of my most enthused reads! If you were in denial about me being a geek before, you can’t hide from it now,” Henry wrote on Instagram.
Questlove
Questlove is another celeb who loves to host a game night, offering up games like Scrabble, Monopoly and Speak Out. He’s always sure to share photos from the event too, revealing that major stars like Chrissy Teigen, Megan Thee Stallion, Tyler the Creator, Weird Al Yankovic and J.J. Abrams have all been in attendance. Taylor Swift has even stopped by his game nights and Questlove says she’s a fan of Uno.
“[Uno] shows me who a person is in a matter of minutes,” he said on an episode of Hot Ones. “Taylor actually, when she first played Uno with us, she took it to levels of excitement that I didn’t know one could do in an Uno game.”
