The attempts to rank Hollywood’s smartest and dumbest celebrities have been few and far between.

The Sydney Morning Herald listed some of the smart and not-so-smart attributes of the stars. Their involvement in causes appears to be taken as evidence of brains in a sign of what Australians rate highly. Their own Nicole Kidman is by turns a black-corseted vixen on the cover of a women’s magazine and a campaigner before Congress in Washington DC against women’s violence. Angelina Jolie is nowadays busier working on her global causes than her movie career, it seems.

Heart-throb George Clooney works to stop the Iraq War and prevent genocide in Darfur. Blonde stunner Sharon Stone campaigns for AIDS and travels to Israel to promote stars, the newspaper notes.

But some actors appear to be lacking in brains – or know how about world problems. Melanie Griffith, for instance, once told a reporter she had never heard of the Holocaust.

Also noted are some top academic records. David Duchovny has a PhD in English Lit from Yale. Matt Damon went to Harvard. Natalie Portman has a psychology degree from Harvard and speaks fluent Hebrew, French and Japanese.

Meanwhile, The New York Daily News has drawn up a 50 Dumbest People In Hollywood list. Stars who made the ranking included Lindsay Lohan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Charlie Sheen, Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson.