5 famous people who claimed they saw UFOs

Humankind has always harbored a deep curiosity about life outside of the Blue Planet. While NASA has been actively scouring space to detect signs of alien life, time and again, Earthlings have reported witnessing unidentified objects in our very skies. Although the topic of alien life has received fresh attention in the aftermath of the Pentagon's declassification of the 'UFO files', there had been highly publicized claims of UFO encounters by high-profile celebrities before.

This is a stock illustration of an alien walking through a forest near a crashed UFO.

UFO expert Timothy Green Beckley compiled his interactions with celebrities on the topic of UFOs in his 2015 book, ‘Shirley MacLaine Meets the Pleiadians: Plus - The Amazing Flying Saucer Experiences of Celebrities, Rock Stars and the Rich and Famous.’ Among all the other instances, Beckley described how the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali had narrated to him his experience of witnessing two UFOs over the New York City sky. According to Beckley, Ali was completing his daily run just before dawn when he saw a bright light in the sky. Ali also explained to Beckley that the light appeared to be hanging by an invisible thread. “At first I thought it was a beacon projected from a helicopter. But moments later a similar object passed in front of us,” Beckley quoted Ali.

The chapter also mentions that Ali confessed this was not his only account of spotting a UFO. ‘The Greatest’ claimed to have witnessed 16 UFO sightings. The author quoted Ali in the book, “The closest one happened when a cigar-shaped ship hovered briefly over a car I was a passenger in one night driving north on the New Jersey Turnpike. What a sight that was. We could see the shadow made by the UFO as it passed over the pavement of the road in the light of the full moon.” Beckley also added that Ali claimed that these unidentified objects had been "watching" him for some time.

The image shows Muhammad Ali launching his autobiography ‘The Greatest: My Own Story’ at a presser on March 10, 1976.

‘Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2’ star Kurt Russell confessed to encountering the ‘Phoenix Lights.’ In a 2017 BBC interview, the actor recalled flying his partner Goldie Hawn’s son, Oliver Hudson, to meet his girlfriend on March 13, 1997. It was during this time that the actor, along with Hudson, saw lights in a triangular formation hovering over Phoenix. Russell said, “I saw six lights over the airport in an absolute uniform, in a ‘v’ shape, and … I was just looking at them.” Immediately after the sighting, Hudson urged Russell to report the incident. Sadly, air traffic control claimed that they did not have anything on their radar. However, thousands of people in the same area also reported seeing the lights between 7:30 PM and 10:30 PM. Official investigations later claimed that the sightings were tied to a training exercise involving A-10 Thunderbolt jets.

The image shows Kurt Russell at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival on June 16, 2026.

In a 2015 interview with ‘This Morning’ on the UK’s ITV, Nick Jonas discussed his experience of encountering a suspected UFO. The musician stated that he spotted as many as three flying saucers in the sky from his backyard in Los Angeles back when he was 14-15 years old. He had his friend with him who also witnessed the unexplained objects in the sky. Jonas said, “I looked at my friend and said, ‘Are you seeing this or am I losing my mind?' He was seeing the same thing. Then I went online and looked, and there were three identical sightings, two weeks before.”

The image shows Nick Jonas interacting with the ‘Power Ballad’s cast and director on May 18, 2026.

Designer Rick Owens and Miley Cyrus had a chat for Interview Magazine back in 2020. Among other things, the topic of extraterrestrial life also came up for discussion. This is when Cyrus opened up about her bizarre experience. The musician claimed to have been chased down by "some sort of UFO" near San Bernardino. While she joked that the experience might be because of "weed wax" she bought from someone in a van, Cyrus was convinced that what she saw was real. “But the best way to describe it is a flying snowplow. It had this big plow in the front of it and was glowing yellow. I did see it flying, and my friend saw it, too. There were a couple of other cars on the road, and they also stopped to look, so I think what I saw was real,” Cyrus said. She also claimed to have made eye contact with a being sitting inside the object.

The image shows Miley Cyrus in Los Angeles, California, on May 22, 2026.

Back on August 23, 1974, John Lennon claimed to have come across an unidentified flying object in the sky. His former girlfriend May Pang told The Beatles Story in 2023 that Lennon had gone out to the balcony of his New York City apartment to smoke a cigarette, when he was shocked to see a dark, circular object hovering over the sky. The singer noticed that the object had a red light on the top while the rim consisted of white pulsating lights. Shocked, a naked Lennon called on Pang to confirm what he was seeing, which she did. Later, Pang confirmed seeing "the large, circular object" and said that it emitted no noise. "I started yelling it’s a UFO,” she later wrote.

The image shows John Lennon at the Times Square recording studio back in August 1980.