Mark Wahlberg, Ellen DeGeneres, and Chloë Sevigny can now get Canadian passports, along with millions of everyday Americans

The U.S. is home to many famous Americans who, in late December 2025, became U.S.-Canadian dual citizens when Canada updated its citizenship law.

The new law, which removed the first-generation limit to inheriting Canadian citizenship based on ancestry, doesn’t just apply to the big names: it applies to millions of everyday Americans, too.

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Let’s dive into five American celebrities who now qualify for U.S.-Canadian dual citizenship.

You may even share a distant Canadian ancestor with one of these celebrities, meaning you too qualify for Canadian citizenship.

Mark Wahlberg may be Boston born, but his mother’s side of the family is deeply Canadian. Three of his great-grandparents hail from Canada—one from Winchester, Ontario (to a French-Canadian father from St-Jérôme, Québec), and two from St. John, New Brunswick. Genealogists have even traced that French-Canadian line to Anne (Couvent) Amiot, who arrived in New France in 1635—whose descendants, through the mass emigration of nearly one million Quebecers to the US between 1840 and 1930, likely include hundreds of thousands of present-day Americans.

Ellen DeGeneres has Acadian roots, meaning she descends from the French settlers who settled in the Maritime provinces of Canada in the 1600s. She can trace her lineage to Jeanne Aucoin—the daughter Frenchman Martin Aucoin—who settled in Nova Scotia in the 1640s. Her family remained in Canada for generations until her fifth great-grandfather relocated to Louisiana in the late 1700s, giving rise to her Cajun heritage. Through Martin Aucoin, Ellen DeGeneres and Madonna are 11th cousins. Madonna descends from his other daughter Michele, who also settled in Nova Scotia.

Chloë Sevigny’s Canadian roots can be traced back to her great-great-great grandfather, Charles-Eusèbe Philias Sevigny, who has born in Ste-Pie-de-Bagot, Quebec and later moved to Massachusetts—where an estimated 10% of present-day Bay Staters have Canadian ancestry. That Québécois line stretches back further still, to Marguerite Lamain, one of the 800 Filles du Roi King Louis XIV sent to New France in the 1600s to help build the colony that would eventually become modern Québec. Millions of Americans today are descendants of the Filles du Roi.

Liza Minnelli—EGOT winner, Cabaret icon, and daughter of Judy Garland—has Québécois roots. Her paternal grandmother, Marie-Émilie Odile Lalouette dit Lebeau, was the daughter of Flavien Charles Lalouette dit Lebeau, who was born in 1849 in Saint-Benoît, Deux-Montagnes, Québec. Dit Lebeau emigrated to Chicago between 1867 and 1869 as part of the great wave of French-Canadian migration south in the 19th century.

Jack Huston, best known for his role in Boardwalk Empire, has a dual citizen ancestral pedigree, with familial links to the Rothschild and Sassoon families, plus an Oscar-winning Canadian great-grandfather, Hollywood patriarch Walter Thomas Huston, who was born in 1883 in Toronto, Ontario.

Get a Free Consultation on Applying for Proof of Canadian Citizenship

So, you might be a Canadian, eh? Here’s what you should know

Maybe you have a French-sounding last name, perhaps you have familial ties to New England, or maybe you’ve heard tales that your great grandparents spoke French in the home. These are all signs that indicate you may have an equal claim to Canadian citizenship as Mark Wahlberg or Ellen DeGeneres.

If you find just one Canadian ancestor above you in your family tree, and can obtain the official documents required to prove your descent from them, you can apply for a proof of Canadian citizenship certificate, with which you can obtain a Canadian passport.

And so can anyone in your family who descends from the same ancestor.

As a citizen on the basis of your ancestry, you don’t even need to set foot in Canada. All you need is documentation that demonstrates a continuous line of descent from a Canadian ancestor.

Nail that down, and you can be an official Canadian citizen in as little as 10 months, the time it currently takes to process such applications.

From the date of the passing of Bill C-3 in December 2025 through to January 2026’s end, Canada received over 12,000 citizenship by descent applications, thanks in large part to interest from the south.

U.S.-Canadian dual citizens enjoy the rights and privileges granted to citizens of both nations, including the right to enter and work freely in Canada.

If you obtain proof of Canadian citizenship as an American, you will not incur any tax obligations through doing so. Unlike the U.S., Canada imposes no worldwide tax on its citizens

With a Canadian citizenship certificate in hand, you can then apply for a Canadian passport—which, if not processed in 30 days or less, you’ll get for free.

Amid rising political tensions in the U.S., Canadian passports are factoring into back-up plans for many Americans.

CanadaVisa’s citizenship by descent calculator can help determine if you qualify under Canada’s new citizenship laws, in less than a minute.

Get a Free Consultation on Applying for Proof of Canadian Citizenship