Henry Louis Gates Jr. has helped celebrities uncover fascinating aspects of their ancestry, oftentimes discovering things they never knew before. This week on his PBS series "Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates," he will delve into the genealogy of actors Robert Downey Jr. and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Both Downey and Gyllenhaal are textbook examples of the many
Americans with a rich mixture of European ancestry. Gates and his team
dig into their deep American roots in early colonial communities, and
meet their Eastern European Jewish ancestors, who share almost identical
migration stories from the Mayflower to Ellis Island.