Maybe Brad Pitt should play Sen. Barack Obama in the movies – after all, they’re ninth cousins.
Their mutual eighth great-grandfather, Edwin Hickman, 1690-1769, is responsible for starting the family line that begat Pitt and Obama – born just two years apart nearly 200 years later.
“If it’s true, I consider it great company,” Pitt told The Post after being informed of his new relation.
“Kevin Bacon’s got nothing on [Obama] in the ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ department,” says Megan Smolenyak, chief family historian of Ancestry.com, a genealogy Web site that turned up loads of connections for The Post.
Obama is related to Vice President Dick Cheney through a 17th-century descendant, as well as President Bush, who has his own share of fascinating family connections.
In addition to John Kerry, Marilyn Monroe and Princess Di and half a dozen ex-presidents, Bush is related to Pocahontas’ living relatives.
Ancestry.com employs newly released and archived census, immigration, military and birth and death records. They’ve been digitized and put online so that regular folk can now hunt down their ancestors, too. A basic search on the Web site costs nothing, but more advanced searches start at $19.
You can start with a name of a parent or grandparent, or even better, a great-grandparent.
More detail, like knowing your grandfather was a bricklayer or the year that a great-grandmother emigrated, can make a big difference, Smolenyak said.
Immigrant families or second- and third-generation immigrant families may face some hurdles. Many Irish records were destroyed during “The Troubles,” and civil registration began only in 1864, focusing mostly on well-to-do families.
Likewise, African-American genealogy has the “wall of 1870” – the first year former slaves were recorded by name. Prior to that, there’s little information.
Also related, according to ancestry.com, are:
* George W. Bush to Wild Bill Hickock, Benedict Arnold, Dan Quayle and Gerald Ford.
* Clint Eastwood to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
* Richard Nixon to James Dean and Johnny Carson.
* Drew Barrymore to Shirley Temple.
* Humphrey Bogart to Audrey Hepburn.
* Truman Capote to Tennessee Williams.
* Susan B. Anthony to Emily Dickinson.
gotis@nypost.com