As a start, I’m just going to remind myself what our discussion revolved around… ah yes… what is meant by intelligence. Otherwise I’ve found that often a discussion goes off on tangents, equally important, but different to the original topic 
Thus, in order that I don’t go offtopic…
So, I would still say that the ordinary use of the word signifies either “cognitive tricks” (non-profound thoughts that appear immediately impressive to a lay observer such as myself) or is inapproriately used as a synonym for “successful”. In my books, I find neither use to be consistent with my intuitive understanding of the word intelligent, which I’ll get to in a bit. That’s not to say that that ordinary use of the word is illegitimate for anyone else using it. If that’s what it means to them and they are happy to use it in that sense, good for them.
But, to get onto your understanding of the word. I don’t want to dispute the concept of “pattern recognition” as the real “idea” and “source” of intelligence. However, I do find its use here problematic. Firstly, your argument is simply a hypothesis (and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s how we solve problems), rather than a solid or rigorous or known theory.
What is to say that the actors you have mentioned share a similar synaptic make-up in the brain that allows them to excel in their fields, which is the tapestry to which you have given the name “pattern recognition”. Because, if you think about your idea for a moment, that is essentially what your argument must fundamentally get to. As far as I know the field, and it isn’t very deeply, we don’t have a good knowledge of these things (although with the entry of big corporates into the field, such as Google and that London-based neuro outfit they bought, there might be more progress on this over the next decades).
So, you are implicitly staking the claim that the artist’s prowess in creating a pleasing painting is essentially due to the same brain wiring that allows a mathematician to solve the Poincare conjecture. This could indeed be so, but my point is simply that that is advancing a hypothesis that can, at best, guide further investigation. The way that you present the argument, it would tend to sound like a rigorous theory, when we are very far from that, and which would require a long time and great effort to approach.
Going even farther along the track, let’s say that there were indeed similarities in the brain across people that are generally recognized as successful in their field. Perhaps they have a high density of connections. And we thus conclude they are intelligent. And, so what? That artist that creates pleasant paintings – if his neuron density is an inevitable outcome of thousands of hours of painting, do we care? What is the real thing we are trying to uncover here?
As to my own understanding of the word, as I have mentioned previously, I take it to signify someone who is able to have insights into either the fundamental workings of physical or social systems that are entirely novel or, at worst but more commonly, not widely known or shared (I’m not talking like a handful of people here, but nonetheless a very modest proportion of the general population) but ultimately correct. Now, could this be due to some particular / prototypical wiring of the brain that, if I were to have a full dataset, I would see as much in Einstein as in Picasso? Perhaps. But who knows. It might turn out not to be so, and actually it wouldn’t matter from my take. They exhibit this ability for insight so to me they are “intelligent”. It might not be due to anything like “pattern recognition”, were that even to exist as some discrete, measurable and meaningful idea.
If you were to ask me who might fit the mould that I’m drawing here, I could mention someone like Chomsky, not only for his linguistic work (which is a fascinating field in itself) but also for his few insights into political and social structure. That is what interests me, because I am personally not too impressed by a “pattern recognition” if it takes the form of quickly recognizing patterns in stock charts in a manner that would inevitably be absorbed by anyone munching away at the same feed for long enough.
The interesting question for me is whether, for someone like a Chomsky (or Gauss, or Newton, or you name it), this outcome was predetermined due to some particular brain wiring coded in the genes or whether it was due to the fact that he was exposed to an intellectually stimulating environment from a young age, or something else entirely.
Also, slightly off-topic, and to nitpick, but in good faith – whenever I read an appeal to authority argument (" Pattern recognition is the most agreed upon definition of intelligence, by high IQ people") I am, I think understandably, always a bit sceptical about the quality of the arguments that are to follow. I think your hypothesis can be voiced without this garish flaw 
