Peter Weller has a Master’s degree in Roman and Renaissance Art and working on a PhD.
In 1974 Ken Dryden returned to the nets for the Montreal Canadiens after his law articling.
Harold Gould, a successful character actor, has a Ph.D. in theater.
Frank Ryan, the QB for the Cleveland Browns in the 1960s, had a Ph.D. in Mathematics.
Moe Berg, a backup catcher in the 1930s, held a law degree (and worked as a spy for the US government).
Ashley Judd should be near finishing a Master’s in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Tom and Ray Magliozzi (Click and Clack of NPR’s “Car Talk”) are both graduates of MIT. I’m not sure whether Ray has any advanced degrees but Tom has a PhD in Marketing.
Tom Scholz of the band Boston has a Master’s in mechanical engineering from MIT.
Not sure if you want to consider only those with non-drama degrees, because Yale University has a very good drama program, only offering master’s degrees. Among its graduates are Patricia Clarkson, Charles Dutton, Henry Winkler, Paul Giamatti, Meryl Streep, Liev Shreiber, Chris Noth, Paul Newman, and a bunch of others. So all of those have at least master’s degrees.
Sheila James, my childhood crush as the brainy Zelda on Dobie Gillis, graduated first in her class at Harvard Law. Isaac Lidsky of Saved By the Bell also graduated from there.
Other actors with law degees include William Sanderson, Taylor Simpson-Wood, Josh Saviano, and Fred Thompson.
Charlie Korsmo, who was the kid in Dick Tracy and was also in Can’t Hardly Wait, received a law degree from Yale Law School, as did Ben Stein and Pat Robertson.
James Franco has an MFA in Writing, and will be starting on his PhD in English at Yale.
Graham Chapman had a medical degree. In fact, I believe all of the members of Monty Python have degrees.
there has got to be an obscene joke in there somewhere:eek:
I learned this a couple months ago when he did a lecture at UNC (where I’m a musicology student). There’s a huge collection of American music here that used to be at UCLA, and he worked on cataloging it back in the 60s.
Rachel Maddow has a PhD in politics from Oxford.
Richard Vranch, the pianist on the original British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, has a PhD in physics from Cambridge.
Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Wyatt in “Weird Science,” has a PhD in English and teaches at Cal State Long Beach.
Something I forgot about earlier - as long as we’re including athletes, we should mention pro football Hall of Famer Alan Page, who has a JD, and has been an Associate Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court since 1992. He actually selected the panel which heard the Franken-Coleman election dispute.
Figure skater Debi Thomas (silver medalist at the 1988 Calgary Olympics) is now an orthopedic surgeon.
Former NFL QB Pat Haden is a Rhodes Scholar and also holds a J.D. from Loyola Law School.
His friend, sometime roommate (starting out and twixt divorces) fellow Python John Cleese was a law school graduate, and after the show Terry Jones attended and sometimes lectures in medieval history at Cambridge.
Another music guy, Dexter Holland of The Offspring has a Masters in Molecular Biology from USC and abandoned progress on his PhD after the band hit it big.
Do cartoonists count as celebrities? Stephan Pastis (creator of Pearls Before Swine) was a lawyer before he became a syndicated cartoonist.
Dionne Warwick has a masters in Ed.
I am pretty sure that Bill Cosby’s degree is only an honorary one, not an actual degree.