Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park, is also an actor and a musician, with a fine band called DVDA. He co-wrote almost all the music for South Park (the show and movie), Team America, Orgazmo, and Cannibal: The Musical (wherein he played the lead parts in the latter two).
William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman back around 1940, is also known as the creator of the polygraph (lie detector). Surprisingly, the original polygraph has nothing to do with a sexy Amazon tying people up with a magic lasso and forcing them to tell the truth.
William Shatner’s new album, Has Been, is damn good. Seriously.
OK… maybe flying airliners is not the big deal that I imagine it to be. Although I still wouldn’t particularly want to hear “this is William Shatner” over the intercom.
There are tons and tons of musicians that are actors on the side, or actors that are musicians on the side, but I don’t think that’s what the OP is after.
I am sure I remember reading that a former member of the Kinks – either Peter Quaife or Mick Avory – left rock and roll and became an astronomer. However, a quick Google didn’t turn up anything relevant on the subject.
It did, however, reveal that Brian May of Queen fame had been pursuing a Ph.D. in astronomy when he decided he had a more promising future in rock and roll. He has apparently since been awarded an honorary degree.
Ziegfeld Girl, Broadway star and movie actress Justine Johnstone later became a medical pathologist and in 1940 was cited as one of the scientists behind the five-day cure for syphilis.
Movie star William Haines later became one of the country’s foremost interior designers.
Brian May is a good one. He is a regular guest on the BBC’s rather quaint monthly astronomy show The Sky At Night. I love that show, and I especially love the way that they never mention that he was Queen’s lead guitarist. He’s just Brian May, honorary PhD, astronomy fan.
That might very well be true, but Marsters definitely isn’t a committed, full-on band member anymore.
It looks like some of the ex-Ghost of the Robot members have decided to soldier on as Gods of the Radio. I guess they just couldn’t imagine giving up the GotR abbreviation!
Monty Python’s Terry Jones is something of an an expert on Medieval history, having written several books on the subject, and also writes op-eds for The Observer and The Guardian.
Iain Dowie, former Northern Ireland international footballer and currently manager of Crystal Palace (in England’s top division), was a qualified aeronautical engineer for British Aerospace.
No, it is a big deal. To do so, you have to have a commercial pilot’s license, an Airline Transport Rating (which requires an IFR, 1500 hours of flying time, multi-engine ratings, and all kinds of other requirements). Then once you have the ratings, you have to get a type rating in every big plane you fly, a process which is very difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
Getting to the point where you can fly an airliner means you have a serious commitment to aviation. Travolta has been flying since he was 16 years old, and has thousands and thousands of hours. He’s simply an outstanding pilot. Once he had a total electrical failure in a Gulfstream jet while in instrument conditions. He found a hole in the clouds and spiralled that jet under the cloud layer and made an uneventful landing at a small airport. This is a pretty impressive feat in a Gulfstream with most of his instruments and his radios dead.
And the equally late Helen Gahagen Douglas. Also George Murphy. And the woman who played Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies (whose name escapes me and I’m far too lazy to look it up) ran for Congress, unsuccessfully (Buddy Ebson recorded radio ads for her opponent).
> Gina Davis was into archery and tried out for the Olympics.
To flesh this out a little, Geena Davis never even tried archery until she was in her late thirties. In general, as I understand, archers are at the top of their form in their twenties and thirties. At 43, she came very close to making the U.S. women’s Olympic team in archery.
Sting had a career as a school teacher before he was famous. Also former teachers: the lead singers for Men At Work and Midnight Oil, whose names completely escape me right now.
