Jesus the Carpenter
Hitler the Painter
Although Davy Crockett was a politician for a short while he failed at nearly everything he tried, mill operator, justice of the peace, distiller, indian fighter, wagoneer, hat maker, farmer, student, father, congressman, Alamo defender, etc.
It may have taken him from a few months to a few years to fail, but within a few years at any occupation, he went financially bankrupt, lost re-election, gave up, or got kicked out of whereever he was at.
Then there are the ones who maintained a “real” job while pursuing their muses, people who make me laugh when young artists want government subsidies while they pursue theirs:
Wallace Stevens - My favorite American poet, lawyer, and VP of Hartford Insurance
William Carlos Williams - Great (or annoying) American poet and pediatrician
TS Eliot - Ex-pat poet, teacher, bank clerk (actually, I have been led to understand his position was more as a lower-level officer with Lloyd’s foreign and colonial department), and publishing company director
[sacreligious aside]
If Jesus was God, why didn’t he have a better reputation as a carpenter? “That Jesus–what he can do with just a little bit of wood is miraculous! He took one two-by-four and four nails and built a whole house!”
[/aside]
You never watched “Thine Olde Hovel”? 
Don’t forget Charles Ives, who ran an insurance business while composing music — very weird patriotic Yankee music — in his spare time. He did his composing in the first two decades of the 20th century, but didn’t expect anyone to actually listen to the radical new sounds he was coming up with. He quit composing and forgot about it for many years.
Then in the 1950s, when he was an old man, shortly before he died, the music world discovered his long-forgotten compositions and suddenly Ives was a celebrity. Turns out he had—single-handedly and in isolation—discovered most of the innovations of 20th-century avant-garde composition before anyone else did.
Rabbi Akiva was an ignoramus until age 40, earning his living as a shepherd.
He then studied Torah for 24 years and eventually because one the greatest Torah scholars of the Mishnaic period, at one point having over 24000 students learning from him.
Thanks! I was trying to remember him. Ah, insurance–the NEA of the real world!
Then there was Alexander Calder, who started out, if the technical wonderfulness of his designs didn’t make it obvious, in engineering. Tempermental artist? Nope! “My way or the highway?” Not a chance! He made models of his designs and built them to the size and colors his customers wanted, just like he had been taught to in industry.
He’s my hero.
Julia Child was in the CIA during WWII.
Julio Iglesias was a professional football (soccer) goal keeper, he broke a bone (a misfortune) and picked on singing (a tragedy) 
What about Jimmy Dean?Guessing young people today know him only as a sausage maker (or lends his name to it),but he had some kind of a career as a country/western singer/humorist with his own TV show for awhile.
For all I know he may still play the Branson,Mo.type circuit.So maybe,like Paul Newman, he’s a switch hitter.And IMO,his breakfast sausage is as good as Newman’s sauces/whatevers
Actually, Julia Child was in the Office of Strategic Services, the WWII predecessor to the CIA. Among other things, she helped create a shark repellent
Lots of famous people did good work as citizen soldiers. A couple of notables I don’t see on that page: Ted Williams, who was future astronaut John Glenn’s wingman in Korea; actor (and another Marine) Sterling Hayden was a master mariner who purportedly commanded a flotilla in the Mediterranean for the OSS in WWII.
Come to think of it, the Director of the OSS, “Wild Bill” Donovan, was a lawyer who included Winston Churchill among his interwar clients.
Eddie Rickenbacker was a race car driver before the First World War, but that’s probably not much of a reach. Chariman of the Board of Eastern Airlines might be, though.
One of the most interesting career changers has to be Leo Szilard, a brilliant physicist who drafted the letter to Franklin Roosevelt (which Albert Einstein signed) which suggested the possibility of an atomic bomb and which led to the Manhattan Project. Szilard ditched the program after the war to become a biologist, temporarily arrested his cancer by designing his own radiation therapy program, and became a Fellow of the Salk Institute.
I was under the impression that he was also a gynaecologist (a profession suiting a lady-killer like him :rolleyes: ), but when I checked it out I found that I was mistaken. His father was, though, and he himself studied law.
Wasn’t Pope John Paul II a football goalkeeper at home in Poland?
From this site: