Jim Nabors, who made his career as Gomer Pyle, also tried a brief stint of singing. (IIRC, I saw him do that on the Ed Sullivan [del]show[/del] shew – yeah, that long ago.) It doesn’t seem like he got much traction there, though.
He sang pretty frequently on Gomer Pyle, too. It was amazing how his singing voice, a baritone, was so different from his normally higher pitched speaking voice. Shazam, shazam!
Barbra Streisand started out as a very successful singer . . . then, a very successful actress . . . then a very successful director and producer . . . while remaining a very successful singer.
Brief singing career? He got a lot of traction as a singer, recording 28 albums, including three gold and one platinum, over a period of at least two decades.
Mick Foley, pro wrestler and standup comedian.
In 1980, Robert Redford starred in Brubaker, which made plenty of money. Later that year, Ordinary People – which he didn’t act in – hit theaters, promptly winning him both the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Director.
In 1992, Redford starred in Sneakers, which made plenty of money; and, later that year, A River Runs Through It – which, okay, he narrated – hit theaters to earn him another Golden Globe nom as a director; he then acted in Indecent Proposal in '93, before earning another Golden Globe nomination and another Oscar nomination directing Quiz Show in '94 without acting at all.
(Sure, he then started directing himself on screen, earning yet more Golden Globe nominations as both a director and an actor. And, sure, I’m glossing over just how big a movie star he was before he started directing; and also how he’d still headline a Best Picture winner even after he started directing. Still, he proved his talents as a director were completely separable from his talents as an actor.)
I’ll toss one out there that’s more obscure, yet I believe still fits the bill:
Ken Levine
Television writer, screenplays, books and so forth. Won an Emmy for his work on Cheers. Also wrote for MASH, the Simpsons and a host of other television shows. Also wrote a few movies. A successful career by any measure.
Also, a quality baseball broadcaster who has been the voice of the Baltimore Orioles, the Seattle Mariners and the San Diego Padres. I recall him with the Orioles. He had an interesting wit and it wasn’t necessarily a traditional way to approach the role. He also once appeared on The Simpsons as the broadcaster for the Springfield Isotopes.
AND…
A successful DJ for a west coast network spinning disks in the 1970s.
AND…
He has a blog that’s very successful in which he gives advice and insight into the television industry. Time magazine gave him a ‘Best 25 Blogs’ award in 2011 for his writing.
That’s a guy who’s been successful in a couple of different ways without ever really breaking through to ‘celebrity’ status.
Two separate careers in another sense: Marie Blake was an actress in the Dr. kildare series of films, retired, and had a second career years later as Blossom Rock.
My grandmother had all his records. He was a big hit with women over a certain age. His choice of material made sure he would never compete with the Beatles, but he did have a heck of a voice, even I’ll admit that.
Grandmama! She was also Jeanette MacDonald’s sister.
I offer** Larry David**. He was mainly behind the camera on Seinfeld as a writer and producer. With Curb Your Enthusiasm he is the starring actor.
Plus his various other stand up comedy, film directing and guest acting roles.
TCMF-2L
Mark Hamill never found the kind of success after Star Wars that Harrison Ford did-- or really even Carrie Fisher, who at least got a lot of supporting actress roles after. Hamill has very few credits.
However, he DID have a prolific career as a voice-over actor. He did voices for animated TV shows, a few movies, but also a number of video games. He’s the Joker in the Batman video games, including Arkham City.
Ellen DeGeneres went from stand-up, to TV acting, where she did a lot of physical comedy, to hosting a really successful talk show.
Anita Gillette isn’t really what you are asking about, but she is someone who has touched all the bases. She started on the stage in Gypsy, did Sally Bowles in the original run of Cabaret, then took a role on a soap opera. After that, she appeared on a lot of game shows, and made many one-off TV appearances. She went back to the stage for a while, and wasn’t so visible outside of New York for several years, but then got cast in a supporting role in Moonstruck, and stayed in Hollywood. She did several other movies, and started playing everybody’s mother on TV (she was Tina Fey’s mother on 30 Rock). Now she is doing a cabaret show. She did one with Penny Fuller for a while, and now, in her 70s, she’s performing solo, to fantastic reviews.
Not to mention, a lot of stars of successful shows become producers of the show for tax reasons, and then roll their profits into new shows by producing those as well-- Kelsey Grammer produced Ghost Whisperer, for example. This is what a lot of people who want a break from working do.
John Travolta first came to fame on the TV series Welcome Back Kotter, then was in hit in Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Urban Cowboy. Then he dropped off the A-list for several years before making a comeback in Pulp Fiction.
Reba McEntire has had a very successful singing career and has her own TV show. She also is an author.
Kylie Minogue first rose to international fame in daytime Australian soap opera Neighbours. She has continued to act on TV and film sporadically since.
However she switched predominantly to a music career first as an undeniably cheesy, manufactured disposable pop artist before, after becoming romantically involved with Michael Hutchance of INXS, carving out a relatively serious dance pop career that has seen her compared favourably with Madonna.
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Werner Klemperer had a pretty solid acting career even before he was Col. Clink on Hogan’s Heroes (I mean, Judgment at Nuremburg alone…). But he was also a concert violinist and spent his final decades as an in-demand orchestral conductor.
David Bowie acted in a number of movies, several of them very highly-regarded, and starred onstage in The Elephant Man, all on top of a stellar musical career.
Ed McMahon started his showbiz career as a carnival shill. HI-yoooo!
Jennifer Lopez has had an interesting career trajectory: Dancer on In Living Color, actress in Selena and finally as a recording artist (while still making the occasional film).
Lyle Lovett, in addition to his amazing musical career and a surprising number of film and TV acting credits, modeled clothing for the Johnston & Murphy catalogue a decade or so ago.
David Lynch, the acclaimed film director, drew a comic strip for alternative weekly newspapers back in the 80s. Matt Groening has a similar resume. Lynda Barry, another alt.news cartoonist, wrote a play that got produced in the early 90s.
A number of popular actors–Harry Anderson and Bill Bixby come to mind–were also respected stage magicians. Penn and Teller have acting resumes on top of their magic act.
Cyndi Lauper was an agent or representative of some sort for the stuntman The Human Fly. She used to drop by Marvel Comics’ offices to pick up his royalty check.
What was his second career?
Barry Manilow wrote advertising jingles (You deserve a break today…) while trying to make it as a songwriter. When he ran out of money to pay real singers to record demos of his songs to send to record companies, he made a demo of himself singing the songs.
When Clive Davis made an offer to release a record of his singing, Manilow replied “I’m not a singer.”