Also, add Clint Eastwood to the list of licensed helicopter pilots, although at 91, I don’t know how much flying he still actually does.
https://www.aerotime.aero/23092-clint-eastwood-celebrity-pilot
Gary Coleman had a career as a security guard and Winona Rider had a career as a shoplifter. I wonder if they ever met on the job.
Her bandmate, Jackie Fox, graduated from Harvard Law School with Barack Obama (and, for that matter, one of my HS classmates, with whom I briefly worked at Baskin-Robbins).
R.E.M. drummer emeritus Bill Berry operated a hay farm even when he was still in the band.
Actor Ken Jeong is also a licensed M.D.
I had never heard of the deathcore band Chelsea Grin until the guitarist announced that he was leaving the band to attend medical school.
Let me note that in the U.K. the chancellor of a university is mostly a ceremonial position. Also, a lot of the cases mentioned here are not ones where the performer actually held a second occupation but ones where they occasionally do something very well as a hobby. Many of them are just cases where a person got a degree in something which they didn’t use before turning to performing.
I had meant to note that, as well – not that being a chancellor isn’t an honor and a responsibility, but my understanding is that it’s not necessarily one in which one’s academic or scholarly skills are heavily used.
That said, May does appear regularly on British TV shows as a presenter or commentator on scientific topics. Also, he has turned his interest in stereophotography (an early form of 3-D photography) into a business – he runs a company which sells stereo viewers and books, and has been recognized as a leading contributor to the field.
Huh. I could have sworn I sas an article in Flying years ago about him flying a Qantas 747 scheduled flight across the ocean as some kind of publicity thing. Maybe ge just deadheaded and they played it up or something.
Okay, another celebrity pilot who made it a second career: Jimmy Stewart. He was already a Hollywood star when he volunteered to fly bombers in WWII (as did Clark Gable). What makes Stewart diffrrent is that after the war he remained active in the Air National Guard, where he rose to the rank of Brigadier General while slso being a star in Hollywood. Such was his humility that most people didn’t even know it.
Stewart started the war as a private in the Army Air Corps at age 33. He was too old to join the aviation cadet program, but he was already a licensed commercial pilot with a college degree, so he was eventually made a 2nd lieutenant.
He could have stayed out of action making training and war propaganda films like John Wayne, but he demanded to be sent to Europe, where he flew B-24 Liberator missions. His actions in the war won him the Distinguished Flying Cross the French Croix de Guerre, and the Army Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. He was promoted to full Colonel in 1945, rising from private to colonel faster than almost anyone in history - and totally on his merits, and not because he was a celebrity.
After the war he flew for,the Stategic Air Command in the 195’s and 1960’s qualifying on the B-47 and the B-52. This was during the height of his fame when he made movies such as… Strategic Air Command. I guess he didn’t need much research for the role.
He retired only when he hit the mandatory retirement age of 60, by which time he even flew a bombing run as an observer in Vietnam in a B-52. He retired with the rank of Brigadier General, the highest rank any Hollywood actor ever reached. In 1985 he was given a permanent promotion to Major General. He also received the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal.
I take back what I said about Tom Cruise, Jimmy Stewart is Hollywood’s greatest pilot.
Travolta has donated the 707 (a shorter model that was a Qantas custom design) to the HARS Aviation Museum. However, it is currently stored in the USA and its delivery flight to the Australian museum is delayed pending the raising of all necessary funds / the completion of some work on the airframe. The last news that I have read is that it is being worked on to bring it back to airworthy condition for the delivery.
Speaking of pilots, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands has worked part-time as a KLM co-pilot as a hobby.
Yeah, I always thought it was a bit amusing that when he filmed Strategic Air Command, he personally was higher ranking than his character. My father and I also wondered whether he just wore his own uniforms and insignia, or if they were costume department uniforms and he kept them afterward.(officers buy their own uniforms).
As for interesting second careers, Dan Spitz, lead guitarist of the 80s metal band Anthrax is now one of the world’s foremost mechanical watchmakers.
Spitz Watches – Passion Fine Jewelry, Inc.
Dan Spitz, From Heavy Metal To High-End Watchmaking (monochrome-watches.com)
Watches and Music: A Harmonious Match - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
I think there were some pretty ambiguous / vague press releases at the time. John Travolta doesn’t have a commercial licence though, so wouldn’t be able to be a pilot on a commercial flight, he would also need an Australian licence to fly an Australian registered plane. The second point is why he won’t be able to fly his old B707 to Australia when it eventually makes the trip. Something he was originally planning to do.
After a successful career of making watercolor postcards, Adolf Hitler eventually became Chancellor of Germany
I don’t think it’s quite right to say that Full Metal Jacket kicked off his acting career; he did have a few on-screen roles before that.
Sandra Bullock restores architectually significant properties and then rents or leases them.
In the late '90s, Daniel Day-Lewis took a three-year hiatus from acting, during which he spent time as a woodworker, and as an apprentice shoemaker in Italy.
Karen Allen (Boon’s girlfriend Katy in Animal House, and Marion Ravenwood in two Indiana Jones films, among other roles) continues to act in movies and on TV. But since 2003, she has also run Karen Allen Fiber Arts, a women’s clothing store in Great Barrington, MA. She did study textile and clothing design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York when she was younger, and after opening her store, continued to act; and to design, knit, and sell her clothing creations.
I recently read that model/actress Cristina Raines (Nashville, The Sentinel, etc) quit acting and became an RN, specializing oin kidney dialysis patients.
$105,000? Hope those people are getting insurance on them.
One of the Bay City Rollers later became an RN, and then got in some trouble for fraternizing with teenage boys.
Actress Heddy Lamarr was an inventor who, along with composer George Antheil invented a radio torpedo guidance system for Allied torpedoes, which used spread spectrum and frequency hopping. The technology is used in wifi and Bluetooth now.
Similarly, Julia Child served in the OSS during World War II, during which time she helped invent shark repellent.