According to her Wikipedia page, she got married, raised 3 kids, and started an acting school.
An impulse, not a lifetime career move necessarily. I’ve had it myself, and know many others. It’s a big viewpoint shift, but being a student of zen virtually never pays the rent.
Likewise, Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson has also participated in fencing, and came close to qualifying for the Olympic Trials some years back, and is a licensed commercial pilot. The band has its own plane, which he flies.
What’s up with sharing razor blades in prison? Just what it sounds like or slang?
You forgot test pilot.
We have a lake house in Minnesota so used to hear about him all the time. I thought he had retired years ago, but it looks like he just continued on his path of being a weirdo. Russian tv? OAN wasn’t hiring?
One of my daughter’s besties spent many years at uni, firstly a degree in film studies and finally earned herself a doctorate in gender studies. Late last year, she decided to train to as a cabin crew member for a major international airline. Now she is flying high!!
Huh. Coinkidinkally, I have a friend who left a PhD program in computer science to become a teacher and director for the American Contract Bridge League.
But yeah, almost any career transition in which one end involves college or graduate study probably doesn’t qualify as really “unusual”. People can wind up enrolled in post-secondary education programs immediately after or before doing almost any other job imaginable. Individuals I personally know in that category include not one but two (current) Buddhist monks and one (former) scuba dive instructor in Thailand.
And I’m betting one should NOT call her a “stewardess”. 
One of the mayors in my fair multi-city got a BSN for her first degree, and eventually earned a doctorate in vocal music, which she also teaches at a local university.
Oh damn no, she’d punch you right in the gob, after giving you a lecture on hegemonic sexism and all the other isms. Hahahhha.
Richard Coles was a member of the Communards band in the 1980s, an out gay campaigner when that was still controversial, became a Church of England vicar, and is now also a TV commentator/presenter on classical music, aming other things, and a novelist.
From about 1998 to 2002, I worked with a younger guy who left the military and went into private security. He was a contract security manager and consultant for a few years and then left to become a security director for a medium-sized company.
I recently had lunch with a buddy who worked with us during that period. He told me that “Eric” had become a train engineer. He had decided that he didn’t need the hassle of managing anything and he learned that some railroad company offered a 6-month (?) course to drive trains. Been doing it for a year or two and loves it.
Lots of examples exist, and I don’t really know what’s particularly unusual. I know someone who taught special education classes for two years after college and then went to a university to get a Ph.D. in philosophy. She’s now a professor of philosophy and the head of her department.
I knew a woman very well my first time in graduate school. She was getting a master’s in music performance because she played the cello. I dropped out of my first time through a Ph.D. program, which was in linguistics, after getting my master’s in it. I haven’t seen her since then. Meanwhile, I changed to another university where I started on a Ph.D. in mathematics, which is what my bachelor’s degree was in. I dropped out of that Ph.D. program too after getting my master’s in it. I also took some computer science courses because I was told that I should get another master’s in that if I wasn’t getting a Ph.D. in mathematics. I didn’t even finish a master’s in that. Recently, decades after never thinking about the woman who studied cello, I happened to look her up online. She worked as a cellist for awhile, but it became clear that she would never would be a very well paid one. She then went to graduate school in mathematics, got her Ph.D., and spent the rest of her career as a mathematics professor. I had thought of her as the least intelligent of my gang of friends at my first graduate school (who were all quite smart, I admit) and was baffled to find that she got a Ph.D. in mathematics. All of which just shows that I can’t judge people’s intelligence at all.
I know someone who got a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and photography. He then worked for two years as a wedding photographer. He got tired of that and joined the army. They trained him as an analyst. He left the army after six years. He now works for a contractor to an intelligence agency doing similar sorts of analysis.
I remember her. She seemed to be everywhere for a while. Then, she disappeared. Now, I know why.
Leonard Cohen also was a Buddhist monk for a number of years.
I used to work in a marketing department for a chain of retail stores. The previous person in my position wanted “a less stressful career”–and became an air traffic controller.
One thing that’s so common that it’s hardly worth mentioning is spending about twenty years in the U.S. military and then moving on to another job for another twenty years or so. After twenty years in the U.S. military, you’re eligible for a pension. It’s not quite enough to live on for the rest of your life, so most people after that time get another job until they’re read to retire.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Why can’t I ever avoid typing mistakes? I meant “ready to retire”.
Amidst all the success stories here, that line (my bolding) really stood out.
@Kelevra, Where’s he now? Still doing maintenance at a golf course?
I always thought the story of actor Daniel Day-Lewis was fascinating. When the producers of Gangs of New York sought him out, they found that he had retired from acting and was working as a cordwainer in Italy. He apparently became interested in the subject when he had a pair of custom shoes made in a shop, and asked the proprietor to train him.
Today I learned …
I had never seen the word “cordwainer” before, either.
There’s a woman on another website who was an RN for many years, and she left that career, as in literally walked off the job one day, in order to pursue her retirement dream, 20-plus years earlier than expected. What is that dream? Being a luthier, a maker and maintainer of lutes.