36 Famous Folks Who Could Go Pro in an Entire Second Career
Save some talent for the rest of us
![36 Famous Folks Who Could Go Pro in an Entire Second Career](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/4/3/1025643_320x180.jpg)
These celebrities either made it out of the late 20th century without consuming any lead, or they had a hero dose as a baby and turned into a friggin’ X-Man.
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![CRACKED REAL ME WITH В Bill Maher has a double major from Cornell University. After graduating from Cornell with a double major in History and English, Bill Maher confessed his comedy dreams, began performing all over NYC and quickly landed The Tonight Show.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/8/0/1025680.jpg)
![CRACKED Demetri Martin left NYU Law School for The Comedy Cellar. After turning down Harvard twice, and leaving Yale for a full scholarship to NYU Law, Martin saw the Comedy Cellar right across the street, dropped out and never looked back.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/9/1025679.jpg)
![CRACKED Ken Jeong is still a licensed physician. A doctor specializing in internal medicine by day, comedian by night, Jeong booked a slew of bit parts in TV and film before his role in Knocked Up caused him to fully transition into comedy.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/2/1025672.jpg)
![CRACKED David Duchovny was an aspiring poet at Yale. With a В.А in English from Princeton and a master's from Yale, he planned to be a poet and novelist before abandoning his Ph.D studies after booking a beer commercial.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/1/1025671.jpg)
![CRACKED Lisa Lampanelli: from Harvard to Rolling Stone to stand-up comedy. Lisa Lampanelli studied journalism at Boston College and a graduate program at Harvard. She was a copy editor at Popular Mechanics, and assisted at Rolling Stone before becoming The Queen of Mean at celebrity roasts.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/8/1025678.jpg)
![CRACKED Lisa Kudrow was following in her doctor dad's footsteps. With a Bachelor of Science in Biology, she worked at her father's medical practice for 8 years while dabbling in acting. While booking roles, she was researching cluster headaches.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/4/1025674.jpg)
![CRACKED Edward Norton consulted for the Enterprise Foundation in Japan. After studying history at Yale, he moved to Osaka, Japan to consult for his grandfather's non-profit - which helped provide affordable housing.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/3/1025673.jpg)
![CRACKED Ron Shock was a vice president of a fortune 500 company. After a stint in prison for jewel theft, he was a regional vice president of MacMillan Publishing and owned a successful computer software company before starting stand-up at 40.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/7/1025677.jpg)
![CRACKED H FOR IV. James Franco could have designed and engineered weapons. Labeled a math wiz, he interned at Lockheed Martin while still in high school. Against his parents' wishes, he began acting but later made it up to them with 4 master's degrees and a Ph.D.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/6/1025676.jpg)
![CRACKED Jerry Springer was an advisor to Robert F. Kennedy (and a mayor!) In 1968, he was a campaign advisor for RFK, then even after a prostitute related scandal, he became mayor of Cincinnati in 1977. After a failed run for Ohio governor, he got into broadcast journalism.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/5/1025675.jpg)
![CRACKED Greg Giraldo was an intellectual prodigy. After earning a Bachelor's from Columbia, he got a near-perfect score on Harvard's Law School Admission Test. Не graduated and worked as a lawyer for 8 months before quitting for stand-up.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/0/1025670.jpg)
![CRACKED Ali Wong leaned heavily into cultural diplomacy. She was an Asian-American major at the University of California who graduated summa cum laude, and studied as a Fulbright Scholar in Vietnam before ever trying stand-up.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/7/1025667.jpg)
![CRACKED Gulla A Award James Woods was almost an eye surgeon. With a reported IQ of 184, James Woods got a full scholarship to MIT, but his love of acting had him drop out one semester before graduating into his intended field of eye surgery.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/8/1025668.jpg)
![CRACKED John Krasinski taught English. At Brown, he taught English in Costa Rica, and cited Management of Industrial and Nonprofit Organizations as his favorite class before acting in a play and never looking back.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/6/1025666.jpg)
![CRACKED Lewis Black was a Yale educated playwright. With a master's in Drama from Yale, he became a playwright and artistic director of West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theater Bar in NYC. Не began stand-up by warming up crowds before plays.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/9/1025669.jpg)
![Mike Judge Creator of King of the Hill, Beavis and Butt-head, (and an entire list of other great f*cking shows and movies) Intel plays the Bass. Не is pretty good, too! Before his breakthrough with MTV, Judge quit an office job so he could play bass full-time with a blues band. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/5/1025665.jpg)
![David McCallum's acting career spans over 50 years, from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to N.C.I.S. but he's also a composer of note. You'd recognize The Edge, if you heard it, since it's been sampled NCV extensively; most notably by: DR ORE THE NEXT EPISODE FEATURING SNOOP DOSO CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/3/1025663.jpg)
![Thomas Jefferson is the father of American archeology. Не was the first person on Earth who excavated a prehistoric site to learn about its builders. Не used methods that became standard a century later. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/1/1025661.jpg)
![Michael Dorn can fly military jets. The actor, who played Worf in the Star Trek franchise, started piloting in 1988 and he has since flown many different aircraft, including a Lockheed Т-33, an F-86 Sabre, an F-16, and an F-18. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/0/1025660.jpg)
![GRACKED.COM Richard Nixon was a multi-instrumentalist. Victoria Although he never learned to read music, Nixon could skillfully play the piano, saxophone, clarinet, accordion and violin.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/2/1025662.jpg)
![36 Famous Folks Who Could Go Pro in an Entire Second Career](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/6/4/1025664.gif)
![Condoleeza Rice is an accomplished concert pianist. She performed with the Denver Symphony at age 15, and has accompanied cellist Yo Yo Ma at Washington's Constitution Hall. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/8/1025658.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Dr. Phil used to race moto- cross. Не can still pop a wheelie on a dirt bike.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/9/1025659.jpg)
![Prince has been described as a pool shark. The Purple One's personal photographer (who considered himself as a fairly decent pool player) told a story about how Prince beat him: He proceeded to basically clean the table two times in a row before I even had a chance to shoot. When I did finally have a chance, he beat the pants off me. Не was that good. And he was cocky about it, too. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/7/1025657.jpg)
![Susan Sarandon is good at ping-pong. SPiN NEW YORK She loves the sport so much that she co-founded SPiN, a chain of table tennis clubs and bars. It now has nine locations, including New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. GRAGKED COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/5/1025655.jpg)
![36 Famous Folks Who Could Go Pro in an Entire Second Career](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/4/1025654.gif)
![CRACKED.COM The late Monty Python star, Graham Chapman, was also a qualified doctor although he obviously focused more on his comedy career.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/6/1025656.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Justin Bieber can solve a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes! RUBIK'S 4LIFE Yes, probably faster than you can! Bieber has been showing his puzzle-solving skills in many interviews through the years, for example on The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2015.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/2/1025652.jpg)
![Sir Anthony Hopkins paints canvases that sell for up to $80,000. BLIC Не paints four times a week, for hours and hours, and he's made more paintings than he can count. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/3/1025653.jpg)
![DAVID DUCHOVNY IS A PUBLISHED NOVELIST. НЕ ALSO HOLDS A MASTER'S DEGREE IN LITERATURE FROM YALE. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/1/1025651.jpg)
![Richard Gere knows how to play multiple instruments, including the guitar, piano, and trumpet. And he composes. Gere would write the music for high- school productions he was acting in. Не even wrote the piano piece he played in Pretty Woman. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/5/0/1025650.jpg)
![GRAGKED.COM a BVLGAR n S Hilary Swank competed in swimming in the Junior Olympics, and was ranked the fifth all-round gymnast in her state.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/4/6/1025646.jpg)
![CRACKED COM days Consto Margot Robbie has given 100 tattoos to different people in her free time.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/4/9/1025649.jpg)
![ACTOR JASON MOMOA IS ALSO A PAINTER, HAVING STUDIED THE ART IN PARIS CRACKED.COM Which isn't strange, considering that his mother is a professional painter and photographer.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/4/8/1025648.jpg)
![Besides acting, Patrick Dempsey also has a career as a race-car driver. P. Dempsey TINI 911 Mot MARTINI M MARTIND MICHELIN CRACKED COM backer](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/4/7/1025647.jpg)
![Plato was a well known wrestler In fact his name Plato (real name Aristocles) was given to him by his wrestling coach. CRACKED COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/4/5/1025645.jpg)