Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy, and more celebrities studied for a career as a doctor or nurse before ending up finding their true passion in entertainment.
Not all celebrities have a clear cut path to Hollywood. In fact, many stars had a completely different career path before deciding to pursue acting or music. For some, that meant working toward a job that was more of a safe bet than finding fame — like working in the field of medicine. There are quite a few celebs who studied for a career as a doctor or nurse before ending up finding their true passion in entertainment.
Read on to find out which celebrities studied medicine…
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1. Ken Jeong
Before Ken Jeong made it big as an actor, he worked as a doctor. For his undergraduate studies, he attended Duke University as a pre-med student but took a drama class that changed his life. While in school, he continued to do theater on the side and then went on to med school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
During his residency, he began doing stand-up comedy, and after finishing his schooling he became a doctor who specialized in internal medicine. He continued to secretly pursue comedy, which ended up leading him to some of his early roles.
“Most doctors have golf as a hobby. Mine was doing comedy…[The Hangover] changed my life overnight. It changed everything for me…I always say Knocked Up opened the doors and The Hangover just burst it wide open…I’m like a doctor who had a detour,” Ken told NPR.
2. Jay Sean
Jay Sean was always passionate about music but growing up, he didn’t feel it was a realistic career. Instead, he decided to study to become a doctor, attending Queen Mary’s School of Medicine in London. He attended med school for two and a half years while juggling his music career which was on the rise.
“I used to be in med school during the day, revising for exams, and then in the evening, I would be partly juggling medical school and also throwing concerts and doing festivals and writing raps and producing songs. And it was just something I juggled for a long time until it became very clear that music was what I was meant to be doing,” Jay told Buzzfeed.
Once he got a record deal with Virgin Records, he ended up dropping out of school.
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3. Pau Gasol
Growing up in Spain, both of Pau Gasol’s parents were in the medical field. As a preteen, he made the decision he would one day become a doctor after learning that Magic Johnson had been diagnosed with HIV. Though he later developed a love for basketball, he decided to enroll in medical school at the University of Barcelona. He attended school for two years before his schedule playing with FC Barcelona got in the way. Not long after dropping out, he was drafted into the NBA.
“To me, it was not hard because I knew what felt right,” Pau told ESPN. “I just felt like basketball was really getting to a point that it could be a great opportunity. I was getting good at it. I was traveling with a professional team. It was really exciting stuff. I was right there, and it was happening to me. I thought if it didn’t work out, I could always go back to medicine. I could always become a doctor.”
While Pau never went back to med school, he decided to help people in other ways, partnering with Children’s Hospital and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He also became a Spanish ambassador to UNICEF, specializing in AIDS among children.
4. Jennifer Stone
After wrapping filming on Wizards of Waverly Place, Jennifer Stone enrolled in college and while deciding her major, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It encouraged her to pursue something in the medical field and she ended up attending nursing school at Azusa Pacific University. She began volunteering at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center and later completed her RN residency there. Now she works at the hospital as an emergency room nurse while balancing it with her acting career.
“I wanted to be somebody that was like, ‘Look, I’ve been where you’ve been, and it gets better,’” she told People. “The hardest phase of a diagnosis story is the not knowing what’s going on with your body, not knowing how to treat it. I think that’s the most challenging part.”
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5. Naomi Judd
Before the late Naomi Judd made it big as a country star, she was an ICU nurse. When she was 19 she decided she wanted to be in the medical field and enrolled at the College of Marin where she attended nursing school. She had the intention of later attending medical school but ended up finding fame as a singer first.
“I went to nursing school, the College of Marin, in California. I actually wanted to be an MD… I was going to use my RN degree to support myself and put myself through med school,” she told Ability Magazine. “I loved being an RN. It taught me so much about humanness. I learned that we are all exactly the same. We wear different masks, and we may have slightly different personal histories, but we are all exactly the same. And I learned about medicine.”
She added, “When Wynonna and I started singing together — she so desperately needed to have a new direction in life — it quickly became obvious that that was what we were meant to do.”
6. Jenny McCarthy
Jenny McCarthy was once an aspiring nurse before she made it big in the entertainment industry. She started off studying special education at Southern Illinois University and then pivoted to nursing. She took part in the program for several years until finances forced her to drop out.
“You know what’s funny, what I first was going to college for was for special education. Then I failed public speaking class and decided to go into nursing because I liked medicine. But then I went broke and had to leave,” Jenny told Pink Magazine.
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7. Graham Chapman
Monty Python’s Graham Chapman was once an aspiring doctor. Before the late actor was a part of the famed comedy troupe, he studied medicine at Emmanuel College, a part of the University of Cambridge. While in school, he joined the Cambridge Footlights and after graduation, he ended up going on tour with the group in New Zealand. He deferred medical school for a year but ultimately enrolled at St Bartholomew’s Medical College. He graduated in 1962 but decided to pursue his acting career.
“He wasn’t ever driven to go into medicine … it wasn’t his life’s ambition,” Graham’s brother John shared in The Life of Graham.
8. Bonnie Hunt
Before giving things in Hollywood a shot, Bonnie Hunt began a career as a nurse. In high school, she worked as a nurse’s aide and then went on to attend nursing school. After graduation she got a job at Northwestern University Hospital, where she worked in the oncology department. While in Chicago, she ended up finding her love for performing and formed an improv group. She eventually landed her first role in Rain Man.
“Growing up in my neighborhood, I didn’t really think it would be possible to act, but my dad always told us to go for our dreams. I was really lucky to be a nurse first, because it’s given me the gift of perspective,” she told The Saturday Evening Post.
She continued, “One of my patients told me, ‘When are you going to go out to L.A.?’ I said, ‘I’m not going to because then I’d fail and have to come back and explain myself.’ He told me, ‘Bonnie, facing the end of my own life and one of my biggest regrets is not going out and failing a few times.’ So he made me promise I would. And I’ve failed many times, but I’ve learned from them. You always learn more from your failures than successes.”
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9. George Miller
Filmmaker and Mad Max creator George Miller got his start as a doctor. He studied medicine at the University of New South Wales and then completed his residency at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. During his final year in med school, he got the opportunity to make a one-minute short film for a student competition and ended up winning. From there, he was hooked on making movies.
He continued on to become a doctor, making short films on the side, which eventually led to the release of Mad Max in 1979. Despite it being a huge success, he continued working as a doctor through the mid-1980s.
“I always found this quote, that John Lennon line, ‘Life is what happens when you are making other plans,’ and it’s definitely true in my case,” he told The World. “I always wanted to be a doctor, enjoyed being a doctor. But at the same time … I suddenly became interested in cinema.”
10. Adrian Holmes
Arrow actor Adrian Holmes was a nurse before his acting career took off. Although he didn’t want to go into the medical field, his mom convinced him he needed a backup plan in case acting didn’t work out. He enrolled in nursing school at Langara College and during his work-study program, he worked at numerous hospitals. Just as he was completing his nursing studies, he began landing acting jobs and ended up stepping away from the career.
“[My family was] happy that they got me to do the fallback, and I’m happy that I got to live my dream and actually get to work doing what I love,” Adrian told Vancouver Is Awesome.
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11. Michael Crichton
Late filmmaker Michael Crichton went to medical school before he started making movies. He got his undergraduate degree in biological anthropology from Harvard University and later enrolled in their med school. While studying he began writing and publishing books to help pay for his education — and they ended up becoming incredibly popular.
Despite his success as an author, he graduated from Harvard and went on to complete his clinical rotations at the Boston City Hospital. He went on to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies before ultimately focusing on writing.
“When I was in college, I wanted to be a writer. But then I read that only 200 writers in America support themselves writing. I thought, ‘That’s an awfully small group.’ I didn’t want to be a part-time writer with a day job — that didn’t interest me. I either had to be one of those 200 people or forget it,” he later said.
He continued, “So I decided to become a doctor. I was attracted to medicine partly because I thought I would be doing useful work, helping people — I would never have to wonder if the work was worthwhile. But many working physicians are not convinced at all. They have all kinds of doubts, which troubled me. I also found that I was at odds with the thrust of the profession at that time, which was highly scientific medicine: the physician as technician and the patient as a biological machine that was broken. I didn’t find it appealing to work in that kind of setting.”
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