If the daily grind has you questioning your future in medicine, you’re not alone in considering a career change. While medicine is often seen as a lifelong calling, history is full of doctors and nurses who took their training in unexpected directions. From film and literature to sports and public life, here’s a look at ten famous individuals who left medicine behind and found success far beyond the hospital walls.
Alister MacKenzie
The finest golf courses: Are you familiar with the Augusta National Golf Club where the Masters Tournament is played every year? Even if you are, we bet you didn’t know that its designer was a practicing doctor first. Alister MacKenzie trained as a surgeon at Cambridge University in England and was also a world-renowned golf course architect. In addition to Augusta, he designed more than 50 golf courses on four continents. Fun fact: his father was also a doctor.
James Naismith
The supreme “dunker”: The father of basketball was also a physician. James Naismith invented the game in 1891 and seven years later graduated with a medical degree from the University of Colorado Medical School. He created the game in only two weeks!
Ken Jeong
Ken Jeong, the actor and comedian who is probably best known for his performance as Mr. Chow in The Hangover movies is a licensed physician in California. Although he no longer practices medicine and is now a full-time actor, his medical background still plays an important role in his life and he maintains his medical license to practice in California. He had a short-lived sitcom on ABC called Dr. Ken, where he played a doctor that is juggling his career and family. Jeong has also done some YouTube videos with WIRED where he answers medical questions from Twitter.
Bonnie Hunt
Bonnie Hunt, Emmy-nominated actress and star of Cheaper by the Dozen, was an oncology nurse for many years. In fact, she delayed her dreams of Hollywood to go to nursing school. While working as a nurse, she moonlighted at the Second City Improv troupe. She says the strength she gained as a nurse has prevented her from being “devastated” by rejection in Hollywood.
Robin Quiver
Robin Quivers, the wisecracking sidekick to radio talk show host and “shock jock” Howard Stern, was a nurse long before she was a radio star. She obtained her nursing degree from the University of Maryland and then enlisted in the Air Force. She served as a trauma nurse and rose to the rank of captain. That was three years before she became the news anchor on Stern’s show.
Tina Turner
Tina Turner – yes, THAT Tina Turner worked in healthcare before she became one of the biggest vocalists of all time. She served as a nurse’s aide at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. She had plans to become a practical nurse and then her singing career took off. With 12 Grammy awards, the rest is truly history.
Martha Jane Cannary
You may recognize her better as Calamity Jane of the old frontier. She was known for her sharp shooting and fearlessness, but she was also a 24/7 nurse for smallpox patients in South Dakota. Some think she had developed an immunity to the disease after surviving it as a child so was able to care for the sick without becoming sick herself.
Whether you want to move on from healthcare or sit tight in your chosen profession, it’s interesting to see the different celebrities who started out as doctors and nurses. Seems they cared passionately about everything they chose to do in life.
George Miller
George Miller’s career spans both cheerful films like Babe and Happy Feet and the brutal dystopia of Mad Max. His path to filmmaking began in medical school at the University of New South Wales, where skipping class to watch M*A*S*H and The Battle of Algiers sparked his interest in cinema. After medical school, Miller enrolled in an Emergency Medicine residency at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney/ Miller later drew on real ER trauma cases to shape the violence of the first Mad Max film.
Dr. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
Dr. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif is just one of many NFL players who work in medicine. Before becoming the first NFL player to opt out of the 2020 season over COVID-19 concerns, Laurent Duvernay‑Tardif was the only active player simultaneously pursuing a medical career. He earned his MD from McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine in May 2018 and plans to complete a residency in emergency medicine. A Super Bowl champion with the Kansas City Chiefs, Duvernay‑Tardif also played for the New York Jets before retiring from the NFL in 2023.
Agatha Christie
Throughout her life, Agatha Christie wrote 66 detective novels and 12 short story collections, selling more than two billion copies worldwide. Beyond her literary career, she was also a mother, world traveler, playwright, and a nurse during World War I, where she logged thousands of hours caring for wounded soldiers, assisting in surgeries, and cleaning operating rooms. During this time, she became deeply interested in medicine, earning a license as an apothecary’s assistant and learning firsthand about poisons, their effects on the body, and how easily they could be detected. That medical knowledge later became a defining element of the detective fiction for which she is best known.
