Movies and TV shows portraying the military have been popular for decades (who remembers that record-breaking M*A*S*H finale?). But some actors have done more than just act like they were in the military; they actually did it. In honor of Memorial Day, here are five celebrities who served in the U.S Armed Forces.
Adam Driver
Adam Driver arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” on Dec. 9, 2017. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Today, he’s better known for his roles in “Girls,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” and “Marriage Story.” But at 18 years old, Adam Driver wasn’t thinking about his future acting career; he was thinking about the military. The 9/11 attacks happened just two months before his 18th birthday, and Driver was “filled with a sense of patriotism and retribution and the desire to do something,” according to his TED Talk.
That something was joining the Marines. “It’s one of the things I’m most proud of having done in my life,” he said. “I loved the Marine Corps the most for the thing I was looking for the least when I joined, which was the people.”
Driver served for almost three years before he was medically discharged, after which time he attended Juilliard and was eventually nominated for two Academy Awards.
Bob Ross
TV painting instructor/artist Bob Ross painting one of his landscapes as his pet crow holds a paint brush in its beak while perched on top of easel in studio home. (Photo by Acey Harper/Getty Images)
Bob Ross was a master sergeant in the United States Air Force, and if it weren’t for that experience, he may not have become the painter we know him as today. Ross grew up in Florida, so he hadn’t seen the snowy mountains he later became famous for painting. It wasn’t until the Air Force sent him to Alaska that he began putting the beautiful scenery he saw on canvas.
Eventually, Ross was making more money selling his paintings than he was from the Air Force, and he was happy to have a backup career that didn’t involve being “mean.” “I was the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work. The job requires you to be a mean, tough person. And I was fed up with it. I promised myself that if I ever got away from it, it wasn’t going to be that way anymore,” he told the Orlando Sentinel in 1990.
Morgan Freeman
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 08: Morgan Freeman attends 2026 Sierra Club’s Trail Blazers Ball at Skirball Cultural Center on April 08, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images)
Morgan Freeman comes from a military family, and he wasn’t going to be the exception. I joined the Air Force. I took to it immediately when I arrived there. I did three years, eight months, and ten days in all, but it took me a year and a half to get disabused of my romantic notions about it,” he told Interview Magazine in 2016.
Freeman realized the version of the Air Force he wanted was just a fantasy. “What I wanted was the movie version,” he said. “So that was the end of the whole idea of doing anything other than acting for me. I’ve never had any other vocation.”
Bea Arthur
HOLLYWOOD – MARCH 2: Actress Bea Arthur accepts The Quintessential Non-Traditional Classic Family award for “The Golden Girls” during the TV Land Awards 2003 at the Hollywood Palladium on March 2, 2003 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Though she didn’t see combat, Bea Arthur played an important role in World War II. The actress enlisted as one of the first members of the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve in 1943, serving as a typist and truck driver. She was honorably discharged after two years at the rank of staff sergeant.
After her service, Arthur won Emmys for “Maude” and “Golden Girls,” the latter of which still airs reruns today.
Chuck Norris
‘Missing in Action’ or ‘Portés disparus’ 1984 directed by Joseph Zito. (Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Getty Images)
We have Chuck Norris’s time in the Air Force to thank for his martial arts film career. The “Walker, Texas Ranger” star served as an Air Policeman in South Korea in 1958. There, he began training in Tang Soo Do and developed his love of martial arts, later becoming a black belt in not only Tang Soo Do, but also karate, taekwondo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and judo.
Unfortunately, Chuck Norris passed away in March at 86 years old.
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