re: Crazy Things You Didn't Know About Actors

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Steve Buscemi was a New York firefighter (Engine 55, Little Italy)from 1980 to 1984 before becoming an actor. After 9/11, he returned to Engine 55 and worked 12-hour shifts at Ground Zero.

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even cooler is he doesnt publicize it.

so many actors would whore that info out but he has too much respect for firefighters to do that.

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-Was a chopper pilot in Vietnam and was an Army Ranger

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Nah man, his ToD ended in 65'.

Still does not change the fact he was a BSD.

Tommy Lee Jones was an all-Ivy League guard at Harvard.

John Wayne (Marion Morrison) lost his football scholarship at USC due to an injury (broken collarbone) he sustained while body surfing.

Colin Farrell taught line dancing before making it as an actor.

Ricky Gervais was once part of a UK pop singing group called Seona Dancing.

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Jimmy Stewart had a degree in Architecture from Princeton and won a scholarship for graduate school based on his design of an airport. He eventually became a Brigadier General in the Army Air Force, but initially was rejected when he tried to enlist because he was underweight.

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Jimmy's one of my favorite people ever. Dude had one wife his whole life, made great movies, and tried like hell to serve his country, when they rejected him he gained weight to make it, and then tried to make him a mouthpiece he asked his commanding officer to let him serve in combat.

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n October 1940, Stewart was drafted into the United States Army but was rejected for failing to meet height and weight requirements for new recruits—Stewart was five pounds (2.3 kg) under the standard. To get up to 143 pounds, he sought out the help of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's muscle man and trainer Don Loomis, who was noted for his ability to add or subtract pounds in his studio gymnasium. Stewart subsequently attempted to enlist in the Air Corps, but still came in under the weight requirement, although he persuaded the enlistment officer to run new tests, this time passing the weigh-in,[33][N 2] with the result that Stewart enlisted and was inducted in the Army on March 22, 1941. He became the first major American movie star to wear a military uniform in World War II.

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Stewart was concerned that his expertise and celebrity status would relegate him to instructor duties "behind the lines."[40] His fears were confirmed when after his promotion to first lieutenant on July 7, 1942,[41] he was stationed from August to December 1942 at Kirtland Army Airfield in Albuquerque, New Mexico, piloting AT-11 Kansans used in training bombardiers. He was transferred to Hobbs Army Airfield, New Mexico, for three months of transition training in the four-engine B-17 Flying Fortress, then sent to the Combat Crew Processing Center in Salt Lake City, where he expected to be assigned to a combat unit. Instead he was assigned in early 1943 to an operational training unit, the 29th Bombardment Group at Gowen Field, Boise, Idaho, as an instructor.[35] He was promoted to captain on July 9, 1943,[41] and appointed a squadron commander.[36] For Stewart, now 35, combat duty seemed far away and unreachable and he had no clear plans for the future. However, a rumor that Stewart would be taken off flying status and assigned to making training films or selling bonds called for immediate action, because what he dreaded most was "the hope-shattering spectre of a dead end."[42] Stewart appealed to his commander, 30-year-old Lt. Col. Walter E. Arnold Jr., who understood his situation and recommended Stewart to the commander of the 445th Bombardment Group, a B-24 Liberator unit that had just completed initial training at Gowen Field and gone on to final training at Sioux City Army Air Base, Iowa.[43][N 4]


World War II bomber pilot in 1943
In August 1943, Stewart was assigned to the 445th Bomb Group as operations officer of the 703d Bombardment Squadron, but after three weeks became its commander. On October 12, 1943, judged ready for overseas movement, the 445th Bomb Group staged to Lincoln Army Airfield, Nebraska. Flying individually, the aircraft first flew to Morrison Army Airfield, Florida, and then on the circuitous Southern Route along the coasts of South America and Africa to RAF Tibenham, Norfolk, England. After several weeks of training missions, in which Stewart flew with most of his combat crews, the group flew its first combat mission on December 13, 1943, to bomb the U-boat facilities at Kiel, Germany, followed three days later by a mission to Bremen. Stewart led the high squadron of the group formation on the first mission, and the entire group on the second.[45] Following a mission to Ludwigshafen, Germany, on January 7, 1944, Stewart was promoted to major.[45][N 5] Stewart was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions as deputy commander of the 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing on the first day of "Big Week" operations in February and flew two other missions that week.[47]

On March 22, 1944, Stewart flew his 12th combat mission, leading the 2nd Bomb Wing in an attack on Berlin. On March 30, 1944, he was sent to RAF Old Buckenham to become group operations officer of the 453rd Bombardment Group, a new B-24 unit that had just lost both its commander and operations officer on missions.[48] As a means to inspire the unit, Stewart flew as command pilot in the lead B-24 on several missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. As a staff officer, Stewart was assigned to the 453rd "for the duration" and thus not subject to a quota of missions of a combat tour. He nevertheless assigned himself as a combat crewman on the group's missions until his promotion to lieutenant colonel on June 3[41] and reassignment on July 1, 1944, to the 2nd Bomb Wing, assigned as executive officer to Brigadier General Edward J. Timberlake. His official tally of mission credits while assigned to the 445th and 453rd Bomb Groups totaled 20 sorties.


Receiving French Croix de Guerre with Palm in 1944
Stewart continued to make missions, uncredited, flying with the pathfinder squadron of the 389th Bombardment Group, with his two former groups, and with groups of the 20th Combat Bomb Wing.[49] He received a second award of the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions in combat and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He also received the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. Stewart served in a number of staff positions in the 2nd and 20th Bomb Wings between July 1944 and the end of the war in Europe, and was promoted to full colonel on March 29, 1945.[41][50] On May 10, 1945, he succeeded to command of the 2nd Bomb Wing, a position he held until June 15.[51] Stewart was one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years.[10][35]

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Eddie Albert (AKA Mr. Douglas from Green Acres):

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On September 9, 1942, Albert enlisted in the United States Navy and was discharged in 1943 to accept an appointment as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat "V" for his actions during the invasion of Tarawa in November 1943, when, as the pilot of a U.S. Coast Guard landing craft, he rescued 47 Marines who were stranded offshore (and supervised the rescue of 30 others), while under heavy enemy machine-gun fire.[8]

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Interesting side note. He was with the Marines on the Hospital ship after the Battle of Tarawa. One of the Marines, private Joseph Lobianco a native of Baton Rouge, was there on the hospital ship with him. Private Lobianco was shot in the head in the battle of Tarawa, but he survived. Lobianco wrote to his mother that Eddie Albert read to him on the hospital ship. He may have been one of the Marines Albert rescued. He doesn't say in the letter.

Lobianco ran the Lobianco's grocery store at 3804 Government street. It's since been torn down. It was the run down pinkish building with two Coca-Cola button signs on the front of the building.

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James Woods witnessed the 9/11 terrorists doing a dry run for the attacks. He was on a plane from Boston to L.A. about a month before 9/11, and was so disturbed by the other passenger's behavior, he reported it to the flight crew and authorities after he landed.

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Well, obviously there should be more to this story, right? Isn't there a flight record of who was on that flight?

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Russell would later go on to portray Elvis in the 1979 TV biopic "Elvis" as well as a criminal Elvis tribute artist in "3000 Miles to Graceland".

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and the voice of elvis in Forrest Gump