Celebrities You Didn’t Know Were Star Athletes Once
Celebrities who were athletes before hitting it big
There’s no singular path to stardom in the entertainment field. For many, the paths goes through the football field, the basketball court, the baseball diamond, the diving board or even the skatepark. Among our list of celebrities who were athletes before hitting it big in another field, some had an injury derail their athletic dreams; others just couldn’t cut it in their sport; and others approached or reached the top and went in search of a new challenge. But, no, four-time NBA MVPs who weren’t terrible in “Trainwreck” don’t count. Sorry, LeBron.Tommy Lee Jones
The Oscar winner was an offensive lineman on the undefeated 1968 Harvard Crimson. “Football was a wonderful experience for me.
It was a means of, oh, I don’t know, sustaining for much of my youth,” he said, according to Esquire. “In times of trouble, I’ve always had football. I always knew I was a football player. And that was a comfort on many occasions.”
Terry Crews
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The “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star appeared in 32 NFL games from 1991 to 1995, playing for Washington, the Chargers, and the Rams.
He told Business Insider in 2017 that football helped prepare him for life as an actor: “I look at entertainment and my football career, the ups and downs, the ins and outs to how hard it was, it really prepared me for entertainment, in that, I could take rejection, I could go to an audition and realize that it wasn’t about me and just realize it was about the piece, or realize it was about, you know, you go on a set and you realize who’s the star, who’s the coach, who’s the director, who’s the day player, who’s the backup.”
Mahershala Ali
The Academy Award winner went to St. Mary’s College on a basketball scholarship, playing in 97 games over four seasons. As a senior in 1995-96, Ali, then Mahershala Gilmore, averaged averaged seven points per game and shot 39.8 percent from deep.
“It was about getting a basketball scholarship to a Division I school,” he told GQ in 2016. “Once I got that, I didn’t set a realistic next goal on how to get to the NBA, which is perhaps for the best. I fell into acting. A teacher gave me an opportunity to be in a play and it came a little easy to me.
When it got difficult was when I decided to study acting and I went to grad school. I felt like if I got [into NYU] this was what I was supposed to pursue.
It just so happened that it worked out.”
Joel McHale
The comedian and “Community” star walked onto the Washington Huskies football team as a tight end in the early ’90s.
“He came and worked hard,” teammate Ernie Conwell, who went onto an 11-year NFL career as a tight end, told ESPN of McHale. “We kind of prided ourselves on being tough-nosed and hard-working and he fit right in there perfectly with us. He wasn’t great, but he had everything he needed: desire and want-to.
He was tough, he could catch the ball and he wasn’t afraid to put his body on the line.”