You will never guess which celebrities studied accounting, their current careers seem far flung from their original studies.
- Eddie Izzard. Izzard was the son of an accountant and went on to study accountancy at Sheffield university, U.K. Izzard is now better known as a comedian and actor well known for his artistic flair and offbeat comedy. Although Izzard has found acclaim as a stand-up performer he failed all of his accountancy exams.
- Bob Newhart. Newhart is also a comedian but in his former days he worked as an accountant, although he admits that he was not particularly good at accounting and had difficulty balancing the books
- Mick Jagger. Jagger studied accountancy in London, U.K. before hitting the big time as front man of the Rolling Stones. Jagger didn’t complete his studies due to his growing music career.
- Kevin Kennedy. Kennedy is better known as a baseball manager and TV host. Kennedy is actually a trained CPA and has been known to assist his players complete their tax returns.
- John Grisham. Grisham is a well-known author who also has an accountant degree and studied criminal law, although his previous aim was to be a tax lawyer.
- Robert Plant. Plant is well known for being the singer in Led Zeppelin. He received accountancy lessons but gave this up to pursue music.
- Gibby Haynes. Haynes is the lead singer of the Butthole surfers but previously studied accountancy where he was judged accounting student of the year at Trinity University, Texas.
- D’Lo Brown. Brown is a professional wrestler who also graduated as a CPA from the University of Maine.
- Kenny G. Instrumental musician received a degree in accounting from the University of Washington. He reckons that this helped him to manage his finances as a budding musician.
- Chuck Liddell. Liddell is a MMA/UFC fighter but is also a trained accountant, graduating from California Polytechnic University.
As can be seen there is a diverse range of creative endeavours from these former accountants which goes to show that being an accountant, as well as several other careers in finance, can tally well with your creative side.
Accountants have great analytical skills that can be transferred to different careers as can be seen from the list above. Although accountancy is sometimes considered a very dry subject it is surprising how many artistic people started off their working lives in this sector.