Freeman is an Air Force veteran, Newman a Navy veteran, and Hackman, McQueen, and Keitel are former Marines. Stewart retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general. As actors, they played good guys, bad guys, and even God (Freeman in Bruce Almighty). Hollywood is known as an industry that’s hard to break into. But a long line of military veterans have taken the town by storm and played a wide range of roles and characters for film and television, from Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy, an Army reservist) to Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones, a former Army officer) to Fat Albert and Dr. Huxtable (Bill Cosby, Navy). That list keeps growing as military veterans, including some still serving, continue to be lured toward the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown.
“By the time I left the Navy in January 2008, I had already booked Cold Case, NCIS, CSI: Miami, and The Young and the Restless,” says retired Cmdr. Alan Pietruszewski. “I do believe that the rigor of fulfilling military duties in high-stress environments is a rather good emulator for the mental anguish associated with auditions.”
Pietruszewski joined the Navy after seeing An Officer and a Gentleman and says he “was seduced by the chance to fly for the Navy.” While at sea, his interest in film never waned. He began making movies for fun and started to consider acting as a career after the military. While stationed in southern California and Boston, he took acting classes, attended casting workshops, got headshots, and acted in student films and independent projects to gain experience. He eventually landed an agent in Los Angeles.
“My actor ‘wheelhouse,’ so to speak, is the clean-cut guy, military [member], cop, government agent, pilot, lawyer, doctor, etcetera,” says Pietruszewski, who flew an F-14 Tomcat and was an F-14 flight instructor and member of the airshow dynamic flight demonstration team and graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN).
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