18 Surprising Celebrities Who Were Veterans Before They Hit Hollywood

10. Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner was an American businessman who was most-known as the publisher of Playboy magazine, a controversial publication featuring nude women. While Hefner’s career was defined by Playboy, as a young man, he was a member of the U.S. military.

Hefner served in the U.S. Army from 1944-1945 as a writer for a military newspaper. While Hefner’s time in the military was brief, it reportedly shaped his career immensely. Many believe that Hefner’s Playboy magazine helped spawn a social revolution, partly because of his own time in uniform which was a “one-man counteroffensive against buttoned-up social movements in postwar America.” One author of a Hefner biography noted that “without that time in the military to sit behind a desk and spend time working on creative things, his life would’ve been different.”

Check out which music legend joined the military to avoid jail time on the next slide!