5

Tom Cruise: Superstar Actor, Shitty Priest

Paramount Pictures

When most people think of Tom Cruise, they think of Scientology. He's become synonymous with the religion known for worshiping a space alien and covering up gay sex. Well, Cruise very nearly became synonymous with a religion known for worshiping a magical man in the sky and covering up child sex.

Yes, Cruise was almost a Catholic priest. He was recruited at the age of 14 for St. Francis Seminary School in Cincinnati. According to Father Ric Schneider, who recruited him, young Tom was "instantly hooked." When Cruise applied to the school, he was required to take an IQ test, which he barely passed with the exact minimum score of 110. So he wasn't an exceptional student, but no priest is going to turn away a 14-year-old Tom Cruise.

MySpace
The original risky business.

He might still be there, working as a priest and acting in the seminary's theater department, if it weren't for a single night of shenanigans that brought it all to an end. Under the cover of night, far from their God's heavenly gaze, Cruise and his friend Shane Dempler hatched a scheme to steal liquor from the Franciscan fathers. Dempler snagged them while Cruise waited below, catching bottles as they were thrown out the window. The two amateur burglars broke most of them, but managed to save enough to sneak into the woods and get hammered. Everything was going according to plan, until some of the other students got involved and way too fucking drunk, in that order.

Father Ric Schneider
A similar incident later in life led to Rock Of Ages.

4

Steve McQueen: Legendary Actor, Awful Marine

United Artist

The "King of Cool" himself, Steve McQueen, enlisted in the US Marines out of pure boredom in 1947. What followed were three years of him trying to turn the Marines into an '80s comedy.

Steve McQueen
Sadly, "Louie, Louie" hadn't been written yet.

Assigned to an armored unit, it didn't take long for McQueen to get into trouble. First, he turned a weekend pass with his girlfriend into a two-week vacation. When the MPs finally caught up with him, he decided that the best course of action was to resist arrest. It didn't end well, and he spent the next 41 days in jail. The lesson he learned from this was that he should immediately attempt the exact same thing again.

Steve McQueen
(Drunk) Love conquers all.

3

Kurt Vonnegut: Beloved Writer, Crappy Car Dealer

Whyaduck Productions

2

Ice-T: Fine Rapper and Actor, Terrible Soldier

Brad Barket/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

In 1976, rapper Ice-T was 18-year-old Tracy Marrow, and like all teenagers with great decision-making skills, he had a new daughter on the way. Unsure of how to support her, he walked into the local recruiting office and said, verbatim, "Yo, I want to be in the Army." And the United States Army replied, "You had us at 'Yo.'"

Ice T
His followup pitch, "Yo, I also want a general's paycheck" was met with far less enthusiasm.

Ice got through basic and moved on to advanced individual training at Ft. Benning to become an infantryman. While there, one of the commanding officers started recruiting the men who seemed to have the most street smarts. Since that's 90 percent of Ice-T's personality, he was chosen, and he was sent out at night to steal things for his CO. Not necessarily drugs or liquor, but gear that would ordinarily be a hassle to get through normal requisitioning.

The operation was a success ... until the CO decided that he needed a blue rug for his office and sent Ice-T and his gang off on an elaborate floor-covering heist. But while the thieves were inside, their getaway driver took off, and later confessed to the crime. Ice-T soon found himself in jail facing burglary charges. The Army, being a well-oiled machine of logistics and bureaucracy, chose that moment to pay him his $2,500 bonus. So he broke out of jail and went AWOL. He reappeared across the country in LA, then called his CO and "convinced" him to smooth things over.

Mohylek / Wiki Commons
Presumably by reading him a rough draft of the lyrics to "Cop Killer."

1

Gerard Butler: Great Actor, Too Drunk For Lawyering

Warner Brothers Pictures

You probably know Gerard Butler as the man who front-kicked a Persian messenger into his city's well in the movie 300. But before he was inspiring Flint, Michigan's drinking water policies, Gerard was drinking his way through law school.

Butler studied law at the University of Glasgow, where he became president of the Law Society and double president of partying. Despite the incredible amount of liquor he filled himself with, he graduated with honors and was on his way to being a functioning alcoholic lawyer. Things took a turn for the worse, however, when Butler took a year after graduation to visit America. And nobody overdoes things like America. Butler spent the next 12 months in Venice Beach drinking, working odd jobs, traveling, drinking, and getting arrested. For drinking.

Overture Films
So other than all the murder, Law Abiding Citizen was shockingly autobiographical.

After seeing our great country, then drinking away the memory of it, Butler returned to Scotland and took a job as a trainee civil lawyer. But he brought too much America back with him. He drank beyond reason, broke bottles over his head, ran in front of cars, and once woke up in Paris, covered in blood and bruises with no idea how he got there. It got bad enough that he was fired one week before he was to receive his full certification as a lawyer. Luckily, he had all the skills needed to become an actor, and was cast in his first film less than a year later.

Miramax
He could sit there and look whacked-out as fuck with the best of them.

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