Order in the court! Rebel Wilson, Gerard Butler and more stars tried their hand at studying and practicing law before they made it big in Hollywood.
Before solidifying his place among some of the hottest names in the movie industry, Butler held a high position in the law society at his Scottish university. After graduating from the University of Glasgow with honors in 1992, he fell into a fellowship with a prestigious law firm in Edinburgh before eventually following his heart and pursuing an acting career.
In October 2018, the Angel Has Fallen star revealed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that he spent a combined seven years preparing to become a lawyer. “Just the right amount of time to mess it all up,” Butler joked at the time.
Wilson, for her part, attempted to balance out the two pathways she dreamed of following while studying at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The Isn’t It Romantic actress reflected on her experience studying law while also being a working actor during a May 2019 appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden.
“I’ve never practiced [law] for money,” Wilson explained at the time. “A law degree is five years total and I was already on Australian television by, like, year two. I play a lot of dumb characters so people were very confused about what I was doing in the contract law exam … But it took me so long to get into law school, you have to study really hard, so I thought I may as well finish it even though I was already kind of famous.”
While some stars followed through on their extensive studies until the very end, others found the study a little too challenging. Rashida Jones had lofty ambitions of becoming a lawyer while she was a student at Harvard University, but admitted to The Independent several years later that she lost faith in the law during the infamous O.J. Simpson murder trial in the 1990s.
“He got off and I couldn’t believe it,” the Angie Tribeca star explained in February 2014. “I thought what’s the point of spending the next eight years in school if the justice system is that broken?”
Scroll down to see which celebrities have pursued and obtained law degrees!