From Prison to Stardom: Celebrities Who Found Fame After Serving Time

In certain cases, an actor’s criminal history becomes an intriguing facet of their public persona. Some embrace their past indiscretions, seamlessly incorporating them into their current image. Others leverage their fame to advocate for criminal justice reform, aiming to prevent others from experiencing similar fates. Still, there are those who prefer their past remain forgotten, hidden in the shadows of their now-glamorous lives.

The public’s reaction to these revelations can be equally fascinating, often revealing society’s capacity for forgiveness and understanding. Regardless of the outcome, the stories of actors who found fame following incarceration offer plenty of insights into the complexities of redemption and reinvention.

Take Tim Allen, for instance. Before he captured the hearts of audiences in the 1990s with hits like “Home Improvement,” “Toy Story,” and “The Santa Clause,” Allen was a struggling stand-up comedian. In 1978, he was apprehended at a Michigan airport with a pound of cocaine in his possession. Reflecting on his troubled youth during an episode of “WTF with Marc Maron” (as reported by The Hollywood Reporter), Allen revealed he had succumbed to alcoholism by age 11. His subsequent two-year prison sentence served as a pivotal turning point. “I just shut up and did what I was told,” Allen recalled. “It was the first time ever I did what I was told and played the game. I learned literally how to live day by day. And I learned how to shut up. You definitely want to learn how to shut up.”

Before ruling the 1990s with “Home Improvement,” “Toy Story,” and “The Santa Clause,” Tim Allen was a working standup comedian. In 1978, Allen was arrested at an airport in Michigan for trying to carry a pound of cocaine in his luggage. He later told “WTF with Marc Maron” (via The Hollywood Reporter) that he’d had an incredibly-troubled childhood, having become an alcoholic before he turned 11. His subsequent two-year stint in prison, he said, was a wake-up call. “I just shut up and did what I was told,” Allen recalled. “It was the first time ever I did what I was told and played the game. I learned literally how to live day by day. And I learned how to shut up. You definitely want to learn how to shut up.”

After Allen got out, his career eventually took off, and people now know him as the star of family-friendly entertainment like “Jungle 2 Jungle” and “The Shaggy Dog.” When his mugshot regularly goes viral online – impressive mustache and all — fans are reminded that the clean-cut comedian has had some real-life legal issues.

Allen told Maron that he tries to stay away from moralizing. “I’m not telling anybody else how to live,” he said. “I don’t like that.”

Mark Wahlberg has lived many lives. He’s made his mark in everything from lighthearted comedies like “Ted” and “Daddy’s Home” to prestige dramas such as “Boogie Nights” and “The Departed” to action epics like “Transformers: Age of Extinction.” Even before excelling at the multiplex, Wahlberg had a career as a rapper. Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch had a major hit with “Good Vibrations,” and Wahlberg himself caused quite a stir when he modeled for Calvin Klein in some suggestive tight white underwear.

Before all of that, Wahlberg had a criminal past he’d rather you forget. In 2014, he filed a petition to have his 1988 assault charges pardoned, insisting that he’s changed his life enough that we can all just ignore the fact that he served prison time as a teenager for a brutal, racially-motivated crime against a Vietnamese man that left the victim blinded.

In a petition to the Massachusetts Board of Prisons (via The Los Angeles Times), Wahlberg wrote, “I am deeply sorry for the actions that I took on the night of April 8, 1988, as well as for any lasting damage that I have caused the victims. Since that time, I have dedicated myself to becoming a better person and citizen so I can be a role model to my children and others.” He later dropped the pardon requests and instead met with the victim to make amends, who forgave Wahlberg for his actions.

While some actors try to cover up their prison pasts, “Machete” star Danny Trejo has embraced his, always open to discuss his extensive criminal record. In a 2011 interview with Prison Legal News, he reflected, “I was in San Quentin, Folsom, Soledad, Vacaville, Susanville, Sierra.” Some were short terms, but the last time he was behind bars, Trejo had been sentenced to five years. “We were doing robberies,” he said. “You do robberies for your drugs. That’s the way my uncle taught me.”

Before his Hollywood career, Trejo worked as a drug counselor. He showed up to support someone on the set of the 1985 film “Runaway Train,” and the rest was Hollywood history. “A guy comes up and says, ‘Hey do you wanna be in this movie?’” Trejo recalled. “He says, ‘Can you act like a convict?’ And I say, ‘I’ll give it a shot.’”

Trejo has since gone from prison inmate to action star, appearing in everything from “Spy Kids” to “3-Headed Shark Attack.” He boasts an extensive voice-work resume, and even runs a chain of Los Angeles taco spots. Despite being so busy, though, he still finds time to give back to the prison community, never forgetting where he came from. He told Prison Legal News, “Everything good that’s happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else.”

Luenell broke through when she starred as a sex worker in the original “Borat.” She looks back on her time on that set fondly, writing on Instagram in 2023, “It was the biggest, craziest, scariest, most profitable (to this DAY), movie of my career.” Luenell parlayed that appearance into a solid Hollywood resume, and she’s since been in projects as varied as “A Star Is Born” and “Power Book II: Ghost.”

Before she was an actor, Luenell lived an entirely different life. She worked at a bank and, over time, realized that the organization was in serious trouble. “I knew that the bank that I was working at was about to fail and being the hustler that I thought I was, I said, ‘Well I’m gonna get some of this money before this bank goes to hell. So I robbed the bank,” she confessed to The Jasmine Brand.

Initially, she thought she’d gotten away with $50,000. As she explained on the Tiger Belly podcast (via Instagram), the law tracked her down. “I was worried every week because my name was in the paper, and my picture was in the paper,” she said. “Had it been less money, I would’ve got away with it.” Ultimately, Luenell told The Jasmine Brand, “I did four months and 18 days on a year bid.”

Rory Calhoun came up at the height of the Hollywood studio system, a time when the public image of actors was carefully manufactured by controlling studio heads. Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, Calhoun made his name as the dashing star of a number of Westerns such as “Massacre River,” “Rogue River,” “Powder River,” and “River of No Return.” He also starred opposite Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 Technicolor romance “How To Marry A Millionaire.” 

The 1950s proved troublesome for Calhoun. Details about his unsavory past were leaked to Confidential Magazine, reportedly in exchange for the tabloid agreeing not to publish rumors that actor Rock Hudson was gay, a classic example of an actor rumor that turned out to be true. Instead, Confidential wrote about Calhoun’s extensive criminal record, including long stints in prison for stealing cars.

The Los Angeles Times wrote in his obituary that Calhoun got ahead of the bad press by admitting everything to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. “I guess you could classify me as a thief with a pure joy of stealing,” he said. “I enjoyed it because I knew I was doing something that I shouldn’t be doing.” His career survived the scandal, and he went on to star in multiple hit television shows, including “The Texan” and “Capitol.”

Hogwarts fans wondering why the narrator of the “Harry Potter” reunion special’s voice sounded so familiar, were likely already acquainted with Stephen Fry, who also narrated several audiobooks and video games from that series. He’s also an established actor in his own right, with a career that has stretched from “Blackadder” to “Gosford Park” and beyond.

His warm, inviting voice and ability to mimic several characters made Fry a natural to narrate the family-friendly entertainment series. That’s why a lot of fans are surprised to find out that Fry spent time in prison when he was a teenager. He’s hardly a hardened criminal, however, and the details of his sentence are as charming as one might expect.

“[I] stole some credit cards and went ape, at the age of 17, around the country,” Fry told Varsity. The fraud that got him caught apparently wasn’t the first time, either. He told BBC Radio that he was a kleptomaniac as a teenager, and it led to him being expelled from multiple schools. He was finally sentenced to several months in Pucklechurch prison, and while there, he taught his cellmate to read. He joked that he didn’t mind his time behind bars, reflecting, “It was an absolute breeze to anyone who had been through the English public school system.”

When Charles S. Dutton was a teenager, he found himself in quite the scuffle. He later claimed that a man attacked him with a knife, but when the fight was through, the other man was the one who lay dead, and Dutton was charged with manslaughter. He wound up in prison for two years, and then after he was arrested again and wound up fighting with a corrections officer, he served a further seven.

While locked up, Dutton took to reading plays and then got into acting, all while focusing on his studies. “I went to college in prison,” he later told Roland Martin (via YouTube). “I got an associate arts degree.” After he was released, Dutton studied acting at Yale, and turned his experience into a one-man show called, fittingly, “From Jail to Yale.”

Dutton now boasts an extensive list of impressive credits, including “Alien 3,” “Crocodile Dundee II,” Menace II Society,” “The Practice,” and “Without a Trace.” He’s been on Broadway in multiple August Wilson plays, including “The Piano Lesson” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and has even won three Primetime Emmys. He also devotes his time to helping young men who are currently incarcerated, telling Martin he advises them, “You’ve got to discover, or rediscover, your own humanity while you’re here.”