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Celebrity can be a fleeting thing. One day you may be a global megastar, the next perhaps not so much. So, having qualifications to fall back on is a smart move and a great personal achievement.

A surprising number of stars find themselves too busy to go to college when most people do. But some make time mid-career to return to education and make up for lost time.

Here are five celebrities who went back to school when they were already famous and got some interesting qualifications.

He might be better known to music fans as Queen’s lead guitarist, but Brian May’s undergraduate degree was in Physics and Mathematics. He started a PhD shortly after graduating in 1968, but abandoned it to concentrate on his rock career. “My choice was made on the assumption that I wasn't very good at physics and I might be quite good at music,” he said later.

But in 2006 he returned to Imperial College and in 2007 he finally submitted his thesis, titled ‘A survey of radial velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud’. It turned out he was quite good at physics after all, and became Dr Brian May.

Since then, he’s written astronomy books and worked as a science team collaborator with NASA during the New Horizons space probe mission to Pluto.

Mayim Bialik has been a fixture on television since she was in her early teens, appearing in movies as well as starring in '90s smash hit sitcom Blossom. These days she’s probably best known as the host of popular US quiz show Jeopardy and as Amy Farrah Fowler, Sheldon Coopers’s brainy girlfriend in The Big Bang Theory.

But in real life she’s no slouch when it comes to academic qualifications, either. In 2000, after Blossom ended, she went to college and gained an undergraduate degree in neuroscience. “I also wanted to be appreciated for what was in my head,” she said. “I fell in love with science and wanted to pursue science, so that’s what I did.”

Later, in 2007, she gained a PhD. She then became interested in attachment theory and parenting, and wrote a book on the subject in 2012 before returning to acting.

Natalie Portman has acted in countless blockbusters - from Mars Attacks! to Star Wars - and all that international film stardom didn’t leave much time for college.

But just after the release of The Phantom Menace in 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology. Once in class she suffered from impostor syndrome. “I felt that I wasn’t smart enough to be in this company,” she said. “And that every time I opened my mouth I would have to prove that I wasn’t just a dumb actress.”

It turned out that she was definitely smart enough - she graduated in June 2003 and later took a postgraduate course at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Lenny Henry left school at the age of 16 without any formal qualifications. “I grew up with the belief that education was not intended for the likes of me,” he said. But while touring with famous comedy double act Cannon & Ball in the early 1980s he finally began studying for his O-Levels.

It was over 26 years later that he got his first degree, in English Literature, from The Open University. After that he gained an MA and then a PhD in screenwriting from Royal Holloway. His doctoral thesis was titled: 'Does the Coach Have to be Black? The Sports Film, Screenwriting and Diversity'.

“The idea of me getting a PhD is the most unlikely thing ever to be mooted by anyone in the world.” he said. In 2016, he was installed as Chancellor of Birmingham City University and reflected on his studies in his inaugural address: “The experience changed my life. It opened my mind to more possibilities, new thinking and different perspectives.”

Maybe it was spending all that time at Hogwarts, but Harry Potter star Emma Watson seems to have got a taste for the classroom while playing Hermione Granger in the legendary film franchise. She enrolled at top Ivy League university Brown to study for a degree in English Literature, just as the Harry Potter film series was coming to an end.

“Having an education is such a valuable asset. I took 12 months off. I’ve just been studying full-time, reading English literature. I love TS. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, William Blake,” she said.

And the education bug seems to have bitten her as deeply as the acting one. In 2023 she announced that she would attend Oxford University to study for an MA in creative writing.

This article was published in August 2023