Those graduating from Northwestern in the next few years face an unfriendly job market, but the following celebrity alumni make becoming famous look like a piece of cake.
Clinton Kelly
For those of you wondering what degree allows you to bash a person’s lack of fashion sense on national television, look no further than What Not to Wear’s Clinton Kelly, who has a master’s degree in journalism from Medill. Before becoming a television personality, Kelly worked as a freelance writer and an editor for New York fashion magazines. He developed his reputation in the fashion world as a contributing editor at Marie Claire and a deputy editor at Mademoiselle.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
While it is almost common knowledge that Louis-Dreyfus studied theatre at Northwestern, most don’t know she dropped out and joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, contemporaneous with the likes of the then-hilarious Eddie Murphy. Acknowledging that the world won’t end if you don’t graduate, she received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree when she gave the 2007 commencement speech.
Zach Braff
Many know Zach Braff as the star, director and writer of the 2004 movie Garden State. After graduating in 1997, Braff acted in a few acclaimed independent films and a New York Public Theater production of Macbeth co-starring Alec Baldwin, but didn’t gain widespread recognition. Luckily, his agent convinced him to audition for Scrubs, the dramedy that jump-started his career.
Stephen Colbert
Perhaps the most beloved Northwestern alumnus is the man behind Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. After studying theatre at NU, an unemployed Colbert took a job answering phones at Second City. As an employee, he could take free classes and was eventually hired for the troupe. There, he met comedians he would work with later in his career, including Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, both of whom he would work with on the sketch comedy show Exit 57 and the cult series Strangers with Candy.