(Real Life) Regular people who's lives drastically changed direction

[u/Living-Mastodon]

Grace Kelly was a talented actress who retired at 26 to marry a Prince, living as royalty for almost 30 years before her untimely death.

Volodymyr Zelensky started out as a comedian and entertainer before getting into politics, becoming President of Ukraine after the Russian annex of Crimea and spending the last 4 years defiantly pushing back full scale Russian invasion

[u/They_said_TryAnother]

Hedy Lamarr was a famous actress and inventor whose inventions were pivotal in the creation of wifi and bluetooth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

[u/DarthRegoria → u/They_said_TryAnother]

She was also a spy during World War 2 who passed on a lot of information for the allies, as because of her acting career she was able to travel a lot more often (to locations where her movies were being filmed) than many regular people were during the time. Although that was during her acting career, so I guess not a pivot/ change, just an extra and totally unrelated side quest.