Plenty of movie stars have played war heroes on screen. Many of them acted from experience, having served in the U.S. military during wartime. 

Actor and filmmaker Mel Brooks often mocked Nazis in films like The Producers and History of the World: Part 1, and in the latter years of the war, he took them on in battle. While still in high school in 1944, Brooks was drafted and passed a test to earn special training that allowed him to serve as an artillery observer. In France and Belgium, he marked terrain, checking for landmines and also making a path for Allied troops on their way to fight the Battle of the Bulge. Brooks estimates that he barely avoided death on five occasions. 

Foundational screen comedian and silent film star Buster Keaton was drafted by the U.S. Army in 1918, toward the end of World War I and after he’d already become a movie star. His division assisted allies in the trenches of France in late 1918, where it was so cold that Keaton lost most of his hearing. He was nearly killed by friendly fire when he tried to enter his own camp and didn’t hear a guard shout a warning. 

Alec Guinness — best known for the war movie The Bridge on the River Kwai and Star Wars — signed up for the U.K.’s Royal Navy in 1939 and made officer within three years. For a year, he ran exercises and transport missions until he was called in to help with Operation Husky, a.k.a., the Allied invasion of the Axis-controlled stronghold of Sicily off Italy. Because his ship stopped to load 200 troops from another regiment, they didn’t hear that the powers that be delayed the invasion by an hour. And so, Guinness’ ship was the first boat in Operation Husky, and he endured extremely heavy artillery from both ground troops and airplanes. 

A major film star of the 1930s and 1940s, Jimmy Stewart’s acting career sustained a four-year pause because of U.S. Air Force service. He trained at an Army Air Corps base where he got a special commission and amassed 400 hours of flight time, leading the military to train him to be a fighter pilot. In 1943, Stewart took to the air with armed aircraft over Europe. As the commander of the 703^rd Bomb Squadron and Operations Officer of the 453^rd Bomb Group, Stewart flew in 20 anti-Nazi-plane combat missions.

James Garner — best known for starring in Maverick in the ‘60s and The Rockford Files in the ‘70s — believes that he was the first man in Oklahoma drafted to serve in the Korean War. Deploying with the 5^thRegimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army, he saw action on his section day in Korea. Rifleman Garner was near the back of his patrol group when he got hit by mortar shrapnel, cutting his hand, face, and wrist. After healing for two weeks, he was back in the field and faced Chinese troops in 1951’s First Spring Offensive. Outmanned and out maneuvered, Garner’s unit suffered heavy gunfire; he returned fire and saw himself kill an adversary.