List of former copywriters
Many creative people spend time early in their careers working as advertising copywriters. This is a list of such people – specifically, people who worked as copywriters before achieving fame in a non-advertising career.
Names are followed by the careers in which they are famous.
- Sherwood Anderson, author
- Augusten Burroughs, author
- Helen Gurley Brown, former publisher and editor (Cosmopolitan)
- Peter Carey, author
- Bryce Courtenay, author
- Don DeLillo, author
- Kenny Everett, comedian and radio DJ
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, author
- Terry Gilliam, director and animator
- Alec Guinness, actor
- Dashiell Hammett, author
- Hugh Hefner, publisher (Playboy)
- Joseph Heller, author
- Russell Hoban, author
- John Hughes, director, writer
- Tim Kazurinsky, comedian
- Elmore Leonard, author
- Rick Moranis, actor
- Ogden Nash, poet
- Bob Newhart, comedian and actor
- Alan Parker, director
- Steven Pressfield, author
- Franc Roddam, director
- Indra Sinha, author
- Salman Rushdie, author
- Dorothy L. Sayers, author
- Fay Weldon, author
- Thom Jones, author
- John Safran, documentarian and broadcaster
- Agda Bavi Pain, Slovak Author