The stars you never knew served

1. Ice T

The rapper-turned-actor spent four years in the Army after graduating from high school in 1979. When asked on CNN last year about what advice he has to returning veterans, he said, “You’ve already learned how to overcome adversity, so just apply that to the civilian world and you’ll win.”

2. Morgan Freeman

Before he was an A-list actor, Freeman was a radar technician in the Air Force. He was 18 in 1955 when he signed up hoping to be a fighter pilot. He spent a couple of years as a mechanic before he left for LA to pursue acting, but he still loves flying his private planes.

3. Harvey Keitel

The Brooklyn-born film actor was 17 when he enlisted in the Marines. He spent two years in the service and has said he learned a lot about himself from the experience. “One night in night combat training, myself and my platoon were out there in the darkness,” he told the New York Times in 1993. “You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. And some Marine instructor — an old guy, in his 20s — said, ‘You’re all afraid of the darkness, because we’re all afraid of what we don’t know.’ He said, ‘We’re going to teach you about the darkness so you won’t be afraid.’ ”

4. Gene Hackman

The “The Royal Tenenbaums” actor served 4 and a half years as a field radio operator in the Marines in the late 1940s.

5. Drew Carey

The host of “The Price Is Right” enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1980 and served for six years after graduating from Kent State University. He says it was there he adopted his signature crewcut. “I still wear my hair short and have the glasses,” he told Military.com. “Also, I enjoyed the regimen and camaraderie. I knew that once I left the Reserves, I would give back to the military, so I teamed up with the USO.”

6. Bea Arthur

Before she was a sharp-tongued “Golden Girl,” Arthur served in the Marines during World War II. She enlisted in 1943, according to The Smoking Gun. The site says she denied her service for years, but records show she served as a typist and a truck driver, moving up the ranks from private to staff sergeant.

7. Bill Cosby

The comedian served in the Navy from 1956 to 1961. According to Military.com, Cosby trained as a hospital corpsman and worked on Navy ships and at the Marine base in Quantico, Va., before being sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

8. James Earl Jones

The voice of Darth Vader served in the Army for two years in the 1950s.

“I was in the Army between Korea and Vietnam, and I’m one of the few people who actually liked it,” he told the Sun Sentinel when he promoted the film “Gardens of Stone,” in which he played an Army master sergeant. “It’s always fascinated me how the soldier lives in a whole society that is alienated from the main society.”

9. Mel Brooks

The Brooklyn-born film director served in the Army as a combat engineer, defusing land mines during World War II.

10. MC Hammer

The rapper, whose real name is Stanley Kirk Burrell, spent three years in the Navy.