12 Celebrities Who Moonlighted As Spies

Though John Wayne was heavily criticized for his lack of service in World War II, it turns out he might have been helping out after all, just behind the scenes. Wayne himself claimed to have gathered information for the U.S. government in 1943 and 1944. The exact details of the information he gathered have never been publicly released, which I guess is sort of the point. There is, however, a letter to the actor from the Office of Strategic Services thanking him for his non-specific “service.”

This one might not be as thoroughly confirmed as the others, but there’s no way I’m not mentioning it. After all, it’s pretty easy to believe that the espionage community would have at least a passing interest in a guy who could escape anything. The rumors are that Houdini worked for Scotland Yard, and there are diary entries from officers there referring to documents from “HH,” which some take to be Houdini himself.

His movie character would suggest that Harpo Marx would make a uniquely unhelpful spy, but in real life, it was the opposite. In 1933, Harpo smuggled messages back and forth from the U.S. embassy in Moscow in an envelope taped to his leg. Luckily, nobody strip-searched the Marx Brothers, though that would have been grounds for an incredible bit.

Cary Grant’s role in espionage was actually brought about by the activity of another actor. Errol Flynn, a leading man around the same time that Grant wasn’t particularly fond of, was reported to have been working with the Nazis. Happy to dig up dirt on Flynn seeing as his downfall would have been both professionally beneficial and personally satisfying, Grant observed him and reported back to MI6 on his activity.

Josephine Baker may not be quite as well-known as others on this list because she was a talented black entertainer in the 1930s, a time when the U.S. only really liked the first and third words of that description. She left for France, where her star power was immediately realized. That same charisma got her recruited by French military intelligence, and she smuggled information to the Allies on sheet music.

A little switcheroo for you here: This entry isn’t informing you of a spy, but rather debunking a popular rumor. There’s plenty of internet coverage of Greta Garbo working as a spy, but it’s owed to a weird, confusing occurrence. That’s the fact that the non-famous (as most are) spy Juan Pujol Garcia went by the codename “Garbo.” A codename assigned by MI6, which was probably thinking, “I bet this’ll fuck over internet writers a bunch in the future.”

As Roald Dahl wrote timeless children’s books, he was also involved in some serious adult business: espionage. During World War II, after his service as a fighter pilot, he was sent to the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. Eleanor Roosevelt took a shine to him, and suddenly, he was stopping by the White House for frequent hangs. He used this window into an unedited Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s mind to keep Britain abreast of his thinking.

The same Steinbeck you were first introduced to via a required summer reading list was also a spy during the Cold War — interestingly enough, at his own suggestion. When he was hired by Collier's Magazine to travel the Mediterranean and write about his travels, he hit up the CIA, saying, “Hey, I could probably do some spying, too, if you want.” They did want.

A revolutionary feminist and staunch liberal isn’t exactly the sort of person you expect to pick up the phone when the CIA calls. They’re more likely to have interactions that start with a kicked-in door. Yet Gloria Steinem did extensive (and reportedly lucrative) work for government agencies in the 1950s and 1960s. She speaks pretty openly about it, which is maybe her tiny way of still pissing them off.

Actor Christopher Lee has claimed that he was a spy in the British SAS, along with working for the Royal Air Force and Long Range Desert Group. There have been grumblings that his tales lay it on a little thick, but it’s undeniable that he did indeed serve. 

Now, this was all done before his fame, meaning it’s not like he would have been given any special treatment. Not to mention, if it’s exaggeration that gives us incredible stories like him, as Saruman, explaining to Peter Jackson what a man sounds like when he dies, I’ll take a stretched truth or two.

Like Christopher Lee, spying was weirdly her gig before she made it big. She worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and received an Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service for her time there.

All the entries so far have had one important thing in common: They weren’t working for the baddies. Not true about fashion and Instagram quote icon Coco Chanel. She was a faithful servant of the Nazi regime during World War II. Chanel even tried to broker a peace agreement on their behalf in 1943, at which point the ship on “shaking hands with the Nazis” had well and fully sailed.