Honoring Veterans Day With a Look Back at Movie Stars Who've Served

November 11 is Veterans Day, the annual U.S. holiday celebrating all those who’ve served in the Armed Forces. In honor of the day, we’re taking a look back at some famous faces who’ve done their part from silent clown Buster Keaton and his stint during the Great War to Star Wars: The Force Awakens villain Adam Driver and his time in the Marines.

Robert Altman

The future filmmaker (who’d go on to direct seminal war picture M*A*S*H, among many others) flew more than 50 bombing missions in World War II with the US Army Air Force’s 307th Bomb Group. (Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Ernest Borgnine

The veteran actor, an Oscar winner for 1955’s Marty, was also a Navy vet who re-enlisted soon after Pearl Harbor. He spent the war patrolling the Atlantic on an anti-submarine ship, and would later keep up the association by starring in popular TV show McHale’s Navy. (Photo: Everett)

Mel Brooks

Before he was behind comedy classics like The Producers, Young Frankenstein, and Blazing Saddles, Brooks was a corporal in the Engineer Corps, defusing land mines, and taking part in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. (Photo: AP Photo)

Tony Curtis

The Some Like It Hot star enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17 and served on a submarine tender in the Pacific in World War II. In September 1945, the future actor watched the surrender of the Japanese forces from the deck of his ship, the USS Proteus. (Photo: Getty Images)

Kirk Douglas

The future Spartacus star was just getting his acting career going on Broadway when the war began. He joined up after Pearl Harbor in 1941, serving as a communications officer in the Navy. He was discharged after an injury in 1944. (John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)

Charles Durning

The Sting and Tootsie star had an extraordinary military career during World War II, earning a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. He was one of the first troops on Omaha Beach during D-Day and was one of the few to escape a massacre of American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge. (Photo Everett)

Douglas Fairbanks Jr

Star of The Prisoner Of Zenda and Gunga Din, Fairbanks is arguably best known for his service in the US Navy: He rose to the rank of commander during World War II and earned among other honors, the Silver Star and the British Distinguished Service Cross. (Photo: MPI/Getty Images)

Henry Fonda

When World War II broke out, Fonda was already a big star thanks to movies like The Grapes Of Wrath and The Lady Eve. That didn’t stop him from joining the Navy in 1942, where he eventually won a Bronze Star and Presidential citation for his work as an intelligence officer. (Photo: PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

Clark Gable

After wife Carole Lombard was killed in a 1942 plane crash, the Gone With The Wind star signed up with the U.S. Army Air Force. Gable was given a special assignment to make a film to recruit aerial gunners, and flew combat missions on Flying Fortresses over Europe. (Keystone/Getty Images)

Alec Guinness

The man who’d come to be known as Obi-Wan Kenobi was already a well-known actor on the British stage when World War II broke out. He joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and later commanded landing craft during the invasions of Sicily and Elba. (Photo: Everett)

Christopher Lee

A famed screen villain in movies like Dracula and The Lord Of The Rings, the British actor served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force in Africa and Italy during World War II, before helping to track down Nazi war criminals. (Baron/Getty Images)

Lee Marvin

A celebrated tough guy thanks to roles in The Dirty Dozen and Cat Ballou, Marvin had the biography to back it up. A Marine during World War II, he was shot during the Battle of Saipan. “After a sheltered life, I went the other way,” he once said. “I wanted to prove how tough I was.”

Paul Newman

The future Cool Hand Luke star joined the Navy in 1943. A radioman with an air crew, he narrowly avoided death aboard the USS Bunker Hill when it was attacked by kamikaze bombers. Newman was scheduled to be aboard, but his flight was delayed. (Photo: Diltz/RDA/Getty Images)

Jack Palance

A future Oscar winner, Palance flew on B-24 Liberator bombers during World War II. Rumor had it that he’d had reconstructive surgery after he was burned during a bail-out, but Palance dismissed this, saying “If it is a ‘bionic face,’ why didn’t they do a better job of it?” (Photo: Everett)

Donald Pleasence

When the British actor, known for playing James Bond nemesis Blofeld, appeared in the seminal WWII movie The Great Escape, he was drawing from personal experience: His RAF bomber was shot down in August 1944, and he was held for a year in a POW camp. (Photo: Everett)

Rod Steiger

An eventual star of On The Waterfront and The Pawnbroker, Steiger ran away from home at age 16, and lied about his age to sign up for the Navy, serving as a torpedoman on destroyers in the Pacific during World War II. (Photo: Everett)

Jimmy Stewart

Stewart was a huge star before World War II thanks to Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and The Philadelphia Story, but he still enlisted well before Pearl Harbor. A highly-decorated B-24 bomber pilot, he flew 20 combat missions and rose from private to colonel in only four years. (AP Photo)

Adam Driver

Before fighting for the dark side in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Driver was a Marine, having enlisted after the 9/11 attacks. “It just seemed like a badass thing to do,” he told GQ. A biking injury kept him from deploying to Iraq, and he was eventually discharged. (Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Buster Keaton

The silent-era star was drafted into the Army during World War I. “I resented my uniform, which made me feel ridiculous,” the actor later said. Keaton was still able to hone his acting chops, pretending to be an officer on a French base and driving off with his girlfriend. (Photo: John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)

Chuck Norris

The Missing in Action star was an Air Force air policeman from 1958-1962. During his stint, he took up Tang Soo Do training in South Korea, and earned the nickname “Chuck.” (Photo: AP Photo/files)

Clint Eastwood

Eastwood was drafted into the Army in 1950. While at Fort Ord in California, he met actors David Janssen and Martin Milner — two men who’d persuade young Eastwood to move to Los Angeles after his military stint in 1954. (Photo: Collection/Getty Images)

Gene Wilder

Recruited in 1956, Wilder stayed as close to his New York City acting classes as he could, serving as a paramedic at Valley Forge Army Hospital in nearby Pennsylvania. (Photo: Art Zelin/Getty Images)

Gene Hackman

At 16, Hackman joined the Marines because — as he once joked — “I couldn’t get laid.” Beginning in 1946, he served four and a half years as a field radio operator, and also worked as a DJ on the Armed Forces Network, which sparked his interest in show biz. (Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Harvey Keitel

The future Mean Streets star dropped out of school at age 17 and enlisted in the Marines, where he served in Beirut in 1958. “I was on an incredible adventure there,” he later told the New York Times. “I was excited about … doing what’s good.” (Photo: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Humphrey Bogart

Years before movies like Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, a young Bogie joined the Navy in 1918 and served on a troopship during the end of World War I. He later said, “At eighteen, war was great stuff. Paris! Sexy French girls! Hot damn!“ (Photo: Museum of the City of New York/Getty Images)

Mickey Rooney

Rooney was a top box-office draw when he was drafted into the Army during World War II. He served almost two years entertaining troops abroad and won a Bronze Star for it. (Photo: AP Photo)

Morgan Freeman

Freeman turned down a drama scholarship to enlist in the Air Force in 1955, serving as an Automatic Tracking Radar Repairman and rising to the rank of Airman First Class: "I took to [military life] immediately,” he’s said. (Photo: John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images)

Robert Duvall

A descendent of Robert E. Lee, Duvall followed in his family’s footsteps when he was drafted in 1953, just as the Korean War was coming to a close. He ultimately wound up focusing on acting instead of fighting, enrolling in a theater program with the help of the G.I. Bill. (Photo: Robin Platzer/Images/Getty Images)

Richard Pryor

The comedian was in the Army for two years in the late 1950s, spending most of it in a military prison for joining in a fight while in Germany (he was later discharged). (Photo: Seth Poppell/Yearbook Library)

Rock Hudson

Hudson served in the Philippines as an aircraft mechanic for the Navy during World War II. He said he made mechanical errors that caused two planes to be destroyed — only to later claim he fabricated the story. (Photo: Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Sidney Poitier

The future Oscar winner lied about his age and joined the Army at age 16. But as he later admitted in his autobiography Measure of a Man, the actor grew displeased and faked insanity to try to get a medical discharge. A great actor from the start! (Photo: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Spencer Tracy

Katherine Hepburn’s other half in films like Woman of the Year and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was in the Navy for a year as World War I drew to a close in 1918. He never saw combat. (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Steve McQueen

Having joined the Marines in 1947, the actor once spent 41 days in a prison for ditching his duties (he’d later claim to have been demoted from private first class to private “about seven times”). All was forgiven when he saved the lives of five men during a deadly Arctic exercise. (Photo: John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)

Ernie Hudson

The future Ghostbusters star joined the Marines in the ‘60s. He later came to regret it. “It was a nightmare,” Hudson has said of the experience. “I said, ‘Christ, I’ve got to get out of here.’” His asthma got him dismissed after just three months, which set him on a path toward Yale School of Drama.

James Earl Jones

The Oscar-nominated star of The Great White Hope (and voice of Darth Vader) joined the U.S. Army in 1952, eventually rising in the ranks to first lieutenant. "I loved the Army — I almost stayed in the Army,” Jones told NPR last year. (Photo: AP Photo)