Many creative people spend time early in their careers working as 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're famous.

• Sherwood Anderson, author
• Augusten Burroughs, author
• Helen Gurley Brown, publisher and editor (Cosmopolitan)
• Gary Comer , founder of Lands' End
• Don DeLillo, author
• Terry Gilliam, director and animator
• Alec Guinness, actor
• Dashiell Hammett, author
• Hugh Hefner, publisher (Playboy)
• Joseph Heller, author
• Russell Hoban, author
• Tim Kazurinsky, comedian
• Ogden Nash, poet
• Bob Newhart, comedian and actor
• Alan Parker, director
• Franc Roddam , director
• Salman Rushdie, author
• Dorothy L. Sayers, author
• Fay Weldon, author

Copywriters famous for their copywriting or advertising careers can be found at the list of copywriters.