See also: List of 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're famous.

• Sherwood Anderson, author
• Augusten Burroughs, author
• Helen Gurley Brown, former publisher and editor (Cosmopolitan)
• Peter Carey, author
• Bryce Courtenay, Australian Author
• Don DeLillo, author
• 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, novelist
• Salman Rushdie, author
• Dorothy L. Sayers, author
• Fay Weldon, author
• Thom Jones, author