Stony Brook University on Long Island with the stadium prepared for a graduation ceremony. Photo by Brian Kachejian.
Long Island has quietly educated an extraordinary range of people who later became famous in film, television, music, sports, science, technology, journalism, literature, and politics. Across Nassau and Suffolk counties, schools including Hofstra University, Adelphi University, Stony Brook University, Nassau Community College, Five Towns College, New York Institute of Technology, and Long Island University have helped shape careers that eventually reached audiences around the world.
For this article, Long Island means Nassau and Suffolk counties rather than the full geographic island, which also includes Brooklyn and Queens. Some of the twenty-five people below earned degrees from Long Island colleges. Others attended briefly before leaving to pursue careers that were already beginning to take off. From Francis Ford Coppola and Christopher Walken to Chuck D, Eddie Murphy, Carolyn Porco, and Adam Levine, all twenty-five spent part of their college years studying on Long Island.
Francis Ford Coppola
Long before directing The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola found his creative footing at Hofstra University in Hempstead. Coppola arrived at Hofstra in 1956 on a playwriting scholarship and immersed himself in the university’s theater program. He directed productions, wrote plays, and helped merge two student theatrical groups into the Spectrum Players. Coppola later said that Hofstra was where he first developed confidence in his creative abilities. He graduated in 1960 with a theater degree before continuing his education at UCLA’s film school and becoming one of the most influential American directors of the twentieth century.
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken enrolled at Hofstra University in 1961 and studied English while continuing the professional acting career he had begun as a child. His stay in Hempstead was brief. After two semesters, Walken left Hofstra when he was cast in an off-Broadway production of Best Foot Forward alongside Liza Minnelli. The decision turned college into a short chapter in a career that would eventually span stage, television, and film. Walken later won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Deer Hunter and became one of the most recognizable performers of his generation.
James Caan
James Caan transferred to Hofstra University after beginning his college education at Michigan State University. At Hofstra, he crossed paths with fellow student Francis Ford Coppola, beginning a connection that later became part of film history. Caan did not graduate from Hofstra. His growing interest in acting led him to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in Manhattan, where he studied with Sanford Meisner. Coppola later directed Caan in The Rain People and cast him as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, the explosive performance that earned Caan an Academy Award nomination.
Madeline Kahn
Madeline Kahn attended Hofstra University on a drama scholarship and graduated in 1964. During her college years, she studied drama, music, and speech therapy while performing extensively on the Hofstra stage, including in Shakespeare productions. Kahn ultimately earned her degree in speech therapy, but performance became her profession. Her remarkable singing voice, comic precision, and theatrical training led to Broadway and then film, where performances in Paper Moon, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and High Anxiety made her one of the most distinctive comic actresses of her era.
Phil Rosenthal
Phil Rosenthal graduated from Hofstra University in 1981 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. As a drama student, Rosenthal developed the stage experience that initially led him toward acting. After graduation, he worked as a struggling actor in New York before discovering that writing and producing were better suited to his talents. Rosenthal eventually created Everybody Loves Raymond, drawing on family relationships and everyday domestic comedy to build one of television’s most successful sitcoms. He later became equally recognizable as the host of the food and travel series Somebody Feed Phil.
Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy enrolled at Nassau Community College in Garden City after graduating from Roosevelt High School. His college stay was brief because comedy was already taking over his life. Murphy had begun performing stand-up as a teenager on Long Island and continued working clubs while attending Nassau. Within months, he successfully auditioned for Saturday Night Live and joined the cast at only nineteen years old. His rapid rise on television led to a major film career that included 48 Hrs., Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America, and the Shrek films.
Billy Crystal
Billy Crystal attended Nassau Community College after an earlier college baseball opportunity at Marshall University ended when the school’s baseball program was suspended. Back home on Long Island, Crystal studied at Nassau before transferring to New York University, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in film and television directing. His education coincided with a growing interest in comedy and performance. Crystal eventually became nationally known through television, stand-up, the Academy Awards, and films including When Harry Met Sally…, City Slickers, and Analyze This.
Jacqueline Woodson
Author Jacqueline Woodson attended Adelphi University in Garden City during the 1980s, studying English while also participating in track and other campus activities. Her experience there was complicated, and she later spoke openly about feeling isolated as a Black student in the English department, but she also found professors and friends who encouraged her writing. Woodson left Adelphi before completing the degree and went on to become one of the most acclaimed writers of literature for young people and adults. Her books include Brown Girl Dreaming, Another Brooklyn, and Red at the Bone. Adelphi awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2016.
Chuck D
Carlton Ridenhour, better known as Chuck D, graduated from Adelphi University in 1984 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design. His years in Garden City became important to both sides of his creative life. He drew cartoons and designed graphics while also becoming heavily involved with Adelphi’s student radio station, WBAU. The station was emerging as an important outlet for hip-hop on Long Island, and Ridenhour used it to host and promote the music while developing the commanding voice that later defined Public Enemy. Adelphi has repeatedly described his college years as foundational to his artistic, political, and musical development.
Flavor Flav
William Drayton, better known as Flavor Flav, attended Adelphi University and became part of the same Long Island college-radio environment that helped shape Public Enemy. At Adelphi, he connected with fellow student Carlton Ridenhour, later known as Chuck D, and the two collaborated around WBAU and the local hip-hop scene. Flav’s musicianship, comic personality, and high-energy vocal style became the perfect counterweight to Chuck D’s commanding delivery. Together they helped form Public Enemy, whose records including It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet became landmarks of hip-hop.
Jonathan Larson
Jonathan Larson attended Adelphi University on a theater scholarship and graduated in 1982 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. While studying in Garden City, Larson acted in university productions, wrote music, and composed material for student cabarets and stage shows. His professors and classmates remembered an artist whose ambitions increasingly moved toward writing and composing rather than simply performing. Larson spent the years after Adelphi developing new forms of musical theater in New York City. His greatest work, Rent, opened off-Broadway shortly after his death in 1996 and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical.
Gary Dell’Abate (“Baba Booey”)
Gary Dell’Abate graduated from Adelphi University in 1983 and discovered radio almost immediately after arriving on campus. He became deeply involved with WBAU, eventually working as an on-air personality and station manager. Dell’Abate has recalled walking into the college radio station during orientation and instantly becoming fascinated by broadcasting. That experience led to internships and professional radio work after college. He eventually became the longtime executive producer of The Howard Stern Show, where the nickname “Baba Booey” became permanently attached to him and part of the show’s history.
Sean Hannity
Sean Hannity attended Adelphi University during the early 1980s but did not graduate. Raised in Franklin Square, he also attended New York University and later studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Hannity’s formal college education remained unfinished as he moved into construction work and developed an increasing interest in talk radio. His first regular radio opportunity came years later at the college station KCSB in Santa Barbara. Hannity eventually built a nationally syndicated radio career and became one of the most prominent hosts on the Fox News Channel.
Joy Behar
After earning her undergraduate degree at Queens College, Joy Behar continued her education at Stony Brook University, where she received a master’s degree in English education in 1966. Behar later worked as an English teacher on Long Island before eventually pursuing comedy. Her route into entertainment came much later than that of many performers, but years in classrooms and ordinary jobs supplied an enormous amount of material for her observational style. Behar became a successful stand-up comedian and, in 1997, one of the original co-hosts of ABC’s The View.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Laura Schlessinger attended Stony Brook University and earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences in 1968. Her scientific education continued at Columbia University, where she later earned graduate degrees in physiology. Long before becoming nationally known as Dr. Laura, Schlessinger therefore followed a conventional academic path in the sciences. Her career eventually shifted toward radio, writing, and relationship advice, and The Dr. Laura Program became one of the most widely syndicated talk-radio programs in the United States.
Joe Nathan
Joe Nathan attended Stony Brook University and became one of the school’s most successful athletes. He arrived as a shortstop rather than a pitcher and earned academic honors while starring for the baseball program. The San Francisco Giants drafted Nathan after his junior year, but he later returned to Stony Brook and completed his Bachelor of Science in business management in 1997. After converting to pitching in professional baseball, Nathan developed into one of Major League Baseball’s premier closers. The six-time All-Star finished his career with 377 saves and later had Stony Brook’s baseball field named in his honor.
Jef Raskin
Jef Raskin, the computer-interface pioneer who conceived and began leading Apple’s Macintosh project, completed his undergraduate education at Stony Brook University. Raskin studied mathematics and philosophy while also pursuing interests in physics and music. He later earned a master’s degree in computer science from Pennsylvania State University. At Apple, Raskin became an early advocate for computers designed around the needs of ordinary users rather than technical specialists. His ideas about simplicity, interface design, and human-computer interaction helped establish principles that would influence personal computing for decades.
Carolyn Porco
Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco graduated from Stony Brook University in 1974 after studying physics and astronomy. Raised in the Bronx, Porco had become fascinated with the night sky as a teenager and carried that interest into her undergraduate work on Long Island. She later earned her doctorate at Caltech and became an imaging scientist on NASA’s Voyager missions. Porco achieved even greater prominence as leader of the Cassini imaging science team, overseeing the spectacular photographs and scientific observations produced during the spacecraft’s long exploration of Saturn and its moons.
Adam Levine
After the disappointing first chapter of his band Kara’s Flowers, Adam Levine moved from Los Angeles to Long Island with bandmate Jesse Carmichael and attended Five Towns College. Their stay was relatively brief, but Levine later described the experience as musically important because exposure to hip-hop and R&B pushed him beyond the alternative-rock influences that had shaped his teenage band. Levine and Carmichael eventually returned to Los Angeles, reunited with their former bandmates, and formed the group that became Maroon 5. The band’s debut album, Songs About Jane, transformed Levine into an international pop star.
Julian Casablancas
Julian Casablancas, lead singer and principal songwriter of The Strokes, studied music on Long Island before his band became one of the defining rock groups of the early 2000s. After leaving traditional high school and earning his GED, Casablancas took music classes at Five Towns College. He later attended Adelphi University, which lists him among its alumni as a member of the Class of 2001. His formal study of harmony and composition helped provide structure for the tightly arranged songs that appeared on The Strokes’ landmark debut album, Is This It.
Wyclef Jean
Wyclef Jean attended Five Towns College for a brief period after graduating from high school in New Jersey. His time at the Long Island music school became one stop in an education shaped as much by churches, neighborhood music, recording equipment, and collaboration as by classrooms. Jean soon focused fully on making music with Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel in the Fugees. Their 1996 album The Score became one of the defining records of its era and won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. Jean subsequently built a long career as a solo artist, songwriter, producer, and humanitarian.
Joe Satriani
Joe Satriani grew up in Westbury and Carle Place and attended Five Towns College while developing the technical knowledge that helped make him one of rock music’s most celebrated guitarists. He had already committed himself seriously to guitar as a teenager and studied with jazz musicians including Billy Bauer while also teaching younger players. One of those students was future guitar star Steve Vai. Satriani eventually left Long Island for California and built a career centered on instrumental rock. His breakthrough album, Surfing with the Alien, demonstrated that virtuosic instrumental guitar music could reach a large mainstream rock audience.
Karine Jean-Pierre
Karine Jean-Pierre graduated from the New York Institute of Technology in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in life sciences. Raised in Hempstead, she pursued her undergraduate education on Long Island before earning a Master of Public Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Jean-Pierre eventually moved into campaigns, advocacy, and government, working in Democratic presidential politics and the Obama administration. In 2022, she became White House press secretary, the first Black person and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to hold the position.
Chris Distefano
Long before becoming a full-time stand-up comedian, Chris Distefano trained for an entirely different profession at the New York Institute of Technology. He earned his Doctor of Physical Therapy degree in 2010 and worked as a physical therapist while simultaneously performing comedy at night. The demanding combination continued until entertainment gradually became his full-time career. Distefano gained broader recognition through MTV programs including Guy Code and later built a successful career through stand-up specials, podcasts, television appearances, and live touring.
Brian Kilmeade
Brian Kilmeade graduated from LIU Post in Brookville in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in communications and a specialization in political science. He also played soccer for the university, an experience he later credited with teaching him lessons about competition and persistence. Kilmeade moved into broadcasting after college and worked in sports radio and television before joining Fox News in the 1990s. He became a longtime co-host of Fox & Friends, a nationally syndicated radio host, and the author of several books on American history.
The colleges of Nassau and Suffolk counties played very different roles in these twenty-five careers. Some students stayed long enough to earn undergraduate or graduate degrees, while others spent only a semester or a year on campus before another opportunity changed their direction. What connects them is that Long Island became part of their educational story. Hofstra’s theaters, Adelphi’s radio station, Stony Brook’s laboratories and athletic fields, Nassau Community College’s classrooms, and the music programs of Five Towns all became stepping-stones in careers that eventually reached far beyond the Island.
For more stories about notable Long Islanders, read 25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were From Nassau County, New York and 25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were From Suffolk County, New York.
