You don't have to be musician to listen to music, and you don't have to be a filmmaker to go to the cinema, but somehow when we think of science, we think of it only as an academic discipline.
When I was acting, as a hobby, I would devour popular science books and keep up-to-date about what was going on in the science community. And then, suddenly my hobby became my job. I didn't one day say, "I'm not acting. I'm now going to be a science person.