11 Celebs' Strange Pre-Fame Jobs

From birthday party clown to outhouse cleaner
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 7, 2014 1:25 PM CDT
11 Celebs' Strange Pre-Fame Jobs
Angelina Jolie and Brad PItt. He's in a tux now, but he used to wear a chicken suit.   (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

Hey, you gotta start somewhere. Radar rounds up 25 celebrities who had strange—and sometimes a little embarrassing—jobs before they got their big breaks. A sampling:

  • Cindy Crawford: Shucked corn at a local fair for $4 an hour. (But note, that's how she ended up getting discovered.)
  • Hugh Jackman: Performed as "Coco the Clown" at parties for children. "I had no magic tricks," he once recalled, leading a 6-year-old to call him "terrible."
  • Ellen DeGeneres: Sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door.
  • Sylvester Stallone: Cleaned out the lions' cages at New York's Central Park Zoo for $1.12 an hour.
  • Brad Pitt: Handed out flyers, while dressed in a chicken suit, outside a Los Angeles El Pollo Loco fast food joint.

  • Johnny Depp: Sold ballpoint pens over the phone. Or rather, tried to—he reportedly never actually made a sale.
  • Matthew McConaughey: While living in Australia, he got paid to shovel chicken manure out of cages.
  • Howard Stern: Drove an ice-cream truck.
  • Sean Connery: Has been a coffin polisher, a milkman, and a lifeguard.
  • Whoopi Goldberg: Her job was to put makeup on dead people at a mortuary, in preparation for their wakes and funerals.
  • Stanley Tucci: Cleaned outhouses at a New York summer camp.
Click for the complete list, including one now-sex-symbol who used to have to dress up as a banana at her old job. (Read more Cindy Crawford stories.)

We use cookies. By Clicking "OK" or any content on this site, you agree to allow cookies to be placed. Read more in our privacy policy.
Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X