20 Jobs Celebrities Had Before They Were Famous

Before they became movie stars, chart-topping musicians, and familiar faces on television, plenty of celebrities worked the same kinds of jobs as everyone else. Some made sandwiches, served fast food, or dealt with customers. Others took on work that seems a little unusual in hindsight, from helping out at a circus to preparing holiday hams.

That does not mean their earlier jobs were all miserable. In fact, several people on this list have said they enjoyed the experience, while others have shared stories about demanding shifts, difficult customers, or jobs that simply were not right for them. What makes these memories interesting is not how glamorous or unpleasant they were, but how different they look alongside the careers that followed.

These 20 examples are drawn from celebrity interviews, personal essays, and firsthand recollections. The jobs range from high-school and college work to positions held during the early stages of entertainment careers. Here is what these familiar names were doing before most of us knew who they were.

Christopher Walken really did spend a summer working with a lion, although the story is a little less dramatic than the phrase “lion tamer” suggests. As a teenager, he joined a traveling circus and played the lion trainer’s son in a short routine. After the experienced trainer finished his act, Walken entered the cage with Sheba, an older, trained lioness who performed a few simple tricks. He has described her as gentle and said he enjoyed the experience. It was an unusual early show-business job, but he wasn’t independently training wild lions.

Before her breakthrough on American Idol and her Oscar-winning performance in Dreamgirls, Jennifer Hudson worked at a Burger King in Chicago. She has recalled singing into the drive-through headset while taking customers’ orders, treating the microphone as a chance to perform. In interviews, Hudson has spoken warmly about the experience rather than describing it as a job she hated. The work put her in front of plenty of people, even if they were stopping by for burgers instead of buying concert tickets. Her singing career eventually took her far beyond the drive-through window.

Rachel McAdams spent about three years working at McDonald’s as a teenager in Canada, alongside her brother and sister. Her sister was even her manager. The actress has said it was a good place to work, although she didn’t consider herself a particularly strong employee. She liked washing her hands frequently, which sometimes clashed with the rush of customers at the drive-through, and she once broke an orange juice machine. Long before Mean Girls and The Notebook made her a familiar face, she was handling the same busy shifts and small workplace mishaps as countless other teenagers.

Before becoming widely known for The Summer I Turned Pretty, Christopher Briney worked at Trader Joe’s while he was in college. In an interview with Interview magazine, he confirmed the job and spoke positively about it, saying he had a great time. There is no dramatic quitting story or workplace disaster here, just a college student earning money before his acting career gained momentum. It is a useful reminder that many celebrities held ordinary retail jobs not because something went wrong, but because they were trying to pay their bills while figuring out what came next.

Margot Robbie worked at a Subway restaurant in Melbourne before her acting career took off. She has described the sandwich-making job as one of her favorites and said she took real pride in getting customers’ orders right. By her account, she was still working there around the time she landed a role on the Australian soap Neighbours. She later joked that watching someone else make a messy sandwich could be frustrating because she knew how she would do it. Not every celebrity’s early job was a miserable experience, and Robbie’s time behind the counter is a good example.

Before he became a familiar face in films and television, Steve Buscemi served with the New York City Fire Department from 1980 to 1984. He worked with Engine Company 55 in Manhattan while also pursuing acting. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Buscemi returned to help fellow firefighters with recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site. This was not an odd side gig or an embarrassing job to leave behind. It was public service, and it remains an important part of his personal history alongside his later success on screen.

Tiffany Haddish worked in airline customer service before her comedy and acting career made her a household name. She has specifically confirmed working for Alaska Airlines and has described herself as good at dealing with customers. That experience still shapes her approach to travel: she has encouraged passengers to treat airline employees politely rather than taking their frustrations out on the people at the counter. Customer service may not sound like the most glamorous first chapter in a comedy career, but it certainly offers plenty of opportunities to learn how people behave under pressure.

Long before One Direction became an international success, Harry Styles worked part-time at W. Mandeville Bakery in Holmes Chapel, the English village where he grew up. His duties included serving customers and helping clean the shop. He was still a teenager when he auditioned for The X Factor in 2010, the show that brought together the members of One Direction. Styles later returned to the bakery while filming the group’s documentary This Is Us. For people who knew him as the local kid behind the counter, his rise from weekend shifts to sold-out shows must have been quite a change.

Matthew McConaughey’s early work at Oak Forest Country Club in Longview, Texas, involved more than keeping the course tidy. He has recalled starting before dawn to rake dozens of sand traps before golfers arrived. The groundskeeper also hired him for overnight work dealing with armadillos that were damaging the greens. It was a far cry from a film set, and the schedule could be demanding. McConaughey described the work himself in a GQ interview, explaining how seriously he took the need to leave the bunkers ready for the first group of the day.

Nicole Kidman learned massage techniques when her mother was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. She has explained that she took a course to help with the painful muscle problems her mother experienced and then began giving paid massages in people’s homes. That makes this story more personal than a simple list of unusual jobs might suggest. The work grew out of a desire to help a family member, and Kidman later said she continued to enjoy giving massages. It is more accurate to describe this as massage work than to assume she held a particular professional license or clinical qualification.

Before she became a recording star, Nicki Minaj waited tables at Red Lobster and worked in several other customer-service jobs. She has been open about not always getting along with customers. In one frequently retold story, she followed a couple into the parking lot after they left with her pen, and the confrontation helped cost her the job. Minaj later discussed the incident in interviews, including with GQ. It is a colorful part of her early employment history, but the underlying job was a familiar one: serving meals and trying to get through a busy shift.

Before he became known as a fashion expert on Queer Eye, Tan France briefly worked as a flight attendant for Britannia Airways in England. He was 19 and had planned to take a six-month seasonal position, but he left after about two months. France has written about the demanding training and explained that the job was not a good fit for him. Working on an aircraft sounds exciting from the outside, yet it involves a great deal of preparation, responsibility, and close contact with passengers. For France, the experience turned out to be a short detour rather than a career.

When Melissa McCarthy was starting out in Los Angeles, she took jobs she could reach on foot because she did not have a car. Among them were positions at the YMCA and a Starbucks in Santa Monica. She has recalled one especially memorable customer: comedian Chris Farley, whom she admired so much that she became starstruck while trying to take his order. The coffee-shop job came before McCarthy made her name in television and film. Her story is not so much about a terrible workplace as it is about the awkwardness of unexpectedly meeting a personal hero.

Whoopi Goldberg trained in cosmetology and worked at a funeral home before her acting career took off. Her duties included preparing the hair and appearance of people who had died so their families could see them at a viewing. In an interview with Fresh Air, Goldberg spoke thoughtfully about the work, explaining that she saw it as a way to offer some comfort to grieving relatives. The schedule also allowed her to pursue theater. It is an unusual job compared with the entertainment careers that followed, but Goldberg has made clear that she regarded it as meaningful work.

Terry Crews was an artist before he became a professional football player or an actor. While studying at Western Michigan University, he spent a summer working for WJRT television in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. When the station’s courtroom sketch artist was unavailable, Crews stepped in and drew scenes from a local murder trial for the news broadcast. He has spoken about how proud his family was to see his work on television. One important detail often gets reversed: this assignment came before his NFL career, not after it. His artistic interests have remained part of his life ever since.

Before Old Town Road made him famous, Lil Nas X worked at Six Flags supervising children’s amusement rides. In a Rolling Stone profile, he specifically recalled looking after attractions such as Yosemite Sam’s Wacky Wagons. He also worked as a cashier at the Georgia restaurant chain Zaxby’s. The money he saved from these jobs helped support him during the period when he decided to focus on making music. His path to a breakout hit did not begin with a major record deal; it included the same kinds of entry-level shifts many students and young adults know well.

At 17, Amy Poehler spent the summer of 1989 working at Chadwick’s, an ice cream shop in Massachusetts. She later wrote about the experience in a New Yorker essay, describing the scooping, cleaning, and end-of-shift chores that made it more tiring than a cheerful summer job might sound. The work involved more than handing over cones; there were booths to scrub, equipment to wash, and customers to deal with. Poehler’s account is funny, but it also captures the way a first job can teach someone about hard work, impatience, and the relief of finally clocking out.

Before Friends turned her into a television star, Jennifer Aniston worked as a bicycle messenger in New York City when she was about 19. She later called it one of the toughest jobs she had held, largely because navigating city streets on a bike did not come naturally to her. Aniston has described riding into a door and struggling with coordination, although she also said she enjoyed parts of the job. In an early interview, she recalled that the messenger stint lasted only a few months and ended with her being fired. Acting proved to be a much better fit.

Before her role on Suits, Meghan Markle earned money with her handwriting. She worked as a freelance calligrapher, creating invitations and correspondence, including lettering for Robin Thicke and Paula Patton’s 2005 wedding. She also handled holiday cards for Dolce & Gabbana and taught paper-arts workshops, including calligraphy and gift wrapping, at Paper Source. Markle has said the work helped her pay bills while she auditioned for acting roles. It may be one of the more unexpected jobs on this list, but it relied on a practical skill she had developed long before she became well known.

Paul Rudd took a job glazing hams while saving money for acting school. In an interview with CBS News, he described the repetitive process of applying sugar, using a torch, wrapping the finished hams, and getting them ready for customers, especially during the holiday rush. He has since joked that the experience helped him realize he did not want to spend his career doing it. Rudd worked several jobs before becoming a familiar face in films such as Clueless, but ham glazing remains one of his more memorable stories. It was real work, even if it now makes for an amusing interview anecdote.