Entertainment

18 Celebrities & Their Pre-Fame Jobs, From Whoopi's Morgue Gig to McDreamy's Professional Juggling Career

You know that saying "don't quit your day job?" These celebrities probably heard that grating phrase many times before they hit it big. And for many of them, they actually had a day job to quit. These 18 celebrities started at the bottom before rising to the top of their game. Check out the work that these stars did before hitting A-list status in Hollywood.

by Kaitlin Reilly

Rachel McAdams

The Midnight In Paris actress worked at McDonalds for three years, but admits that she never quite got the hang of it.

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Victoria Beckham

Beckham played a rollerskating sperm on a children’s television show called Body Matters. Guess she didn’t feel like working at McDonalds.

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Pink

According to Ranker, Pink worked at a variety of fast food chains, including Wendy’s, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut.

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Rod Stewart

The singer worked a series of odd jobs before making it big, but perhaps his weirdest was marking off plots at a cemetery.

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Channing Tatum

Tatum had experience stripping long before his Magic Mike days. He became a stripper at 19 but thinks that the experience was much more cheesy than sexy. I’ve seen Tatum dance and have to say that I wholeheartedly disagree.

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Christopher Walken

Not many people can say that they held the same job as Walken did before making it big. Walken worked at a circus as a lion tamer, which might be scary if the lion wasn’t really old.

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Jon Hamm

Hamm’s first job was hardly reminiscent of the classiness of the Mad Men offices: He worked as a set dresser for pornography shoots.

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Hugh Jackman

Imagine the Wolverine coming to your house in full clown makeup. You don’t have to because it happened. Jackman worked as a party clown before launching his acting career.

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Megan Fox

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles star only had one non-acting gig, but it’s a good one. She dressed as a giant banana while working at a smoothie shop in Florida.

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Amy Adams

Before she was an Oscar nominated actress, Adams was a Hooters girl. And she wasn’t the only star who started at the chain…

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Naya Rivera

Glee actress Rivera also waited tables at Hooters.

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Madonna

Madonna was allegedly fired from her job at Dunkin’ Donuts in New York City for “squirting jelly” all over a customer.

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Robert Redford

Redford was fired from his job on an oil rig when he was caught sleeping on a job, possibly dreaming of Hollywood.

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Patrick Dempsey

Before he was McDreamy, he was a juggler. Like, a really excellent, professional juggler. It’s a job.

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Brad Pitt

The movie star credits strippers for changing his life. Before he started acting, Pitt worked as a driver, taking strippers to different events. One of them recommended an acting class that set Pitt on the movie star path.

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Kristen Bell

From frozen yogurt to Frozen. Bell told David Letterman that she probably served fruit flies to many people while working at a sketchy frozen yogurt shop.

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Whoopi Goldberg

Goldberg worked in a morgue as a “beautician” for the deceased before breaking into comedy. Her boss even pranked her on her first day by pretending to rise from the dead!

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Kanye West

As he explains in his song “Spaceships” off his album The College Dropout, West worked as a sales assistant at the Gap. Now he won’t even wear anything by the Gap.

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