Long before their names appeared above movie titles, most Hollywood stars spent years scraping together rent money in ways that had nothing to do with acting. Some of those jobs were dull. A handful were downright humiliating, the kind of thing you’d only admit to on a late-night talk show once you’d already won an Oscar. Here are nine A-listers whose early resumes look almost nothing like their IMDb pages today.
Brad Pitt’s chicken suit at El Pollo Loco
Before Fight Club or Ocean’s Eleven, Brad Pitt spent a day inside a feathered yellow costume outside a fast food restaurant. He used to flap around in a feathered yellow suit for the grand opening of an El Pollo Loco at Sunset and La Brea in Los Angeles. He couldn’t even recall what the job paid when Ellen DeGeneres asked him about it years later, though one detail stuck with him.
Pitt could not remember how much the gig paid, but he remembered drivers were not kind. The chicken suit wasn’t his only strange gig either. “I had a similar job driving strippers around for a couple months,” Pitt said, a stint he later credited with introducing him to the acting class that changed everything.
Sylvester Stallone’s lion cage cleanup at Central Park Zoo
Years before he became Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone had a job that involved a shovel and considerably less glamour. Even though he wanted to be an actor, survival was far more important, so Sylvester Stallone got a job as a lion cage cleaner at Central Park Zoo. The pay was almost insulting for the mess involved.
Even though the job doesn’t seem that bad, he was paid only $1.12 an hour to collect the poop out of the enclosures. It got worse from there. Sylvester Stallone once remarked “Not too many people ever have the thrill of seeing lions taking giant leaks. Let me tell you, they’re accurate up to 15 feet, and after a month of getting whizzed on, I quit.”
Whoopi Goldberg’s job styling the deceased
Whoopi Goldberg’s path to an EGOT included a stretch working with clients who couldn’t complain about their haircuts. In the 1970s, Goldberg moved to San Diego, California, where she became a waitress, then to Berkeley, where she worked odd jobs, including as a bank teller, a mortuary cosmetologist, and a bricklayer. She answered a newspaper ad and put her beauty school training to unusual use.
“I did hair and makeup on dead people,” she revealed. “There was an ad in the paper!” “And I’m a licensed beautician as well, because I went to beauty school.” Her boss once pulled a prank that still gets retold in interviews decades later, sitting up from inside a mortuary drawer and greeting her calmly while she nearly ran into a wall trying to escape.
Matthew McConaughey’s chicken coop duty in Australia
Long before Dallas Buyers Club, a teenage Matthew McConaughey spent a year abroad doing anything but glamorous work. As a high school student, McConaughey decided to study overseas, applying for and winning a Rotary scholarship that allowed him to explore Australia. He was sent to Warnerville on the central coast of New South Wales, a tiny community unknown even to many native Australians. While he was there, McConaughey attended classes and worked by cleaning out chicken coops and washing dishes.
He’s never treated the memory as a low point, oddly enough. “It was a very life-changing year because I was removed from all the crutches that I had in my life. I depended on myself – stumbled, fell, and survived. It was a great year getting to know myself.” Not bad framing for a year spent shoveling chicken manure.
Hugh Jackman’s disastrous stint as a party clown
Wolverine himself once earned money making children laugh, or at least trying to. For three years in Australia, Jackman performed as “Coco the Clown.” The problem? He didn’t know any magic tricks or balloon animal skills, and his juggling was terrible. Kids noticed.
A six-year-old kid once loudly complained that Jackman was a terrible clown. He wasn’t just failing at children’s parties either. Before his roles as Wolverine, Gabriel van Helsing, and P.T. Barnum put him on the map, Hugh Jackman briefly worked as a Physical Education teaching assistant at Uppingham School in Rutland, England.
Danny DeVito’s work as a hairdresser for the deceased
Danny DeVito’s road to Taxi and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia started in his sister’s beauty salon in New Jersey. Before he was an actor, DeVito worked as a hairdresser and beautician in New Jersey. His sister Angela owned a salon and encouraged him to work with her and take classes in makeup artistry at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. That training eventually led him somewhere unexpected.
His career took a unique turn when he started styling hair for the deceased. DeVito visited local funeral homes to style women’s hair before their open-casket viewings. He took the job very seriously, knowing it brought vital comfort to grieving families to see their loved ones looking beautiful. It’s a strange footnote for a man now best known for playing one of television’s most chaotic characters.
George Clooney’s failed run as an insurance salesman
George Clooney tried his hand at several trades before Hollywood came calling, and none of them suited him particularly well. One of George Clooney’s early jobs was as an insurance salesman, which he recalled did not go well. “The first day I sold one [policy] and the guy died,” said Clooney, who also worked jobs cutting tobacco and selling women’s shoes before getting his big break.
Door-to-door sales apparently wasn’t his calling either. Clooney spent his days walking up to houses, knocking on doors, and trying to convince skeptical homeowners to buy policies. He was terrible at it and hated the constant rejection but continued because he needed the financial stability. Given his current reputation as one of the most persuasive faces in advertising, the irony isn’t lost on anyone.
Jon Hamm’s job on adult film sets
Before he became the buttoned-up Don Draper on Mad Men, Jon Hamm worked in a corner of the film industry he doesn’t love discussing. Very few A-listers would be willing to admit they worked in the adult film industry, but Jon Hamm had no problem talking to Howard Stern about it. For $100 a day, the Emmy-winning Mad Men cast member worked as a set dresser for, as he described them, “Skinemax movies.”
He’s been candid that the work wasn’t glamorous in any sense. Hamm boiled the situation down to its most basic truth, when he told Anderson Cooper, “I had to get by – I wanted to be an actor.” He went on to remark, “There was nothing tasteful about it. It was depressing.” He took the job purely to pay bills while he chased auditions.
Alec Baldwin’s night guarding the door at Studio 54
Alec Baldwin’s reputation for a short fuse might trace back further than most fans realize. Famously hot-tempered Alec Baldwin worked as a nightclub bouncer before hitting it big – at New York City’s famed Studio 54, no less. The job put him face to face with some of the era’s most difficult, demanding club patrons on a nightly basis.
It’s not hard to see how a few years spent managing rowdy crowds at one of New York’s most notorious nightclubs might toughen up a young actor before he ever stepped in front of a camera. The job offered no creative outlet and little glamour, just long nights and short patience. Still, it paid the bills long enough for him to keep chasing auditions until the roles started coming.
None of these actors set out to spend their early twenties in chicken suits, funeral homes, or nightclub doorways. The jobs were rarely chosen for love of the work itself, just a means of staying afloat while waiting for a break that, for most people, never actually arrives. Looking back at these stories now, what stands out isn’t the embarrassment but the persistence, the willingness to take work nobody would put on a highlight reel simply because rent was due and the dream hadn’t died yet.
