Imagine having Madonna or Megan Fox take your order at a fast food restaurant! It’s hard to believe but, at one point in time, this was their reality. Though they’re on top of the world, it’s reassuring to know these celebs took a hard day’s work seriously! (Some, at least.)
Rachel McAdams
Before starring in blockbuster hits likeMean GirlsandThe Notebook,Rachel McAdamsspent most of her time asking customers if they would “like fries with that.” Although the job was less than glamorous, McAdams has only positive things to say about the fast food chain. She toldGlamour,that McDonald’s was a “great place to work.”
McAdams is used to getting positive reviews for her performances, but it seems that her performance on the grill was quite uninspiring. She recalled, “I was not a great employee; I broke the orange juice machine one day.” McAdams resolves that if her acting career hadn’t panned out, she “wouldn’t mind running a restaurant.”
Jennifer Aniston
BeforeFriendsand before getting a haircut named after her character in the show, a 19-year-oldJennifer Anistonwas cycling through the dangerous streets of New York City to make sure customers got their packages on time. In the days before package-delivering drones, people like Aniston swerved through oncoming traffic to people’s doorsteps.
Aniston confirmed that this was the toughest job of her life, admitting, “I’m very uncoordinated and extraordinarily clumsy.”
What ended her career in parcel-delivering was a crash into a parked car. Regardless, it looks like she always has a back-up plan in extreme biking.
Channing Tatum
Oh, you thoughtMagic Mikewas just a role he played once? Nope…
Channing Tatumhad the perfect resume for the job. After dropping out of college at 19, Tatum returned home and picked up some strange jobs. He started as a roofer, then left that job to become a stripper and, apparently, he was a top-notch one.
From there, he moved on to modeling and then, a few years later, acting. Tatum has always been up-front with the media about his past, and he admits that he does not miss it. He toldPEOPLEmagazine, “I don’t miss anything about stripping. I stripped in Tampa for like 25 girls, at best. It wasn’t glamorous whatsoever, so there’s nothing that I miss about stripping.
Whoopi Goldberg
If you’re going to retain any information today, let it be this. This little tidbit was confessed after a discussion onThe Viewthat talked about stay-at-home moms who help bring in extra income by taking on a phone sex operator job.Whoopi Goldbergconfessed on the talk show that she’s spent some time on the other side of the phone, saying, “When I was younger, the money was great.”
She admitted that the job was a saving grace for income when she was a struggling actress in Hollywood. Although Goldberg is up front about her past, she has said that she would be unable to do the job now. Why? She has acknowledged that people on the other end would likely recognize her voice.
Johnny Depp
Johnny Deppcould give an entire TED Talk on terrible jobs from his life before acting. He’s done everything from working at a gas station to being a telemarketer.
One of the worst jobs he had? A pen salesman. Depp wasn’t a door-to-door salesman. He had to convince potential buyers to make a purchase over the phone.
Depp recalls:
“I marketed pens -on the phone. But the beauty of the gig was that you had to call these strangers and say, ‘Hi, how ya doing?’ You made up a name, like, ‘Hey, it’s Edward Quartermaine from California. You’re eligible to receive this grand-father clock or a trip to Tahiti. You promise them all these things if they buy a gross of pens. It was just awful. But I actually think that was the first experience I had with acting.”
Chace Crawford
If there’s anyone that fits the Abercrombie and Fitch brand to a ‘T,’ it’sChace Crawfordand his SoCal aesthetic. During high school, Crawford also modeled for Hollister before attending Pepperdine University where he studied broadcast journalism and marketing.
After a few semesters at Pepperdine, Crawford dropped out to pursue his acting career while working as a car valet to pay the bills. It wasn’t long after this mild hurdle that Crawford appeared on The CW showGossip Girlas the clean-cut Nate Archibald. If you scour the internet deep enough, you’re able to still find some of the modeling photos from his Abercrombie days.
Taylor Swift
Like many of the other celebrities on this list,Taylor Swift’sfirst job can’t exactly be described as glamorous. Swift spent most of her childhood on the Christmas tree farm where her family lived, and each member of the family played a vital role in keeping the farm going. Swift’s job? She was in charge of knocking the praying mantis pods out of trees.
She toldEsquirein 2014, “My job was picking the praying-mantis pods off of the trees, collecting them so that the bugs wouldn’t hatch inside people’s houses.” She continued, “The only reason that was my job was because I was too little to help lift trees.” Regardless, we’re sure that customers appreciated Swift’s efforts.
Harry Styles
Harry Stylesis undoubtedly making dough now that he’s an A-list celebrity, but it looks like he’s been making dough his whole life - he used to work at a bakery. It seems as though Styles has always been a good-natured lad, as his past employers couldn’t get enough of him.
“He was the most polite member of staff we’ve ever had,” said his past employers from the bakery. “Customers really took a shine to him. The shop suddenly had an influx of girls when Harry worked here. Sometimes there would be 12 of them pouring in at one time. Even now, a group of 20 girls will sometimes come in and start taking photos of the shop.”
Meghan Markle
Meghan Marklehad a lot of practice leading up to her own wedding, as she once taught calligraphy, gift-wrapping, and book-binding classes at Paper Source while pursuing acting on the side. She would hand write wedding invitations, and her resume is sprinkled with some famous names such asRobin ThickeandPaula Patton.
Since Markle had the experience, she added some of her own touches to her andPrince Harry’swedding invitations. Although we can’t be sure that she hand-wrote every individual one, it’s touching that Markle still wanted to be a part of something as small as that when she probably had a lot on her plate.
We can’t imagine the beautiful starlet actually wanting to cover up her incredible looks but, at one point in time, it was literally how she earned a paycheck. We’re used to seeingMegan Fox’sface plastered on magazine covers and movie posters, but there was a time when she made minimum wage working in a smoothie shop.
She said onEllen, “I worked at a little smoothie shop in Florida, and I mostly worked behind the register. But once a week, usually on Fridays, someone had to dress up as a piece of fruit and go and stand out by the highway. I was a banana, a giant banana.”
