Benjamin Ashford|These Stars' First Jobs Are So Relatable (Well, Almost)

As they say,Benjamin Ashford you've got to start somewhere.

And so many stars started off anywhere that would have them, waiting tables after school, making minimum wage in between auditions or even embarking on full-fledged careers before realizing that [insert more stable profession here] would never make them happy. 

Which doesn't mean that they didn't take pride in their work, even if it was 180-degrees away from where they wanted to be.

"When you first go into the workforce, your first job, whether it's 7-Eleven or whatever it is," Hugh Jackman mused to Fast Company in 2019, "you realize that you've got a role to play—a responsibility—and people are expecting you to fulfill it." And even though his convenience store tenure was not illustrious, "I was left with this feeling that I could make my way," he added. "I could work with my hands, my feet, and my brain."

Of course, leave it to the de facto master of all ceremonies to make even the most thankless-sounding gig sound formative and inspiring.

So with summer-job season officially underway, here's a reminder that there is no direct route from bartending and scooping ice cream to fame, fortune and thanking the Academy—but if there's a will, there's a way.

Keep reading to see what Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Chris Hemsworth, Oprah Winfrey and many more stars took on for their first jobs:

The Oscar winner scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins before she delivered Mystic Pizza.

Once upon a time, the Oscar winner worked at an El Pollo Loco in Hollywood. "Man's gotta eat," Pitt said on Ellen in 2019, adding that he felt "no shame" about his days dressed as a chicken for the fast food chain.

His other gigs to pay the rent included moving furniture and chauffeuring strippers around. The latter admittedly got "really, really depressing," Pitt said during a 2007 Oscars roundtable, so he quit after only two months, "even though it was really good money I needed at the time." But, making one last drive, he met a woman who was in an acting class he decided to check out and the rest is history. "Strippers changed my life," he concluded.

The late-night host started off working in a grocery store. Which wasn't bad, minus having to scrape gum off the welcome mats.

The Thor star said on The Tonight Show that he got his first job at 14 "cleaning breast pumps" at a pharmacy—"and repairing them as well, occasionally."

"They would rent them out, the machines would come back," he explained, "and I would have a toothbrush, a little spray and wipe..."

But Hemsworth wasn't one to nurse a grudge.

When he was in high school, the two-time Oscar winner sold popcorn and peanuts at Oakland Athletics games, a tear-free gig since there's no crying in baseball.

Before walking red carpets, the Oscar-nominated actress waited tables at Hooters. Which, she said, was a great way to earn money to buy a car.

As a teenager she worked at a grocery store near her father's barber shop in Nashville and "hated it with a passion," she recalled during a 1992 visit filmed for The Oprah Winfrey Show. 

Not least because she "wasn't allowed to talk to the customers," she said, adding, "Can you imagine that for me?"

But Winfrey diligently showed up for work without fail. "The only thing that got me out of the store," she said, "was the fact that I got myself a job in radio broadcasting."

While sharpening her acting chops at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, the Oscar winner supported herself bartending.

"I learned a lot of accents as a bartender," Bullock told the Associated Press. "A lot of girls came in looking for rich husbands. I learned to imitate them."

Art reflects life: The Magic Mike star's own days as a male stripper under the stage name "Chan Crawford" inspired the 2012 box office hit.

The rapper revealed she started off waiting tables at Red Lobster restaurants: "I've gotten fired from all three or four of them."

Before she was in front of the camera, Mindy worked behind the counter at a video store. Admitted the actress, "I think I learned nothing from it."

The Notebook alum once worked at McDonald's, where, she acknowledged, "I was not a great employee."

The Independence Day star says she was inspired to go into the entertainment industry after seeing Diana Ross and Michael Jackson in concert, but she "never forgot" where she started: Working at a hot dog stand!

The actor's first job was cleaning up at a local barbershop when he was 11 years old. While working there, he learned a lot about acting and "hustling!"

The first daughter, who graduated from university of Southern California in 2023, reportedly had a summer job waiting tables and working the takeout window at a seafood restaurant on Martha's Vineyard when she was 15.

Before she was a top dog in Hollywood, Emma worked behind the counter at a dog treat bakery. Seeing puppies all day? Doesn't sound too ruff.

Before her star-making role as Rachel on Friends, the actress made her allowance cleaning toilets ("I'm actually pretty good at it," she's said) and was later a bike messenger in NYC.

As a teenager, the actor spun tunes at an Australian nightclub under the name "Russ Le Roq" to pick up women.

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The priesthood proved mission impossible for the future movie star after a brief stint in a Franciscan seminary at 14. And when he moved to New York to pursue acting, he worked as a hotel bellhop to make ends meet.

The Wolverine actor manned the counter at a 7-Eleven in Sydney before being fired for talking to the customers too much. The manager "just wanted me to get them out," he told Fast Company. "I said, 'There's no one else here and I want to chat.'"

The multitalented star of The Deer Hunter and Hairspray was already a child actor—"I was in sketches with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin," Walken told The Guardian. "Never got paid a cent!"—when he spent a summer as a trainee lion tamer in the circus when he was 16.

"Who's going to turn that down?" he said. 

"I would come into the cage and wave my whip," Walken recalled, and the lion, Sheba, would "lazily get up and sit like a dog and maybe give a little roar. I like cats a lot. I've always liked cats. They're great company."

The Transformers star previously worked at a smoothie shop, where once a week someone had to dress up as a piece of fruit and stand by the highway to entice customers. "I was a banana," Fox said on Ellen in 2012, "a giant banana."

The Poosh founder's first job was as a movie production assistant, where, she told Us Weekly, she yelled "cut" and "rolling" all day.

The Scottish actor studied law for five years and spent two working at an Edinburgh firm—where, he said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in 2018, he became "the first trainee lawyer ever in the history of the Scottish legal system to be fired before he qualified." Getting sacked actually took "a lot of work," he added, sharing that he racked up 32 days of being OOTO in his first two years.

"You find yourself suddenly working at a law firm," Butler explained, "and you follow that through and you think, 'Okay, I can see myself now in retirement age, having done something that— in truth—I don't care about. I have no interest in this.'"

The Hannah Montana star moonlighted as a house cleaner with Sparkles Cleaning Service before landing her life-changing Disney Channel role.

"I had one normal job and I actually liked it," Cyrus said on Tyra in 2008, noting, "I can clean toilet bowls."

The "Applause" singer had an after-school job waitressing at at diner on New York's Upper West Side. She used the extra cash to buy a Gucci purse to fit in with her classmates at her all-girls private school.

"I was so excited because all the girls at Sacred Heart always had their fancy purses, and I always had whatever," she told New York. "My mom and dad were not buying me a $600 purse."

The artist born Stefani Germanotta put those skills back to use when she played bartender and served food at her dad's then-new restaurant Art Bird in 2018.

Even before the comedian earned minimum wage busing tables at a Red Lobster in Queens, N.Y., he was a paper delivery assistant for the New York Daily News, working alongside his dad Julius.

"I loaded trucks at the Brooklyn plant over on Pacific St.," Rock told the publication in 2014. "I have actual fond memories of working not just with my father, but with old cats loading trucks."

As for the Red Lobster, he shared in a stand-up routine, "I used to scrape shrimp into the garbage can and then load up the dishwasher. That was my real job. I never got a raise, I never got a promotion. They kept me in the back because I had really f--ked-up teeth and they didn't want people to think that shrimp f--cked up your teeth."

The No Doubt singer was once just a girl working at a Dairy Queen.

"When I started there, I fit in my outfit," Stefani said of her high school-era job during a segment on The Voice in 2014. "When I ended there, I did not fit in my outfit." But she could sample the goods all day and not gain an ounce at her next job, working the makeup counter at a department store.

In an anecdote seemingly ripped from an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, DeVito shared on a 2022 episode of the The Always Sunny podcast that he dabbled in posthumous hairdressing for funerals.

After a client passed away, her family asked if he would do her hair, the Taxi star explained, after which he styled several more corpses. 

"I would go to the morgue and they're there, they're dead, they're done up by the mortician," he recalled. "I would take their hair and use the dry setting lotion and curl the hair, set the hair, take it out and fluff it up a little."

The singer walked out mad after two weeks working at McDonald's when his manager yelled at him for over-salting the fries.