Jobs stars had before they were famous
ELVIS PRESLEY: truck driver. Once upon a time, The King drove for The Crown Electric Company in Memphis. He was told to stick to truck driving “because you’re never going to make it as a singer”.
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: morgue beautician. The American actress, comedian, author, and television host was a trained beautician and took a job at a funeral parlour back in the day. She used to, as US Cosmopolitan put it, “doll up dead people after embalming and before burial”. JOHNNY DEPP: telemarketer of pens. “The beauty of the gig was you had to call up these strangers and say, ‘Hi, how ya doin’?” You made up a name like, ‘Hey, it’s Edward Quartermaine from California’.” Depp told New York’s Daily News in 2014 about selling pens on the phone.
BRAD PITT: a dancing chicken. In his pre-movie star, pre-Angelina days, Mr Pitt worked in El Pollo Loco restaurant chain in Los Angeles. The future star of Fight Club would dress up as a chicken and hand out flyers.
MADONNA: sold doughnuts. Prior to becoming the Queen of Pop, Madonna was the Queen of Pastries at Dunkin’ Donuts in New York’s Times Square. She allegedly got sacked for squirting jam at a customer. Express yourself indeed. NICKI MINAJ: waitress. Long before she became what her local paper The New York Times called “the most influential female rapper of all time”, Ms Minaj worked as a waitress in The Bronx’s Red Lobster restaurant. The voice of Pound The Alarm and Rich Sex was eventually asked to leave for “discourtesy to customers”. “I chased a customer out of the restaurant once so I could stick my middle finger up at her and demand that she give me my pen back,” she told Billboard.
BEYONCE: hairdresser. The biggest female star in the global music industry’s first job was sweeping hair from the floor of her mother Tina Knowles’s beauty salon in Houston, Texas.
OZZY OSBOURNE: plumber’s assistant. The bat-chomping Prince of Darkness apparently chopped off the end of his thumb by accident while working as a plumber’s assistant when he was 15. He then went on to work at a slaughterhouse.