The majority of celebrities stick to the tried-and-tested jobs of waitress, bartender and burger-flipper before they make it, but then there are others who have more interesting jobs. No doubt the worlds of adult-film-set-design and make-up for the dead were sorry to lose these particular people to the world of showbiz…but we're glad they finally found their true calling. Delve into the murky days of pre-fame in our Top 10 Celebrities who had Interesting Previous Careers.
10. Sylvester Stallone
You know just what Ol' Sly is like – pugnacious, tough and brave. Which he'd have to be, given that his first colleagues were even more vicious than Apollo Creed. After leaving the University of Miami without completing his degree in drama, Stallone headed to New York in search of stardom and found himself cleaning out the lions' cages at Central Park Zoo.
It was probably good training for his later fights – sure, Rocky's nemesis would beat a man to the ground, but he probably wouldn't tear out his innards and feast on them. No wonder Stallone plays characters that are scared of no-one…
9. Angelina Jolie
Angelina is famed for having a bit of a macabre side – when she married first husband Jonny Lee Miller, it was in a shirt that had Jonny's name written on it in blood. Then she and second husband Billy Bob Thornton used to wear vials of each other's blood around their necks.
So it's not surprising that Jolie once dabbled in funeral directing. By the time she started studying the subject, she had already done some acting, thanks to actor father Jon Voight, but her grandfather's funeral had made her determined to break away from family tradition and become an undertaker instead. She obtained her qualification at the age of 14, but then decided that acting was the career path for her after all. A teenage morbid phase that really took things to the extreme…
8. Brian Cox
When you think about pre-fame careers, "pop star" isn't really one that springs to mind, is it? But all things are comparative and Professor Brian Cox has found far more fame with his TV-presenter/physics expert than he ever did as a musician.
But he was a genuine pop star for a while, playing keyboards with mid-90s band D:Ream. Although they were not technically one-hit wonders, they are chiefly remembered for one song – the New Labour anthem of "Things Can Only Get Better". In 1997, things did get better for New Labour, and they got into UK government with a landslide majority. Things didn't get better for D:Ream and they slowly slid into obscurity, with Brian Cox emerging years later with his own show, "Wonders of the Solar System". It might have been a bit of a backwards career path, but seems to have worked out well for him!
7. Whoopi Goldberg
Another actor who took casual jobs to pay the bills, Whoopi Goldberg found herself as a make-up artist when she first moved to California. Not so very far from the Hollywood life, you'd think – but the difference was she wasn't making up film stars, she was making up corpses in a mortuary.
According to Whoopi, her manager found an unusual but effective way of getting her over her fears. She was getting on with her job, when she heard a creaking noise coming from the drawers behind her. Turning round, she saw a corpse sit up and wave to her, only to realize it wasn't a corpse at all, but her boss! He said "That's the worst thing that could ever happen to you here, and it won't. So there's nothing to be scared of", which helped her to work among the dead without being scared of them. I'd guess she was still glad to give that job up though!
6. Roald Dahl
I recently overheard someone remark that Roald Dahl was famous for being "Sophie Dahl's Granddad". Of course, he was much more than that and his children's books are much loved still. But before writing about nasty ways to despatch annoying children, he had another career – that of a fighter pilot in the Second World War.
He flew with the Squadron No.8 RAF from Egypt and flew solo without any training in aerial combat or specific training in the plane he was flying, a Gloster Gladiator. He crashed in September 1940 but survived to fly again in the Greek campaign the following year. He took part in the Battle of Athens, and his record of shooting down 5 enemy aircraft qualified him to be a flying ace. By the end of the war, he was a Wing Commander, but evidently decided that writing was a gentler career.
5. Demi Moore
She may have been a member of the Brat Pack in the 1980s, but did Demi Moore also pack a punch in her former career? Leaving school at 16, she wanted to pursue her acting dream, but while she waited for her big break (a role in General Hospital), she worked as a debt collector. There's no evidence that Demi was the part of the operation that actually did the punching, and kneecap breaking but it's entertaining to think she did, given how slight and ladylike she is. In all likelihood, she probably collected debts peacefully and never even wielded a baseball bat…but why let reality mess with a good story?
4. Tom Cruise
I know it's hard to believe, now that Tom is a staunch believer in the ultra-logical and sane Church of Scientology, but in his pre-fame days, Tom Cruise flirted with a little-known cult known as Catholicism. In fact, he was so taken with the Catholic Church that he spent some time in a Franciscan seminary, with the intention of becoming a priest. In retrospect, he'd have been a good fit. Persistent rumors if homosexuality? Check. Ability to deliver a sermon? Just watch Magnolia to to see how well he can handle a speech (although the subject matter might have to be toned down a little for the congregation). Sadly for the Catholics, Cruise turned out more Reacher than preacher and now it's a different church that has his loyalty.
3. Sean Connery
And talking of the ability to deliver a speech, here's heroic Scotsman and epic actor Sean Connery who was destined to charm audiences with his unique style…..but he could have so easily ended up as a milkman. It's strange to think of those silky tones being wasted on asking housewives whether they wanted "full fat or shemi shkimmed?" but the young Mr Connery had a number of pre-fame jobs, including artist's model and coffin polisher. I wonder whether he and Whoopi ever sit together at awards ceremonies reminiscing over the fun days and nights they spent at their respective funeral parlors? I'd like to think so. Sean also held jobs as a laborer, bodybuilder and lorry driver before joining the Royal Navy and eventually got round to doing some acting too!
2. Jon Hamm
The star of Mad Men got his first break in the movie industry by being a set designer. That's nothing terribly unusual, but his job was designing sets for adult movies. I know what you may be thinking – when people watch these movies, who on earth is looking at the sets? But there are some, apparently (I don't speak from experience) and it's someone's job to design them. In the early 2000s, that someone was Jon Hamm. He says there was "nothing tasteful about it. It was depressing" and that it was just carrying furniture around while the stars were….busy. Fortunately, he managed to break out of his Skin-e-max niche and into the slightly more mainstream world before he got on to the other side of the cameras!
1. Rod Stewart
The ageing British musician may nowadays be chiefly known for his taste in younger women, but he's also known for his pop career, reeling in the fans with hits such as "Maggie May" and "Sailing". What a loss it would have been to music then, had young Rod pursued his first love of soccer. In 1960, aspiring to become a professional soccer player he had try-outs for the 3rd Division club Brentford FC, and sadly the club didn't take him on. It was a longstanding fan belief that Stewart had been signed up for them, but in reality they never even called him back….and so he chose music instead. Stewart spoke of this, saying "Well, a musician's life is a lot easier and I can also get drunk and make music, and I can't do that and play football. I plumped for music … They're the only two things I can do actually: play football and sing"
Luckily for us, Rod Stewart also had a plethora of other careers before he hit the big time – silk screen printer, gravedigger and a worker at a North Finchley funeral home. Seems like undertaking is the new celebrity pre-fame job of choice!
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