The 25 Worst Day Jobs Held By Famous Actors

Image via Complex Original

America learned that Hudson had it her way in a past life after a tiff with Simon Cowell. The ever-obnoxious Cowell chided Hudson for not thanking American Idol in her Oscar acceptance speech. Hudson cleverly responded, "If I'd been any better at my job when I was at Burger King in my middle teens, I wouldn't be here either, so should I thank them, too?"

Hudson worked at a franchise on East 87th and State Street in Chicago for the duration of her Whopper-making career. For her high-profile shout out to the BK lounge, Hudson was given a gift card entitling her to unlimited Burger King for life.

Back in the day, Helen Mirren, aka the most gracefully aged woman in history, used to grace an amusement park with her regal presence. The spot was called The Kursaal, which just rolls off the tongue. We'd call her a "barker" stateside, but in good ol' Essex, she was a "blagger". Reportedly, this led a number of young gentlemen to respond, "I'd blag-her any day." [Ed. Note—Sorry for that one. He just can't help himself.]

They say actors get into the theater any way they can. Seventeen-year-old Warren Beatty lived out that stereotype with his first job, walking the alleys surrounding the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. hunting mice.

Beatty would further demonstrate his commitment to the stage when he rejected numerous football scholarships to study the arts at Northwestern, only to drop out the next year and head for New York to become an actor.

Whether you're from the sticks in England or the US, you're probably familiar with clay pigeons, those little orange discs hunters shoot as target practice. For some reason, conventional wisdom dictates that kids too young to have real jobs should be the ones who load the trap machine for rifle-wielding sportsmen.

Bloom continued this long-standing and stupid tradition until he was old enough that women could appreciate his good looks without feeling weird. That was pretty much the low-point in terms of hardship for Bloom: He landed the role of Legolas in Lord of the Rings two days after graduating from acting school.

Prior to his acting career taking off with 21 Jump Street, Depp was a musician. After dropping out of high school to play music, Tim Burton's favorite guy found himself in a number of tribute bands, where he spent the night in the shoes of the B52s, Iggy Pop, and KISS.

After playing in a number of bands and spending some time as a telemarketer, Depp met Nicholas Cage through his first wife. The Cage advised Johnny to get into the acting game. Though he split from his wife the next year, acting suited Depp, and he left the cat makeup and telemarketing behind.

During an appearance on Letterman, Kristen Bell was asked if she'd ever held a "morally bankrupt" job. Her answer will not surprise any of you folks who have been price-gouged for second-rate fro-yo on a summer trip to TCBY. Bell worked at a franchise of the yogurt chain just outside of Detroit. Motor City bad boys need their fro-yo too, and a teenage Bell was the one to serve it to them.

Bell, for her part, didn't give a damn. She told the late-night host, "I definitely, definitely knew for over a year knew that there were fruit flies in the yogurt and actively served it to everyone in the Metro Detroit area."

A number of celebrities had to clean toilets as part of their day job nightmare. Tucci's post-freshman year summer gig was next-level awful. His major job responsibility was cleaning outhouses at a Westchester, NY, summer camp.

The character actor has a sense of humor looking back on the terrible gig. In a 2006 interview with Time, he was asked if he'd learned "any lessons that apply to acting" during his time hosing down antiquated outdoor bathrooms. Tucci replied, "Yes, don't ever clean an outhouse."

You'll likely find this shocking, but America's favorite golden-haired slacker stereotype did a lot of travelling in his youth. McConaughey lived in Australia for a while as an exchange student (and we were so sure he diligently kept his undivided attention on his studies).

As he bummed around the Outback, McConaughey held several odd jobs, including dish washer and chicken coop cleaner. When asked about his time cleaning up after our egg-bearing feathered friends, McConaughey said the most McConaughey thing possible: "Those types of trips are really ones that leave a lasting impression."

Don't think Eastwood became the manliest man around through sheer force of will. No. Just as with all things, you have to put the time in, son. The chair-talker's pre-cowboy resumé reads more like a Levis ad than actual work experience. Eastwood was a lumberjack, fireman, steel worker, aircraft manufacturer, and Army swimming instructor before he got his fat $75 per week contract that broke him into the B-movie scene.

Long before Jackman starred in The Prestige, he was a clown without any magic tricks. The children were about as tough as the critics of Les Misérables regarding his less-than-stellar performance. Jackman recalled, "I was Coco the Clown and I had no magic tricks and I remember a six-year-old standing up at a party saying 'Mummy this clown is terrible, he doesn't know any tricks'—and he was right."

For his mediocre clowning, Jackman took home about $50 per show. For that rate, we wouldn't have learned magic tricks either.

The Graduate was Hoffman's break-out role. Though it's tempting to remember Hoffman as an over-night success playing the recently post-matriculated Ben Braddock, the actor was 30-years-old when he landed the role. Hoffman put in about a decade in the New York theater scene before he went Hollywood.

During that time he hustled through all sorts of day jobs, from coffee fragrance tester to Hawaiian lei stringer. No, we didn't realize those jobs existed either.

No, that's not some obscure epithet that Darrell Hammond hurled at Will Ferrell's Alex Trebek while portraying Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy. Between a stint in the Navy and the beginning of a fascination with bodybuilding that would launch his acting career, Connery held a slew of odd jobs.

Bricklayer, milk man, nude model, and yes, coffin polisher, were just some of the work that Connery held down before he found fame. After he placed third in the Mr. Universe contest in 1950, he was finally able to leave all of those strange day jobs behind for a career being professionally dashing.

Before he cut his teeth in the San Fransisco stand-up scene, Williams got some legit acting training at Julliard. While he was training at the greatest and most pretentious drama school of all time, Williams was a walking bohemian stereotype: He was a mime working the sidewalks outside MoMA.

We imagine his reviews from passing pedestrians were closer to the clippings from What Dreams May Come than Good Will Hunting.

Anybody that's worked a shit job knows that having a fun-loving boss makes everything easier. Goldberg learned this on her first day as a beautician to the deceased. Her boss welcomed her by posing as a stiff and sitting upright to wave at her.

"That's the worst thing that could ever happen to you here, and it won't," he told her. "So there's nothing to be scared of." Whoopi worked several other tough day jobs, including a stint as a bricklayer and phone-sex operator, before making the move from struggling single-mother to comedy phenom thanks to her hugely successful 1985 one-woman show, Spook Show.

Someone as attractive (and symmetrical!) as Megan Fox doesn't have to work much beyond looking good. Before she discovered this eternal truth, Fox did have one day job. It was a particularly strange one: Fox wore a banana costume to lure customers into a smoothie shop.

On Ellen, Fox admitted that the banana gig was the only job she'd ever had that didn't involve some form of sitting there and looking pretty. Ellen, who was no stranger to tough gigs, having worked as an oyster shucker in Louisiana back in the day, surprised Fox when she had a man sneak up behind her wearing a banana suit during the interview. Oh, that Ellen.

"I was hired by gamblers in New York to collect money from people," Rourke said. We all know what that entails.

The actor recently opened up about his days as a heavy, recounting how he would've shot a man if the gun hadn't misfired. Rourke did such a good job in the "collections department," for a man he refers to only as "Uncle So-and-so," that he got a promotion: He was enlisted to blow up a Harlem gas station.

Luckily for Rourke's long-term prospects, he couldn't get his hands on enough dynamite to finish the job, and was demoted in short order.

Would that we had a time machine. Of course we'd stop some major atrocities, but we'd also be sure to swing by the Hooters where Amy Adams did a two-month stint in order to afford a car, and grab us some wings. (Honestly, the wings at Hooters are mediocre at best, but there's something about seeing the gifted actress slumming that could calcify certain feelings about the state of American culture and...never mind.)

Adams reflected on why the job wasn't a good fit recently: "I was a dancer," she said, "and I used to run around in a leotard and tights. I really didn't quite get it. I was so naïve about that. And I just thought, 'Well, it's a leotard and tights and shorts; it's not a big deal.' But there is a difference, and I learned it... That was a short-lived ambition."

Method preparation wasn't necessary for Channing Tatum to gear up for Magic Mike, as the actor'd already put in his time on the pole. After dropping out of college, Tatum took the stage name Chan Crawford, after attempts to get more conventional gigs proved fruitless.

Though his rise from from dancing on laps to starring in films directed by Steven Soderbergh is certainly a feel-good story, some of his old co-workers are a bit bitter about his recent success.

A number of fellow strippers from back in the day have come forward, accusing Tatum of stealing their moves to create some of Mike's magic. Tatum doesn't romanticize his days in ass-less chaps, even if some of his fans might. He said, "I was young and dumb and stupid and wanted to make a little money. You can work ten hours a day for minimum wage—that's the opportunities for kids without a college education."

The early hard-luck days Sylvester Stallone endured before selling Rocky have been well-documented. The man was reduced to living in his car and even spent a couple weeks sleeping in a bus station. He also starred in a porno for a measly $200.

One of the lowest points of that tough period was Sly's time spent cleaning out lion cages at the Central Park Zoo for $1.12 an hour. After all of this, Stallone turned down an initial offer of $350,000 for the Rocky script, holding out for a less lucrative offer that allowed him to be attached as the star. It was the smart move.

If you're hoping to get discovered as a model, you should put yourself where people will see you. Geena Davis took this pretty literally: Before she was signed to a modelling agency in 1979, Davis worked as a window mannequin at Anne Taylor. Once she was signed as a model, the doors were open for her to prove that her drama degree from Boston University had prepared her for more than window posing. She landed her breakout role in Tootsie a couple years later in 1982.

The most parodied celebrity on the amateur comedy circuit, Christopher Walken, got his first taste of show business as an assistant lion tamer. Walken got the gig after lion tamer Carol Jacobs decided that young Christopher should play his on-stage son.

As you might expect, the uniquely-inflected actor is rather modest about his time spent taming. He said that Sheba, his lion, was old and docile, "really more like a dog."

You might be disappointed with your first post-collegiate gig, but at least you didn't have to sell chestnuts. Two years after dropping out of school, Murray was hocking hot nuts (yeah, it felt dirty writing that) in front of a grocery store. Unsurprisingly, chestnut sales didn't exactly pan out for Murray, who soon went to study at Second City with Del Close at the prompting of his brother, Brian.

Things started to fall together for Murray after studying comedy in Chicago. The next stop was Saturday Night Live before he was able to draw on experiences from his first day job at a golf course for his role in Caddyshack.

The Santa Claus used to roll with a different kind of white powder. While he was incubating his stand-up career, the Tim the Tool Man found some less than legal ways to make ends meet. Allen was caught with over a  pound of cocaine in his trousers at an airport back in the '70s.

The drug-dealing comic proceeded to rat out everyone he knew, allowing him to whittle a potentially huge sentence down to just over two years. Aside from a 1997 DUI and some really shitty movies, this was the end of Allen's criminal side, though Wild Hogs should be considered obscene (and illegal) material.

The shitty day jobs of Brad Pitt have become the stuff of legend. It's a difficult to tell which of his many gig was the worst.

In one year, Pitt worked as a chicken mascot for El Pollo Loco, handing out flyers, and as a chauffeur for strippers chaperoning lap dances. Being a stripper chauffeur might sound like a good hustle, but remember that you're watching the road, not the action.

Recalling driving around girls named Daisy, he told People magazine, "My job was to drive them to bachelor parties and things. I'd pick them up, and at the gig I'd collect the money, play the bad Prince tapes and catch the girls' clothes."

Yo, what the hell do you have against Prince, Brad? Bad tapes? Prince doesn't have bad tapes.

Jon Hamm's quick to tell you that he only set-dressed softcore, but that doesn't mean that he's proud of his time spent moving couches to obscure crotches on porn sets.

As a struggling actor, Hamm lived in his buddy's basement, taught English, and made porno sets prettier. Just like Don Draper would do, 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."

And then he poured two drinks and drained both.