Celebs’ First Summer Jobs

Celebs’ First Summer Jobs We were all teenagers once, just trying to make a few extra bucks by scooping ice cream or working long hours in a department store. And guess what? That goes for the rich and famous, too. Long before their successful careers and lavish lifestyles, many celebs were out toiling away at not-so-glamorous jobs just like we were.

Find out what very odd jobs these 10 celebs held before they made it big in showbiz:

George Clooney Before moving out to Hollywood to pursue his dreams of becoming an actor, Clooney had to make some fast cash. He held a bunch of different odd jobs throughout the 1980s, from DJ-ing at a nightclub in Cincinnati to cutting tobacco in his family’s fields. Clooney, 50, also dabbled with retail and sold women’s shoes at McAlpin’s and suits at Nadler’s Menswear. Thank goodness he was able to save up—what would ‘Batman & Robin’ have been like without Clooney?!

Brad Pitt Things weren’t always so glamorous for this hunky movie star. After Pitt, 47, left the University of Missouri and moved out to Los Angeles, his first job in Hollywood was pushing fast food at the restaurant El Pollo Loco…while wearing a chicken suit.

Ellen DeGeneres No, DeGeneres didn’t always host an award-winning talk show. The comedienne’s first job involved driving cars out of a carwash and wiping them down—and believe it or not, she actually liked it! (Especially when she got to drive the really nice cars.) Her next odd job—which lasted only half a day—was at a glove factory checking for flaws. “It was horrible,” DeGeneres, 53, said.

Johnny Depp He’s won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. But long before Depp, 48, was starring in big blockbusters like ‘Edward Scissorhands’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, he made his money pumping gas as a gas station…and selling pens. (Yes, pens.)

Mick Jagger The rock and roll legend spent one summer selling ice cream from a pushcart. Jagger, 67, may be an iconic musician now, but he actually had no initial plans that involved a career in music—he studied finance at the prestigious London School if Economics in hopes that he would make a career in the field.

Tom Cruise Long before he landed the leading role in ‘Risky Business’, Cruise, 48, was out on his bike . When he was briefly living in Kentucky, he had a newspaper route delivering the ‘Louisville Courier-Journal’.

Warren Beatty Oh, the things aspiring actors will do to be close to the stage. Back in 1953 when Beatty was just sixteen and living in Washington D.C., he took a job shooing rodents away from an alley behind a theater.

Carol Burnett Before she became famous, Burnett, 78, worked as an usherette at a movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard. One night, the manager publicly fired and humiliated her after she advised a couple not to walk in late to Hitchcock’s ‘Strangers on a Train’ and to wait for the next showing because it was so good. Decades later, Burnett received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and asked it to be placed right outside the Pacific Theater where she was fired. Talk about sweet revenge!

Christopher Walken Long before ‘Joe Dirt’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’, Walken ran away and joined the circus—really! He was the lion tamer, but claims it wasn’t anything to be impressed about. “I had a whip and a hat, and I'd go into the cage and [the lioness] would jump up on this box and I'd wave the whip at her, and she’d get up and go, ‘Whraaah!’” Walken, 68, said. “Everybody would applaud and that was it.”

Ozzy Osbourne The multi-platinum rocker has sold over 100 million records worldwide. But before his heavy metal career took off, Osbourne, 62, brought in cash working at a slaughterhouse. His first task involved cutting out and emptying sheep stomachs—and even the Prince of Darkness didn’t have a strong enough stomach to handle that. “For the first two or three weeks, I did nothing but throw up everyday. The smell was just unbelievable,” Osbourne said.