We're All Human - Celebrity Jobs Before They Became Famous

Well, we all have to start somewhere. In this week's gallery, discover what first jobs some of the top celebrities undertook before hitting stardom.

(NB: Click on thumbnails to view large size images)

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Dynamic lifter ... According to imdb, Matthew McConaughey "spent a year in Australia after high school washing dishes and shoveling chicken manure"

Bloody hard work ... Ozzy Osbourne once worked in a slaughterhouse

Tough gig ... Mick Jagger used to be a porter in a mental hospital. As a child, he also had a summer job selling ice cream from a refrigerated trolley

DJ Russ in da house ... the brawny superstar Russell Crowe worked as a DJ under the name "Russ Le Roq" at an Aussie nightclub when he was 16. "It was the easiest thing to pick up women," he told Inside the Actor's Studio host James Lipton in 2004

Ladies business ... Courteney Cox Arquette used to be the spokesperson for Tampax and was the first person to ever say the word "period" on TV

Material girl ... Madonna worked her way up from humble origins - she served customers at Dunkin' Donut while trying to get her break




Balls-up ... Hayden Christensen used to be a tennis ball boy, and he once accidentally interupted play during a John McEnroe match

Child labour ... Lucy Liu's enterprising parents put her to work in a pyjama factory when she was just 11 years old

Now everyone smiles back ... Demi Moore once worked as a hated debt collector

Look at him now ... bald but successful Danny DeVito worked at a hairdresser in his youth, "to make money and meet girls"

Sweet ... our very own Cate Blanchett was the original Tim Tam girl in first set of ads to promote the chocolate biscuits

Clowning around ... Hugh Jackman once worked as a clown, reportedly making about $50.00 per show


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Easy kinesy ... Eva Longoria graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in Kinesiology. Instead of becoming a physical therapist, she entered a talent contest, caught the acting bug and signed on with an agent

Echo ... Mariah Carey lasted one day working in a hair salon "It was the pits working in a salon, sweeping up hair," she told Cosmopolitan. "What made it worse was that the manager wanted every female working there to have a cute, phony name, like Foxy or Stormy. He decided I would be Echo. So as I was sweeping up hair, he kept asking me, 'What's your name again?' I told him, 'It's Mariah.' And he said, 'No, no - now it's Echo.' So I said, 'Excuse me, I have to go make a phone call,' and I never went back."

Dim beginning ... Barbara Streisand worked as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant and was also a babysitter to the owner's children

Just buy the goddamn lightbulb already ... Jerry Seinfeld supported himself by selling lightbulbs over the phone

Oh shucks ... comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres now rubs shoulders with the A-list, but she once shucked oysters to pay her rent. DeGeneres also worked on and off as a bartender, a house painter, a secretary at a law firm, a vacuum saleswoman, and a salesperson at Merry Go Round

Damme jobs ... According to answers.com, Jean Claude Van Damme worked several odd jobs including chauffeur, carpet layer, pizza delivery, trainer, and bouncer




Hot diggity dog ... actress Eva Mendes once sold hot dogs at Glendale Galleria Mall in California

Don't mention the past ... screen siren Warren Beatty reportedly worked as a professional rat-catcher before he wooed film audiences

Mime time ... Robin Williams worked as a street mime in the '70s

Do you want fries with that? ... Sharon Stone must be one of many celebs who made their bucks working at McDonalds when they were young

Spring chicken ... as a struggling actor in Los Angeles, Brad Pitt donned a giant chicken suit and stood outside a Sunset Boulevard el Pollo Loco store to attract customers. Pitt was also a limo driver who chaperoned strippers around Hollywood

Fit ... Calista Flockhart taught aerobics before turning to acting


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Rock and a hard place ... Chris Rock launched his career as a busboy at a Red Lobster franchise in New York. He used the experience as a gag on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 2003. "The thing about Red Lobster is that if you work there, you can't afford to eat there. You're making minimum wage. A shrimp costs minimum wage," he said

Brickie ... Whoopi Goldberg found herself working as both a bricklayer and funeral home cosmetician long before she hosted the Oscars

Scream for ice cream ... Deuce Bigalow star, Rob Schneider, worked as a dish washer at an ice cream parlor before his big break

Bright idea ... former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, worked at a local Orthodox synagogue turning the lights on and off

Before Friends ... Jennifer Aniston worked as both a waitress and telemarketer before making it big

Trumped ... "I accompanied my father to his sites and would collect soda bottles with my brother for the deposit money. That was my first income. Later, I went around with the rent collectors to see how that worked. I learned to stand out of the doorway to avoid the possibility of being shot," said Donald Trump




Hair care ... Denzel Washington landed his first job at a barbershop called Modernistic where he brushed customer's collars. "I learned a lot about acting there," he told Oprah Winfrey in 2006. "The best liars are in the barbershop." The Oscar winner attended Fordham University and graduated with a degree in journalism

Foot in the door ... Tarantino first entered the movie business as an usher for a porn theater in Southern California. After that, he became a video store clerk, inspiring countless wannabe auteurs to buck film school in favor of a job at Blockbuster

Angelic ... Naomi Campbell's love affair with the camera started as a seven-year-old in Bob Marley's video clip 'Is this Love'

Cheerleading the way ... well before she became everyone's favorite desperate housewife, Terri Hatcher was a cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers

Doing it for the kids ... Pirates of the Caribbean heartthrob Johnny Depp fronted a Florida-based rock band called The Kids. After that he supported himself as a phone salesman of pens, a gig he once called his ¿first acting job¿ due to the different voices he came up with to relieve his boredom

Jenny from the block ... J.Lo financed her song and dance lessons by working in a law office

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Long shot ... when Orlando Bloom was 13, he worked as a clay trapper at a local pigeon shooting range

McStart ... Macy Gray once worked at McDonald's, later appearing in a 2006 McDonald's commercial saying "The action, the fun, the people, the sense of accomplishment -- it truly was my first big break!"

Clueless ...according to IMDB, Heather Graham worked at Toys R'Us as a teenager, and once worked as an usher at The Hollywood Bowl

Flash dance ... Colin Farrell once said in a 2000 interview that he spent eight months touring Ireland with a dance troupe - teaching line dancing

Uptown boy ... Sean Combs, known as P.Diddy, was an intern at Uptown Records where he did washed cars & fetched coffee




Ditzy splits ... Lucille Ball was reportedly fired from an ice cream shop for not remembering to add bananas to banana splits

All in a day's work ... Ashanti once said in an MTV interview that before she started singing, she worked at a daycare

On call ... In high school Tom Hanks carried bags for a number of celebs, working as a bellboy at the Oakland Airport Hilton, also later getting a job as a popcorn and peanuts vendor at the Oakland Coliseum

No point in groening about it ... before drawing comic strips for The Simpons, Matt Groening worked some odd jobs: as a sewage treatment plant worker, a chauffeur to an old director, and then as a ghostwriter for that same director's memoirs

Wood work ... Harrison Ford once made quite a name for himself as a carpenter

Myriad of jobs ... Just after high school Clint Eastwood was a gas station attendant and a firefighter. After being drafted to the Korean war in 1950, he returned to secure a contract to play small parts at Universal Studios, but two weeks later he was told he spoke too slowly and that his Adam's apple was too big, and his career as a swimming pool digger began

New deli ... Kate Winslet used to work in a deli in North London


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Sweet escape ... Gwen Stefani's first job was scrubbing floors at Dairy Queen, an American fast food chain

Skater boy ... David Spade once worked at a skateboard shop

Truckie ... After graduating from high school, Elvis became a truck driver. This was after he was fired from a job at the Precision Tool Company in Memphis when they discovered he was under-age

Juicy ... Bette Midler once worked at a pineapple processing factory

Happy meals ... Rachel McAdams worked at a McDonalds for 3 summers

Hard to believe ... As a journalism student in college, Marilyn Manson wrote music articles for 25th Parallel, a South Florida lifestyle magazine. He also was the assistant entertainment editor of the school's student newspaper




Mile high ... Evangeline Lilly, of the hit show Lost used to be a flight attendant

Just wanna have fun? ... Cyndi Lauper had many odd jobs including a job cleaning out dog kennels, a "hot walker" of horses at Belmont Race Track, an ear piercer, a salesclerk in a vintage clothing store, and a singing waitress in a Japanese piano bar

Video rental ... Immediately after high school, Adam Brody had a job working at Blockbuster

Jingle bells ... Jon Bon Jovi once had a job as a Christmas decoration maker

Menial tasks ... today Jim Carrey commands as much as $20 million per film, but at age 15, when his father lost his job, Carrey took after-school jobs as a security guard and janitor at a tyre factory to help his family get by


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