Before the red carpets, these stars’ had some very strange origins. We’re talking lion taming, mortuary makeup, even armadillo hunting.
These aren’t internet myths, they’re the genuine origins that shaped icons we’ve seen on the screen for years. As a kid of the 80s, I thought origin stories came from comic books. Turns out Hollywood wrote stranger ones.
Sean Connery, Milkman
Long before 007, Sean Connery delivered milk in Edinburgh for St. Cuthbert’s Co-operative Society.
The Sunday Post reported that he went on rounds as a teenager, earning a wage, learning the streets, and picking up the nickname that clung to him long after tuxedos and Walther PPKs.
It’s a job that feels carved from a black-and-white photo, not the glossy franchise that followed. From bottles on doorsteps to shaken martinis isn’t a straight line, but it’s a great one.
Denzel Washington, Garbage Collector & Barbershop Assistant
Trash routes and a barbershop taught Denzel Washington timing and hustle. ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live noted he actually worked sanitation in his twenties, and he’s talked about the grind, the smell, and finishing early if you moved fast.
Meanwhile, GQ reported that he would sweep up and absorb stories at a barbershop as a kid, which sounds like the perfect training for cadence and character.
Sylvester Stallone, Zoo Animal Cage Cleaner
Lion cages and bleach. Stallone’s low point. It was reported that he took a short-lived job cleaning big-cat enclosures at a New York zoo, the kind of gig that leaves a smell that clings no matter how hard you scrub.
When you’re broke, you take anything, he said, and you feel that in the details. Three tough weeks. Raw hands. Wishing the lion would put you out of your misery, then choosing to keep going anyway. That grit’s what made Rocky believable.
Danny DeVito, Mortuary Beautician
According to The Always Sunny Podcast, DeVito got his start cutting hair at his sister’s salon, then wound up styling the hair of the recently deceased when clients passed on. Death still needs good hair.
One report mentioned that this detour even nudged him toward formal makeup training, a path that ultimately led to acting school and, eventually, Taxi and beyond.
It’s a dark, practical, and somehow perfectly DeVito origin story. A career pro who’s always balanced grim laughs with heart. Yahoo’s write-up captured the reveal and the internet double-take that followed.
Johnny Depp, Ballpoint Pen Telemarketer
Telemarketing ballpoint pens kept a young Johnny Depp afloat. AZCentral reported he hated the job, made one sale, then talked the customer out of it, which is the most Johnny Depp origin anecdote imaginable.
Cold calls. Long scripts. Dead air. A gig measured in refusals while you dream about a life you can’t see yet, only hear in riffs. Six words that sum it up: phones, pens, and pure tedium. We all know the grind, even Mr. Depp.
Nicole Kidman, Massage Therapist
Seventeen, a mother with cancer, and a pragmatic choice that says everything about Kidman’s resolve. SurvivorNet notes she trained as a masseuse so she could handle her mom’s post-treatment care when money was tight, turning skill into support at a moment when her family needed it most.
That detail reframes the future Oscar winner’s focus and empathy, because it wasn’t a side hustle so much as a lifeline learned under pressure. It was a genuine act with huge meaning. The kind that quietly explains a career of meticulous roles.
Whoopi Goldberg, Mortuary Cosmetologist
Working as a mortuary cosmetologist paid the rent for Whoopi Goldberg. As Oprah’s Master Class put it, she did hair and makeup for the dead, and even tells a chillingly funny story about a boss’s prank in the drawer room that cured her of any lingering fear.
At the end of the day, work is work, even when it’s in silent company and cold lighting. The job must have been surreal, but it tracks with Goldberg’s gallows humor and her ability to ground the uncanny in something honest, human, and often tender.
Matthew McConaughey, Golf Course Armadillo Hunter
Armadillos on the fairway were McConaughey’s targets. It was reported that the future Oscar winner raked 77 bunkers before sunrise, then at night took a .22 to protect the greens from marauding armadillos, a schedule that sounds invented until you hear it from him. Early mornings. Late nights. Very Texas.
Then the long route to movie sets where he learned to chase a different quarry. A strange apprenticeship for sure, but the persistence maps cleanly onto the career that followed.
Hugh Jackman, Children’s Party Clown (Coco)
Amazingly, considering he’s the greatest showman (pun intended), Jackman’s Coco the clown bombed at kids’ parties.
People reported Jackman earned fifty bucks a show, couldn’t juggle, and once got roasted by an eight-year-old who simply called him out. Brutal crowd.
That pre-Wolverine humiliation reads like a rite of passage, you can almost hear the tiny heckler, forever.
Jon Hamm, Adult Film Set Dresser
Between auditions, Jon Hamm dressed sets for Cinemax soft-core productions.
Vanity Fair found him labeling it “soul-crushing,” which is a sharp contrast to the sleek perfection of Don Draper’s office that would later define him. Props in the wrong kind of period piece. Rent due. Pride dented. Then, the gear shift to million-dollar arm and Madison Avenue mythmaking.
Taylor Swift, Praying Mantis Exterminator
On a Pennsylvania Christmas tree farm, Taylor Swift had a buggy job. NBC.com notes she spent days plucking praying mantis egg pods off Douglas firs so families didn’t bring home an accidental hatch.
The work sounds quaint until you imagine the slow, careful hunt through needles and sap while customers browse for sparkle and pine. It’s oddly cinematic. A future superstar learning quality control one pod at a time.
Christopher Walken, Lion Tamer
Christopher Walken once worked as a trainee lion tamer with a lioness named Sheba. Yes, a real circus gig.
As The Guardian put it, he was 16, stepping into the cage after the main act to cue simple tricks. Walken describes Sheba as “very sweet,” practically like a dog, which makes the whole image even wilder given his later on-screen intensity.
The job lasted one summer, but it’s the kind of origin story that makes you rewind, and read again because it sounds like a cut scene from a movie.