11 totally unexpected celebrity career changes

The road to fame and success never did run smooth. There are many stars who started on career paths oriented far away from the roles we know and love them for today.

From the astonishingly famous filmmaker who was a Red Cross ambulance driver, to the Hollywood actress who put make-up on corpses; the world-renowned chef who nearly played professional football, to the singer who became the most famous scientist in the world – superstar career paths are often full of twists and turns. Just take these 11 unexpected examples…

While Brad Pitt’s acting career has spanned almost fifty years, there was a time when he was a confused student studying to pursue a career in journalism with a focus on advertising.  

With two weeks to go until graduation, Brad dropped out of the course and moved to LA where his big break in Thelma and Louise didn’t come until he’d tried his hand at a few non-acting jobs first, including one where he had to dress up as a chicken. 

“There is a place called the Job Factory, and every week they list all of these odd jobs,” Pitt told Tiger Beat. “It finally got so bad that my buddy and I said let’s see who can get the most humiliating job. I won! I got a job with a restaurant called El Pollo Loco. I dressed up as a chicken, stood out on the corner of Sunset in one-hundred-degree weather and flapped my wings for the Grand Opening. They liked me so much they asked me back!”

Known for creating incredible drawings and animations, Walt Disney was honing his craft as soon as he could hold a pen. But before his creations took off, he delivered papers at 4:30 in the morning. 

Towards the end of the First World War, Walt attempted to enlist but was rejected because he was too young. Undeterred, the young designer forged his signature and joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. 

He made it across the ocean to France, but arrived after the armistice was signed in November 1918. He decorated the side of the ambulance with cartoons, and even managed to get his designs published in an army newspaper before returning to the States a year later where he began work as an apprentice artist. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Director Ava had an exciting start to her career, beginning in journalism with an internship at CBS, and was even assigned to help cover O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.  

Being disillusioned with journalism, she turned to film PR, working for companies like 20th Century Fox, even going on to found her own PR company before finding her calling as a filmmaker, aged 32. 

She is now best known for films including Selma, A Wrinkle in Time and Origin, and has been Oscar-nominated for her work.

“I always tell people who are talking about second careers and wanting to make transitions, it’s a lot less scary if you do it in steps,” she told Variety. “Little by little, just push your limits. Be a weekend warrior; put out the thing. You don’t have to give up your job. If you don’t wanna do it that way, you don’t have to. But five films I made and distributed on my own before I left my job and left my agency.”

While an early career stint as a DJ called Marky Mark might not be something you associate with the actor known for gritty action films like The Union, Mark Wahlberg likes to defy expectations. As DJ and lead singer of the band Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Mark was responsible for a slew of ‘classics’ including ‘Good Vibrations’, ‘I Need Money’ and ‘Wildside’.

He swapped his backwards cap and platinum album for a role in the film Renaissance Man in 1993, before starring opposite Reese Witherspoon as the lead in Fear in 1997, beginning a 30-year acting career.

It might be hard to picture Gordon Ramsay swapping his double-breasted chef’s jacket for a pair of football boots, but there was a time when the celebrity chef had his sights set on the green grass of Ibrox, home to Scottish football giants Glasgow Rangers.

Unfortunately for Rangers (though fortunately for our tastebuds) a sudden injury called an end to his career on the pitch, and the Hell’s Kitchen host returned to college to complete a course in hotel management. 

Gordan now owns an array of global restaurants, with seven holding Michelin stars, and has starred in a raft of critically acclaimed shows including Kitchen Nightmares, MasterChef and Gordan Ramsay: Uncharted.

Vera Wang may be synonymous with luxury wedding dresses and haute couture collections, but the American fashion designer began her career as a competitive figure skater. However, after failing to qualify for the US Olympic team in 1968, the renowned bridal designer ditched her skates for sketch pads. 

“My career has been every bit as much about adversity as it has about passion, coupled with the necessary willingness to accept change,” Vera explained during a 2005 WWD summit. 

Vera penetrated the fashion industry by landing a job at Vogue at the age of 23, becoming one of the youngest editors in the magazine’s history. However, 17 years later, the fashion mogul left Vogue to pursue her own label and transform people’s perceptions of modern wedding gowns. 

The career path from doctor to actor is not one well-travelled, but comedian and Hangover star Ken Jeong managed to do just that. Having obtained a medical degree from the University of North Carolina, he practised in New Orleans while doing comedy on the side. 

“I was so super serious as a doctor. I would bark orders to my nurses. I was hardcore. I wanted to make sure I did my job right. I was perfectly trained to be a physician. You know, it wasn’t a fluke. I worked hard at it,” he told NPR. 

After some TV and film executives saw his stand-up show, they encouraged him to move to Los Angeles and pursue showbusiness more fully. This led to Ken securing a role in Knocked Up and later The Hangover. 

Starting out in the 80s and 90s as a keyboard player with the rock band Dare, Brian showed no signs of leaving the world of celebrity for academia. His focus on music meant he struggled at school, achieving a D in A-Level maths. 

Aged 23, Brian applied to study physics at the University of Manchester, but ended up joining the group D:Ream, best known for ‘Things Can Only Get Better’.

Despite the band’s success, Brian quit and pursued his original passion: physics. He completed his PhD at Manchester, and has presented several programmes including ‘Forces of Nature’ and ‘Solar System’ for the BBC as well as teaching physics and writing books, including The Key to Understanding the Universe.

With pleasing scientific circularity, however, Brian and D:Ream reunited for a special performance at Glastonbury this summer.

Changes in fortune can happen at any age. Harrison was 34 when cast in the role that would change his life – space pilot Han Solo in Star Wars. Prior to his big break, he worked as a self-trained carpenter in order to support his young family.  

He secured a small part in George Lucas’s second feature film, American Graffiti, but had to continue with the carpentry to make ends meet. A friend of his needed help finishing the entrances to Francis Ford Coppola’s offices. 

“He appealed to me. I said I would do it but only at night, when no one was around, because I didn’t want to be that guy—I wanted them to think of me as an actor, which I was. I did the job,” Harrison told Esquire. While I’m finishing up, first thing in the morning in walked George Lucas and Richard Dreyfuss to begin the process of meeting people for Star Wars. George had told our agents he wanted new faces, not the same people from American Graffiti. I was there with my tool belt on, sweeping up, said hello, chatted, and that was it.  

“Later, I was asked by the producer to help them read lines with candidates for all the parts. Don’t know whether I read with people who were reading for Han Solo—can’t remember. I read with quite a few princesses. But there was no indication or forewarning that I might be considered for this part. It was just a favour. And then of course they offered me the part.” 

With height, grace and poise, perhaps it isn’t that unexpected Charlize Theron was originally a ballerina before reaching Hollywood’s pinnacle.

“I was a ballerina from the time I was four years old and I thought that’s what I’d always do. I left South Africa at 16 and studied abroad and supported myself by modelling,” she told Notebook magazine. 

She enrolled in the prestigious Joffrey Ballet School in New York City but, aged just 18, her doctor told her to stop dancing as the strain from several small injuries had accumulated to a dangerous degree. Charlize was devastated. 

“It was only once I couldn’t do it anymore. I went into this really deep depression,” she told Girlboss Radio, explaining that she ended up living in “a friend’s basement with no windows” in New York. “I hadn’t left for like two weeks and I was eating pints of Haagan Daaz just sitting on the couch, and my mom flew out and she basically said, ‘You can do this, by the way, in South Africa. We have a couch and we have ice cream.'” 

Charlize’s mother later suggested her daughter become an actress, even buying her a one-way ticket to Tinseltown when Charlize decided it was worth a shot.. Hollywood’s gain was the couch’s loss…

While Sister Act star Whoopi Goldberg has known plenty of acting success, including winning an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony award, she started out just like everybody else – trying out different ways of making a living. She went to beauty school, but rather than practising her new skills on the living, she answered an ad in the newspaper for a job as a mortuary cosmetologist – someone who beautifies corpses. 

In the early days of her career, her boss played a prank on her to make sure she was fit for the job. 

He called her in for a meeting. “In the old days, they used to have these big, thick doors – wooden doors. [It was] kind of chilly in the room, and [it] had these drawers. So I go in and he’s not in there,” she explained on ‘Oprah’s Master Class’. 

As she waited, she heard a scratching sound, and began to feel scared.   

“My brain is saying, ‘Hey, that’s not a sound we should be hearing right now. As I start to look around, I see that one of the drawers is moving – and it’s moving out, it’s opening.  

“As my brain puts together the fact that the drawer is opening – we don’t see anybody pulling the drawer open — at the same time, I’m getting up to run. It’s all coming together at the same time,” she says. “The drawer is really opening, and this thing happens where I see this: [My boss sits up and says,] ‘Hello there.'” 

Spooked, Whoopi didn’t process what was happening.   

“I run, boom, into the door. Knocked myself out.”  

Once she was conscious, her boss said: “‘Now, the worst thing that you could imagine has happened. That’s it. That’s the worst thing that can happen. It’s already happened… You still want to work?'”   

“It was the greatest,” Whoopi added. “Once he did that, I was fine.” 

Showing her admirable range, Whoopi also once briefly worked as a bricklayer. Hopefully she didn’t apply cement as a beautician applies make-up, or she would have left some rather precarious walls in her wake…