Skills-based hiring | Celeb pre-fame jobs highlight the power of transferable skills

It’s difficult to imagine many celebrities as regular people needing to work a regular job to make ends meet. But there are a lot of famous people who become known much later in their lives, leaving a lot of time for regular work. And even if they rose to fame whilst they were young, most stars aren’t ‘nepo babies’ who have been born into wealth.

Despite getting lucky and having a marketable talent, famous people typically have an interesting story to tell from their life before fame, where they had to work hard doing a nine-to-five job or through unsociable hours in hospitality or retail.

What they did before

Before his debut in the 1967 hit film The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman famously worked as a janitor at a dance studio, a coat checker, dishwasher and worked in retail at the department store Macy’s.

Wolverine star Hugh Jackman had the less conventional job of being a clown at kids' birthday parties where he would perform and do tricks for his young audience.