Celebs With Odd Jobs Before Fame - Page 14

Nicki Minaj will be featured in the November issue of GQ magazine, and if we’re lucky that means a few things. First, there should be a picture spread with Nicki proudly showcasing the cakes. Second, said spread should serve as a precursor to another one of Nicki’s barely there Halloween costumes.

You can preview the article on GQ’s site while hoping from some “Anaconda”-level of exhibitionism. In it you’ll find that Nicki once chased down some customers for an ink pen while she was a waitress at Red Lobster. Like many of us, she had to work a horrible job on the way to her dream. Nicki’s not alone. Hit the jump for a list of other celebs with odd jobs before fame.

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Photo: Instagram

Can you imagine one Marshall Bruce Mathers III cooking up your order after a bad day? Before Rap, Eminem briefly held down the job of a short order cook at Gilbert’s Lodge at 22335 Harper in St. Clair Shores between 8 Mile and 9 Mile roads.

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If Naya Rivera is a bit reluctant to wear low-cut clothing in her acting roles, it may be because she’s already had a job being leered at. One of the jobs the Glee actress had before Hollywood stardom was as a Hooters waitress.

Sometimes a pre-Rap job in retail can be a G.O.O.D. thing. While working at the BAPE store in SoHo, Kid Cudi gave Kanye West his demo and even chased him down the street to remove a security sensor tag. Cudi has since performed at the SoHo location and even been graced with his own BAPE shirt to commemorate his employment.

photo: WENN

Before landing the dream role of Don Draper on AMC’s Mad Men, Jon Hamm was a writer, a teacher and a set dresser for soft-core pornography movies. Talk about paying dues.

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Kanye West wasn’t just telling a relatable story on the song “Spaceship.” He really was folding khakis as a sales assistant at The Gap back when he was struggling to make ends meet.

photo: WENN

Consider the 2012 film Magic Mike semi-autobiographical. Actor Channing Tatum used to pop his cakes for the ladies as a male exotic dancer.

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While she was a 16-year-old directing kids theater, Rachel McAdams kept afloat by working in a nearby McDonalds. “I was not a great employee; I broke the orange juice machine one day,” McAdams told Us magazine in a 2012 interview.

photo: WENN

Sometimes you have to hit the bottom to truly appreciate the top. Jennifer Hudson has won a Grammy, Oscar and a Golden Globe, but in her formative years she was handling fries and shakes as an employee at Burger King.

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We should all be as lucky as Gerard Butler next time we’re late to work. The A-list actor is a former lawyer, and he told USA Today, that coming to work hungover and subsequently getting fired put him on the path to his true passion—acting.

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Can you imagine how many dudes probably tried to mack down Eva Mendes despite the fact she had a huge rainbow hat on in the middle of a shopping mall food court? Mendes bounced around a series of minimum wage jobs including cooking food and making lemonade as an employee of Hot Dot On A Stick.

Before he was repeating his name and giving out his phone number, Houston product Mike Jones worked on the assembly line at a Compaq plant. He also sold cell phones and two-way pagers, which may explain the whole phone number thing.

photo: WENN

When you see Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J going crazy for professional (or even backyard) wrestling, it’s for a reason. The two members of Insane Clown Posse launched wrestling careers around the same time they started rapping. Miracles, indeed.

It may not have supplied him with a 1099, but Jay Z was earning cash moving two-for-fives during his time supplying street pharmaceuticals. Lucky for him, an early encounter with fellow Brooklyn rapper Jaz-O took him overseas when the rest of his peers got raided.

After going through a serious case of denial, rapper Rick Ross finally came clean about one of his many jobs before being the head of Maybach Music Group. In a 2014 interview, Ross told MTV’s Sway Calloway he wouldn’t change anything about being a correctional officer and has no regrets of his former profession.

Her pictorial spread is probably reason enough to grab the November issue of GQ. But there are probably some hilarious quotes from Nicki Minaj about her old job as a waitress at Red Lobster.