Working their way to stardom

From being a bellhop to Mission: Impossible. 10 celebrities' first jobs.

Image: Pedro Marroquin

Before the red carpets and million-dollar paychecks, many of the stars we know today were punching clocks at jobs that looked a lot like the ones we or our neighbors had. Even if their names are big today, they started small, and they surely remind us that fame doesn’t come overnight. The road to stardom can be a mop or a tray of food. Let’s see some of these A-listers’ first jobs.

Image: Jay Wennington

Long before he charmed audiences as James Bond, Sean Connery was a milk deliveryman around Edinburgh. He also tried his hand at bricklaying, lifeguarding, and even polishing coffins. That experience with manual labor gave him the determination and physical presence that fit perfectly once Hollywood came calling with a license to kill.

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Tom Cruise may be one of the most bankable action stars today, but his first gig was hauling luggage as a hotel bellhop. Can you imagine him doing that? Carrying bags wasn’t glamorous, but it taught him about hustle and hard work. Not long after, he traded in suitcases for scripts… How fast can fortunes turn, right?

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Before Seinfeld became a TV star, Jerry was hustling in New York City, selling light bulbs over the phone and even hawking fake jewelry on the sidewalks. Those odd jobs gave him endless material for comedy about the absurdity of everyday life, which became the backbone of his stand-up and, eventually, his hit show, Seinfeld.

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Whoopi’s road to fame wasn’t particularly easy. She once worked as a beautician in a morgue (yes, you read that right!) and also spent time on construction sites as a bricklayer. Imagine the resilience and a sharp edge those experiences gave her, and how much they helped her shine on stage and screen.

Image: Praveen Thirumurugan

When Jim Carrey was a teenager, his family faced tough times, and he took a job cleaning factory floors. Sweeping up was a far cry from the slapstick comedy that later made him famous, but it gave him empathy and a strong work ethic.

Image: Petr Macháček

Before she became Rachel on Friends, Jennifer Aniston was dialing numbers as a telemarketer. Cold calling strangers wasn’t exactly fun, but it gave her persistence and a thick skin. When she landed her breakout role, she turned those early struggles into one of the most beloved TV characters of the ’90s.

Image: Ethan Hoover

You may know her as Queen Elizabeth, but long before playing queens and winning Oscars, Helen Mirren was at an amusement park in Southend, England, working as a promoter. Talking up roller coasters and fun houses must have given her a taste of performance and persuasion. It might not have been regal, but it was her first step toward a royal acting career.

Image: Heidi Fin

Ellen DeGeneres tried out plenty of jobs before comedy stuck. She worked at JCPenney and TGI Fridays, picking up people skills and funny observations along the way. Those early experiences shaped her wit and conversational style, which later made her stand-up and talk show so inviting to audiences.

Image: Jon Tyson

Jon Bon Jovi once worked in a Christmas decoration factory and later as a janitor. Those modest jobs couldn’t hold back his music dreams. Once his band hit the charts, he swapped broomsticks and ornaments for guitars and global fame.

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Before slicing through the screen as Wolverine, Hugh Jackman was teaching gym class in England. As a physical education teacher, he spent his days coaching kids in sports and fitness. But he was so much more; it was his natural energy and presence, which later helped him leap from the classroom to Broadway stages and Hollywood blockbusters.

Tango, Bravo

Codewords decoded: How many did you know?

In situations where clear communication is paramount, especially when lives are at stake, professionals often rely on standardized codewords and phonetic alphabets designed to prevent confusion. Either from movies or from personal experience, it's probable that you've heard at least some of these before, and many have found their way into everyday conversation. Let's find out how many of these code expressions you can recognize.

Mayday is the international distress call used when the sender is in immediate, life-threatening danger. Pilots and mariners use it to signal that they require urgent assistance due to situations such as engine failure, fire, flooding, or medical emergencies.

The word was introduced in 1923 by British radio officer Frederick Stanley Mockford, who based it on the French phrase m'aider, meaning "help me," in an attempt to make it internationally recognizable. Hearing this transmission immediately alerts emergency responders that every second counts.

Not every emergency is severe enough to warrant a mayday call. When a crew faces a problem that is urgent but not immediately life-threatening, the appropriate codeword is Pan-Pan.

Like mayday, it comes from French: it derives from panne, meaning a breakdown or mechanical failure. A Pan-Pan call might be used if an aircraft loses an engine but can still fly safely, or if a ship experiences equipment problems while remaining under control. It tells responders that assistance is needed, but that the situation has not yet become critical.

Few emergency signals are as universally recognizable as SOS. Contrary to popular belief, the letters do not officially stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls." It was adopted in 1906 because SOS is an extremely simple, easy-to-transmit, and unmistakable pattern in Morse code.

SOS remains one of the world's most enduring distress signals, and it's still recognized by rescue organizations all around the globe.

In the NATO phonetic alphabet, each letter is assigned a unique word to eliminate confusion when radio transmissions are distorted by noise or poor reception. If you've ever heard someone spell a name as "Mike Alpha Romeo Yankee," you've encountered the NATO phonetic alphabet.

The system was officially adopted by NATO in the 1950s and is now widely used by militaries, airlines, emergency responders, and many police departments worldwide. Using it greatly reduces the chance of misunderstanding important information over radio.

Roger dates back to the early days of radio communication, when the letter R stood for "received." Before the adoption of the NATO alphabet, the US military used Roger instead of Romeo to represent that letter_._

Although modern communications systems have changed and the US military has fully embraced the use of the NATO alphabet, Roger remains standard aviation terminology, and it's one of the best-known radio acknowledgments in the world. It conveys a very simple but important meaning: "I have received and understood your message."

Although many people assume Roger and Wilco mean the same thing, they actually convey different messages. Wilco is short for "will comply." In other words, it tells the sender not only that the message was received and understood, but that the instruction will be carried out.

Saying both Roger and Wilco is technically redundant in proper radio communication, since complying necessarily implies understanding, but the combination is often heard in movies and television.

In the NATO phonetic alphabet, Tango simply represents the letter T. However, US military personnel have also adopted it as a shorthand when referring to a target or a hostile.

This secondary meaning became widely known through military operations in the twentieth century and has since appeared in countless books, films, and video games in phrases like "We've got one Tango moving north."

Oscar Mike, NATO for the letters O and M, is military shorthand for "On the Move." It's a quick way of reporting that a unit has begun moving toward its objective.

The expression is especially common in the US military and has become more familiar to the general public through documentaries, memoirs, and films. It's finding its way into civilian life, meaning simply "I'm heading out."

Ten-codes were developed during the 1930s to allow for brevity and standardization of message traffic in radio communications. They were widely adopted by US public safety departments and by radio enthusiasts.

While the system is being slowly phased out in favor of plain language communications, many local police, fire, and sheriff departments keep using it, and it is still strongly associated with radio culture by the general public. One of the most famous ten-codes is 10-4, meaning "received and understood."

Hospitals around the world use color-coded announcements to communicate emergencies without causing unnecessary panic among patients and visitors. Perhaps the best known is Code Blue, indicating that a patient is experiencing cardiac or respiratory arrest and requires immediate medical assistance.

While some hospitals use their own custom color codes, Code Blue has become so widely recognized that it now appears frequently in television dramas and everyday conversation whenever someone refers to a life-threatening medical emergency.