10 Celebrities Who Got Fired From Regular Jobs Before Fame

Find out why these celebrities got fired…

Before fame, Pharrell Williams had a short-lived career in fast food. When he was younger, the musician and producer said he worked at McDonald’s but did such a bad job that he ended up getting fired on three separate occasions.

“McDonald’s was my first and only job. I got fired three times. I was eating the chicken nuggets,” he shared on BBC Radio 2. “The first two times it was just because I was lazy. The third was like, ‘What are you doing? You’re just sitting there eating nuggets?’”

Harrison Ford worked many jobs before finding fame, one of those positions being a cook at a hospital. Looking back, Harrison says he wasn’t qualified to be a chef — and ended up getting fired almost immediately.

“My first job…I cooked at a hospital. I don’t know what I told them but they gave me a knife and a bunch of carrots, and I cut this part of my finger off within minutes,” he revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “But the sew-your-finger-back-on department was right down the hall, and right after that was where they fire you for lying about [cooking skills].”

In high school, Bill Hader had a job at a movie theater but ended up getting fired because he spoiled a movie for a group of customers. Bill says some college-aged girls were standing blocking the entrance and when he asked them to move, they were rude. When they finally made their way inside for the film, he ended up telling them that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character died.

“One night a group of sorority girls came in and were blocking the doors. I asked them to move…They were being really rude to me,” Bill once shared. “So, as I tore the tickets I said, ‘By the way the boat sinks at the end, Leo dies…It’s great, you think he’s sleeping, but he’s frozen! Oh and the old lady throws the jewellery in the ocean. Enjoy the movie.’ My always-stoned boss had to come over and go, ‘Did you just tell them the end of Titanic? I have to fire you.’”

Hugh Jackman held a lot of jobs before landing his big break, including a gig as a circus clown. But when he was in high school, it was a job at 7-Eleven that got him fired. Looking back, Hugh says he only lasted a few months because his boss thought he was talking to the customers too much.

“I talked too much to the customers, which was probably true,” Hugh told Fast Company. “She just wanted me to get them out. I said, ‘There’s no one else here and I want to chat.’”

Before making it big, Nicki Minaj worked at Red Lobster as a waitress but it didn’t work out well for her. In fact, Nicki says she would get fired and then apply to work at another nearby location. By the time she stopped working in food services, she says she had been fired from Red Lobsters in the Bronx, on Long Island and in Queens.

“I walked up to this lady. Her and her boyfriend had walked out of the restaurant and they took my pen and they didn’t tip me. I walked to the car, I banged on the car window, and I said, ‘Give me my pen!’ I started [flipping them off] and my manager fired me on the spot,” Nicki recalled on The Tonight Show.

Robert Downey Jr. held a variety of jobs making it big, including a gig at a sandwich shop, hospitality work in clubs and a job at a Thrifty’s in Santa Monica. He said he also worked at a shoe store but got fired after just a few weeks for stealing.

“My first job was working at the Indian Walk Shoe Store on Broadway and 83rd Street. I made it about 10 shifts before I was fired for my sticky fingers,” he said in a Wired interview.

As a young man, Robert Redford followed in his father’s footsteps to work at the Standard Oil refinery just outside of Los Angeles. In the shipping yard, he was tasked with cleaning and driving a forklift — but didn’t do so well. When he ended up falling asleep in an oil tank, his duties were moved to the bottle-washing department in the chemical building. After smashing a load of glass bottles, he was fired…and then proceeded to get fired from several other odd jobs.

“I got fired from the jobs I should have been fired from,” he shared in Harvey Mackay’s Fired Up!, per Business Insider. “I took those jobs to earn money. The lesson I learned was that I wasn’t meant to do any of those things. I was never meant to be in the labor market.”

Back in the 1970s, Liam Neeson was in the process of training to be a teacher in England. He said he ended up working at a college but was ultimately fired for hitting a student who pulled out a knife in the middle of class.

“He was a big guy too, about 15 years of age,” Liam shared. “I had to punch him and then I was reprimanded for hitting the kid. There were always discipline problems, getting them to settle down before you can start to teach them. This particular kid did not want to settle down, he wanted to disrupt the whole class. So I went over to him and asked him to leave the classroom and stand outside. The next thing he pulled a knife on me. My reaction was to punch him, which I shouldn’t have done but I felt threatened.”

When Madonna first arrived in New York City in the hopes of following her dreams, she worked some odd jobs and got fired from most of them. She said she only lasted a week at a local Dunkin’ Donuts, where she was given the boot after “playing with the jelly squirter machine.” She was later also fired from the Russian Tea Room.

“Well you know what I got fired for at the Russian Tea Room? I was a very good hat check girl, I must say! I got fired for wearing fishnets. I’m like, ‘But you can’t even see my legs! I’m behind a door!’” Madonna said on The Howard Stern Show.

When Cardi B was an aspiring star, she worked as a cashier at the Amish Market in New York City while going to school part-time. She said she ended up getting fired for giving a co-worker a considerable discount — but her manager suggested taking up another line of work after he let her go.

“He was like, ‘You’re so pretty, you got a nice body.’ He told me to go across the street to New York Dolls, the strip club. That’s when I started stripping,” Cardi told The Fader.