As they say, you’ve got to start somewhere.
And so many stars started off anywhere that would have them, waiting tables after school, making minimum wage in between auditions or even embarking on full-fledged careers before realizing that [insert more stable profession here] would never make them happy.
Which doesn’t mean that they didn’t take pride in their work, even if it was 180-degrees away from where they wanted to be.
“When you first go into the workforce, your first job, whether it’s 7-Eleven or whatever it is,” Hugh Jackman mused to Fast Company in 2019, ”you realize that you’ve got a role to play—a responsibility—and people are expecting you to fulfill it.” And even though his convenience store tenure was not illustrious, “I was left with this feeling that I could make my way,” he added. “I could work with my hands, my feet, and my brain.”
Of course, leave it to the de facto master of all ceremonies to make even the most thankless-sounding gig sound formative and inspiring.