24-05-2025
Celebrities Who Got Normal Jobs
Lots of people go into the entertainment industry dreaming of fame and fortune, but for most, it sadly doesn't work out. Sometimes, even performers who've been successful fall on hard times or struggle to get work. Many of them make the very commendable choice to get a job outside of the industry.
Here are 21 celebs who took on "normal" jobs:
Amid reports that she was working at a salon, Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky tweeted, "Its true Im workin@ Superstar Salon as a makeup artist & more Im proud 2 b workin & helpin pay bills BUT ill NEVER loose sight of my dreams." Her agent, Bill Viloric, told Newsday, "She's working part-time in a salon while she continues to audition for TV and film roles. She hasn't given up on her dreams."
Nikki has also continued acting, most recently appearing in the movie Bosco. She's also reportedly quite popular on Cameo.
Anneliese Van Der Pol has continuously worked on stage and onscreen, but at one point after the end of That's So Raven, she "worked in New York in several restaurants." On a 2023 episode of her podcast Big Name B*tches, she said, "I was really proud of myself; you had to do a lot of multitasking."
However, meeting fans or even fellow actors while on the clock wasn't always a positive experience. She said, "The disappointment, the look, the drop of faces when [people] recognized me, was truly gut-wrenching. It's almost like I had to say, 'I'm okay. I'm actually really happy that I don't have to audition and am doing something I know I'm good at.' I know when I clean a table or bring a meal that, I can do that, and there won't be any mistakes. I won't be judged. Essentially, I kind of was judged...I remember one time, I ran into Ashley Tisdale, and I had to serve Ashley Tisdale. I wanna say she was lovely, didn't do anything, but she was uncomfortable for me. She was so uncomfortable. It was like I had to [be like], 'I'm fine, girl!"
At the height of his fame in the early '90s, MC Hammer was reportedly raking in $33 million a year. However, lavish purchases, such as 17 cars, a $9 million mansion, and a Boeing 727, quickly depleted his bank account, and he wound up $14 million in debt. In 1996, he declared bankruptcy. A year later, he experienced a "visitation from Jesus" and decided to become an ordained minister in the Church of God in Christ. He told the LA Times, "Whether the bankruptcy played any role in my refocusing, that's great. Hallelujah, I hope it did! But the most important part of what occurred to me was love, missing the love of God in the way that I had known it."
Jamie Walters, who's most known for Beverly Hills 90210 and singing the #1 hit "How Do You Talk to an Angel," quit acting to become a firefighter in Los Angeles. He told The US Sun, "A lot of years have gone by, and I don't think people are expecting when the fire department shows up that the guy in uniform might be somebody from a TV show in the '90s. I'm thankful that I was able to switch gears and do something that I'm proud of and that my kids find interesting and cool. I still have a lot of friends that are in that business, but it's a tough business. Unless you're doing well, it's a struggle to raise a family."
"I started having second thoughts about this [acting] career path, and I'd always been interested in becoming a firefighter. The more I researched, I was like, oh man, it's hard to get this job. This is really competitive. It took like three years, the process, from the time you take the written and you have medical exams, background checks, psychological, more physical agility checks. I finally got my job offer to come to the training academy in 2003," he said. He briefly returned to acting for a guest appearance on BH90210, where he played a fictionalized version of himself.
As Ke Huy Quan grew up, he realized that roles for Asian actors were, unfortunately, rare and therefore very competitive. So, he decided to go to film school at USC as well. After he graduated in 1999, famous action director and choreographer Corey Yuen offered him a stunt choreographer job on X-Men. Following his role in the 2002 Hong Kong film Second Time Around, he didn't act again for almost 20 years. He continued working various positions behind the camera. He told Vulture, "I was happy working behind the camera, but this entire time, something felt missing. When those opportunities dried up, I spent a long time trying to convince myself that I didn't like acting anymore. I didn't want to step away with the feeling that it was because there were no opportunities. I was lying to myself."
Then, the success of Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 inspired him to try again. Within a few weeks of hiring a new agent, he booked Everything Everywhere All At Once, which he went on to win an Oscar for.
"I Wanna Be Bad" singer Willa Ford left music and became an interior designer after the failure of her second single. She told Billboard, "A lot of people don't realize this, but my second single was released on September 11, 2001. Everything that happened that day froze; the world stood still, as it should have. My second single didn't do well because anything that launched that day kind of got canned. I know that sounds silly, but on radio, they slate things, but it really fell to the wayside. I didn't think it was a big deal because we were making a new album anyway. The record company I was with at the time got acquired by another record company, and the president of our record company left the company. So, I ended up in no man's land."
Her new career came about unexpectedly. She said, "I'm just a creative human: if I'm not creating, I'm dying. In my first marriage, I moved to Texas, and I was pretty bored there. I started working on the house with an interior designer at the time named Amy Nolan, and we really ended up doing the house together. I found this absolute love for it. I came back out to LA after my divorce, and I was acting, but there's so much dead time. I just needed another outlet. I started doing it for friends, and everyone was loving what I was doing. It was word of mouth. I did a movie, and the producer of the movie asked me to work on their home. Before I knew it, I was doing really high-end homes. Now I have three employees and myself with the new firm. It's constantly changing and growing. I love it."
After Drew Barrymore emancipated herself from her mother at 14, she "found a place in the back of a building where [her] friend Justine was living." In her memoir Wildflower, she wrote, "I needed a job. Justine worked at a coffeehouse in the Valley, but she had a car, and I was two years away from getting my driver's licence, so I went to the coffeehouse near us, the Living Room, which happened to be one of the big LA hot spots at night. It was the start of the 1990s, and coffeehouses were where everyone hung out. People poured out on to the street every night. I wasn't great at my job. I wasn't really great at anything. I had only done two things: acted and had wild life experiences."
She also wrote, "I could tell my boss, who had hired me on the novel idea of having a washed-up former child actor behind the counter, was patient with all my learning curves, but was also irritated with me. He came in when I was doing dishes (which, come to think of it, probably helped me realize you actually had to 'do' dishes rather than just put everything in the sink and pray, like I did at home), but he walked in and said, very sharply and exasperatedly, 'Don't use the abrasive side of the brush! All the pastry cases are getting scratched and foggy, and you can't see what's inside!'"
She, of course, got back into acting, next appearing in Motorama and Poison Ivy.
In 2018, photos of The Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens working at Trader Joe's went viral. He told Good Morning America, "This business of my being this Cosby guy who got shamed for working at Trader Joe's, that's going to pass. But I hope what doesn't pass is this idea that people are now thinking, this rethinking of what it means to work, the honor of the working person and the dignity of work." He quit his job when the pictures starting spreading, but he also said that the support he received from both fans and his peers was "really overwhelming, in a good way."
After seeing Geoffrey's interview, Tyler Perry decided to offer him a role. He told GMA, "I said, 'Hmm, I got something for you. I'll write a senator in, make you a senator in [The Haves and the Have Nots]. I called him up, and the next week I had written him into 11 shows. But when he showed up the first day, I saw him in costume, I had 20,000 more ideas running in my head for him."
Then, in 2024, Geoffrey told V-103 Atlanta's The Big Tigger Morning Show, "Even today, right now, as we speak, I still struggle to make a living. I struggle every day to make my ends meet, and people can't get their heads around that because they see me in movies. People have the impression, 'You're making a lot of money. What's the problem? Why are you having financial troubles?' They don't understand the specifics of how my industry works."
In support of Geoffrey, many actors shared their experiences using the hashtag #ActorsWithDayJobs. Broadway and voice actor Liz Callaway — whom you'd probably recognize as the single voice of the titular character in Anastasia — tweeted, "After 3 Bway shows and a Tony nom. my unemployment ran out so I got a job at a gift shop. One a day a customer said, 'has anyone ever told you you look like Liz Callaway?' I confessed it was me. He said 'good for you!!' That was Ira Levin, who wrote Deathtrap."
In a since-deleted tweet, Julie Berman said, "Got a job as a hostess when I left General Hospital. Many didn't understand why I'd leave #GH without another acting gig waiting for me. (If only we could all be so lucky). This is what dedication to your artistic happiness actually looks like."
After The Traitors UK, Wilfred Webster went into full-time influencing. However, because of his career, he wasn't able to secure the kind of mortgage he wanted. So, he planned to pivot to a part-time job in teaching or the charity sector to supplement his income. He told Vice, "The thing with social media is it's always fluctuating. So it's never guaranteed income all the time. That's hard, especially with a family."
Reality star and beautician Sarah Goodhart told Vice, "When I came out of Geordie Shore, I'm a working class person, so I needed to return to work. Whereas if I was able to take more time off, I probably could have tried to become an influencer – but you have to wait a few months for the money [from the show] to come in."
After roles became harder to come by, American Pie actor Chris Owen took a job as a server at a Santa Monica sushi restaurant. In 2014, he told the New York Daily News, "Life doesn't always go the way you planned. I love acting, and this job lets me stay in the fight...I get recognized a lot. I walk up to the table and see the look in their get excited, and it feels good. I like connecting with people for that brief moment in time."
He's continued acting, most recently appearing in the movie Money Game.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial actor Robert MacNaughton told Yahoo, "I was pursuing [acting] in Los Angeles till I was about 30, and I found I'd kind of lost the joy for acting. I was auditioning for things I didn't really want to do even if I got the part, just to keep my agent happy. I was really not happy. I was happy when I was doing theater, but it was infrequent. And so I visited Arizona during that time, and I just liked the pace, and I liked it better than where I was living in California. So I decided I wanted to move there. And then I tried still going back for auditions and everything, and that didn't work. It was too much, driving from Arizona to Los Angeles twice a week. So then I had to get a real job, and I started working for the postal service. I've worked for them since 1995. And I was able to get a transfer to the New York area when I married my wife."
However, more recently, he's gotten back into acting a little bit. He continued, "So then what happened was, I didn't really plan on getting back into acting, but my wife is an actress and she had the lead in a mob movie called Laugh Killer Laugh. And the director, Kamal Ahmed, asked if I wanted to work on the movie. He had a part for me but it was working one day, just a few scenes. And it was kind of a funny part, and I said OK; he was a friend, and I did it for no money. I didn't plan on getting back into acting. In fact, it was the first time I picked up a script in 25 years. So I just did it sort of as a one-off. And then while I was doing that, this guy who was doing a horror movie asked if I wanted to do that. And I went, 'Yeah, I never was in a horror movie!' So I did that. But it wasn't any kind of planned comeback or anything."
After leaving Jon and Kate Plus 8, former reality star Jon Gosselin reportedly began working as a sales marketer for Global Green Property Service. Life & Style reported that it was a "modest job" without a huge salary, but he wanted to make money to help support his kids. An alleged insider told the outlet, "Jon doesn't long for fame at all. He's much more content blending in and being able to live his life without the world watching."
Jon eventually moved on from the sales job. In 2016, he was a full-time DJ and part-time cook at TGI Friday's. He told Entertainment Tonight, "I only work there eight hours a week, because I like to do it. Why can't I work at a restaurant? I like to cook. My buddy needed help, so I said, 'OK, why not?'" However, he left the job after a picture of him at work was leaked.
Then, in 2020, he told Entertainment Tonight that he was a healthcare facility's IT director. He said, "We see the undocumented and uninsured. We're doing telemedicine and telephonic, and we're using Ring Sensual for Zoom to see patients. So we're not physically seeing patients right now. My job was to set up and teach providers, which are doctors, on how to use telemedicine. So I developed a procedure rather quickly, and my boss, the CIO, bought software that we never used before. I had to learn it in five, six hours."
Devon Werkheiser tried to find his next "big thing" after Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. He "pushed and pushed at ages 16 to around 24." He told Business Insider, "My savings, which I'd been living pretty modestly on, inevitably ran out when I was around 25. I just wasn't paying attention, and suddenly it was like, 'Oh shit, I need to start making a living.'"
"I was never ridiculous with my money, but I would eat out or go on trips when I wanted to. I'd always be living on my savings until the next job came and refilled it, then I'd live on my savings some more. Over the years, supporting-role jobs started paying less in the industry, and at the same time, I was booking less and less. The only thing I knew to do was to go get some hourly job and start working my way out of my situation. I got a 9-to-5 for the first time in my life. It was a real wake-up call for me," he said. The experience partially inspired him to start his first podcast, Growing Up with Devon.
Former Looking Glass singer and guitarist Elliot Lurie wasn't able to find commercial success as a solo artist after his band disbanded in 1974. Ten years later, he relocated to LA and began working a a music supervisor for movies and TV. Eventually, he became an executive at Twentieth Century Fox, where he was in charge of music.
However, in more recent years, he's gotten back into playing shows. On his official website, he said, "I started playing out again, beginning with occasional oldies shows, sitting in as a 'special guest.' Although I've constantly remained involved with music over the years, I was reminded that the most direct connection is still performing live to an audience."
The Goonies actor Jeff Cohen grew up to be an entertainment attorney thanks to the support of director Richard Donner. He told Variety, "Dick Donner and Lauren Shuler Donner, because they were kind, paid for my college when I went to Berkeley. The story is when my acting career started to peter out, I still loved show business, and Dick let me be a production assistant for him."
He continued, "I worked for him at Warner Bros. When I was applying to college, I said, 'Hey Dick, can you write me a letter of recommendation for college?' And he said, 'Sure kid.'...He asked me to put some notes together to give him an indication of what he should say. In the note to him, I told him about my life and some of the struggles that I went through as a kid — my father not being there and other issues that I dealt with. And he called me on the phone, and instead of merely writing a letter of recommendation to college, he told me that he and Lauren had read my letter, and they were going to pay for my college. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I was shocked. I had to sit down, because, for me, paying for college was going to be a problem. That changed my life. Not only economically, but it showed that Dick and Lauren believed in me."
Maggie Yu Miao, who was a TV star in Hong Kong, reportedly left acting and became a server in Dongguan, China. In a social media video, she said, "Life in Dongguan is fulfilling! Working here today, somewhere else tomorrow — there's always income. Acting, on the other hand, feels uncertain. Sometimes you wait six months or a year just for a single role. In Dongguan, I feel like hard work pays off, so I'll keep going."
Similarly, Kiko Leung reportedly left her acting career in Hong Kong and took a job at a friend's restaurant, where she cleans, takes orders, and prepares food. When fans recognize her, she takes pictures with them. She told QQ, "Whether acting or waiting tables, both are jobs. There is no distinction in terms of prestige, only different in nature. Now, I need to change my mindset and expand my horizons to learn new knowledge." She also said she wants to open her own food store.
And finally, after appearing on Love Island, Paige Thorne "just felt under this enormous pressure all of a sudden to 'become' an influencer." However, that career path made her feel "constantly filled with anxiety," and she drank "all the time" at events. So, she quit influencing and went back to being a paramedic. She told Vice, "This whole influencer world isn't forever. It's such a volatile situation, so it's important to have a backup."
She also told Cosmopolitan that, after being dropped from the show, she struggled with getting a serious job offer. She said that, in one interview, "I really felt like they'd only asked me in so they could laugh at me; I don't think they had any intention of hiring me."
