Before they staked a claim and became well-known, these celebrities had to slowly build brand recognition, just like the rest of us.
Here’s what they were doing before we knew them:
1. Brad Pitt – worked as a giant chicken in front of El Pollo Loco, a fast food chain
2. Marlon Brando – department store elevator operator (he quit after four days because having to call out “lingerie” embarrassed him)
3. Danny DeVito – hairdresser in his sister’s beauty salon
4. Whoopi Goldberg – applied makeup to corpses in a mortuary (she said it was great work because clients never complained about how they looked)
5. Gene Hackman – ladies’ shoe salesman at Saks, New York
6. Gregory Hines – karate instructor
7. Cyndi Lauper – cleaned dog kennels
8. Steve Martin – eight years at Disneyland selling Mouseketeer ears and Davy Crockett coonskin hats
9. Gregory Peck – carnival barker at the World’s Fair and tour guide at New York’s Rockefeller Center
10. Telly Savalas – Peabody Award-winning executive with ABC News and State Department employee
11. Sylvester Stallone – gym instructor and dorm bouncer at a girl’s boarding school in Switzerland
12. Warren Beatty – dishwasher and cocktail-lounge pianist
13. Benny Hill – milkman
14. Sinéad O’Connor – singing kiss-o-gram French maid in Dublin
15. Luther Vandross – defective merchandise clerk at S&H trading stamps
16. Dan Akyroyd – wrote a manual for penitentiary guards
17. Frank Zappa – greeting card designer and encyclopedia salesman
18. Sean Connery – milkman and coffin polisher
19. Danny Glover – social worker
20. Rod Stewart – grave digger, fence erector, and sign writer.
Compiled from “The Book of Lists” by David Wallechinsky.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Meg, so true…all great personal brands are as a result of being persistently consistent. Each of these people have one thing in common though…they recognised that they wanted to do something else, and they left their ‘day jobs’ and pursued it with vigour and rigour. Are we all doing what we want… and are we pursuing it with vigour and rigour?
Thanks for commenting, Luke.
“Vigour and rigour” is so aptly put. One of the key components of personal branding that I work on defining with my clients is their vitality. The things that energize and jazz them truly indicate what they have to offer their next employers.
-Meg
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