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10 Celebs Who Gave Up NORMAL JOBS For FAME

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Long before she was throwing a shield around as Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot was competing for a beauty crown, and Brad Pitt was standing on Sunset Boulevard in a full chicken suit.

TheThings Celebrity’s June 2017 rundown, “10 Celebs Who Gave Up NORMAL JOBS For FAME,” strips away the red-carpet gloss and goes back to the paychecks these stars actually cashed before anyone knew their names. The through-line is simple: almost nobody in Hollywood skips the line. They clock in at grocery stores, retail counters, and fast-food windows first.

• Gal Gadot won the Miss Israel title in 2004 and completed her mandatory two-year service in the Israel Defense Forces before ever stepping onto a film set.
• Brad Pitt worked as a costumed mascot for El Pollo Loco on Sunset Boulevard, waving down cars while he took acting classes on the side.
• Julia Child spent years as a copywriter, research assistant, and typist — plus a wartime stint with the Office of Strategic Services — before enrolling at Le Cordon Bleu.

Gal Gadot’s Detour Through the IDF and the Pageant Circuit

Gadot’s résumé before Wonder Woman reads nothing like a typical actress’s origin story. She took the Miss Israel crown in 2004, a title that got her noticed but wasn’t the plan — Israeli law required her, like every other 18-year-old citizen, to serve two years in the military. She did her time in the IDF before pageant appearances and modeling work eventually opened the door to acting, a path that eventually put her in the Fast & Furious franchise and then in Zack Snyder’s DC lineup.

Brad Pitt’s Chicken Suit on Sunset Boulevard

Pitt’s pre-fame job is the kind of detail that sounds made up until you hear him confirm it himself in old interviews: he put on a full chicken costume for El Pollo Loco, standing out on Sunset Boulevard to pull in customers while he chased down auditions and acting classes around Los Angeles. It’s the same stretch of road he’d later be photographed on as one of the most recognizable faces in the world, which is exactly the contrast the video is built to highlight.

Before the mascot suit, before the acting classes, before Wonder Woman, one of these stars was doing mandatory military service — the other was waving traffic down for a fast-food chain.

Julia Child’s Long Road to Le Cordon Bleu

Julia Child didn’t pick up a whisk until she was well into adulthood. She worked as a copywriter, a research assistant, and a typist, and during World War II she served with the Office of Strategic Services — the wartime intelligence agency that preceded the CIA. Only after all of that did she enroll at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, a decision that eventually turned her into American television’s first celebrity chef.

The Pattern Behind the Chicken Suits and Grocery Aisles

The video’s larger point is that these three aren’t outliers — the feature also references other now-famous names who worked neighborhood grocery stores, retail counters, and fast-food service before their break came. The common thread is time served in unglamorous, low-paying work while auditions, training, and applications piled up in the background.

It’s the kind of list that plays well precisely because the gap is so wide — a Miss Israel pageant winner turned IDF soldier and an Oscar winner in a chicken costume are both a long way from the household names they’d become, and TheThings Celebrity’s video leans on that gap the whole way through.