THEY’RE wealthy, successful and everyone knows their name.
But some stars weren’t afraid to their hands dirty before their time in the spotlight.
Many well-known names started out in jobs a world away from their glamorous showbiz careers – and some are VERY surprising.
We reveal the down-to-earth first jobs of some of your favourite famous faces.
Stacey Solomon’s smelly Saturday job
She’s the star of countless primetime shows, earns six figures from her clothes range with Primark and has just teamed up with Asda for a George homeware range – not to mention the millions of adoring fans who follow every moment of her mum life on Instagram.
But down-to-earth Stace has humble roots. She once worked in a fish and chip shop in her native Essex.
The Loose Women panellist did part-time shifts at the aptly named Oh My Cod! in Hornchurch, East London, when she was a single mum and studying at college.
She told her co-stars: “They did an amazing battered sausage and I loved working there. I was really good at wrapping chips. I go back in all the time.”
17
Stacey continued to work there while auditioning for The X Factor in 2009 – the show that would catapult her to fame.
“It was the best experience of my life, it was so surreal,” she said.
“I went from working at Oh My Cod! to singing with Whitney Houston.”
17
Alison Hammond holidays
This Morning presenter Alison has become a public favourite thanks to her upbeat personality and willingness to take the mick out of herself, as demonstrated in her new job as co-host of Great British Bake Off.
17
It turns out that the 48-year-old Brummie learned how to please an audience back in her days as a holiday rep in Tunisia in her early twenties.
She said: “I went there with a friend and the entertainer in the hotel had left.
“The next thing I know, I’m on the stage on my holiday entertaining the kids, doing mini disco, singing I Am The Music Man.
“The manager came up and asked if I wanted to get a job and I didn’t have a job at the time.
17
“So you never know – by going on that holiday, I wound up in that sort of career.”
She was still doing the job when she appeared on the third series of Big Brother in 2002, winning the public’s hearts after jumping on a table and breaking it.
Cheryl Tweedy on tables
While she was waiting for stardom, Cheryl was doing waiting of a different kind in her native hometown of Newcastle.
17
The 40-year-old singer did shifts in a restaurant alongside training as a dancer and doing minor childhood modelling jobs.
But she left the dirty dishes well behind when she auditioned for Popstars: The Rivals in 2002 and was picked as one fifth of Girls Aloud who are about to make a comeback.
Cheryl would later become a judge on The X Factor and score five number one nights as a solo artist.
Not bad for a Geordie girl from The Toon.
Gabby Logan got grubby
17
She might be the daughter of former footballer and manager Terry Yorath, but Gabby Logan certainly didn’t mind getting her hands dirty from a young age.
She got a cleaning job at her grandmother’s café in Leeds – aged just nine.
The BBC sports anchor, 50, earned £5 a shift for helping out, before taking a different job at 13 sweeping floors at a hairdressing salon.
She got the TV bug a couple of years later when she appeared on Blue Peter as a gymnast.
Gabby would write to the director of the show to thank him and say she wanted to work in telly – and he replied to encourage her to go to university.
Her telly dream came true and years later she would make a show for his production company for ITV2.
She said: “He walked on set and said: ‘You took my advice!’.”
Davina McCall was a Saturday girl
Clean-living Davina was once a hard-partying teen, developing addictions to drugs after being introduced to them by her mother.
17
When she was 17 and still at school, she fell into debt – and got a sales assistant job to try and clear it.
“I owed about £3,000, which was a lot of money then,” says the 55-year-old TV presenter.
“I had to pay it off with a Saturday job, working in French Connection in London’s Covent Garden for £20 a day.
“It took me over five years to pay it off, but now I’m very careful not to be overdrawn because I remember how awful that felt.”
Michelle Keegan had baggage
She got her big break playing barmaid Tina McIntyre in Coronation Street but that’s in stark contrast to what she did in her younger years.
17
Michelle Keegan’s pre-fame jobs included working in Selfridges in Manchester on the make-up counter and as a check-in assistant at Manchester Airport.
But the Stockport-born actress wasn’t stuck in customer service jobs for long.
She landed the role of Tina at only her second audition, beating 900 other girls to the part in 2008.
Today, the 37-year-old has a string of TV credits to her name and has been named the sexiest woman in the world by men’s lifestyle magazine FHM.
Alesha Dixon took a gamble
She’s won Strictly Come Dancing, had top ten hits and is a judge on Britain’s Got Talent.
17
But who would have put bets on Alesha Dixon reaching such heights back when she worked in a betting shop as a teenager?
The 45-year-old star revealed: “I worked in Ladbrokes but I spent most of the day daydreaming about my music career.”
She also aspired to be a PE teacher, planning to go to Loughborough University, until she was scouted on a train home from London to Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.
During her Ladbrokes days, she also secretly romanced fellow popstar Noel Simpson from R&B boyband Damage.
He said: “I used to wait outside for her to finish her shift and then we would go off together.”
Amanda Holden got fruity
The Britain’s Got Talent judge is known for being a little bit fruity and it might have something to do with her job choices before stardom.
17
Amanda’s first job was working in a fruit and veg shop in her hometown of Bishop’s Waltham, Hampshire.
She would do Saturday shifts at greengrocers Hylands before getting her big break in musical theatre.
But Amanda, 52, has never forgotten her root veg, returning to the store when she published her memoir No Holding Back in 2013.
She said: “I had this brainwave to do a book signing in the shop I worked in when I used to get £13 a day and spend the money on clothes in a shop up the street.
“I was a Saturday girl from 13 to 16 and it smelled just the same.”
Kris Jenner had wings
The Kardashian matriarch never looks anything less than polished, a quality she no doubt picked up on her first job.
17
Before marrying her first husband Robert – dad to Kim and co – Kris, 67, was cabin crew for American Airlines for a year back in 1976.
She revealed on an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she had the job back when she was known as Kristen Mary Houghton.
Kris was only 20 and had been dumped by attorney Robert for the ex-wife of Elvis, Priscilla Presley when she decided to train as stewardess.
But colleague Cindy Spallino recalled how she would still call him from the training centre in Texas each night, even though: “All men were attracted to her because she was so beautiful.
“I could walk through an airport and heads would turn because she was totally stunning.”
When she rekindled things with Robert, she quit the skies for the high life in LA and the pair married in 1978.
Molly-Mae Hague the lifesaver (kind of)…
If reality TV star Molly-Mae looked comfortable in a bikini during her stint on Love Island in 2019, it’s because she’d had plenty of practice.
17
She worked as a part-time leisure centre lifeguard in Manchester with her sister Zoe, before taking the crown of Miss Teen Hertfordshire and World Teen Supermodel.
Sharing a photo on Instagram of the pair eating lunch in their yellow and red uniforms, she joked: “Had this job for three years. Not gonna lie, never saved a life.”
The super-influencer would also train as a spin instructor and work in Boots before clawing her way to charging £65,000 per sponsored social media post.
Today, the 24-year-old is more likely to be posing by a pool in the tropics alongside fiancé Tommy Fury and their baby daughter Bambi.
17
Olly Murs delivered the news
These days, Olly can be found gracing the pages of the national newspapers, with his recent wedding to wife Amelia hitting the headlines.
17
But before he found fame, the popstar had a job delivering them – as a paper boy for his local newsagent.
He said: “My granddad was a hard worker and my dad is too. It was instilled in me as a kid.
“I never got pocket money – I had to earn it. I had two paper rounds before school, not just one.
“Wherever I worked, whether it was at football, in the pub, I’d do whatever was asked of me and more.”
Unlike many other stars, Olly, 39, didn’t grow up dreaming of fame and only realised he had a talent when he did karaoke on a night out with friends aged 23.
Two years later, he got his break when he was picked for The X Factor, making it to the final two – and next year he’ll be supporting Take That on tour.
He said: “It’s given me the opportunity to be where I am now. I’d probably still be working in sales otherwise.”
Geri Halliwell-Horner greased up
When Geri was still a showbiz wannabe, she did shifts serving customers at a takeaway.
17
But her diminutive stature caused a few problems for the future Ginger Spice.
She revealed: “I worked in a fish and chip shop, but I was so short I couldn’t see over the counter.
“I’d go home at the end of the night with a greasy slick on my forehead. It was a horrible greasy nightmare.
“I did it for one summer when I was 16.”
17
The Spice Girls star, 51, would go on to work as a nightclub dancer in Majorca, a presenter on a Turkish game show and a glamour model.
Today, she lives in luxury with her Formula 1 boss Christian Horner and has recently published her first children’s novel, Rosie Frost & The Falcon Queen.