First Jobs of the Rich and Famous

When he was 15, his father lost his job. Carrey took after-school jobs as a security guard and janitor at a tire factory outside Toronto to help his family get by.

His salvation? Visiting local comedy clubs.

"My mother dressed me in a polyester suit, and I got booed off the stage, and I didn't go back for two years. But then when I went back, I was gangbusters," he told Larry King in 2001. 

“My first job was babysitting. Throughout graduate school, I was a nanny to a little baby because I love watching children. I learn a lot from them. They’re really the most theatrical of all of us." 

"When I moved out to L.A. for the first time to do In Living Color, my grandmother and my aunt all came to visit me in the first week. And I thought, ‘This is really weird.’  But they just wanted to see that I was living in a nice place. At that time it was like, ‘Why are they visiting me already?  I'm not even settled in.’ I didn't have furniture or anything. We all slept on the floor. Now that I think back, it was great.”

“I had just graduated high school and I was working part time at Coldstone Creamery, and doing an internship and getting ready to go to college. I didn’t tell any of my friends that I had auditioned for Hairspray, because if it didn’t happen I didn’t want to explain to everybody. When it happened, I was like, ‘Oh no, I have to tell everybody!’ So I got the news the night before my senior prom. I went to my senior prom the next day, and I said, ‘Hey, guys I tried out for the new Hairspray movie, and I got it.’"

"The thing about Red Lobster is that if you work there, you can't afford to eat there," he once told Jay Leno. "You're making minimum wage. A shrimp costs minimum wage. I cleaned up after the kids. Kids don't eat. I used to zero in on a kid. 'Don't touch that scallop. Please don't touch that scallop.'"

“I didn’t even think about movies where I came from. I wanted to be on the stage. When I was 10, I did Annie in the West End. I did Bugsy Malone when I was 11 and 12. And then at 16, David Merrick saw me in 42nd Street. I took over the lead and he cast me. I was there for two and a half years. Right now, these young kids are going crazy. I never had that because I had a work ethic. I had to turn up and be there six nights a week.”

“I remember getting my first check. I couldn’t believe how much taxes were taken out. I think the check was, like, $88 bucks. I was like, ‘Oh, my god. All that work for $88 bucks.’ But I was happy. I think I gave some to my mom. And then I probably went shopping with the rest of it.”

One of his first jobs was as an usher at an adult theater in Southern California.

"To me, the greatest job a person could ever have is being an usher at a movie theater. You get to go to a movie theater all day long, and then you get to see all the movies for free. Irony of ironies, I end up getting a job at a movie theater where I could care less about the movies and was totally bored by them."

As one of the top reality show producers in the world (Survivor, The Apprentice), his past isn’t nearly as glamorous.

“When I arrived [in America] a friend of mine had a chauffeur job in Beverly Hills and it seemed like an easy thing, except for there were no jobs. The only position I could get was childcare. I thought I'd do it for two weeks. It was two years later before I moved on from nanny.”

“I was trying to be a lawyer in a very traditional Edinburgh firm, but I hated it. Finally, they let me go—which was the worst day of my life. But I went straight off to act, which is what I’d always wanted to do. Now I think, 'If that hadn't happened, where would I be?’”