These stars went from the classroom to superstardom. Check out these 5 celebrities who were teachers before they got famous.
1. Hugh Jackman
Before Broadway and Hollywood got a hold on him, Jackman spent one year working as a teaching assistant at a top British boarding school called Uppingham School in 1987. He was “an 18-year-old Aussie teaching English to a bunch of English kids,” he recalled, according to BBC. “I thought, if that was my school fees, I’d be pretty annoyed.”
2. Sylvester Stallone
At 18, the creator of the hit Rocky series was hired by a swiss boarding school for girls as a gym teacher and dorm bouncer. The teaching gig helped him discover his love of acting. He took that passion and applied it to studying drama at the University of Miami before moving to N.Y.C. to make his dreams come true.
3. Stephen King
Known for his supernatural horror novels, King chipped away at building his career as a writer while teaching high school English at Hampden Academy in Maine in the fall of 1971, according to his website. King kept teaching until the spring of 1973, when a major sale of his novel Carrie would allow him to quit his job and write full-time.
4. Sheryl Crow
The “Soak Up the Sun” singer got her start teaching music during the week and playing gigs on the weekends back in the ’80s, according to The Telegraph.
5. Gene Simmons
Before performing in front of thousands in full makeup and tight leather pants, the Kiss bassist and co-lead singer spent several months teaching sixth grade at a public school in New York City’s Upper West Side neighborhood. “The reason I quit after six months is that I discovered the real reason I became a teacher,” Simmons explained during a June 1978 interview with the Lakeland Ledger. “It was because I wanted to get up on stage and have people notice me. I had to quit because the stage was too small. Forty people wasn’t enough, I wanted 400,000.”