The odd jobs of British celebrity women before they became famous

Many wonder what household names, stars and celebrities did before they were famous. How did they manager to hit the big time and where did they come from? We have compiled a list of British women who made it in the spotlight but did some rather interesting jobs before they got there...

We know Helen Mirren as a dame - royalty almost - as she is the only actress to have ever played both Queen Elizabeths on the screen. Thee Academy TV Awards for Best Actress and the winner of Esquite Magazine’s Sexiest Woman Alive in 2010, her job in her youth was a bit less glamorous…

The daughter of an exiled Russian Aristocrat once worked at the Kursaal amusement park in Southend as a "blagger", to attract customers to the rides.

The ‘Titanic’ and 'Avatar' actress has appeared in a wide range of films and always taking on more ‘gritty’ characters. She is the youngest actress ever to receive two Academy Award nominations and was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama. But what did this stunning, talented ‘British Rose’ do before landing her first role?

Kate Winslet was actually a sandwich maker in a delicatessen in her home town of Reading, Berkshire. Despite being told she was too ‘blubbery’ to get any role other than the ‘fat girl’ parts, she pursued her passion for acting, “…one day, I was cast as Rose in ‘Titanic’. The most unlikely candidate, Kate from the sandwich shop in Reading, suddenly acting in one of the biggest movies ever made!”

Victoria Beckham is a true picture of dignity, poise and business. A huge name in fashion, the mother of four has shown her love for fashion finery since her early days in the Space Girls, being labelled as ‘Posh Spice’ thanks to her love for high-end designers. But she was wearing something quite different in her youth…

Believe it or not, polished and restrained Victoria Beckham was in a BBC Sex Education show called ‘Body Matters’, where she dressed up as a gigantic sperm on roller-skates. The first thing you will try to do is find this video, but we can unfortunately say it has mystically been removed, but that doesn’t stop you from imagining the Spice-once-sperm girl skating into the distance in an enormous reproductive cell costume.

Kate Middleton is every inch lady. From stepping out after the births of her children looking entirely flawless, to embodying her role as future queen consort and voted one of the most influential people in the world - she always dresses to perfection, smiles beautifully and is everything a member of the royal household should be. Except, well, royal.

She actually worked as a part-time waitress when studying art history at university and, after graduation, started a part-time job as an accessory buyer for the clothing chain, Jigsaw.

The ‘Girls Aloud’ star turned TV personality held the record for the most number one hit singles by a female in Britain until Jess Glynne took the title in 2018. A teen idol and a style icon, Cheryl Cole has also held the titles Best Dressed and Woman of the Year by Glamour and topped the Sexiest Woman in the World list twice by FHM. But where did she begin?

That’s right, Cheryl Cole started out as a waitress. She was waiting tables in a local café in her home town of Newcastle and was known to have a very fiery temper. Cheryl, then 17, met a plumber, 20 and they dated for a few months. Steve said Cheryl would "flirt outrageously with me over the counter and give me secret sexy looks.”

Brit Award winner for British Female Solo Artist, Dua Lipa has received one of the most prolific awards in music - the Billboard Powerhouse Award, which is awarded to the act whose music dominated that year in all streaming sales and radio mediums. One of Time’s most 100 influential people in the world, Dua Lipa started out a little more humble.

London’s Dua Lipa started out covering songs by other artists on YouTube when she was just 14, but she swiftly turned to making her own way and paying the rent. Dua Lipa had various occupations which really shows her determination - she got her first job in retail when she was just 16 years old. She also worked on the doorsteps of nightclubs. She was a waitress at the Mexican restaurant La Bodega Negra in Soho and also a hostess at a nightclub in Mayfair. She then started modelling - getting a job modelling for the ASOS marketplace virtual catalogue.

We all know Gemma Chan from her role as Astrid Leong-Teo in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ in 2018, but her acting talent has shown a lot of promising diversity before then. She had supporting roles in BBC’s finest shows such as ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Doctor Who’, and has also received critical acclaim for her role in the 2018 period drama ‘Mary Queen of Scots’. But acting was not always her dream…

Gemma Chan was to become a lawyer with the firm Slaughter and May, a prestigious law firm in the city where she received a sought-after placement to begin her life as a legal practitioner. But, with a little upset to her parents, she decided it wasn’t the path for her. Chan told The Guardian that 'I realise that what had initially attracted me to law was watching films that were courtroom dramas and barristers giving these amazing speeches.’

The Coronation Street star spent six years in the show devoted to her character, Tina McIntyre, who was listed by The Guardian as one of the top 10 best Coronation Street Characters of all time. She has continued to act in Sky One, BBC and ITV dramas. She married TOWIE star Mark Wright, created a fashion line for Very, and has sparkled in the limelight ever since. Keegan, however, had a very different job to start with.

Yes, Michelle Keegan was a check-in agent at Manchester Airport. One of the most well-known females in Britain was actually the person checking your passports and weighing your bags as you embarked on your anticipated holidays to far away.

Known as one of the decade’s top models, Agyness Deyn is model turned actress turned designer. This versatile lady started out with a bit of scandal as she revealed her age to be six years older than what it said on her CV, but that didn’t stop her and she soared to fame and became a role model for many.

When Agyness Deyn moved to London she, like many young aspiring artists, had to pay the bills and while she was doing the odd modelling job, she worked in a fish and chip shop. In the evenings, she also held a job working at a bar.

The daughter of English musician, Phil Collins, Lily was named International Model of the Year by Spain’s Glamour magazine. She is a model and actress, having starred in films such as ‘Rules Don’t Apply’ where she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Since then, she has gone from strength to strength, appearing in the Netflix series ‘To the Bone’, ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ and ‘Emily in Paris’ where, again, she received a Golden Globe nomination. Was she always set to follow this path, though?

Proud of her studies in Broadcast journalism and communications, Lily Collins started out as a writer. She wrote for some magazines in England and even covered the 2008 presidential election for Nickelodeon. She said about the experience, “I got to do the ‘kids pick the president’ campaign. I was 18 at the time so it was my first time voting, I had a lot of questions myself, so I got to go out in the field and ask questions for the kids but also for myself, which was interesting. I got to be there for the inauguration and all the parties afterward and the conventions too, it was crazy.”

Atomic Kitten diva, Kerry Katona, turned 40 last September and has had an illustrious career in singing and on the TV. Her current net worth is estimated at $2 million, she has 5 children with 3 fathers, has written books and biographical novels and was runner up in Celebrity Big Brother. She has always been quite inventive and diverse in her job roles…

Kerry left school when she was just 16 and at 17 years old got a job as a lap-dancer. She revealed she would earn up to £500 a night on the job. After that, she worked as a dancer and joined a dance troupe that toured Europe before launching her singing career with Atomic Kitten.

A real life ‘Rags to Riches’ story, JK Rowling, one of the richest women in the UK gave us the wonder that is Harry Potter. She is incredibly generous, donating a lot of money to charities, and a role model for many young women. He initial Harry Potter manuscript was rejected by 12 publishers before it was accepted by Bloomsbury. What was she doing before she wrote the first Harry Potter book which she typed out on an old typewriter?

Jk Rowling had studied French and Classics at university and worked as a bilingual secretary at Amnesty International. She then lost her job, moved to Portugal, got married, had a child, got divorced, returned to the UK on benefits and then created a multimillion pound franchise. Not bad.

Feminist Louise Pentland is a YouTube sensation and author, covering topics form motherhood to beauty and lifestyle. She has a number of successful published novels and people are awaiting her children’s books which are to be released this year.

That’s what she called herself. Louise had a number of office roles before she kicked off her YouTube career with ‘SprinkleofGlitter’. She says, “It was the worst office job ever. I spent a lot of time thinking about YouTube and probably wasting company time… Sorry to my old boss!”

Gemma made an entrance to the TV screen in the hit show, The Only Way is Essex. She got the part thanks to Amy Child’s mother who was a friend of Gemma’s mother and was filmed for two weeks as an audition. She had always wanted to go into acting but was told she was ‘too fat’ to be on TV, despite her charisma. But she had another job before finding TV fame…

Gemma started out as a used car saleswoman. In fact, her first episode in the reality series TOWIE is of her selling a car, or rather trying to sell a car, to the star of the show, Kirk Norcross.

Mel B has had an incredible career as part of the 90s sensation group, the Spice Girls. She was a successful solo artist, too, and has kept in the limelight ever since the first audition for a ‘girl group’ in 1994. Before that, though…

At just 16 Melanie Brown was working as a dancer in the ‘Mystique’ show at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. She said about her time there, "I danced there for a season, working five days a week, earning my own money and it was so much fun. I was young, single and had my first one-bedroom flat. It was a great time of my life."