JAMES McAVOY
BUSBOY“I was a busboy at the Monkey Bar in Glasgow
and I got my bum felt by a lot of women. They
would always be trying to make you drop the
glasses. They always played Song 2 by Blur when
I was walking through with glasses stacked up
way over my head. My mate Alex was a busboy as
well and when that song came on we’d say, ‘Aw,
fuck, get back to the bar, get back to the bar!’
We’d have 30 seconds to get there before the
chorus kicked in and all these glasses would be
going everywhere. On a couple of occasions
I must have smashed 20 glasses.”SAMUEL L. JACKSON SECURITY GUARD
“When I first got to New York, I had a job as security guard at an apartment complex that was being
built. Then after it got built I was the guy on the desk who let people in and out of the building
overnight. There were a lot of famous people in that building, so I got to see a lot of actors I knew
from TV and movies. I didn’t enjoy it, though. Of course not! Nobody wants to be up all night, sitting
at a desk, when you know everybody’s out partying. I, for sure, did not.”MAT T DAMON^
SHOE SALESMAN
“Oh boy, I had a summer job where I had to sell
women’s dance shoes in Harvard Square [in
Cambridge, Massachusetts]. And that was a lot
of fun. It was one of those stores where they
marked everything up 200 per cent and then had
a sign in the window that said ‘50 per cent off’.
So I would have to hand out these ‘50 per cent
off’ flyers in front of the store. You know, I was
17 years old and selling women’s dance shoes
on the corner — it’s not that cool. I got laughed
at a lot by people walking by, like, ‘Why are you
selling capezios?’ It was embarrassing.”
MAT THE W McCONAUGHEY^
WAITER
“I wanted to work as a waiter in this all-black
blues bar in Austin, Texas, because I loved the
music. So the owner goes, ‘Okay, come in
tomorrow at 9am.’ When I did he said, ‘Go back
to the bathrooms with Carl and mop up.’ Carl
was his brother. After about 20 minutes of
mopping I hear this voice behind me: ‘Man, put
that mop down. You really want to work here,
don’t you?’ He was initiating me, to see if I really
wanted the job. And I got it. I was the first white
and the first male to wait tables in that place.”
DENZEL WASHINGTON
GARBAGE MAN“I was a garbage man. I don’t know if it was
necessarily my worst, but it was the hardest.
That was the most physically challenging work
I ever did, I would say. So I started my prep
work for Fences [in which his character Troy
works on a garbage truck] 40 years ago!
Who knew?”“I GOT MY BUM
FELT BY A LOT OF
WOMEN. THEY WOULD
ALWAYS BE TRYING
TO MAKE YOU DROP
THE GLASSES.”
COLIN FIRTH^
WELDER & AIRPLANE CLEANER“I welded for a while without any training and got
the famous welder’s glare, where you go to bed and
vomit and all that sort of thing. I also cleaned
aeroplanes. You stand on a ladder and wipe the tiny
engine parts under the wing, with cleaning fluid
running down your sleeve. It wasn’t the worst in
terms of hardship. It was just really, really boring.”