Alden Ehrenreich, who plays Han in the latest “Star Wars” movie, “Solo,” made his feature-film debut at age 19. But he started earning money well before launching his acting career.
“When I was 13, I got my first job — working on my uncle’s passion fruit farm in Santa Barbara,” the 28-year-old tells online investing platform Wealthsimple. “My duties were to pick and sort passion fruit, install fence posts and irrigation systems, and drive a large tractor. It was real-deal physical work, and every day was completely exhausting.”
He’s not the only celeb who started out with a less-than-glamorous gig. Read on to see how five other rich and famous people made their first few bucks:
The former President of the United States got his first gig as a teen, earning minimum wage at a Baskin-Robbins in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“Scooping ice cream is tougher than it looks. Rows and rows of rock-hard ice cream can be brutal on the wrists,” Obama wrote on LinkedIn in 2016. While not easy, “it taught me some valuable lessons,” he added. “Responsibility. Hard work. Balancing a job with friends, family, and school.”
Pop star Gwen Stefani also scooped ice cream as a teen, but at a Dairy Queen in Anaheim, California. “When I started there, I fit in my outfit,” Stefani said about her first gig, according to Us Weekly. “When I ended there, I did not fit in my outfit.”
She did get inspiration on the job, though: According to Interview Magazine, Stefani, her brother and one of their friends came up with the idea for the band No Doubt while working together at DQ.
Before founding Amazon, billionaire Jeff Bezos was flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
“My first week on the job, a five-gallon, wall-mounted ketchup dispenser got stuck open in the kitchen and dumped a prodigious quantity of ketchup onto every hard-to-reach kitchen crevice,” Bezos told Cody Teets, author of “Golden Opportunity: Remarkable Careers That Began at McDonald’s.” “Since I was the new guy, they handed me the cleaning solution and said, ‘Get going!'”
Still, the experience was worthwhile, Bezos said: “You learn a lot as a teenager working at McDonald’s. It’s different from what you learn in school. Don’t underestimate the value of that!”
The creator of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” used to run the slushie machine at his aunt’s store, he revealed on Twitter, using the hashtag “#firstsevenjobs”:
He also had a gig at McDonald’s, manning the cash register. “I did the counter from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., so I was the one you yelled at when you were too late for breakfast,” Miranda told Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones in 2016.
The legendary investor and self-made billionaire was a money-maker from the beginning: He earned his first few cents at age six by selling gum and Coca-Cola in his neighborhood.
When Buffett was 13, he found a more lucrative gig: Delivering copies of The Washington Post, which earned him an impressive $2,000 in two years. Thanks to other jobs he picked up as a kid, Buffett amassed a total of $5,000 ($53,000 in today’s dollars) before age 20.
Like this story? Like CNBC Make It on Facebook.
Don’t miss: Here’s how Warren Buffett hustled to make $53,000 as a teenager
