Before they were famous, many stars had various odd jobs or sometimes completely different career paths. Steve Buscemi was a firefighter, Barney Martin of Seinfeld fame was a police officer for 20 years, etc. And many stars were also teachers, and funny enough many of them also taught drama, like Jon Hamm.Teaching is often a high-stress, low-paying job, but it does yield the reward of guiding future generations to success, and these stars got a taste of that experience. The actors, musicians, comedians, and Broadway legends on this list all at some point were once at the helms of the classroom.
10 Roberta Flack
Flack is best known for her R&B and Soul hits, "Killing Me Softly With His Song," "Feel Like Making Love," and "Where Is The Love," all of which were number one hits. While studying at Howard University, where she got in at the age of 15, she became a student teacher. By 19 she graduated and took up a job teaching music and English in North Carolina after the death of her father forced her to quit graduate school.
9 Andy Griffith
Andy Griffith was one of the most beloved comedians in the history of American entertainment. His sitcom The Andy Griffith show is a classic and it started the career of Ron Howard and featured the talents of another comic legend, Don Knotts. Before he pursued acting and standup comedy, Griffith was teaching music and drama at Goldsboro High School.
8 Hugh Jackman
When the X-Men star was only 18, he spent a year in England as an "assistant housemaster" at the Uppingham School in London. He focused primarily on athletics, he taught gym and coached sports teams, but he also tutored students in drama. He left after his year with the school to return to Australia and go to college.
7 Liam Neeson
Neeson was originally pursuing a career as a teacher before acting. His first career, however, did not end on great terms. Neeson had to leave teaching after punching a student. That might sound bad, an adult punching a teenage student, but according to Neeson, it was self-defense. The student allegedly pulled a knife on Neeson and the future Taken star reacted by knocking the kid out. Perhaps this was the omen that he was meant to be an action star?
6 Sheryl Crow
The popular singer was an elementary school music teacher in St. Louis, Missouri after she graduated from college. Eventually, she would leave teaching to start her entertainment career as a backup singer for Michael Jackson. Crow continues to advocate for schools and education and is a spokesperson for Adopt A Classroom.
5 Jesse Williams
Although Williams has now performed in some not-so-child-friendly productions, he did at one point work with young people. Before acting, Williams was a teacher in Philadelphia. He taught African American studies and English for six years. Williams' parents were also teachers. Williams had this to say about his teaching career, "I grew up in Chicago in an under-served community, over-crowded classrooms that sometimes had two grades in a classroom. Then I moved to a suburban area and had a healthy public school experience. I found this incredible chasm between two of the many Americas we have."
4 Billy Crystal
Whether it's hosting the Oscars, acting in classic comedies like City Slickers or Monsters Inc, or performing on Broadway, it seems there is little that comic legend Billy Crystal can't do. One can add teaching to that list too. Crystal was a substitute teacher at his old junior high school in New York. According to Crystal, he was paid "$42.50" a day to sit in a room and step in if a teacher was absent.
Also according to Crystal, the time he worked for the school seemed to have helped him work on his material, "I taught everything from English to auto shop. I'd be at the front of a class saying, 'Listen, I don't know anything about science, but these two guys walk into a bar...' I'd only been out of school for a few years."
3 Mr. T
Yes, the "I pity the fool," guy from The A-Team was once a school teacher. In a rather fitting homage to his future career in acting and wrestling, the villain from Rocky IIIwas a gym teacher in Chicago. Hopefully, he never got dress coded for all those chains and that mohawk.
2 Jon Hamm
Hamm became a drama teacher at his alma mater the John Burroughs School soon after graduating college. Fun fact: one of his students would go on to be a famous actress who would work with Hamm, none other than The Office alum Ellie Kemper. Hamm would later get a role as the villain in Ellie Kemper's Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
1 Lin Manuel Miranda
The future Broadway legend worked as a substitute teacher at Hunter College High School in New York to make ends meet while he was writing his first musical. Eventually, the Hamilton star and author would have to decide between teaching or writing full-time. With the encouragement of his father, Miranda chose writing. Spoiler alert: it worked out very well for him.
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