Internships may not always seem like the most exciting way to start a career but even celebrities
have used interning as a stepping stone to become a major star.
Whether it be through family connections, university networking, or pure determination,
these 10 celebrities paid their dues.
Here are 10 Successful Stars who Started out as Interns.
After you hear our list, let us know what you think in the comments below and be sure
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Aubrey Plaza Aubrey Plaza’s disinterested demeanor for
which she is best known, may be ideal for her comedic styling but for her time as an
intern for multiple companies, her unique personality was met with varying results.
One of her first internships was for Post-Its which required her to do menial tasks such
as wallpapering an entire bathroom with the sticky notes.
Plaza was also given internships related to her chosen career field.
Along with working as an assistant for short films, and as an intern for the comedy troupe
The Upright Citizen’s Brigade, Plaza was also given a job as an NBC page and spent
much of her time on the Saturday Night Live stage where her future Parks and Recreation
co-star Amy Poehler had the privilege of seeing Plaza in action.
In a 2006 episode of 30 Rock, Plaza played an NBC page, which allowed her to combine
her behind the scenes gig with her acting aspirations.
Steven Spielberg Steven Spielberg is a film industry icon who
has directed some of the most beloved films in the last four decades.
Accomplishing such success relied heavily on his own dedication and passion for the
film industry and the magic of movies.
After being rejected from USC film school but before dropping out of California State
University, Long Beach, Spielberg was given an internship at Universal Studios.
After he was no longer a student and had completed his own short film, he continued to find ways
to sneak into the studio lot and held a position that was not exactly an official internship
which allowed him to gain access to watch filmmakers in action.
His time at Universal enabled him to get his short film “Amblin” viewed by the studio
vice president which scored him a directing contract.
Oprah Winfrey Oprah Winfrey is one of the most powerful
celebrities in history, but she wasn’t always the media mogul she is today.
Even Oprah had to pay her dues by being an intern.
After college, she started her career in broadcasting interning for a CBS affiliate in Nashville.
The internship didn’t last long as she was promoted to news anchor.
She was the youngest and first African American news anchor for WLAC-TV.
She went from one news job to the next, and scored her first talk show with 1978’s People
are Talking.
Eight years later, she landed her very own show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which made her
a household name.
Anderson Cooper For what may be the most impressive internship
on the list, Anderson Cooper scored an unpaid position for the CIA for two summers during
college.
One can assume that with a writer father and a fashion designer and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt
as a mother, networking was probably not much of an issue for the CNN journalist.
During his time as a student at Yale University, Cooper interned for the government agency.
As enticing as taking a position at the Central Intelligence Agency after college may have
been, Anderson decided to become a journalist instead stating he was a news junkie his entire
life and would be much more adept to working in the newsroom instead of being employed
by the federal government.
After more than two decades of success as an award-winning journalist, Anderson obviously
made a wise decision.
Mindy Kaling Before Mindy Kaling headlined her own television
show and became a New York Time’s Bestselling author, she was an intern for Late Night with
Conan O’Brien.
As a nineteen-year-old college sophomore, she was thrilled to have scored what she believed
was a glamorous internship with one of her comedy idols.
However, Kaling wasn’t exactly the best intern as she wasn’t completely willing
to complete the tasks assigned to her.
Rather than doing the basic duties of an intern such as filing and photocopying, the actress
did her best to follow O’Brien around to see him in action.
Working with her hero was much more important to her and she found everything else to be
a waste of time.
Luckily, her career did not depend on the success of her short time at Late Night.
After college, Kaling and her roommate did their own comedy writing by composing the
stage play, “Matt and Ben”, which led to a staff writing job on The Office.
Not too bad for a less than stellar intern.
John Krasinski Mindy Kaling isn’t the only alum from The
Office who started out as an intern for Conan O’Brien.
However, John Krasinski was given much more to do during his time as an unpaid worker.
During his summer break from Brown University, the future Jim Halpert worked as a script
intern for Late Night.
Krasinski has stated that his time at the funnyman’s show was an invaluable experience.
He was able to parlay his intern skills as not only a successful comedic and dramatic
actor in film and television but also as a screenwriter for films such as Promised Land
and the film adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s short story collection, Brief Interviews with
Hideous Men.
Diddy Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, and Diddy are just a
few of the names Sean Combs has been known for but his many titles do not even compare
the to the countless positions and titles he has obtained in his career.
The rapper, actor, producer, and entrepreneur among other things, started out as an intern.
After two years attending Howard University, Combs dropped out of school in favor of an
internship with Uptown Records in New York City.
The business mogul had a reputation in college for throwing outlandish and memorable parties
which served him well in the music community.
During his internship, he worked with up and coming artists like Mary J. Blige.
He was signed on for an official job at Uptown but was fired not long after, which prompted
him to create his own company, Bad Boy Entertainment.
Tom Hanks With five Academy Award nominations and two
wins, Tom Hanks has established himself as a talented actor who has a knack for choosing
the right roles.
Before he proved his dramatic ability, the 1980s were filled with wacky film comedies
and becoming a titular bosom buddy on the small screen.
In the previous decade, Hanks honed his craft by working as an intern for the Great Lakes
Theatre Festival in Cleveland, Ohio.
For three years, Hanks did a little bit of everything to help out the festival including
set design, lighting, and stage management.
With so much of his time allotted for the festival, Hanks ended up dropping out college
at California State University, Sacramento in favor of experience.
Obviously, it was the right choice for one of the biggest movie stars ever.
Donald Glover Donald Glover may be best known as Troy Barnes
from NBC’s Community or as his rapping stage name Childish Gambino but the talented writer,
actor and comedian has been plugging away in the industry for years despite his youth.
While attending New York University, Glover worked as a summer intern for Comedy Central.
For some, internships can be a performer's ticket to fame and success but for Glover,
it was NYU’s sketch comedy group Derrick Comedy which caught the attention of Tina
Fey and resulted in a staff writing job for 30 Rock at the age of 23, which makes this
particular performer’s time as an intern appear slightly less exciting compared to
the others on our list.
Olivia Munn Long before Olivia Munn was brandishing her
telekinetic Katana as Psylocke in X-Men Apocalypse she was an intern at an NBC affiliate for
Tulsa.
After receiving a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa was only
her first stop as an intern.
In 2004, Munn made her way to Los Angeles to pursue acting but found an internship with
Fox Sports.
The internship led to a paid reporter job for the network but even with a background
in journalism, the gig didn’t sit right with the actress who hated working in live
television.
Preferring to follow her passion rather than continuing her work as a reporter, Munn segued
toward an acting career by way of direct-to-dvd films and ultimately found success in major
movies and appropriately enough, HBO’s The Newsroom.
That was our list.
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