A person’s career path isn’t necessarily dictated by the jobs they work early on in life. For example, it might surprise you to learn that a number of successful comedians, like Ricky Gervais and Lewis Black, didn’t have aspirations of doing comedy at all, and were looking to break into the entertainment industry in other ways. On the flip side, several people who went on to become household names in different areas originally tried their hands at telling jokes for a living. Here are a few big-name actors who got their start doing comedy.
Before Ron Perlman became known for his roles in Sons of Anarchy and the Hellboy movies, he was part of a comedy duo with his high school friend, Spencer Schwartz. The pair would lift material from George Carlin and Henny Youngman and perform it for small crowds at nursing homes and discotheques. Things worked out for them initially because the older folks thought Carlin’s jokes were fresh, and younger audiences similarly hadn’t heard Youngman’s stuff. However, Perlman and Schwartz’s comedy careers were abruptly cut short one night after getting run out of a club in the South Bronx by some angry hecklers.
When he was about 21, Steve Buscemi moved to New York City from Long Island to pursue an acting career. His first step on that journey was to attempt stand-up, and he managed to pass an audition at the Improv comedy club in Manhattan. From there, he’d get to witness the rise of future legends like Jerry Seinfeld and Gilbert Gottfried from the sidelines, and quickly come to the realization that he’d never be as good as them. In an interview from 2014, Buscemi described one of the jokes he used to tell, which involved him pulling out a clothing iron after informing the crowd that he’d been pumping iron earlier that day.
Prior to playing Gotham City’s mysterious savior in 1989’s Batman, Michael Keaton was performing stand-up at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York City, among other places. The aspiring actor had a few TV and movie credits to his name at the time, but was forced to do something else to supplement his income. Keaton’s short-lived act primarily consisted of him doing impressions of James Cagney and Albert Einstein and concluded with an extended bit about Bazooka Joe comics. You can check out one of his few recorded sets below.
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