(Credit: Netflix)

It’s easy to think of Hollywood stars as rich and famous demigods living in a world vastly different from the rest of us. The truth is, though, that unless a star is a nepo baby, they probably once had normal lives before being whisked away to stardom. In fact, most of these actors will have worked menial jobs to pay their way while trying to land auditions. For example, long before Friends became the most beloved sitcom of a generation and then repeated that trick decades later on Netflix, one of its stars worked a series of unusual gigs as a teenager and young actor. They’ve even revealed they once served the bizarrely coiffed rock icon Rod Stewart his divorce papers.

Before becoming forever etched in the memories of sitcom fans as the neurotic and bumbling Ross Geller in Friends, David Schwimmer was a regular kid growing up in Los Angeles. He knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of ten when he attended a Shakespeare workshop held by none other than Sir Ian McKellan, and wanted to pursue it as soon as he graduated from Beverly Hills High School. His parents convinced him to go to college first, though, so he attended Chicago’s Northwestern University – where he formed a theatre company and an improv group with future Late Show host Stephen Colbert – before moving back to LA.

While studying in Chicago, improv and theatre weren’t going to pay the bills, so Schwimmer took an unusual job: roller-skating waiter. In 2021, he told the New York Post that he did this for seven long years, and would make most of his money not from tips but from performing stunts for the patrons. “Everyone gets their burgers and fries,” Schwimmer revealed, “then you say, ‘Hey, you want me to jump over your kids for five bucks?’ They’d have their kids lie on the ground, and I’d just jump over them at 30 miles per hour.”

From his teens, though, Schwimmer was used to doing whatever odd job he could find over the summer to make some cash. He revealed that the worst was a strange gig at a copy machine place, where he was tasked with phoning unsuspecting secretaries and pretending to be from Xerox. He’d say, “I see you have a Xerox 2-2500. Looks like you’re running out of toner.” When the confused secretary replied, “I don’t think we are?” he’d assure them, “I think you are. Let me send you a couple of boxes.” If this sounds legally questionable, that’s because it was. “I turned up one day, and the whole place had been raided,” admitted Schwimmer.

Amazingly, though, Schwimmer also worked as a process server the summer after his first year of college. His mum, a divorce lawyer, needed someone to hand divorce papers to unsuspecting husbands and wives secretly – and this is how an 18-year-old Schwimmer informed the ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ singer that his wife Alana Collins wanted out of their marriage.

During an appearance on The Late Show with his old improv buddy Colbert, Schwimmer chuckled, “I was the guy who would pop out of the bushes and serve you divorce papers.” He revealed that the cloak-and-dagger nature of the job appealed to him because he felt like James Bond when he received intel about his target’s locations. Serving Stewart was definitely his most memorable encounter, though, and he joked, “Thank goodness I’ve never run into him since.”

Schwimmer was pretty sure that Stewart had no idea Ross Geller from Friends was the young kid who accosted him in 1984, but Colbert quipped, “He knows now. Change your locks, man. He’s vengeful.” Proving that you can take the boy out of improv but not the improv out of the boy, Colbert added, “You could theoretically run into Rod Stewart sometime, and now he knows to punch you.”