The best job was when I was at drama school and I cleaned flats in the Barbican. I loved it. They were spotless anyway, so you'd just watch the telly and flick a duster around.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I wasn't working on Broadway, I worked in a Bat Mitzvah dress shop and was the Cinderella of the shop - always cleaning and vacuuming!
I did all sorts of jobs after drama school - working in a bar, as a teaching assistant. I probably learned as much from them as I did at drama school.
The worst job I ever had was working nights in the Chrysler Building. I was part of a team of about five guys, and we polished the leather furniture.
Journalists like to say I started off sweeping the pottery floors. But it was just a short-lived part time job doing that after I left school.
My first job was playing 'Nurse 2' in a film by Ben Elton called 'Maybe Baby,' and the first actors I worked with professionally were Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson. I was totally star-struck. I got that job on my final day of drama school, so it was a nice bridge into the professional world.
Professionally, I was at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did lots of things there, and then I won the BBC Carlton Hobbs Award, so I did some BBC Radio drama work, which is a lovely way to start out because you work with lots of great people, and you're working all the time, so you're learning rather than sitting around and waitressing.
The greatest job I ever had was working on my family farm. Each morning my father would come into my bedroom around 4:30 am and command me to get up and work the fields. I would spend the next two hours before school slopping pigs and cropping tobacco.
My first job was being a page at 'The Tonight Show.' I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he'd done the night before. I thought, 'I can do that!' I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.
My first job was in pantomime; I was a chorus girl in 'Dick Whittington' at 16. I got the part by ringing the director daily to see if anyone had dropped out, and it paid off eventually, when I was cast as a rat!
My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.