Robert De Niro held a real New York taxi licence. Elvis Presley drove a truck for an electrical firm and was told by his colleagues to forget the singing. Jennifer Aniston did one day as a bicycle courier and called it the hardest job she ever had. Steve Carell was let go from a rural mail round for being too slow.
Seven people who drove for a living before anyone knew their names, with the parts of each story that hold up and the parts that usually get inflated. There is no lesson at the end. The job was the job, and it paid the rent while the other thing had not happened yet.
Robert De Niro: a month in a New York cab
De Niro's taxi story is the one that is true in every detail, and it is the least typical. He did not drive a cab to make ends meet. He got a hack licence in 1975 to prepare for Taxi Driver, and spent about a month picking up fares around New York so that Travis Bickle's nights would look like real nights. By his own account most passengers did not recognise him. His licence lapsed a few months after the film came out in 1976.
What it says about the job: a month behind the wheel was enough to give one of the most studied performances in American film its texture. The people who do it for years know things a screenwriter cannot invent.
Viggo Mortensen: trucks in Denmark
Before The Lord of the Rings, Mortensen left the United States for Denmark after school and worked whatever was going, including driving trucks and selling flowers. He was in his mid-twenties before he went back to New York to act. Decades later he played a chauffeur in Green Book, and won an Oscar nomination for a role in which the driving was the point.
The truck years do not appear in his interviews as a hardship story. They were a job in a country where he wanted to live.
Elvis Presley: Crown Electric, Memphis
After finishing high school in 1953, Elvis drove a truck for Crown Electric Company in Memphis, delivering supplies to electricians, for about a dollar an hour. He was still driving for Crown when he paid to record two songs at Sun Studio that summer, and still driving when Sam Phillips called him back a year later. His workmates, by most accounts, did not rate his chances.
The detail worth keeping is the timing. The job was not a phase he passed through on the way to something. It was the thing he did every day while the something was being decided by other people.
Danny Glover: San Francisco taxis
Glover drove a cab in San Francisco before acting paid, and unlike most people on this list he kept a connection to the trade after he was famous. In 1999 he filed a complaint with New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission after cabs refused to stop for him and his daughter, and put his name to the campaign against drivers refusing Black passengers. The city moved to suspend the licences of drivers caught doing it.
A former driver using his fame to change how the industry treats its customers is a rarer story than a former driver who made it, and the better one.
Jennifer Aniston: one day on a bike
This is the story that gets inflated most often, so here is the version Aniston herself tells. At 19, working in a New York office to fund auditions, she volunteered to cover for the bike messenger when he did not turn up. She lasted the day, got lost, was terrified in traffic, and has since called it the toughest job she ever did.
One shift, not a career. Which is a fair reflection of what a first day as a cycle courier in a big city feels like, and why the people who do it for years deserve more respect than they get.
Walt Disney: postman at sixteen
In the summer of 1918, Disney applied for a job as a letter carrier in Chicago and was turned down for being too young. He went home, changed his clothes and hat, came back looking older, and was hired. He worked a letter route by day and a collection route by night, then left to drive an ambulance for the Red Cross in France, also by lying about his age. The US Postal Service still lists him among its famous former employees.
The disguise is the part everyone repeats. The part worth noticing is that he worked two shifts.
Steve Carell: seven months on a mail round
In 1985 Carell worked as a rural mail carrier in Littleton, Massachusetts. Small-town routes did not come with a postal van, so he delivered from his own Toyota. He lasted around seven months before his supervisor told him he was not fast enough and let him go. He moved to Chicago shortly afterwards and started at Second City.
He has told the story often, usually as a joke against himself. The detail rural couriers recognise is the car: your own vehicle, your own fuel, and a route timed by somebody who has never driven it.
What the stories have in common
Not much, and that is the honest answer. A month of research, a decade of trucks, one shift on a bike, a job that lasted until it did not. The only thread is that driving is one of the few kinds of work that has always been there for someone who needs money this week and has other plans for next year.
If that is where you are, the driving work has not gone anywhere. The delivery driver jobs guide covers how to start in the UK, and the Service Club Academy has free short courses for new drivers. Nobody is promising an Oscar.