Top 10 Celebrities that Used to be Strippers

With a face as gorgeous and a body as flawless as hers, the idea of Carmen Electra being a stripper seems like male wishful thinking. However, there's actually some reality to this daydream, and the former Pussycat Doll dancer happily admits it. Electra first took to the stage in 1991 at Prince’s “Glam Slam” club in L.A., dropping the name she was born with– Tara Leigh Patrick–and adopted the much saucier name we know her by today. Electra's comfort with her body likely contributed to her landing her first real acting job, on “Baywatch.” In a recent career move, she’s decided to sell her former skills to the masses in a series of aerobic exercise videos and brand of stripper poles kits.

You kind of expect a guy who’s that into himself to want to get paid for it. The Situation is best known for his appearances on “Jersey Shore,” where he rose tofame by flaunting his bod, so it comes as no surprise that he got his start by showing ‘the situation’ at bachelorette parties. Under the alias “Vito Durado,” he worked with exotic dancing group “All American Male,” performing at clubs and events all over New Jersey. His stripping experiences, along with all that GTL, definitely came into use when he appeared as a contestant on season 11 of “Dancing With the Stars.”

       
The Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody played around with a few career choices before scoring with her screenplay for the low-budget breakout film, “Juno.” Cody played around with various writing-based career avenues before trying out stripping. She signed up for an amateur night at a strip club on a whim, and enjoyed it so much that decided to quit her job to become a full-time stripper. Diablo viewed the whole stripping experience– bar top dancing included-–as a form of feminist liberation and would eventually tell her story in her memoir “Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper.”

   
Courtney Love's early life is probably more grungy and hard rock than her music style. She grew up being tossed around by different family members all over the globe– including stints in New Zealand and Ireland– getting expelled from schools and even arrested for shoplifting along the way. After becoming emancipated at 16, she started stripping to support herself, and adopted the name “Love” for anonymity. Stripping granted Love even more travel opportunities and saw her working in clubs in Japan and Taiwan. Meanwhile, working in Los Angeles clubs Jumbo's and the Seventh Veil saw her earn as much as $300 a day, which she used to buy a touring van and musical equipment- effectively investing in her better known career. 
 

Brad Pitt has admitted in the past that he’s not a dancer, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t try. Though stripping was never something he did for money, his pre-fame jobs did include refrigerator deliveryman and wearing a chicken suit for El Pollo Loco. But before he dropped out of journalism school, Pitt and his frat brothers– in their group “The Dancing Bares”– would put on striptease shows for sorority girls in celebration of them turning 21. The girls wouldn’t get the full experience, though, since him and his frat brothers would wear a pillowcase over their heads while they gyrated their junk. Now there's an image that lingers...

      
Amber’s stripping days are widely believed to be one of the things that got her famous in the first place. With a body as devastatingly sexy as hers, it’s really no wonder that her skills on the pole got her noticed by some very well connected people. It was her style and the skills she honed on the pole that helped her get a leading role in the 2008 Ludacris video for “What them Girls like.” This appearance is, in turn, what got her noticed by Kanye West, and the pair quickly became a high-profile item. Even after the couple’s split, Amber managed to keep the flames of fame burning by capitalizing on her impeccable style and explosive social media presence.

Trying to catch a break in Hollywood can be tough, especially if you don't have the right look, but who has a look better than Catherine Zeta-Jones? Yet, she somehow had trouble getting her footing in the L.A. acting scene, and decided that the one thing she needed to push her ahead of the game was a nose job. With that in mind, Catherine turned to stripping to raise money for the operation. The planned worked, as she quit the pole and quickly found success in the industry soon after her surgery.

          
Chris Pratt had a hard time finding work in his small town in Minnesota, and has said he “loves to be naked,” so naturally, he turned to stripping at the fresh young age of 18. Keep in mind that this was before his Guardians of the Galaxy bod, so Pratt wasn’t quite as successful as you might expect. Pratt only stripped a handful of times, claiming he was limited by his lack of dancing skills, but nonetheless made $40 on one occasion. After his stripping stint, he developed a transient lifestyle, living out of the back of his van and picking up odd jobs around the US, before he was discovered by a producer in Hawaii.

You wouldn't think of Lady Gaga as the type of person to grow up in a conservative family upbringing, considering her act. It was clear from a younger agethat she wanted to break away from her background when she moved out and started stripping at 18. Her family hated it, but this helped Gaga learn lesson independence and develop her avant-garde bad-girl style. But that kind of wild freedom comes at a cost: Gaga allegedly got into some pretty hard drugs around this time, leaving her with a dark past that was a challenge to overcome.
 
But before we get to our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:
 
NeNe Leakes

Mark Consuelos

Eve

Getting your start in LA can take years, and it's also a city that can bleed you dry. But by the looks of Channing Tatum, he had no trouble getting by before the fame. Channing danced alongside then-roommate and now reality star Jax Taylor, as they fought to break into the big time. Surprisingly though, the job wasn’t as lucrative as it could have been– on a bad night he’d make around 50 bucks. Maybe it had something to do with his bottle blond hair, or his stripper name – Chan Crawford. We’re guessing this helped him for his role in Magic Mike, though.