Eve showed off her paw prints as a stripper in Philadelphia before becoming the Ruff Ryders’ First Lady.
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Before getting into acting, Brad Pitt was part of a male stripper troupe called “The Dancing Bares.” The pun was probably intended.
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Before she was discovered as a model and alleged gold-digger, Anna Nicole Smith was a waitress and topless dancer named Vicki Lynn Hogan in Houston, Texas.
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Ronnie Ortiz-Magro put all that “GTL” to use hosting events for Chippendale’s.
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Amber Rose was a stripper in her native Philadelphia when she met Kanye West, who turned her into a household name.
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Kendra Wilkinson-Baskett was so ashamed of her stripping past that she only told her mom about it so she wouldn’t find out through her book, “Sliding Into Home.”
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Courtney Love stripped to fund her band, Hole, before they hit it big. She told L.A. Weekly, “I worked at Nude, Nude, Nude! Century Lounge near the airport. I worked at Seventh Veil. But Jumbo’s did give me more consistency. I got to work in the day. To me back then, 300 bucks in a day was fine. I was able to do the kind of stripper economy which is … for every $5 I made, I would give Eric Erlandson three of them and that’s how we bought our van and we bought our backline.”
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NeNe Leakes boasted of her stripper past, “I remember going home and having something like $1,000 and thinking, ‘I made $1,000 in one night. Baby, we are doing this tomorrow night!'” She continued dancing for three years under the names Holly and Silk.
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Now Dita Von Teese is a burlesque performer. Back then she was your average stripper named Heather Sweet.
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Before becoming the reigning queen of porn, Jenna Jameson was a princess of the pole.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones admitted that she worked as a stripper to pay for a nose job back in the day.
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The Situation hates keeping his shirt on, so it’s not shocking that the “Jersey Shore” alum was briefly a member of “The All-American Males” stripping troupe.
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Chris Pratt confessed on “Ellen,” “When I was a kid, I was in a small town. I was a stripper for a little while … It was very low-rent … my friend’s grandma had me. I wasn’t good.” The “Guardians of the Galaxy” star reportedly only made $40, so he ended his exotic dancing career after only three performances.
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Channing Tatum based “Magic Mike” on his experiences as a male stripper in Florida, then going by the stage name “Chan Crawford.”
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Javier Bardem was a stripper … very, very briefly. He explained to Marie Claire UK, “For a day! It was a disaster. And you know who was there watching? My mom and my sister! It was kind of a thing — you go there and dance, they pay you some money. It wasn’t like a ‘Full Monty’ thing.”
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Diablo Cody went from a stripper to an Oscar winner for her screenplay “Juno.”
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When Mark Consuelos was a student at the University of Florida, he served as a roadie for a traveling troupe of male strippers before he joined them as a performer.
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Before she was Prince protégé Carmen Electra, she was stripper Tera Patrick. Electra has gone on to create a line of “Aerobic Striptease” DVDs as well as at-home poles, so it’s safe to say she’s pretty proud of her roots.
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When Lady Gaga was just Stefani Germanotta, she performed in go-go bars and not arenas.
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Tila Tequila’s trajectory: Stripper, MySpace sensation, reality star, hot mess, Nazi.
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