Will Ferrell wanted a "real job" when he was growing up
The 57-year-old actor and comedian has been one of the biggest stars in Hollywood for decades but because he had seen his father Roy - who played saxophone and keyboards for the Righteous Brothers - have a lack of security in his life, he decided to chase after a more conservative career for a period of time
12 February 2025
Speaking on 'Sunday Today with Willie Geist', he said: "It's just something I always wanted to do but I didn't give it any thought or any weight because I just saw how unpredictable my dad's life was as an entertainer.
"So I thought 'I'm just not gonna do that, I want a real job' but I didn't know what that meant."
The 'Barbie' star ended up becoming a bank employee for a period of time but was so nervous in his cashier role that he would try to deal with as few customers as possible and then realised he had to focus on entertainment after all.
He said: "I was such a bad bank teller, I would make one transaction and then shut my window down. It was like one every fifteen minutes, then at the end of the day when you cash out, I'd be like $300 short. And the manager was like 'That's okay, so-and-so was $300 over, so maybe you guys just traded money. And I was like 'Yeah maybe we did!'
"That was not the future!"
The Emmy Award-winning star got his big break as a cast member on 'Saturday Night Live' in 1995 and stayed with the sketch show for seven seasons before deciding to leave but still thinks of it as his "dream job" and would have been happy to do it for life.
He said: "If someone had said to me that I would only ever get to do 'Saturday Night Live', and that's all I'd ever get to do, I would have signed on the dotted line.
"It's my dream job, but it was the right time to go in terms of the momentum I had."
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