By Diana McCallum

Marvel characters may be larger than life, but the actors are… well… actors. Sometimes broke, struggling, and willing to take a weird gig, actors. So it shouldn’t be surprising that pretty much every A-List celebrity currently kicking ass in the MCU was once willing to take any hilarious gig that came their way. For example, did you know ...

Chris Evans Was A Children’s Board Game Model

Whether it be Steve Rogers-Chris Evans or cable-knit sweater-Chris Evans, everyone wants to date the best Chris in the MCU, but here’s the good news, if you can get your hands on a copy of the 1999 edition of the board game Mystery Date, you can totally date Chris Evans. You see, at age 15 Evans got one of his first gigs, modelling as a dreamy heart-throb named “Tyler” that you can call and try to date in the game.

Chris has admitted that he’s not much like Tyler, he’s never even surfed, so dating Tyler won’t quite be the same as dating Chris, but it’s the closest most of us are getting so start dialing.

Chris Hemsworth Competed on Dancing With The Stars Australia

You might have heard of most of the celebrity contestants on Dancing With The Stars, but it’s rare that one is a star on the rise, at least not in the American version. But just like water going down the drain, things work the other way in Australia as Chris Hemsworth appeared on the Australian version of the reality show way back in 2006. At the time he was a few years away from being cast as Thor and was starring in an Australian soap opera.

What is sincerely great is that Chris’s performance is as charming and delightful as you’d expect it to be. He may not have the greatest form, but it’s pure joy to watch him salsa dancing around the stage, his hips going absolutely nuts.

What’s less great is that according to Chris, the silly gig nearly lost him the part of Thor, as Kevin Feige told him he thought the fans would “eat them alive” for casting a dancing Thor.

It’s worth mentioning that Spider-Man star Zendaya also appeared on Dancing With The Stars back when she was 16 and only known for a few Disney projects. Her dancing was tight as hell though and she got second place in her season because Zendaya’s good at everything.

Simu Liu Was A Stock Photo Model

Since you’re using the internet you probably already know about Shang-Chi star Simu Liu’s early job as a stock photo model, but we are legally required to mention it here nonetheless. Back in 2014 before he was Shang-Chi, or Jung on Kim’s Convenience, Simu was modelling in stock photos that showed him having the best time anyone has ever had in an office setting. What’s even better is that the photos were incredibly popular even before Liu broke out and he appeared on magazine covers, IRS tweets, and accounting textbooks.

The internet of course ran at max meme speed to make fun of this hilarious incident, which Simu seemed to hate, at first, but he eventually embraced the joke and used it for his own means.

Jon Bernthal Went To Russia To Learn Acting and Play Professional Baseball (Even Though He Didn’t Speak Russian)

Jon Bernthal has one thing in common with the character Frank Castle, they are both VERY intense people.

As Bernthal tells it, he was determined to become an actor, and even had an American acting coach but she suggested he move to Russia to train at the Moscow Art Theatre if he was really serious. Bernthal is the definition of serious so said absolutely, but she also told him “no American had ever taken this route to stardom”, meaning it was a plan with a zero percent success rate (which we’ll remind you is the lowest rate possible). But Bernthal still said yep, I’m gonna move to a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, and become an actor, while also playing professional baseball in the European League because this man is complicated.

Obviously the gamble paid off as he’s now a well established actor in Hollywood, and fluent in Russian, and probably still pretty good at baseball. And very serious.

Jeremy Renner Launches The Jeremy Renner Official App

This list is about how most Marvel stars do ridiculous things before they’re famous, but Jeremy Renner is not most Marvel stars. He is the only actor on this list to make a ridiculous career choice at the peak of his popularity when he launched The Jeremy Renner Official App in 2017.

As the fifth-billed lead in two different franchises, Renner thought his diehard fans needed a place to hang out together, so he launched his own app, which was basically a Renner-only instagram feed where fans could chat, gaze upon pictures of him, and pay money to get their comments pushed to the top where they were more likely to be seen by Jeremy himself. Cool.

Some have described the Jeremy Renner app as genuinely “too good for this world” and say it gave fans a positive space to interact, but that space is long gone. Trolls discovered the app was rather shoddily built and it was very easy to make it look like they were Jeremy Renner himself, or other celebrities, at which point they started sending comments, messages and even push notifications to fans impersonating Jeremy “Official App” Renner and making the place no fun for all the true Rennerheads (or whatever they call themselves) and causing the app to shutdown in September 2019 with this message from the real Jeremy Renner (we assume) to all his Reniacs (is that anything?)

Jeremy was clearly heartbroken by the app’s destruction, you can tell by the typos and squiggly spell check lines in his good-bye post. On the one hand, it’s nice he wrote it himself, on the other hand, come on man, the final post on Jeremy Renner Official App deserves a proofread or two.

Vin Diesel Sold Street Sharks Toys (In A Sex Dungeon Or Something)

Vin Diesel plays two iconic characters in Dominic Toretto and Groot, but even better, he’s a massive atomic level nerd. Like, he could write for this site level of nerd. He based several of his movies off his love of Dungeons & Dragons, he taught Dame Judi Dench how to play while filming Chronicles of Riddick, he’s the founder of video game developer Tigon Studios, and he used to teach breakdancing. Seriously.

But before any of that, he was a guy who sold Street Shark toys wearing nothing but a leather vest in what we can’t confirm - but absolutely looks like - a sex cave or something. And here’s the even more amazing thing - he was god damn great at it! Watch the video below to see a man sell the hell out of a Hand Shark and have a great time doing it.

Vin absolutely crushes this demonstration of Street Sharks, showing off their powers, killing their catchphrases, and saying so many shark puns that it reaches new heights of Jawsome. Truly no other man could deliver the line “Round mound of pound” with such gravitas but also joy.

Considering Vin went on to star in the biggest street racing franchise of all time, maybe we’ll even say the Street Sharks inspired his whole career. Yeah, we’re saying that.

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