On Thursday night, Susan Sarandon hosted an event honoring women's careers, but she didn't talk about her Academy Award win or her blossoming side job as a Ping-Pong club impresario. Instead, she recalled her first job, as a naïve babysitter for her neighbors.
"I remember finding a Playboy magazine and being absolutely shocked," Sarandon told BuzzFeed Shift at Moves magazine's "Power Women Gala" at the Setai Hotel. "The family I was babysitting for seemed so mild and I was a little Catholic schoolgirl. Finding a Playboy in their house was like going to hell or something. I was just so shocked. What could I do? I couldn't talk to anybody about it. I mean, I looked at it, of course."
She also fired off a list of jobs she held while in college, which included cutting hair, waiting tables, doing other people's laundry, working in a post office, and manning a telephone switchboard. While most women dressed in floor-length gowns, Sarandon wore a white button-down shirt and pantsuit.
Andie MacDowell, another honoree, worked in fast food before her red-carpet days: "The first job that I really learned anything from was McDonald's. I started there when I was 15 at the cash register. I had my own money, and I loved it. What did I use the money for? What do you think? I was 15, I bought clothes."
And Gina Gershon's first source of income? "My first job, well, I got a nickel, but I would be a spirit that my sister would paint," she said. "I would come out and dance and she would pretend she was a swami."