Kerry Washington Recalls Her Days As a Substitute Teacher After Starring in 'Save The Last Dance'
Kerry Washington hasn’t always played a Washington, D.C. fixer! The 40-year-old actress visited The Late Show on Wednesday and opened up to host Stephen Colbert about the jobs she held before making it big.
“I worked in a restaurant and I taught yoga and I also was a substitute teacher for New York City public schools,” she revealed. “It was a perfect job for an actor because you get a call in the morning saying, ‘We need a teacher,’ and if I had an audition, I wouldn’t go, but if I didn’t have an audition -- which was most days -- I would go and work in a school.”
But the job wasn’t quite as ideal as she started getting successful.
“I got a job in a movie called Save the Last Dance, and it was my first big film,” she said. “It did not pay me a lot of money, so after the movie came out, I went back to substitute teaching for a while.”
MORE: Kerry Washington Reacts to 'Scandal' Ending After 7 Seasons: 'We're Choosing to Leave'
Now that she’d had a more recognizable role, Washington ran into some problems with her part-time gig.
“And then I had to make a rule that I wouldn’t work in high schools. I could only do elementary schools because kids were cutting class to see Chenille teach French,” she said of her character. “So it was bad. I would go into a school and I would see all these kids outside the window trying to see that girl from Save the Last Dance.”
Washington is now a household name and celebrating the final season of her hit show Scandal. Watch the clip below to see celebrity Scandal fans!
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