This Country’s Daisy May Cooper was ‘humiliated’ by Santa job offer before fame
Daisy May Cooper, of This Country fame, told that she’d been left ‘completely humiliated’ after leaving prestigious acting school RADA and being offered a job as a Father Christmas impersonator
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This Country’s Daisy May Cooper says that before she found fame she was “completely humiliated” by being offered a Father Christmas job when she finished RADA and had to visit the Job Centre.
The star, who has won multiple awards for her hilarious BBC Three mockumentary, revealed she “hit rock bottom” after finishing at the prestigious drama school and visited the Job Centre desperate for work.
Cooper, who starred in This Country alongside her brother Charlie, said a job adviser offered her a “DJ gig in a club in Cheltenham” or a “Father Christmas slot in Swindon arcade.”
At the time, the now-successful actor was exasperated as she couldn’t even get a kitchen porter job in her local curry house.
The 34 year old, speaking on Kate Thornton’s podcast, said: “One of the bleakest [times] was going into the Job Centre after finishing RADA.
“All my peers had gone on to be really successful… and I was back home and I was having to go to the f**king Job Centre.
“I went to the job adviser and I just thought ‘God, I really hope that you know that I don’t want to f**king be here, like, I shouldn’t be here.
“‘I am somebody and I don’t want to be claiming Job Seekers Allowance, I want to be out there pursuing my dream but I’m at f**king rock bottom.'”
She said the job adviser looked at her CV and searched “arts” into the job search.
She continued: “He said ‘well, all that’s coming up really is a Father Christmas slot available in a grotto in Swindon arcade or they’re looking for a DJ in a club in Cheltenham’.
“I just kind of sat there… I was completely f**king humiliated.
“I just said ‘I want something that’s in the evening, that no one can f**king see me, that nobody knows that I’ve completely failed at everything’.
“He said ‘there’s a kitchen porter job at the local curry house’. I said ‘kitchen porter, is that a posh word for waitressing? As in portering the food?’
“And he said ‘no, it’s a potwash’. And he phoned up the curry house and they said ‘sorry the job’s taken’. Over 40 people had applied for the potwash job.”
But, Cooper said it spurred her on to make a successful career in acting.
She said: “That made me think ‘f**k, if it’s that f**king hard to get a potwash job then I’ve got to put my energy into acting and something I want to do, rather than fight 39 others to work as a potwash’.
“That was a massive moment for me.”
Cooper is currently pregnant with her second child with husband Will Weston – but she says she is struggling as she “just wants a drink.”
She said: “I just want a f**king drink, I’m sort of dreaming about it.”
MirrorCeleb