At Universal Studios Hollywood, the most iconic attraction is easy to name. The Studio Tour has transported voyeuristic theme park tourists through Universal’s backlots since 1964. Through the years, thousands of people have entertained guests with their quips and encyclopedic knowledge of Universal movies and TV shows. In fact, some famous folks have worked this gig. Here are eight celebrities who once worked as Universal Studios Tour Guides.
John Badham
You may not know the name, but you’ve undoubtedly heard of this man’s work. Badham was born in Bedfordshire, England, to a British mother and Alabaman father. Imagine that accent!
As fate would have it, Badham’s father was a decorated war hero and honoree in the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame. The Brigadier General used some of his connections to get his son some jobs in Hollywood. During Badham’s early days in television, he also worked as a Tour Guide.
The director would later leverage his sense of humor and storytelling abilities into the creation of several memorable movies. He directed Saturday Night Fever, Short Circuit, Stakeout, and WarGames, among others. That’s a remarkably strong resume for an auteur.
James Kyson Lee
For a brief period, Heroes stood as appointment television. The NBC superhero series ran for four seasons in its original format and then returned for another as a reboot. During those first two seasons, Heroes claimed more than 12 million viewers per episode on average.
From day one, the most famous character on the show was the aptly named Hiro. However, Batman had a Robin. James Kyson Lee portrayed Ando Masahashi, a man who joined Hiro on the latter gentleman’s voyage of self-discovery. In later years, Ando developed his own superpowers, making him a more prominent character in the series.
Lee’s casting always seemed odd, as Ando was Japanese. The actor, on the other hand, was Korean by way of the Bronx. After finishing college at Boston University, Lee purchased a one-way ticket to Hollywood, where he worked at Universal while making ends meet as a struggling actor.
Conan O’Brien
I’m not saying it’s a coincidence because it’s probably not. Two of the people on this list started as Universal Tour Guides. Later, they became recognizable talk show hosts, and that makes a lot of sense.
After all, hosting the backlot tour at Universal is similar to a talk show gig. You start with a few jokes, some of which are funny but most of which aren’t. Then, you move along from segment to segment, providing a calming voice in the face of a Jaws attack or, even worse, a clip from a terrible-looking movie that you pretend to enjoy.
I totally get how Conan O’Brien’s training at Universal led to his career as, well, Conan O’Brien. He honed his craft by introducing himself to strangers, talking to them for half an hour, and then sending them on their way. Hey, isn’t Conan down to half an hour now? I sense a pattern.
Michael Ovitz
As I’m discussing in a different article this month, only a handful of people have held the title of Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. Former Hollywood power player Michael Ovitz is one of them. And the always-enthusiastic talker loves to tell the story of his upbringing.
From Ovitz’s perspective, he’s the ultimate make-good story in the movie industry. To hear him tell it, the former agent came from nothing but scratched his way to the top of the studio food chain.
In reality, Ovitz was a class president at a school where two-time Academy Award-winner Sally Field was a classmate. And billionaire Michael Milken attended, too. But the rest of Ovitz’s story checks out.
He did work part-time as a Universal Studios tour guide while in high school. On that job, he learned the importance of connections in the movie business. So, Universal helped him eventually become the head of Disney. Of course, he sucked at the job, so he might have been a double agent.
Cecilia Peck
You may know Cecilia Peck for three different reasons. For starters, she’s a Golden Globe-nominated actress for her role in The Portrait. In that film, she portrayed the daughter of Gregory Peck, so I don’t think it was much of an acting stretch. After all, she IS the daughter of Gregory Peck. That’s another way that you may know her.
Of course, Peck deserves a tremendous amount of credit for her directorial debut. She worked on Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, one of the best documentaries of the 2000s. Peck’s pretty upfront about her time at Universal. She did it specifically because she needed a union job. Yup, that’s the child of a lifelong actor right there. Practicality rules all.
Randy Pitchford
We’re talking about a different kind of celebrity now. Randy Pitchford is a titan in the videogame industry, where he’s the CEO of Gearbox Studios. That’s the company responsible for the Borderlands franchise, one of the most successful videogame trilogies of all-time.
Gearbox has sold roughly 50 million copies of Borderlands games over the years, generating billions of dollars in revenue. Of course, Borderlands games are known for their bawdy comedy and sophomoric weapons. And Pitchford’s humor is dicey enough that he’s gotten sued for several uncomfortable statements.
I don’t want to blame Pitchford’s Universal training for this. Still, he probably should have learned boundaries at some point. Then again, he’s made millions of dollars by joking about boobies and penises, so the formula clearly works for him. He’s also one of the most recognizable faces in the entire videogame industry.
Jack Wagner
Do you ever watch Hallmark Channel movies? Come on. You can be honest. The ratings for these programs suggest that a vast volume of Americans treat Hallmark programming as the ultimate guilty pleasure.
The general formula for Hallmark movies involves an impossibly handsome man, usually a widower, chastely falling in love with a too-perfect but somehow insecure woman. But Hallmark throws the rulebook out the window in some cases.
For example, Jack Wagner has starred in several of the cable channel’s films. Why does he get special treatment? Wagner’s a multi-generational success story.
First, he earned some semblance celebrity as a daytime soap opera actor on General Hospital. Later, he worked the same gig, only at night, on the highly-rated Melrose Place.
Somewhere along the way, Wagner also had a number one single on the Adult Contemporary charts with All I Need, the most 1980s of all 80s ballads. And he apparently honed his singing, acting, and possibly even seducing skills as a Universal Tour Guide.
Jimmy Fallon
A lot of what I said about Conan applies to Fallon. The latter gentleman is a less funny, more musically inclined version of the former. But the premise still holds.
Fallon trained as a talk show host on the backlot tour. Today, he reaps the rewards as that guy who makes all of the viral videos where celebrities sing with/to him. Hmm, I can’t find anything that suggests James Corden ever worked at Universal as a Tour Guide, but the description fits.
PS: Fallon has lived out the ultimate fantasy for every Universal Tour Guide. He stars in his own attraction, Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon!
