Whoopi Goldberg Worked as a Mortician?! Wow

Before the red carpets and awards, many stars take on unexpected jobs to get by — but few can top Whoopi Goldberg’s early gig working with the dead. Long before she won an Oscar for “Ghost”, Whoopi Goldberg worked behind the scenes at a funeral home. She prepared bodies for viewing and assisted in restoring their faces for final goodbyes.

“I did hair and makeup on dead people,” she revealed during a segment on “The View“, recalling the unusual job she picked up after beauty school.

Whoopi Recalls a Chilling Prank on Her First Day

(Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

Whoopi has shared this incident many times. During her recent episode of The View, Whoopi described a prank by her boss that left her rattled—and ultimately made her more courageous. Called downstairs to a cold room, she heard creaking drawers. As she stood alone in the chilly room surrounded by large drawers, a strange creaking sound caught her attention. Her instincts told her something wasn’t right. Suddenly, one of the drawers began to slide open on its own, and her boss popped out to startle her.

Thinking she was witnessing something supernatural, Whoopi panicked and ran straight into a door, knocking herself unconscious.

How Whoopi Faced the Fear & Overcame It

When she regained consciousness, her boss had one message: “Now, the worst thing that you could imagine has happened. That’s it. … You still want to work?”

Whoopi laughed at the memory and shared that the moment changed everything. “Once he did that, I was fine,” she told The View.

Lesson in Confidence & Compassion

While Whoopi admits that working in a funeral home wasn’t easy, she also found the experience deeply meaningful. She believed it required genuine care to give people a respectful and dignified send-off.

For her, the prank wasn’t just a scare — it became a lasting lesson in fear, compassion, and resilience that helped shape her fearless outlook. In the end, her boss’s prank served a powerful purpose — to show her that the worst she could imagine had already happened, and she had faced it.

From that moment on, Whoopi understood that the bodies were just vessels, and there was nothing to be afraid of. It was a lesson in letting go of fear, one that stayed with her far beyond the funeral home.