Sarah Shahi, Teri Hatcher and Phyllis Smith are among the few celebrities who were professional cheerleaders before making it big in Hollywood.
Shahi made the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders roster in the late 1990s. “It was very competitive I will say that, it was a great learning experience at the same time,” she told Fox411 in April 2016. “Those cheerleaders make show business look like babies foreplay.”
Shahi continued: “I learned a great deal about what it’s like to be disciplined and rehearse. We rehearsed for eight hours a day every single day and I was a full-time college student. To be able to have that kind of foundation going into Hollywood was fantastic.”
Smith, for her part, was one of the first round of NFL cheerleaders for the St. Louis Cardinals’ squad when she joined in the 1970s. The football team later moved and became the Arizona Cardinals. The Rams, meanwhile, played in St. Louis from 1995 to 2015 before relocating to California and morphing into the Los Angeles Rams.
Scroll down to see other noteworthy celebrities who were professional cheerleaders: