On Friday's The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the Oscar-winning actress looked back at one of her first jobs, joking how it inspired her launch into stardom

If you celebrated a birthday at a ShowBiz Pizza Place location in Georgia around 1984, you just may have been served cake by a teenage Julia Roberts.

On Friday’s The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the Oscar-winning actress, 51, looked back at one of her first jobs, joking how it inspired her launch into stardom.

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“I worked in a pizza parlor. I was a teenager, I was in high school,” Roberts said of the gig, which came years before her role in 1988’s Mystic Pizza. “Ironically now, it’s funny because the place was called ShowBiz Pizza. I think I was inspired by my job there.”

Roberts did have to do some acting while she was on the job. One of her roles included dressing as a giant, apron-covered bear.

Image zoom Julia Roberts and Ellen DeGeneres

“I wore a bear costume and brought out the birthday cakes,” Roberts revealed. “I was covered. There was a mask. I was not the only person to wear this costume — for sure there were bears before me. So when you would get in it you would just have to kind of like, before you put the head on, [say], ‘I could do this for minimum wage.’ And there was a button on the very top that had a fan that really just circulated the history of the costume.”

It wasn’t as bad as you’d think, though. “Now that I’m talking about it, it sounds awful, but at the time, [I loved it],” Roberts said.

To help illustrate the point, DeGeneres, 60, revealed a picture of Roberts in character — to the glee of the actress. “Wow,” she remarked. “Yup, there I am.”

Image zoom Julia Roberts Mark Cuthbert/UK Press/Getty

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Elsewhere during her chat with DeGeneres, Roberts got some tips for managing her new Instagram account, was surprised by Martha Stewart and reunited with her My Best Friend’s Wedding and Homecoming costar Dermot Mulroney.