The Former Friends Star With A Shocking Connection To Rod & Alana Stewart's Divorce

Before they got their big break, many now-famous actors started their careers by balancing acting and odd jobs, like Harrison Ford being a carpenter or Jeremy Renner becoming a make-up artist. "Friends" star David Schwimmer was no exception to this before his breakout role as Ross Geller. He appeared on the January 13, 2025, episode of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and discussed his life before acting fame. Schwimmer and Colbert both remarked they were waiters once upon a time, with Schwimmer saying he was a "roller-skating waiter" in Chicago.

He then revealed he had one of the more unusual side hustles: serving divorce papers. "One summer after my freshman year in college, I was just looking for work, and my mom said, 'Well, you can be a process server for me.' My mom was a divorce lawyer, and I was the guy who would pop out of the bushes and serve you divorce papers," he said to laughter from the audience.

His most famous recipient was British rock star Rod Stewart. "Once, oh man, thank goodness I've never run into him since, but I served Rod Stewart. I don't even know if he knows. I don't think he knows," Schwimmer said. "He knows now!" Colbert quipped.

Rod Stewart, who is a surprising friend to the royal family, was married to Alana Stewart in 1979. They ended up divorcing in 1984, when David Schwimmer would have been 18 — so the timelines check out.

While Rod and Alana married when the rocker was 34, he felt like that was still too young to tie the knot. "When I told my dad I was getting married, he said, 'You're far too young.' He was right," Rod told People in 2021. He was very upfront with the outlet, saying, "I still had a lot of living, partying, drinking, and shagging to do."

Alana, a former model and actress, was a little more elegant in stating her reasons for the divorce. "The last couple of years our marriage had started to deteriorate from the madly in love couple who had everything we could possibly want to the reality of having three young children and a wife who couldn't keep up with the rock-and-roll lifestyle anymore," she wrote in 2012 for HuffPost. "I started to feel that everything came before me and the children." Ultimately, separating from each other may have been for the best. Rod has been married to Penny Lancaster-Stewart since 2007 (after a second failed marriage) while Alana wrote that, "I'm grateful for the break-up of my marriage because it forced me to deal with all the buried issues I probably wouldn't have otherwise faced."