To "make it" in Hollywood is to become a star in the entertainment industry. Few people achieve that goal, and soon you'll understand why. It takes talent, money, nerves, luck, and blind optimism. Other lists have dealt with the talent and luck aspects, so here we've focused on nerves. The following actors dealt with starvation, homelessness, demeaning jobs, disgusting accommodations, vandalism, shoot-outs, prejudice, and even a house fire while pursuing their dreams. Despite all this adversity, they kept on going.
They were right to keep going; now they're the biggest stars in the world.
After graduating from high school, Ryan Reynolds moved to LA with fellow Canadian actor Chris Martin. They checked into a cheap motel, but tragedy struck within the first hour:
My Jeep was stolen, but then it was just rolled down a hill around the corner. They removed the doors, took the stereo, and I was left with this shell that was my car. I spent four months in LA without doors on my Jeep - in the rainy season. So I was slugging my way to auditions in the freezing cold. Contrary to popular belief, LA is actually kind of cold in the winter.
Reynolds's big break came a couple years later, when he landed a lead role in the ABC sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. That's a far cry from One Guy, a Jeep and Zero Doors.
- Age: 48
- Birthplace: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Tough business?- Photo:
- Gage Skidmore
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC-BY-SA 3.0
On The Graham Norton Show, Chris Pratt recounted a time in his early acting career when he worked as a server at a "terrible restaurant," making $20 to $30 a day and eating leftovers from diners' plates:
A lady would come in, and she’d be like, "What do you recommend?" And I’m like 32 oz. porterhouse. I would always tell them, I would say, "Listen, here’s how you want it - medium-rare with some mushrooms on the side, get you some mashed potatoes, you’re going to love this, ma’am!"
Whatever the person couldn't eat, Pratt would eat in the "safe zone" between the dining room and the kitchen.
The trouble came when the aforementioned lady asked to take the leftover steak (which Pratt had already consumed) home for her dog. Pratt lied, saying he had thrown it out, but the woman asked him to dig through the garbage for it. Instead, Pratt covertly asked the cook to make a new steak.
It worked out for Pratt, though:
She ended up being so, like, happy that I would be willing to dig through the garbage for her dog that she gave me a giant tip... And she left early because she couldn’t wait for the steak to be done, so I got another steak!
- Age: 45
- Birthplace: Virginia, Minnesota, USA
Tough business?- Photo:
It's hard being racially ambiguous in Hollywood. Vin Diesel learned that when he tried to make it as an actor in the early to mid-'90s. The industry wanted people who could fit into marketable ethnic boxes. Diesel, who still hasn't disclosed his full ethnicity, gave up on LA and moved to New York, where he made a short film based on his multiracial struggles. It's called Multi-Facial.
None other than Steven Spielberg saw the film and hired Diesel for Saving Private Ryan. In the following years, he starred in The Iron Giant, Pitch Black, and The Fast and the Furious.
"Being multicultural has gone from the Achilles' heel of my career to a strength." No kidding.
- Age: 57
- Birthplace: Alameda County, California, USA
Tough business?- Photo:
- Georges Biard
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC-BY-SA 4.0
Johnny Depp was out of his depth in his early years in Hollywood. He moved there with his band:
Dion Ray, a guy who booked bands at the Palace, in Hollywood, thought we should come out. He wanted to manage us, so he pitched me some money, and we saved up some money and we drove out there.
On how difficult it was to get gigs, Depp said:
It was horrible. There were so many bands, it was impossible to make any money. So we all got side jobs. We used to sell ads over the telephone. Telemarketing.
He made $100 a week as a telemarketer. Although the band eventually earned some cash, it paled in comparison to what Depp made when he turned to acting.
- Age: 61
- Birthplace: Owensboro, Kentucky, USA
Tough business?- Photo:
- Photo:
- Gage Skidmore
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC-BY-SA 3.0
At age 18, Charlize Theron relocated to Hollywood on a one-way ticket bought by her mother. She had a rocky start:
When I got off the plane, I asked the cabdriver to take me to the cheapest hotel in Hollywood. He took me to the Farmer's Daughter, which is not the Farmer's Daughter of today [with quaint furnishings and celebrity galas] - no Maxim magazine parties. Back then, the hotel could be rented by the hour. But I'd lived in worse model apartments. I took a bottle of bleach and some rags, and I cleaned up my room and stayed there for a couple of weeks.
The hotel cost her $28 a day. Theron lived off the modest checks her mother sent her, and at one point was so desperate that she stole bread from restaurants. Her luck changed when her check was denied by a bank teller, and a stranger stepped in and helped get it cashed. That stranger was talent agent John Crosby, who set her on the path to stardom.
- Age: 49
- Birthplace: Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa
Tough business?- Photo:
Having dropped out of Northern Kentucky University, George Clooney moved to LA in a beat-up Chevrolet Monte Carlo:
[The car was] leaking oil so bad I would go to the gas station and fill it up with oil and check the gas.
He even slept in it with the engine on, afraid that it wouldn't start again if he turned it off.
Clooney arrived with $300 in savings from a job on a tobacco farm, and he lived with family members and in his "buddy's walk-in closet" - that is until he landed a major role on the sitcom The Facts of Life:
I was making $7,000 a week. I'd been living in [the walk-in closet] for almost two years, and all of a sudden, I could put together enough money for a year's rent to get into this one-bed apartment. It was $400 a month. I was there for seven or eight years.
- Age: 63
- Birthplace: USA, Lexington, Kentucky
Tough business?- Photo:
- Noemi Nuñez
- Flickr
- CC-BY-SA 2.0
Canadian sensation Jim Carrey moved to LA in 1983 but didn't have the quick success that he had back home. Over the first few years, he booked minor TV shows and crappy comedies and got rejected by SNL. As a result, he was prone to bouts of meta-fantasizing:
For years, I used to drive up to Mulholland Drive every night and look at the city and sit and imagine myself with all this money and being sought after.
He also wrote himself a check for $10 million for services rendered from acting, which he post-dated for Thanksgiving 1995.
We're not saying that these tactics worked, but he was able to cash that check by the posted date, having made $7 million for Dumb and Dumber in 1994 and $7 million for Batman Forever in 1995.
- Age: 62
- Birthplace: Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Tough business?- Photo:
Brad Pitt moved to LA in the summer of 1986 and lived in two inauspicious residences:
I landed in Burbank at a house I could crash at for a month or so. It was just me and a maid from Thailand who couldn’t speak English. Man, I was just so up for the adventure, and so excited when I’d drive by a studio where they make movies. It meant the world to me... Then I moved and it was one of those eight guys in a two-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood kind of things... You have your little corner where you keep your clothes folded up in a little bedroll. I became quite accustomed to McDonald’s and Shakey’s Pizza buffet. I didn’t mind. The city was a wide-open experience.
Pitt began booking roles the following year, but it wasn't until 1991 that he achieved fame as J.D. in Thelma & Louise.
- Age: 61
- Birthplace: Shawnee, Oklahoma, USA
Tough business?Matthew McConaughey recounted this blunder in his autobiography, Greenlights:
Well, Sunset Drive is not Sunset Boulevard. As a matter of fact, Sunset Drive off the I-10 West is about 162 miles from Sunset Boulevard off the same freeway. Not knowing this at the time, I listened to the song "L.A. Woman" twenty-two times in a row thinking the lights of Hollywood were just over the next hill.
At 10:36 P.M., I arrived at Don Phillips's house on the beach in Malibu. I rang the bell. Nothing. I rang it again.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, who is it?!" Don finally said from the other side of the door.
"It's me, McConaughey!" I yelled.
"Oh yeah, McConaughey, ya think you can come back later? I got this little chippy in the back."
Exhausted from the twenty-four-hour drive and the overexertion from the premature anticipation of Sunset Boulevard, I barked, "F**k, no, I can't come back later, I told you I'd be getting here tonight. I just drove from Austin!"
Don opened the door, buck naked with a boner.
"Yeah, you're right," he said. "Gimme twenty minutes." Then he shut the door on me.
Welcome to Hollywood.
Don Phillips gave McConaughey more than just a shock and a couch. He gave him a career.
- Age: 55
- Birthplace: Texas, USA, Uvalde
Tough business?- Photo:
Kelly Clarkson had a failed attempt at a music career before she won American Idol. At 18, she ventured to LA to try to find jobs as a backup singer. Every producer she met with rejected her for various reasons, from being too heavy to sounding "Black" despite not being Black. Thus, she had to make money in other ways:
I worked at a comedy club, I was a cocktail waitress at a comedy club. I’ve worked at a Papa John’s. I’ve worked at a Subway... if you’re hungry enough and you want electricity, you’ll work anywhere, and so I did.
She was also an extra on shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Dharma & Greg.
The worst part of her experience (yes, worse than appearing as an extra on Sabrina the Teenage Witch) was to follow:
I was living with a girl I barely knew on Croft Avenue, and the day we moved in, we went out to dinner. We came back from dinner and the place was on fire... I lost everything except one box. I had to sleep in my car.
After a year and a half of bad jobs, incinerated belongings, and homelessness in La La Land, she moved back home to Texas, where auditions were being held for a new competitive singing series. The rest is herstory.
- Age: 42
- Birthplace: Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Tough business?At 17, aspiring actor Aaron Paul took the plunge by moving from Idaho to LA, hoping to swim rather than sink. Both of those are better than getting shot, though, which happened very close to him:
My mom dropped me off, moved me into this little studio, and there was a shoot-out at the Bank of America two blocks away. We could hear the gunshots. Helicopters overhead. And my mom is, of course, terrified. The first night with her leaving, I thought, "Okay, I’m an adult." But I was an infant, really, with a lot to learn. I think that first night changed me.
After using up $5,000 in savings, Paul survived by doing commercials and working at the Universal City movie theater. His big break didn't come until a decade later, and we all know what that was.
- Age: 45
- Birthplace: Emmett, Idaho, USA
Tough business?When Clint Eastwood was truly "the Man with No Name" - one of many aspiring actors in Hollywood - he attended Los Angeles City College on the GI Bill as a veteran of the Korean War. He also worked a variety of jobs like apartment manager and gas station attendant.
Eventually, Universal Studios offered him a contract, which enabled him to drop out of college. Eastwood recounted his father's response to this news:
He said, "Don’t get too wrapped up in that, it could be really disappointing." I said, "I think it’s worth a try." But I always remember it could have gone the other way.
It didn't.
- Age: 94
- Birthplace: USA, California, San Francisco
Tough business?Taking "supportive mother" to a whole new level, Krista Stone let her daughter drop out of high school to follow her acting dreams, moving with her to LA and sharing an apartment just south of Hollywood. This move took a while to pay off. As Emma said:
I auditioned for three months pretty steadily, got absolutely nothing, and then they stopped sending me out.
Many of these projects were Disney Channel shows.
In what sounds like the plot of a rejected Disney Channel show, Emma worked at a dog bakery between auditions. She had similar success with that venture: "I think three people called my specific cookies inedible to their dogs."
This super-bad dog baker made it big with Superbad a couple years later, vindicating her super-good mom.
- Age: 36
- Birthplace: Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Tough business?- Photo:
Unlike most of the actors on this list, Fox was financially successful in his first year in Hollywood. However, financial success comes with its own problems - especially when the earner is young.
Fox, still a teenager, made $50,000 that first year but spent $75,000. He compared this period of his career to college, as it was "replete with parties and heavy workloads, not enough spare time, too much spare time, parties, deadlines, successes, failures, parties, heartaches, girlfriends, parties, ex-girlfriends, future girlfriends, parties, and a graduation of sorts."
His poor choices left him near starvation and living in an apartment that was so small, he had to wash dishes in the shower.
The "graduation" must have been when he landed the role of fiscally conservative youngster Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties.
- Age: 63
- Birthplace: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Tough business?
