These actors who started acting later in life all had legitimate careers, but gave them up to the bright lights of Hollywood. The reasons why they needed to change career directions around mid-life are all different. However, every one of these successful actors took a major gamble to follow their dreams.
Which Emmy Award-winning actress was inspired to pursue her dreams in her 40s following her mother's passing? Which funnyman gave up being a doctor so he could play a doctor on the big screen? Which famous comedienne/actress left her high-clearance job at the National Security Agency so that she could pursue comedy?
Find out those answers and more – and be sure to vote up the most impressive late transitions to Hollywood.
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- Braveheart
- Paramount Pictures
Brendan Gleeson worked for several years as a schoolteacher in Ireland. However, he always had one eye on the stage. "I was teaching English and Irish at the secondary school level, and I actually enjoyed it, but in the summer of 1989, I was working at the Tivoli Theatre and the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, and I was making a little bit of money," said Gleeson, per Independent.ie.
In his mid-30s, Gleeson decided to truly pursue his passion for acting and give up his stable job as a teacher.
"It never crossed my mind I could be a movie star,” he tols the Irish Times. “I remember being asked when I was about three what I wanted to be, and I said, 'An actor.' You go through your teens, and you realize the world is slightly different to your dreams. I never put that down as something viable. I suppose everyone imagines themselves up on the silver screen at some point. I never worked towards that, though. I just liked the work.”
It took one year to score his first Irish film role in 1990's The Field. Then, the prolific character actor found steady work in several mainstream acclaimed productions, including Braveheart, Michael Collins, Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain, 28 Days Later, Troy, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Mission: Impossible 2. In 2005, he became an official part of the Harry Potter universe. The Dubliner played Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
In 2009, Gleeson won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance as Winston Churchill in Into the Storm.
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- Crime Story
- NBC
Veteran character actor Dennis Farina worked as a Chicago Police officer from 1967 to 1985. He had no desire to become an actor. "I was always a movie fan. As a kid, we would go to the neighborhood theater and watch Bogart movies and Cagney movies and stuff like that," Farina told the Los Angeles Times. "I never thought I would be doing what I’m doing."
Then, the Windy City native ran into director Michael Mann through a mutual friend. "Michael is a Chicago guy, anyway," Farina added. "He says he wants to talk to some real-life characters. I talked to him, and he asked me to do a part in the movie. I said, yes, sure."
Farina worked as a consultant and played the small role of Carl in Mann's 1981 crime drama, Thief. He subsequently caught the acting bug. Farina landed additional supporting parts in Miami Vice, Manhunter, and Hunter. However, he didn't stop working the police beat until he scored a more permanent gig.
Farina took center stage on Mann's NBC detective drama Crime Story in 1986, where he played a Chicago police detective. The late star ultimately became one of the most prolific character actors of his generation. He co-starred on both the small and big screen with impressive performances in Midnight Run, Get Shorty, Saving Private Ryan, and Law & Order.
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British-born John Mahoney came to the United States at the age of 19. He didn't necessarily land in America to be an actor, but he always had an interest in performing.
Mahoney walked down several career paths in his 20s and 30s. He worked as a hospital orderly, college teacher, and medical journal editor.
However, Mahoney could not find any real fulfillment with his day jobs. "There was this deep-seated frustration," Mahoney told the Chicago Tribune. "I knew that the only place I had ever been really happy was on stage."
In his late 30s, he finally could no longer ignore his dream of being an actor. He started serious training and eventually worked alongside talents like John Malkovich at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. In 1986, Mahoney won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in John Guare's American Playhouse: The House of Blue Leaves.
Mahoney also became an accomplished character actor on the big screen with supporting parts in films like Say Anything..., Moonstruck, and Eight Men Out.
At the age of 53, Mahoney landed the star-making role of Marty Crane in the television spinoff series, Frasier. Marty was the blue-collar police officer juxtaposed with his two snobbish, uppity sons, Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce). Mahoney worked on the successful Emmy Award-winning comedy for 11 seasons.
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- Lethal Weapon
- Warner Bros. Pictures
Danny Glover acted in college when he attended San Francisco State University in the 1960s. After graduation, he decided to work for the city of San Francisco as an evaluations specialist and program manager.
The acting bug hit Glover in his late 20s. The future movie star honed his craft in the Black Actors’ Workshop at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and on the New York City theater stage. Then, he set his sights on Hollywood.
His breakthrough role came in Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning drama, The Color Purple. In 1987, Glover became a household name when he co-starred opposite Mel Gibson in the buddy action comedy Lethal Weapon, which turned into one of the most successful franchises of the 1980s and '90s. Glover also appeared in Predator 2 and Angels in the Outfield.
Besides his prolific acting career, Glover is a recognized humanitarian who has fought for a variety of activist issues. Those include global human rights, the AIDS crisis in Africa, equal rights, social justice, and education. UNICEF named the actor a Goodwill Ambassador in 2004.
In Ability magazine, Glover talked about how he made the transition from community development into acting:
I didn't think it was a difficult transition. Acting is a platform that can become a conveyer for ideas. Art is a way of understanding, of confronting issues and confronting your own feelings - all within that realm of the capacity it represents. It may have been a leap of faith for me, given not only my learning disability, but also the fact that I felt awkward. I felt all the things that someone that's 6'3" or 6'4" feels and with my own diminished expectations of who I could be [and] would feel. Whether it's art, acting, or theater that I've devoted myself to, I put more passion and more energy into it.
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Ken Jeong always had an interest in comedy. However, his early road took him to Duke University, and then medical school at the University of North Carolina. “It was a tough decision. My parents weren't well off by any means, and I wasn't on a scholarship, so I really felt like I owed it to myself and my family to stick with what I started, to just see what happens afterward," Jeong told LA Weekly.
However, the funnyman did not stop performing stand-up because he was a licensed physician. He moonlighted as a comic by night and practiced medicine by day.
Eventually, the Detroit-born star-in-waiting took off for Los Angeles. Jeong continued to work as a stand-up comedian, actor, and doctor. He scored several small roles, including stints on Entourage, MADtv, and Two and a Half Men. Jeong later met mega comedy filmmaker, Judd Apatow. The writer-director was searching for an actor who had medical knowledge for his 2011 romantic comedy, Knocked Up.
The role proved to be a game-changer. Jeong can thank his wife for pushing him towards his dream career. "My wife, Tran, encouraged me to quit my job as a doctor [of internal medicine] at 36 and pursue acting full-time," Jeong told Redbook in 2011. "I had just finished filming Knocked Up, and it was life-changing. But I didn't have the courage to go for it until she persuaded me."
Fame, fortune, and belly laughs followed. Jeong became a household name with hilarious turns in The Hangover series and Community. He even created his very own semi-autobiographical television comedy series called Dr. Ken. Jeong used his own life's story for much of the show's material.
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- Sling Blade
- Miramax Films
Billy Bob Thornton grew up in various places around Arkansas. During one stop, he and his extended family lived in a shack with no plumbing or electricity, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Young Thornton excelled as both a rock drummer and a baseball player.
After graduation, Thornton ran the gamut of menial labor jobs, including drill press operator, bulldozer, band roadie, sawmill worker, and road paver. He even played in a touring rock band.
In 1981, he went out to California to study acting. His first big-screen part did not come until the age of 32, in the TV movie, The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains. Unfortunately for Thornton, his scenes did not make it past the cutting room floor.
Several bit roles followed over the next several years, but Thornton hoped for something more. He met Billy Wilder at a party. The acclaimed Old Hollywood writer-director gave Thornton the advice that would change his entire life: Write your own screenplays.
Thornton eventually penned the script for Sling Blade. The movie would also be his first directing and major starring vehicle. Despite being an all-around novice, Thornton won the Academy Award in 1997 for best original screenplay and received a nod for best actor.
Big-time Hollywood gigs followed as Thornton became one of the most in-demand actors of the 1990s and early 2000s. He showed off both his dramatic and comedic range in leading and supporting roles in Armageddon, A Simple Plan, Monster's Ball, The Man Who Wasn't There, Friday Night Lights, Bad Santa, and Season 1 of the television anthology series, Fargo.
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Jon Hamm just looks like a movie star. However, he didn't always have the desire to bathe in the bright lights of Hollywood. The handsome actor out of Missouri taught high school drama for two years in St. Louis after finishing college. In the mid-1990s, Hamm decided to head west to Tinseltown with the dream of becoming an actor.
However, Hamm's career failed to launch. He had to grind it out as a waiter to make ends meet. Things got so dismal that he even thought of quitting. The problem wasn't that he was failing to land acting jobs; it's just the work he did find never took him to the next level. When he turned 30, he thankfully scored his first big movie role.
"I had given myself five years to be self-sufficient as an actor. I was already self-sufficient as a waiter. But I knew a lot of 40-year-old waiters, and I didn't want to be one of those," he told W magazine. "I had taught [at] school, and I knew that I could always go back to teaching."
"I gave myself to my 30th birthday, and my 30th birthday actually happened on the set of We Were Soldiers, which was my first big Hollywood movie," added Hamm.
However, his role in the 2002 war drama was still a supporting one. He didn't actually find true stardom until he won the role of Don Draper on the hit AMC drama Mad Men when he was 36 years old. In 2007, Hamm earned an Emmy Award for his performance as the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, womanizing Madison Avenue executive.
Hamm also has a nose for comedy. He has shown off his comedic chops with guest appearances on 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Bridesmaids.
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Turn on the television in 2021, and Terry Crews seems to be everywhere. However, that wasn't always the case.
In 1991, the Los Angeles Rams drafted Crews to play defense. The linebacker/defensive end ended up becoming an NFL journeyman and played for several different teams over his five seasons of professional football.
He decided to retire from the gridiron in 1997 at the age of 30 but found a tough time stepping away from the only life he's ever known. “You’re larger than life, and then all of a sudden, they don’t know your name,” he told ABC News. “They don’t know your number. They don’t know who you are.”
Crews ended up with a tough case of depression and used food as a way to cope. “My wife came up behind me and pinched my back fat. And I was like, ‘Whoa! What are you doing? Whoa! Hey! Don’t touch me!’ And I was mad at her, and she was like, ‘No, honey, it’s cute!’” said Crews.
Crews hit the gym and realized he had to earn a living. “Let me tell you what happens: you go broke, man, and you got to do something,” Crews said. “I was hungry. Your stomach is growling, and you realize these kids got to eat. And you’re like, man, I’m going to act. I’m going to cry onscreen.”
He landed a string of small roles in both television and film. In 2002, at the age of 34, Crews impressed as ex-con Damon Pearly in Ice Cube's cult hit, Friday After Next. Crews also earned a steady gig on the small screen in the 2005 hit comedy, Everybody Hates Chris. He continued to show off his comedic chops on the silver screen in the films White Chicks and The Longest Yard.
Perhaps his most recognizable role came as Lieutenant Terry Jeffords on the long-running sitcom, Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Crews proved he is much more than a professional athlete turned actor when he took over hosting duties on the television game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? He also spent 10 years making several memorable commercials for Old Spice.
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- The West Wing
- NBC
Kathryn Joosten worked as a psychiatric nurse in a Chicago-area hospital. She got married and had two kids. In the early 1980s, a couple of things occurred in Joosten's life that changed her entire perspective on life: her divorce from her husband and her mother's passing. Joosten's mother told her before she died that she regretted not chasing after her dreams.
That proclamation, as detailed in the BBC's obituary, forced Joosten to take another look at her own dreams. She used to love acting. So, in 1982, at the tender age of 42, Joosten pursued her childhood dream and began performing at a local community theater.
In 1995, when she was in her mid-50s, Joosten headed west out to Hollywood. It wasn't long before she landed guest spots on popular shows like Roseanne, Seinfeld, Murphy Brown, and Home Improvement. Then, in 1999, she scored her first big recurring role on the hit drama, The West Wing. Joosten played beloved personal presidential secretary Dolores Landingham for the drama's first two seasons.
The character actress became even more of a household name when she co-starred on the hit ABC TV series, Desperate Housewives. On the soapy drama, Joosten took on Wisteria Lane babysitter - and all-around nosey troublemaker - Karen McCluskey. The actress won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2005 and 2008.
"Some people in Hollywood think of me as a model for dramatic mid-life transitions - from suburban housewife to Emmy-winning actress," she said. "But I never plotted out a master plan for following my dreams."
Despite her late start in Hollywood, the prolific actress finished her impressive career with 120 acting credits. Joosten passed in 2012 at the age of 72.
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Lawrence Tureaud was always an excellent athlete. His football talent earned him a scholarship to play on the gridiron at Prairie View A&M University. However, the university expelled the student after one year.
Tureaud then served as a military policeman in the Army. In the 1970s, he worked as a nightclub bouncer in Chicago and developed a whole new persona. He changed his name to Mr. T, cut his hair into a mohawk, and donned heavy, gold chains. Mr. T was tough, and everyone in the Windy City knew not to mess with him, or else.
The trendy nightclubs Mr. T guarded gave him the opportunity to meet celebrities. He began working as a bodyguard to Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, and Steve McQueen. One serendipitous day, Sylvester Stallone saw Mr. T in a televised strongman competition. Sly heard Mr. T tell commentator Bryant Gumble, "I just feel sorry for the guy who I have to box. I just feel real sorry for him.”
It was that attention-grabbing line that gave the Italian Stallion the idea to cast the tough-talking bodyguard as his much larger, much stronger, extreme trash-talking boxing opponent Clubber Lang in Rocky III. The movie became a huge box-office hit, but more importantly, it created a legend.
Mr. T turned into a 1980s pop-culture sensation. T-shirts with his mohawk image were everywhere, and his famous catchphrase, "I pity the fool," became a part of the '80s lexicon.
In 1983, Mr. T parlayed his Rocky success into a steady television gig. He landed the role of B.A. Baracus on the hit TV crime adventure The A-Team, which was on the air for five seasons. Mr. T was so popular, he even got invited to the White House to meet Ronald Reagan.
Mr. T worked consistently on the small screen for the next decade. He also found success in the world of professional wrestling. The bodyguard turned actor became Hulk Hogan's tag-team partner and a WWE/WWF staple throughout the 1980s.
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- Lost
- ABC
After graduating from college in Des Moines, IA, Michael Emerson went to New York City to become an actor. Like many aspiring thespians, Emerson had to support himself with various jobs like landscaping and retail while he honed his acting skills on the community theater stage. He eventually found work as a freelance illustrator but still kept one eye on his dream.
"It’s not really an easier racket than acting is,” Emerson told Parade. “For some reason, I guess it had - the rejection of an illustrator’s life is less penetrating than the rejection of an actor’s life. So I was able to manage that. But all the while, I still nursed that old dream of being an actor...”
Emerson landed acting roles on and off Broadway. However, it was his powerhouse performance as creepy and insanely intelligent serial killer William Hinks on The Practice that completely turned his career around. The defense team at Robert Donnell and Associates on the long-running ABC legal drama defended many horrible reprehensible criminals. Perhaps none were more chilling to the bone and sinister than Hinks. Emerson was so deliciously evil in the role that he earned an Emmy for his six-episode story arc.
Emerson parlayed his ability to portray insidious characters over to another hit ABC drama, Lost. The actor played the duplicitous Benjamin Linus and earned yet another Emmy award. However, Emerson can play more than just sociopaths. Following Lost, he co-starred as a billionaire software crime-fighting genius on Person of Interest.
In 2019, the actor went back to his wicked ways in the CBS drama, Evil. Emerson portrayed forensic psychologist Leland Townsend, a genius who manipulates his patients into performing vile acts.
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- Wanda at Large
- Fox
Funny lady Wanda Sykes did what most college graduates do in the Washington, DC, area after finishing school - go work for the government. "It was almost like it really wasn’t a choice. When you grew up in that area, that’s just what you did," Sykes told the Washingtonian. "You just ended up working for the government. If you’re not working for the government, then you work for a contractor who works for the government. You’re green badge or you’re black badge, basically. That was just the culture in Washington. It really wasn’t a choice."
The daughter of an Army colonel, Sykes worked as a procurement officer with high-level clearance at the National Security Agency. However, the future stand-up all-star always had one eye on performing. Sykes knew she could make people laugh and even performed as a stand-up comedian while working at the NSA.
"I started doing standup around October or November of '87. I was funny around the office, but mainly, I just knew that wasn't the job I wanted to do the rest of my life," said Sykes. "Most government workers save their annual leave. You try to accumulate 240 hours because whatever you accumulate after that, it's use it or lose it. Me, I would look at my pay stub and I saw, 'Hey, I’ve got 16 hours of annual leave!' And I would take the next two days off: 'Oh, okay, I can go play this club in Roanoke this weekend. I'll leave Friday and be back Monday.'"
Sykes's first real show business gig came as a writer and performer on The Chris Rock Show. She earned an Emmy Award for her work in 1999. Sykes also landed impressive gigs on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm; the Jane Fonda movie, Monster-In-Law; the Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom, The New Adventures of Old Christine; and ABC's hit comedy, Black-ish. She eventually even starred in her own sitcom, Wanda at Large.
Wanda at Large was loosely based on Sykes's own life. Additionally, the performer continues to be one of the top female stand-up comics in the country.
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John Hodgman graduated from Yale University in 1994. He found work in New York City as a literary agent. However, the passing of his mother changed his total career trajectory.
"If my mom hadn't died, I'd still be working in book publishing," Hodgman told NPR's Fresh Air. "And I would have a fine life, probably, and I would've represented a lot of great authors... Or maybe I would've quit and gotten some other job. But the experience of my mom passing away made me understand a couple of things."
Hodgman is also an accomplished humorist and book author. In 2005, he went on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show to promote his first book, a satirical almanac titled The Area of My Expertise. The interview went so well that Stewart asked Hodgman to return as a contributor. Hodgman, who was in his mid-30s, took the show business opportunity and ran with it.
In 2006, he played a "PC" in an enormously successful Mac advertising campaign for Apple computer. The late-blooming star quickly found steady acting work on several popular movies and television shows, including Bored to Death, Community, 30 Rock, and Baby Mama.
Hodgman also kept writing books and essays. The talented humorist penned three books that became New York Times Bestsellers. In 2017, he released Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches. The book is a collection of funny essays. Hodgman wrote about what made him take another look at his career.
"The book is about, to some degree, moments in your life when you are faced with a sudden clarity of where you are in life," Hodgman said. "Sometimes that... surrounds mid-life, when you've maybe accomplished everything you think is most important, and... then figuring out how to push forward from there."
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