Wouldn't it be nice if someone just walked up to you on the street, offered you an acting job, and suddenly you were set for life? Based on the characters on this list, it might not be as unlikely as you'd think...
Hulk Hogan
Hogan was a great pitcher as a kid—so great that he attracted scouts for the New York Yankees and the Cincinnati Reds when he was just playing in Little League. However, an arm injury capped his career before he reached adulthood.
Hulk Was a Musician
Before Hogan became a WWE sensation, he played bass in a band in his home state of Florida. One night, after playing a show at a bar, one of the patrons thought Hulk would make a good wrestler. The rest is history.
Morgan Freeman
Freeman always loved movies and acting when he was a kid. He pieced together every dollar he could to afford to go to the movies. But when Freeman was a teen, he was pressured into turning down an acting scholarship to join the Air Force.
He Came Around to the Idea
By 1959, Freeman decided that acting was what he wanted to do full time. He moved to Hollywood and started popping up in a few different movies and shows. He didn't gain a ton of recognition until he was 52, so let that be advice for the people who think they're too old to become an actor.
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson is by far one of the world's most famous and important actors. His work in Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained won him massive accolades and will go down in history as two of the most memorable performances in the cinematic timeline.
Humble Beginnings
Jackson was 45 years old when he was picked up to play Jules in Pulp Fiction. He was just a friend of Tarantino's at the time, and John Travolta was not particularly fond of him because he was inexperienced. Tarintino saw something in Jackson that others didn't. Since then, he has become one of the highest-paid and most prolific actors of all time.
Chris Pratt
Pratt wasn't a model, actor, musician, or even a wannabe. He was just a goofy kid who worked as a waiter at a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant in Maui. He had no intention of pursuing a career in acting, he really just wanted to hang out with his pals.
The World Works in Mysterious Ways
One day, while Pratt was waiting tables, director Rae Dawn Chong came into his restaurant. She took a liking to Pratt and asked him if he wanted to be cast in her upcoming horror movie. After that, Pratt worked his way up to being one of the most famous actors of the 2010s.
Alexis Bledel
Bledel's true intentions were to become a model before she starred in Gilmore Girls. She got scouted by a modeling agency at a mall when she was younger, but she couldn't sustain the job. In order to pay for her tuition at NYU, she had to do something different to pay the bills.
She Was Born to Act
Sometimes, the universe just steers people in the right direction by accident. Bledel started applying to every job she could find. She applied to waitress jobs, barista jobs, administrative assistant jobs, and a couple acting jobs just to round it out. She unknowingly walked into her audition for Gilmore Girls thinking it was just a commercial spot. She even had the flu at the time, and she didn't really try particularly hard during the interview. Regardless, she was cast anyway.
Danny Trejo
Trejo had a rocky start to his career. The cycle of poverty pushed him to involve himself in gangs and the sale of drugs. He was imprisoned several times before he found an outlet through a community program. He used that program to become a boxing instructor for young kids going through the jail system.
Boxer Turned Actor
Trejo was speaking at one of those programs when a young man asked him to be an extra in his movie. Trejo accepted, and he ended up getting paid to train some of the people on set how to box. The director ended up liking him so much that he gave Trejo the main role in the film.
Harrison Ford
Ford lived a "rags to riches" life. Before Ford became Han Solo, he was a carpenter that worked odd jobs to support his sick mother and father. He got hired to build cabinets for George Lucas's personal home, and they became friends. Lucas offered Ford a role in American Graffiti, then Star Wars, and finally, Indiana Jones.
Welcome to Hollywood
Ford is the first one to admit that his rise to fame was a bit strange and lucky. But who wants to fight with destiny anyways? Because of his stroke of luck, Ford became one of the most famous actors in history.
Rosario Dawson
Coincidentally, Rosario Dawson had a pretty easy time getting famous. When she was just 15-years-old, a screenwriter walked past her house while she was sitting on her porch. The screenwriter asked Dawson to act for her in his latest movie.
What a Coincidence
That screenwriter just so happened to be a man named Larry Clark. If you're not familiar with his work, he directed and wrote the cult classic Kids. Rosario Dawson played the main character, Ruby.
Ashton Kutcher
Before Kutcher started working as an actor, he was an engineering student at the University of Iowa. He was approached by a modeling scout on campus. The agent talked Kutcher into auditioning to enter a modeling competition and he somehow won despite having no prior experience.
Life Be Like That
Young Ashton Kutcher started modeling full time, along with going to school. He kept getting gig after gig, signing with Calvin Klein, and eventually working his way up to getting a role on That '70s Show. This opportunity gave him his "big break," so to speak.
Pamela Anderson
Anderson was a fitness instructor before she became a cultural icon in the 1980s. She was attending a Canadian football game when a camera panned onto her and her face ended up on the big screen. For some reason, the audience went wild because of her appearance, and the announcer called her down to the field.
From Beer to Beach
When Anderson got called down onto the football field, she was wearing a Labatt's beer t-shirt. This exposure landed her a modeling gig with the beer, which ended up getting her a Playboy contract. Anderson landed some TV gigs before she struck it big by playing Lisa on Home Improvement. However, her most notable gig was Anderson's involvement with the 1980's hit, Baywatch.
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep is legendary for her Oscar-winning talent that seemed to come out of nowhere. Streep loved theater as a kid, but she never followed through with her interests. In fact, she didn't even want to become an actor until later on in her life.
The Campus Hero
Streep didn't care much about acting until she auditioned for the intermural play Miss Julie at Vassar College in 1969. She was highly celebrated for her role, she even outshined all of the theater students that joined the production for extra studies. The drama professor that put the play on stated: “I don’t think anyone ever taught Meryl acting, she really taught herself.”
Peter Dinklage
Before Dinklage became Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, he was just a normal guy who worked an office job. He liked to party with his pals, and he was the frontman of a punk band called Whizzy. He used to work 9-5 and hit the bars right afterward, somewhat similar to his character in Game of Thrones.
From Data Entry to Dragon Taming
Dinklage worked at a company called Professional Examination Services. He didn't, and still doesn't, know what his company did. Evidently, he "just plugged information into a computer," and called in sick every Friday because he would go out with his friends on Thursday.
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, didn't live a very lavish life until later on. She bounced between foster homes and orphanages for the entirety of her childhood. She wasn't even a natural blonde, she died her hair when she got older.
The Accidental Super Star
Monroe was working as a factory employee when a U.S. military photographer snapped a photo of her to test his film. That photo ended up being posted in a magazine, and Monroe's modeling life blossomed outward. She eventually died her hair straw-colored and became the "blonde bombshell" that everyone knows and loves.
Jennifer Lawrence
Believe it or not, Jennifer Lawrence is only 25 years old despite being one of the hottest actors of the 2010s. She received an Oscar as Tiffany in Silver Linings Playbook and then became Katniss Everdeen in one of the most successful movie franchises in Hollywood history: The Hunger Games.
A Complete and Total Accident
Strangely, Lawrence was on vacation in New York City from Kentucky when she was spotted by a talent agent on the street. This agent conferred with Lawrence's parents and turned her into a successful teen model overnight. She made her television debut in the series Monk in 2006. From there, she starred in The Hunger Games, X-Men, and many more films.
Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey was born in Texas into an oil mogul family. He turned down the opportunity to work in big oil with his father to become an actor. But, as it turns out, McConaughey wasn't a particularly good actor when he first hit the scene. In fact, he was even dropped from some of the student films he was asked to act in.
So Bad, He's Good
Luckily, McConaughey was out drinking at a bar in Austin, Texas when he ran into a producer that loved his awkward charm. This led to McConaughey's first starring role in Dazed and Confused. He was originally turned down because the producer, Richard Linklater, thought that McConaughey was too handsome and kind to play the role of an older creepy dude who partied with young girls.
Charlize Theron
Theron did what lots of young people do. She decided to move to Los Angeles to make it big in showbusiness. However, she didn't come from an affluent background, and as an 18-year-old, she wasn't able to find a place that would accept her as a renter. So, she stayed in a hotel and watched her measly savings slip between her fingers while she got ghosted by every "talent scout" she approached...
Divine Intervention
One day, Theron was trying to cash a $500 check that she got from her mother back in South Africa. The teller refused, assuming that the check was forged. Theron was arguing with the teller when a nice man named John Crosby, who just so happened to be a talent agent, offered to be her co-signer on the check. He then helped her find acting gigs and she landed her first movie role within one year of that serendipitous meeting.
Johnny Depp
Depp never wanted to be an actor growing up. One day, he decided to join his pal Jackie Earle Haley on a car ride to bring him to an audition for Nightmare on Elm Street. Haley didn't get the part, but when the director, Wes Craven, saw Depp smoking outside the studio, he asked him to come in and audition for a role.
Becoming Someone Fast
Depp made the cut and ended up playing Glenn. He was involved in one of the most horrifying murder scenes in horror movie history because he was smoking a cigarette in the right place at the right time. Depp then went on to become one of the most notable actors in Hollywood history.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Don't you wish that a talent agent would pick you out of a crowd and decide that they wanted you to be rich and famous? Well, that's what happened to Sarah Michelle Gellar. She was contacted by a talent scout when she was just four years old while she was eating out at a restaurant with her parents.
Small Screen, Big Screen, It's All the Same
Just one week after the talent scout talked to Gellar's parents, she got her first acting gig. She had several small TV roles until she got cast as the star in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This led to her becoming a horror movie staple in the 1990s.
Mel Gibson
Before Mel Gibson was given the opportunity to ruin his reputation on the big screen, he was doing practically nothing until he got lucky. He drove a friend of his to audition for the original Mad Max. After that, he got lucky like Johnny Depp...
He's A Jerk for a Living
Gibson had gotten into a bar fight the night before he drove his buddy to the audition. Director George Miller thought that Gibson would be perfect to play the villain role in Mad Max, but when he showed up a week later with a clear face, Miller thought he would make a good hero instead.
Eva Mendes
Mendes wasn't a model, an actor, or anything of the sort. As a matter of fact, she was barely scraping by when a talent agent just happened to run into her photo in a list of modeling candidates. Mendes had tried to set up a modeling career for herself, but as the years went by, nobody got back to her. That is—until she got her big break...
We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends
A talent agent was looking through one of Mendes's friend's modeling portfolio when he came across a photo of Mendes within the portfolio itself. The man immediately became enamored with her and they met by chance afterward a short period of time. Because of this meeting, Mendes earned a ton of small roles, which led to her making enough money to go to acting school and land some higher profile gigs.
Jason Statham
Statham was actually the farthest thing from an actor that anyone on this list has been so far. He was a competitive amateur high diver that sold jewelry out on the streets of London to make ends meet. A talent scout just so happened to be marching past Statham one day when he was selling some watches, and he offered Statham an opportunity to come audition to play Guy Ritchie.
From Deep Dives to Big Checks
Statham was offered a small role in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Evidently, The director of the movie was looking for a fit guy to, well, impersonate a street watch salesman. Statham wasn't going anywhere with his diving career, so he decided to take the role. He then went on to become one of Hollywood's most iconic actors.
Wilford Brimley
Wilford Brimley was actually a real-life cowboy and blacksmith that had been living on a ranch at the time he was "discovered." Directors were looking for a guy who couldn't just pull off being a cowboy, they were looking for the real deal. Since Brimley knew how to ride a horse and actually acted and looked like a cowboy, he got cast in a ton of Westerns.
It's Time to Get Serious
Brimley's good friend and fellow actor, Robert Duvall, talked him into taking acting more seriously. Thankfully, Brimley took that advice and ran with it. He got cast in 1969's True Grit, and a few years later he was cast as Horace in the CBS classic The Waltons.
John Wayne
Wayne was at the top of the world for over thirty years, but before that, he had no idea what to do with his life. He lost a football scholarship due to an injury, and he didn't have enough money to go anywhere else. He had no skills outside of sports, so he asked around for some help from friends...
Working His Way Up
Wayne worked odd jobs here and there until he landed a full-time gig working in the prop department at Fox Studios. Wayne wanted to go back to school, but after some careful consideration, he decided to stick at his job because he was making good money and connections. After a while, the young, handsome John Wayne befriended the legendary director John Ford and was cast in his first film, Stagecoach.
Estella Warren
Before Warren starred in Planet of the Apes and Kangaroo Jack, she didn't have acting or modeling in mind for her career choices. In fact, she wanted to be a professional swimmer. By the time she was a young adult, Warren earned her way onto the Canadian National Swim Team and was in the process of securing an Olympic nomination...
Sometimes, Things Change
However, Warren was spotted by a talent director while she was performing in a high school fashion show in her senior year. This moment led to her getting offered a modeling gig. These events snowballed into her getting acting roles on both television and film in the near future.
Christoph Waltz
Waltz was barely scraping by until 2007 when he made his big break. He was doing backstage work on productions and providing for his family the whole time. However, all of that changed when Quentin Tarantino literally knocked on his door to cast him in his movie...
Tarantino's Right Hand Man
Waltz is best known for his lead roles in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained. He snagged the lead role of SS officer Hans Landa at the age of 51, which kick-started the rest of his career. He won two Oscars since he became a famous actor, and he can finally claim that all of his hard work finally paid off.
Alden Ehrenreich
If there is ever something that you should internalize completely during your college years, it's that having connections pays off. Alden Ehrenreich is the prime example of that because if it weren't for his connections, he wouldn't have become young Han Solo. Well, that and his father was Steven Spielberg's accountant...
It's All in the Eyes of a Genius
Spielberg picked up on Ehrenreich's acting skills when he watched a comedy video that his daughter took of a sketch that he wrote at their friend's Bat Mitzvah. Speilberg was impressed at the young boy's humorous ability, so he kept tabs on him until he was old and experienced enough to hit the big screen.
Evangeline Lilly
Evidently, it was commonplace to approach young women with opportunities back in the day. Lilly was walking around her hometown of British Columbia when she was stopped by a talent agent from Ford modeling. She had never thought about becoming a model before, but she desperately needed to make some money to pay for her college tuition. She accepted the modeling gig, and things started to take off from there.
Humble Beginnings
Lilly initially appeared in a commercial for a sex hotline for Canadian singles. From there, she got picked up for some small TV roles, which ended up developing into further opportuinities. In 2004, Lilly got the opportunity to play Kate in Lost.
Kristen Wiig
Wiig didn't really think about going further with acting as a career choice. She was studying drama in college, but she felt her passion waver quite a bit towards the end of her time in school. But, with the help of an empathetic teacher, she was urged to continue acting to start a career in the industry...
Everyone Needs a Little Push
Wiig moved to Los Angeles a few years after she graduated, and she became a member of The Groundlings improv group. After slogging through the shady end of Hollywood, Wiig was given her big break in 2006 when she was cast as a stage actress on Saturday Night Live.
Sharlto Copley
Strangely enough, Copley is one of the only people on this list that actually tried to seek out a career in acting. He performed in school plays, studied theater in college, and got involved in many local theaters and productions. Sadly, Copley got beat down by the lack of money that the entertainment field has to offer, so he took the business route instead...
Business Owner to Famous Actor
Copley founded several companies by the time he was just 19. By the time he was 24, he had already begun producing television shows, becoming South Africa's youngest producer ever. Through the connections he made and the good will he built, Copley ended up getting the opportunity to play the lead role in District 9.
Sylvester Stallone
Stallone was dirt poor when he first got started in the 1970s. He was an actor and screenwriter who never got his opportunity in his prime. He even lost his home at a point because he was failing so miserably.
The Struggle is Real
Stallone fits all of the stereotypes for the standard "starving artist." Well, he wasn't starving actually, in fact, one of the few things that were keeping him holding on was his commitment to his physique. By the time Stallone hit 30, he wrote Rocky and was immediately launched into stardom.
Channing Tatum
Channing Tatum lived a quiet life until he earned himself a football scholarship to leave his home state of Alabama and move to West Virginia. However, Tatum got a little too into partying, all while he was not making enough cash to sustain himself in school. He ended up leaving college to work odd jobs, one of which was stripping at an LA night club...
The Unplanned Success
Tatum never planned to become an actor. He actually didn't really plan anything. He just went with the flow and recorded the things that he liked about his life. These moments turned into Magic Mike, which built the popularity Tatum needed to stay locked into the big screen forever.
Lana Turner
Turner was one of the more iconic actresses from the 1940s and 50s. She was one of the first sex symbols, which she didn't love. Turner felt that her attractiveness overplayed her talent, so she wanted to make more of her career in Hollywood...
No Matter How Hard She Tried
Turner desperately wanted to get away from being an international sex symbol. Throughout her incredible career, she couldn't avoid getting typecast as the stereotypical "hot woman." Between the pigeon-holing and Turner's very public murder scandal, it's sad to look back and see that she lived a life she did not want to live.
David Boreanaz
Boreanaz starred in Buffy, if you didn't know that already. He always thought that he had a face for the camera, and one day when he was simply out walking his dog, he got the break of a lifetime...
Keep It in the Neighborhood
Boreanaz happened to be unemployed at the time, and he struck up a conversation with his neighbor, who just so happened to be friends with Marti Noxon, the writer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Boreanaz's neighbor said that the role needed to be filled by an impossibly handsome man, and he offered him an audition. The rest is history.