You always hear those amazing stories about how celebrities were discovered – they’re just standing in line at the bank or sipping a milkshake at the drugstore, and next thing you know, they’re making millions at the box office and living in the lap of luxury. Here are a few of those nobody-to-supernova stories.
1. Charlize Theron. This is our “standing in line at the bank” story. Charlize was trying to cash a check from her mother, who was in South Africa, but the L.A. bank refused to honor the international check. Charlize pitched a fit of epic proportions, really letting the bank teller have it. As luck would have it, an agent was in line behind her and was impressed by her passionate “performance.” Although she later fired him because he kept sending her scripts for films like Showgirls, it was the break she needed.
2. Janet Leigh. Janet’s parents worked at a ski resort in Northern California. Norma Shearer was staying at the resort, stopped into Mr. Morrison’s office and spotted the picture of young Jeanette on her proud father’s desk. She took the photo to agent Lew Wasserman. She later explained, “That smile made it the most fascinating face I had seen in years. I felt I had to show that face to somebody at the studio.”
3. Tippi Hedren. Speaking of Hitchcock girls, Tippi Hedren went from diet soda to Bodega Bay thanks to Hitch. He spotted her in an ad for a diet drink called Sego and made the conscious decision that he wanted to make her into the next Grace Kelly. Prior to that, though, she was “discovered” getting out of a cab in Minneapolis by a woman scouting for modeling agencies, which led to a few small ads and commercials like the Sego ad.
4. Luther Vandross was already in the business when he was discovered by David Bowie. Luther had been making a modest living singing jingles and doing backup vocals for Chaka Khan, Bette Midler and Robert Flack. He was working on one of those latter jobs and was messing around with some arrangements in a recording studio in Philly when Bowie overheard him and invited him to work on his Young Americans album. It was his first big recording break.
5. Pamela Anderson. She was merely enjoying herself at a British Columbia Lions football game when her Labatt beer t-shirt-clad self was broadcast on the Jumbotron. People loved her and her photographer boyfriend produced a bunch of posters with her likeness on it. Labatt’s ended up buying 1,000 of the posters to keep up with consumer demand. Anderson appeared in her first Playboy the same year and the rest is history.
6. Natalie Portman was just an 11-year-old girl enjoying some pizza in Long Island when a Revlon talent scout spotted her with marinara sauce smeared on her face. OK, I made that part up – as far as I know, Natalie’s face was perfectly clean. But she was at a pizzeria, and the scout signed her to a modeling contract. After a couple of years of modeling, Natalie thought she would try branching out into acting just to try something different. She landed her first role in The Professional when she was just 13.
7. John Wayne was once just Marion Morrison, a guy loading props into a truck on the backlot of a film studio. Actor Tom Mix had gotten young Marion the summer job in exchange for USC football tickets – Morrison played there under coach Howard Jones. When director Raoul Walsh saw Morrison hard at work, he decided to cast him in a bit part in one of his films. The bit parts grew, and now John Wayne is one of the most iconic actors to ever grace the silver screen.
8. Peter Mayhew. That’s Chewbacca to those of us who aren’t huge Star Wars fans. Sometimes just having a distinctive build is enough to get noticed – Mayhew, an orderly, was featured in a silly newspaper article about men with gigantic feet. Not only did he have huge feet, at 7’3″, he towered over the other man in the picture. The producer of the movie Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger saw the picture and just happened to need an extremely tall man to play the minotaur in his movie and cast him.
9. Lana Turner. Maybe this isn’t a lesson you want to pass on to your kids, but sometimes skipping class pays off. Fifteen-year-old Judy (really Julia Jean, but she went by Judy) skipped her typing class at Hollywood High School and went to hang out at the Top Hat Cafe. She was spotted there by the publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, who referred her to actor and agent Zeppo Marx. Marx signed her and she had her first film role in 1937.
10. Will Smith. Maybe he’s working on an album, but I’d say the Fresh Prince is more of an actor than a rapper these days. He had already made his name alongside DJ Jazzy Jeff and stopped a car in the Universal Studios parking lot to get directions to a nearby arena. The guy he stopped happened to be Benny Medina, who knew of Smith and thought his story would make a great sitcom. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – and Smith’s acting career – was born.
Do you know of any other in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time success stories?
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Tricia Helfer was discovered waiting in line at a Stettler, Alberta, Canada(pop. 6000) movie theater.
posted by Weredingo on 5-25-2010 at 6:46 pm
Ugh, the Charlize Theron story makes me mad. Working for a credit union, it irritates me when people scream at a teller/customer service rep over something that said employee more than likely has zero control over. Just because you don’t get your way doesn’t give you the right to throw a tantrum and yell at someone who’s trying to do their job.
Getting off my soapbox now. :)
posted by Krie on 5-25-2010 at 10:34 pm
Wasn’t Harrison Ford a carpenter on the set of Star Wars? The actor who was supposed to be there couldn’t make it, so that Harrison fill in for him and they loved him so much they ditched the other guy and Harrison went on to fly in a galaxy far away, crack his whip around the world, and defend Air Force One as the President :)
posted by Kim W. on 5-25-2010 at 10:50 pm
Maybe an urban legend, but Toni Braxton was singing while filling her car with gas when a guy from a record label heard her and handed her his card.
posted by E on 5-25-2010 at 11:13 pm
I heard that Matt Dillon was discovered while smoking a cigarette and ditching school. I had a friend who dated Kevin Dylan and went to High School with them.
posted by TVSnark on 5-26-2010 at 1:23 am
Aza Allen has yet to be discovered, but wouldn’t it be ironic if it were from an article like this one…. hmmm
posted by Ruester Cogburn on 5-26-2010 at 4:33 am
Natalie Portman is my dream girl and i love to hear about her
posted by mariagrafs on 5-26-2010 at 5:59 am
A young 13 year old Rosario Dawson was discovered by 19 year old screenwriter Harmony Korine while sitting on her stoop in Brooklyn. Korine was scouting the area for talent for his upcoming movie “Kids”. The rest is history, and Korine went on to do some really weird future projects including “Gummo”. In the special features of the DVD, he claims he cast half of the cast by just walking into a Burger King.
posted by Eric on 5-26-2010 at 8:15 am
Um… yeah… the talent agent was interested in Ms. Theron’s “performance”. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that she’s just about the most beautiful woman in the world, I’m sure.
posted by TBV on 5-26-2010 at 9:13 am
I heard that Chris Klein went to the high school that Election was being filmed at and someone heard him tell a joke and asked him to be in the movie.
posted by Patty on 5-26-2010 at 9:23 am
I would guess that Luther Vandeross was a backup singer for Roberta Flack who was a famous singer at the time (not Robert Flack). That’s probably a typo.
posted by Stew on 5-26-2010 at 9:52 am
Thank you Krie!! I ‘m in the same boat as you!
posted by jo on 5-26-2010 at 9:52 am
@ Kim W. – Ford definitely used to be a carpenter, but by the time Star Wars rolled around he had been acting for a little while already. Not coincidentally, one of his first roles was in George Lucas’s first film, American Graffiti.
posted by Bert on 5-26-2010 at 10:09 am
@KimW:
Although Ford had worked as a carpenter, he was not a carpenter on the set of Star Wars. By the time Star Wars was cast, Ford had already worked for George Lucas in the film American Graffiti (in the role of Bob Falfa). He had also made several appearances in films, television shows, and made-for-tv movies dating back to 1967. His SW screen tests are included as extras on one of the DVD re-releases.
posted by Steven on 5-26-2010 at 10:10 am
A friend of mine used to do theatre work with Mary Steenburgen, and told me this story: She was waiting for an audition in NYC one day, when Jack Nicholson noticed her in the hallway. He invited her to come in and read for his next movie, “Goin’ South.” (That’s not the audition she had been waiting for.)
And the rest, as they say, is history.
posted by Will on 5-26-2010 at 12:46 pm
There’s some guy that comments here on mental floss who appeared in an episode of The FBI Files…it still gets rerun once in a while.
…or uh, so I’ve heard…
posted by Wayne on 5-26-2010 at 1:53 pm
David Boreanaz was walking his dog when a casting director from Buffy spotted him and asked him to audition.
Shannon Sossamon was a DJ at the birthday party of Gwyneth Paltrow’s brother when a casting director asked her to audition for A Knight’s Tale.
*sigh* I’m just gonna go stand on the corner outside of Paramount and hope for the same…
posted by Ariana on 5-26-2010 at 5:17 pm
Hmm I don’t remember if it was Lana Turner or not but one of the big sweater girls was said to have sat in the drugstore accross the street from the studio every day for a week in a pink sweater drinking a matching strawberry shake before being ‘discovered’. ;)
Now Marilyn Monroe was working a war job in a an airplane factory and someone doing an article on women in the war effort took a shot of her working and that got her into modeling which eventually lead to acting.
posted by Angela on 5-26-2010 at 5:47 pm
Kate Bush was discovered by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour while she was singing at a wedding he attended
posted by Professor on 5-26-2010 at 9:46 pm
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is based on Benny Medina’s life story, not Will Smith’s. Will was just a regular guy from Philly who turned down a scholarship to MIT to be a rapper . . .
posted by Kelli on 5-27-2010 at 11:11 am
The story with Harrison Ford is that he was a struggling actor who was supporting himself as a carpenter when George Lucas hired him to do some cabinets in his home. Lucas liked him and cast him in “American Graffiti” and eventually in “Star Wars” – although in the meantime, Francis Ford Coppola, coming off the success of “The Godfather,” hired Ford to expand his offices and wound up giving him a role in “The Conversation”
posted by Kate on 6-7-2010 at 1:04 pm
The story with Harrison Ford is that he was a struggling actor who was supporting himself as a carpenter when George Lucas hired him to do some cabinets in his home. Lucas liked him and cast him in “American Graffiti” and eventually hired him to read lines for other actors auditioning for “Star Wars” – although Lucas decided he liked Ford’s portrayal and wound up casting him. In the meantime, Francis Ford Coppola, coming off the success of “The Godfather,” hired Ford to expand his offices and wound up giving him a role in “The Conversation”
posted by Kate on 6-7-2010 at 1:06 pm