Chris Pratt
Chris Pratt was discovered while he was waiting tables at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company in Hawaii. He waited on a director, Rae Dawn Chong, who decided he had the perfect look for a horror movie she was directing. He played Devon in Cursed Part 3, and hasn’t left LA since!
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron’s fame happened all because she throws great temper tantrums. When she was 19, she moved to LA and was having no luck with breaking into the acting biz. Her mom sent her a check from South Africa, and when Charlize went to the bank to cash it, the teller refused. So Theron flipped out and made a scene, yelling at the teller, which apparently impressed the man in line behind her, who just happened to be a talent agent. He gave her his business card, and a year later she landed her first brief on-screen role for a horror film, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest.
Pamela Anderson
Pamela Anderson’s fame started all because of beer. In 1989 she was at a Canadian football game with friends, and a shot of her wearing a Labatt Blue beer t-shirt went up on the Jumbotron. The company happened to be promoting at the game that night and had their reps escort Pamela onto the field for a standing ovation. Her popularity shot upwards from there; she landed a gig on Home Improvement and then became truly famous for her ongoing role in Baywatch.
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp joined the acting world purely by chance when he gave his friend a ride to a movie audition.. The director noticed Depp in the background and asked him to read for the part of the protagonist’s boyfriend. He landed the part and became the character of Glen in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, kicking off his remarkable acting career. The friend that he drove to the audition was Jackie Earle Haley, who eventually went on to play Rorschach in Watchmen. Jackie MAY have gotten the short end of the stick there…
Channing Tatum
You might already know that Channing Tatum really was Magic Mike in real life. After turning down a football scholarship post-high school, Channing moved to Miami and started working odd jobs, a male stripper being one of them. One day he was roaming the street and a talent agent spotted him, liked his look, and booked him for modeling gigs. He went on to do modeling, TV commercials, music videos, and eventually movies. Thank goodness that agent found him or our entertainment world would be a darker place.
Rosario Dawson
Rosario Dawson didn’t even have to try to land her role. She was simply sitting on the stoop of an apartment she was squatting in when a photographer and screenwriter who were walking by approached her about a screenplay they were working on. She ended up auditioning and landed the role in the 1995 film, Kids. The rest is history!
Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence was 14 and on vacation in New York with her mother when a talent scout randomly approached her and asked if he could take her picture. Apparently not finding that creepy, she and her mom consented and she soon began receiving calls from multiple agencies to do cold readings. She landed her breakthrough role in 2010 for Winter’s Bone and has gone on to become an incredibly successful actress.
Ellen Pompeo
Ellen Pompeo got her big shot after starting out as a bartender in New York. One of her customers was a casting director who thought she’d be perfect for a L’Oreal ad campaign. She accepted it and played a few small roles before landing the lead in the hit TV show, Grey’s Anatomy.
Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman was 10 years old in a Long Island pizza joint when she was approached by a Revlon makeup agent who wanted her to model. She declined the offer to model in favor of focusing on an acting career. From there she went on to land a role in The Professional, and her success only went up from there.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar was 4 years old and an audience member at a talent show (she wasn’t even competing!) when she was discovered by an agent. She auditioned for her first TV movie two weeks later. Now she has gone on to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer and claimed several other starring roles. She got started young!
David Boreanaz
David Boreanaz was discovered completely randomly when he was out walking his dog on the streets of LA. A talent manager spotted him and then approached him about a role as a vampire bad boy on a TV show. And that was it! He was cast as Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and never looked back.
Evangeline Lilly
Evangeline Lilly almost passed on her chance at fame. She worked several jobs and was walking around on the streets of Kelowna, BC one day when she was discovered. A Ford Modeling agent gave her his card to recruit her. She tried to decline at first, but then the agent explained how much money she could make by modeling and she changed her mind. Soon afterwards she started modeling and landed her first contract with the TV show, Lost.
Danny Trejo
Danny Trejo got quite the unusual start to stardom. He had been in and out of jail for many years before he got sober and became a drug counselor. One day one of his mentees asked him to accompany him to the movie set where he worked to help him avoid a relapse. The set was for Runaway Train, and Trejo was asked to be an extra as a prison inmate because of his roughed-up, grizzly appearance. He accepted and soon received numerous other offers in similar roles, eventually landing where he is today.
Marilyn Monroe
Norma Jeane Mortenson (Marilyn’s given name) was working at her job in a munitions factory, inspecting parachutes and spraying planes with fire retardant when she got her start. A military photographer took her picture while she was at the factory and told her how stunningly beautiful she was. He said she could really go places as a model. All it took was a blonde dye job (and maybe some acting classes) and Marilyn Monroe was born.
Janet Leigh
Janet Leigh’s amazing 60-year career started without her even being there! Her parents worked at a ski resort, and Norma Shearer (whose late husband was a former MGM executive) saw a picture of a 19-year-old Janet Leigh on her father’s desk. She took the photo to MGM because she saw definite stardom in her smile, and the rest is history! She went on to star in Psycho during the famous shower scene.
Jason Statham
At one point, Jason Statham was roughing it, making ends meet by selling counterfeit perfume and jewelry in the streets of London. He got into the modeling business and ended up working as a male model for French Connection, where he was introduced to an amateur director, Guy Ritchie. At the time, Ritchie was working on a film project which required a character that was a street-wise con artist. When Guy Ritchie found out about Statham’s history with the black market, he had to have him. Jason played Bacon in Ritchie’s film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, earning himself acclaim and a solid future in acting.
Ashton Kutcher
Ashton Kutcher was drinking underage at a bar near the University of Iowa when he was discovered by a modeling agent. The agent encouraged him to enter a modeling competition called Fresh Face of Iowa, and Kutcher won first place. After that he began entering several modeling competitions with rapid success, eventually leading him to an acting career, where he is today.
Hulk Hogan
Hulk Hogan (originally Terry Bollea) was a musician in a local band, Ruckus, in Florida when he was discovered. During one of their local shows, a couple of professional wrestlers saw them perform and approached Bollea. They suggested he would make a better wrestler than a musician because of his impressive stature. They told their trainer about him and it wasn’t long before Hulk Hogan was born, leaving behind his music career for a life of dramatized violence.
Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson got his big break because he was a bad boy living in Australia. He gave his friend a ride to a movie audition one day. The night before, Gibson had been in a drunken bar fight, which meant he showed up to his friend’s audition sporting a face full of cuts and bruises. The director noticed him and thought he would make a great fit for a part in his dystopian-future movie, Mad Max. Mel later returned to the set fully healed and read for the lead part, landing it and jumpstarting his majorly successful acting career.
Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby was bartending in the late 1950s while attending Temple University. One night a comedian who was supposed to appear didn’t show, so Cosby took the stage to fill in, wowing the crowd. He eventually received a record deal, appearing on The Tonight Show, where TV producer Sheldon Leonard was watching. Leonard liked what he saw and decided to cast Cosby in the TV series I Spy. The show rocketed his career into a comedy acting success. Of course, his career is a little less successful nowadays…
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford wasn’t initially happy with the roles he was landing in Hollywood, so he was working as a carpenter to support his family. A casting director got Ford an audition for George Lucas’s film American Graffiti and he played a minor part for the movie. His relationship with Lucas proved game-changing for Ford later down the road. He was reading lines for actors auditioning for parts in Star Wars, and Lucas was impressed with his reading enthusiasm. He then cast him as the beloved Han Solo we all know and love.
Shannyn Sossamon
Shannyn Sossamon was living in LA and studying dance, DJing on the side to make money. A free spirit, she modeled, danced, and DJed, going wherever the wind blew her. One night while assisting a DJ friend at Gwyneth Paltrow’s brother’s birthday party, she was approached by a casting director who liked her unique look. He asked her to audition for a part in a movie. That film turned out to be A Knight’s Tale, in which she won the lead female role over Kate Hudson, and would give her career in acting and modeling the boost it needed to become huge.
Will Smith
Will Smith had begun a new career in music and one day got lost when trying to attend a sporting event. He stopped a car in the parking lot to get directions, and the person he stopped happened to be Benny Medina, a VP at Warner Brothers. Medina knew who Smith was, and thought he would be perfect for the lead role in a TV show based on Medina’s life. And thus, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was born.
Vin Diesel
Vin Diesel was struggling to make it in the acting world, so he made a semi-autobiographical film about a struggling actor. The film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, where Steven Spielberg saw it and was impressed with Diesel’s skills. Spielberg ended up giving Diesel a role in Saving Private Ryan, which started his real career in acting.
Christie Brinkley
Of all places, Christie Brinkley was discovered in a post office in Paris. American photographer Errol Sawyer was the one who noticed her, and went on to take her pictures. He introduced her to the Paris branch of Elite Model Management. From there, she got her foothold into the fashion industry, becoming one of the most photographed faces in America.
Eva Mendes
Eva’s first stroke of luck happened because of a chance photograph. She was pictured randomly in a friend’s portfolio, which was submitted to an agent. The talent agent noticed Mendes in the photos and contacted her to play a few small roles. Her first acting role was in Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, which started off an impressive career for this young actress.
John Wayne
Before he was ever a big deal, John Wayne was just a simple prop boy, loading props into a truck on the backlot of Fox Studios. At that point in time he was working small bit parts in random films, mostly as an extra. One day director Raoul Walsh saw him hard at work and decided to give him his first starring role in The Big Trail. Good thing that director could see his potential while he was lifting props!
Peter Mayhew
In case you didn’t know, Peter Mayhew is the guy who plays Chewbacca in all the Star Wars movies. His discovery came simply because he is very large. Mayhew was featured in a newspaper article about men with gigantic feet, which just happened to be an eye-catcher for the producer of the movie Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Mayhew was 7’3” tall in addition to having big feet, and when the producer saw the article he knew he would be perfect for playing the minotaur in his new movie. He was cast for the part, and he went on to play the great Chewbacca.
Toni Braxton
All Toni Braxton had to do to get famous is fill up her car with gas! The R&B singer was discovered at a gas station while she was filling up her car, singing to herself, and a record producer heard her. The producer asked her to record a demo and her career blew up from there.
Nick Jonas
Truly, Nick Jonas is the real reason the Jonas Brothers became what they did. When Nick was just six, he was belting out a song in the salon his mother went to, and someone else there referred him to a manager. Thus, the band of brothers was a success.
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