Stars Who ALMOST Quit Before Their Big Break (And Why)

Life

13. Viola Davis

Viola Davis has been around for a while, but she was usually in the background in film and television or playing small parts. It really wasn’t until 2011 with The Help that Davis broke out and became a star in the industry. Before that, her lows were really low. She explained to Ellen DeGeneres that some of her theater experiences were so embarrassing that she almost gave it all up. “I played an opera singer in a one-woman show and I couldn’t carry a tune, and I sang 14 songs,” she said. “One of the places I performed was in the middle of a basketball court and they did not stop playing basketball and they brought their dogs with them and one dog…jumped on me and attacked me in the middle of my aria and I thought to myself, ‘You know what, I think maybe I should choose another career path!'” She spoke of another play in which she played a prostitute. “I exposed my ta-tas,” she said. “And I was about 30 pounds heavier than I am now, but I thought I was hot stuff… And a man in the front row… (said), ‘Oh my God…’ and it wasn’t an ‘Oh my God… they were the most beautiful breasts I’ve ever seen,’ but, ‘Oh my God, this is so offensive.'”

12. Mark Ruffalo

Mark Ruffalo admits that his story has been exaggerated quite a bit, but it’s still filled with disappointment. Pointing out Ruffalo’s exact “big break” is tough because he gained the attention of the industry with his performance in You Can Count on Me, but then he needed surgery on a brain tumor. It wouldn’t be for another few years, until he got the part in 13 Going On 30, that he would breakthrough once again. Prior to that, Ruffalo was almost sick of it all. Apparently, it was his mother who kept him going. He said, “If I tried to quit, she wouldn’t speak to me again.” But can you blame him? On his slow rise to fame, Ruffalo heard the word “no” a lot. “It’s been mythologized now but it started with about 600 auditions without success,” he said. “Most smart people would have quit when it takes that long.”

11. Bradley Cooper

With Bradley Cooper, despite the fact that he was in Alias and Wedding Crashers and a few other decent roles, it really wasn’t until The Hangover that he broke out. But before that, Cooper’s moment of truth came with a theater performance of “Three Days of Rain.” The play was starring Julia Roberts and Paul Rudd, and Cooper says that if it failed, he would have left acting behind. “I remember thinking, ‘if this doesn’t work, maybe I’m not right for this business,’” Cooper said. A little more than a year after that, he was cast in The Hangover, and now he’s a superstar.

10. Claire Danes

Claire Danes has really had two breakthroughs in the industry. She first broke through with Romeo + Juliet in the late ’90s. Then, her career sort of stalled. Sure, she was getting work, but she wasn’t the massive star she was projected to be. She had a few parts in which she was excellent, such as in Stardust, but they didn’t amount to much. Then, around 2008, everything stopped for Danes. She stopped getting work altogether. Of her failures during that time, Danes said, “It was grim. I was very hurt. Two years of not working was brutal. And a point came where I thought, ‘I really like interior design.’ Someone suggested, ‘Maybe your real success is in your personal life.'” But it wasn’t. Her real success was Homeland, which she landed in 2010. “You just hold out for those rare moments when you feel a real fusion with this imagined person,” she said. “It’s really like surfing. You get that wave and think, ‘All right, I can be in freezing-cold water at 5am in the hopes that I will get one.’ And maybe you get three of those a year.”