Actors Who Didn't Get Famous Until They Were Older

It might seem a little cut-throat, but the reality is that if an actor hasn't had their breakthrough role by their mid-thirties, chances are it's never going to happen. Hollywood's problem with ageism has been a hot topic in recent years (Oscar-winner Dame Helen Mirren described the treatment of older actresses in Tinsel Town as "f**king outrageous" while talking to The Wrap), but there's actually a handful of stars who have managed to defy the odds and find fame later in life. The following celebs are proof that sometimes good things come to those who wait.

Chris Pratt certainly took the road less traveled to Hollywood. When he was in his twenties, the actor was living out of a van on the beach in Hawaii. It was a carefree time in his life that he remembers fondly. "We told friends we had a beach house," he told Complex. "In a way we were homeless, but at the same time we were able to transcend the difficulty of home ownership. There was no liability, no overhead. We were truly free. Getting three Mickey's Ice 40s for $6 was a positive too."

To make money for those Mickey's Ice 40s, Pratt got a part time gig waiting table at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. It was there that he had a chance encounter with Commando actress Rae Dawn Chong, who loved Pratt's enthusiasm and decided to cast him in her comedy horror short Cursed Part 3 (2000). He later called both the movie and his acting in it "terrible" but it was still a foot in the door. 

Pratt spent the next decade and a half playing chubby sidekicks, until Marvel decided that (so long as he got jacked for the part) it wanted him as Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). He was 35 when the film debuted.

Jon Hamm's career changed overnight when Mad Men premiered in 2007, finally bringing the struggling mid-thirties actor to the attention of mainstream audiences. It's hard to believe Hamm went unnoticed for so many years when you see him portraying charismatic protagonist Don Draper in AMC's award-winning show, but the truth, he worked some truly terrible jobs just to keep his head above water in Los Angeles. He even worked as a set decorator on soft porn movies, an experience he described as "gross and sad" in an interview with the Daily Mail.

He also told the British tabloid that not getting his breakthrough role until later in life turned out to be a blessing in disguise. "I'd have probably handled it with way less grace," he said. "Most of us are different in our twenties than we are in our thirties. I may have gone off the rails, who knows? You're less comfortable with who you are. I'm thrilled that it happened later for me." 

Hamm now hams it up all over Hollywood, recently bringing his particular brand of cool to Edgar Wright's critically acclaimed thrill ride Baby Driver (2017).

Austrian-German actor Christoph Waltz is another diamond plucked from the rough and polished to perfection by Quentin Tarantino. Waltz was 51-years-old when he landed the part of SS Colonel Hans Landa in 2009's Inglourious Basterds. He was making a living doing TV movies and dramas in Europe when Tarantino cast him as a notorious Nazi nicknamed "The Jew Hunter," a role that allowed him to show off his considerable talents in multiple languages. He won the best supporting actor Oscar for his performance and bagged the same award again under Tarantino's direction in 2012's Django Unchained.

"I don't owe Tarantino my craft, but I do owe him my place," Waltz told The Guardian while discussing his late-blooming career. "I've done so many jobs because I've had to, not because I've wanted to. And it's honourable to do a job because you need to feed your children, and maybe there is also something in it for your development as an actor. But only up to a point. Frustration can get the better of anyone. And I dread to imagine what would have happened to me had it not been for Quentin."

The film industry suffered a blow in 2016 when Alan Rickman unexpectedly passed away. The actor was reportedly unaware of the severity of his cancer until just a few weeks before he died, according to The Telegraph. Tragically, mainstream audiences didn't get to fully appreciate Rickman's acting until he was 41.

The former Royal Shakespeare Company member spent years perfecting his craft on the stage before deciding to turn his talents to the movies. "The good thing about starting late in this career is you go, 'Well, what's the worst that could happen?'" he said in a 2015 interview with The Guardian. "I didn't know anything about LA. I didn't know anything about the film business. I'd never made a film before, but I was extremely cheap."

He landed the part of Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988) and gave an iconic villainous performance as a terrorist ringleader, setting the wheels of his career in motion. Gruber is certainly among his most memorable characters, but Rickman will no doubt be best remembered as Death Eater-turned-hero Severus Snape from the record-breaking Harry Potter film franchise.

Despite being active in the industry since the late 1990s, Melissa McCarthy seemed to fly under the radar for many years. She started out on the stand-up comedy circuit and later graduated to television, becoming a fixture on comedy-drama Gilmore Girls between 2000 and 2007. However, things didn't start to really fall into place for her until 2011, when she auditioned for a Paul Feig movie called Bridesmaids.

According to The Guardian, Feig likened McCarthy's audition to "a religious moment" that left him speechless. "It actually took me 30 seconds to realise it was even funny. She made the decision to play the character kind of guy-ish, like, 'We're gonna go out and make a man sandwich.'" She won the part and became the driving force behind the comedy's success. While some of her subsequent efforts haven't been met with quite the same level of critical acclaim, she was still the second highest paid actress in Hollywood in 2016, and she made huge headlines in 2017 for her spot-on impersonation of former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

Musician and actor Billy Bob Thornton decided to pursue a career in the movies later than most, inspired by a mixture of Elvis Presley flicks and classic westerns. During an interview with Rolling Stone, Thornton called Fred Zinnemann's High Noon "the perfect movie" and also discussed his breakthrough role and unlikely rise to stardom. The Arkansas-native reportedly got his first taste of filmmaking in 1992, when he co-wrote and starred in cult favorite One False Move, but it was his directorial debut, Sling Blade (1996), that put him on the map as a 41-year-old.

Sling Blade became a sleeper hit for Thornton, bagging Oscars for best writing and best adapted screenplay (he had originally written it as a stage play), as well as a best actor nomination for his work as developmentally disabled killer Karl Childers. 

Thornton told CNN he's glad it took him some time to find fame and fortune. "I'm real glad it happened now," he said in 2002. "I wouldn't have been able to handle it. I couldn't handle anything when I was 20."