Actors Who Started Acting For Bizarre Reasons

Many people have a reason for their choice of profession and that reason is usually simple and relatable, like following in the footsteps of a parent, feeling an emotional connection to the work, or being inspired by an idol.

The same goes for actors. A-Listers like Laura Dern and the Gwyneth Paltrow probably act because their parents did. The same could be said of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola's nephew Nicolas Cage, who also happens to cite James Dean as the inspiration for his vocation. Meanwhile, Dustin Hoffman tells the story of dining with Sir Laurence Olivier and asking him, "What makes us do what we do?" In response, Olivier apparently leaned in and repeated the phrase, "Look at me."

But not all actors strove to be peacocks. There are those that have very unorthodox beginnings in the industry. Some used acting to overcome emotional or psychological distress, whereas others came upon the profession accidentally. Perhaps most interestingly, many of the following actors still lean on their initial inspiration to guide their careers years later.

Here are the actors who started acting for bizarre reasons.

You wouldn't know it by hearing her speak today or hearing her sing in Mary Poppins Returns or Into the Woods, but Emily Blunt grew up with a rather severe stutter. "A stutter can be like a straitjacket," she told NPR. "I struggled with vowels, so 'Emily' was like the depths of hell for me."

But the worst part for Blunt and many others with stutters is the bullying and teasing. "I was a smart kid, and I had a lot to say, but I just couldn't say it," she said in an interview with W Magazine. "It would just haunt me. I never thought I'd be able to sit and talk to someone like I'm talking to you right now."

But then she found a therapeutic outlet. Having witnessed her "doing impersonations of people," a perceptive teacher encouraged Blunt to join the school play. Speaking with People, Blunt recalled how her initial hesitation somehow led to her taking the chance, which in turn led to a surprising realization. "I did the play in a stupid voice and spoke fluently," she told the tab. She then progressed from being able to ditch the stutter while in character in general, although she still periodically suffers from the communication difficulty.

When Ted Danson got to university, he had aspirations of trying out for the basketball team. He had played some ball in prep school and proved himself to be pretty good. According to Danson, however, when he showed up to tryouts at Stanford University, he looked out at the other players and said to himself, "Oh, okay, this is a different game."

But all was not lost. "There was a depression for about six, seven months," he told Conan O'Brien. "But then ... I saw this young lady, who was serving in the cafeteria, named Beth. I really wanted to ask her out, and she finally said yes, and we went and had a cup of coffee." That's when, as he explains, that Beth cut their date short because she had to go to an audition.

Danson, who claims he didn't even know what an audition was, "wanted to go with her." When he got there, Danson discovered that "to be in the room, you had to audition. So I made something up, people laughed, I got the smallest part you could get in the play and still be in it." Afterward, he remembers thinking, "It's not basketball, but it's not bad."

With a long list of Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations and wins under his belt, it seems that Christian Bale knows how to pick roles. He's become one of the industry's brightest lights, and, though his performances are a big part of the reason his films do so well, he does get opportunities that others may not. However, being in that position is Bale's just deserts.

"I have been fortunate enough now, but it hasn't always been the case," Bale told PTI (via The New India Express) in November 2018. "In fact, I started acting because my family needed the money. It was the only way we could support ourselves. So, we did not have that option."

Now, plenty of people started acting for the money, so that part doesn't make Bale special, so to speak. What does, however, is that Bale was only 11 years old when he started. While Bale shouldered the financial responsibility, that pressure hurt his passion and drive as well. "There's a pride in being able to do that," he said to The Hollywood Reporter. "But there's also a prison, you know, at such a young age."

It's partly because of this early "love-hate" relationship with acting that Bale refuses to take choice for granted at this point in his career. "Since I am able to choose," he explained to PTI, "I owe it to myself and to the audience to try to choose interestingly and as well as possible."

Tom Hiddleston comes from a wealthy family and enjoyed an elite education, studying at Eton College and then Cambridge University, according to The Telegraph. But that's not to say that, as a young teenager, he didn't experience his fair share of personal issues. While he was away boarding school, his parents were divorcing. Looking for a cathartic release, Hiddleston turned to acting.

"I think I started acting because I found being away at school while my parents were divorcing really distressing," he said in an interview with the Daily Mail. "I was really quite upset, and probably very sad and vulnerable and angry. Acting presented a way of expelling those feelings in a safe place."

Though he admits that he didn't gain this perspective until years later, he is still clearly drawn to the emotional gamut that actors have access to. "The way I see it, life is about trying to get to a place where you feel happy with the chords that you are playing," he told The Telegraph. "I'm lucky because I can experiment with all the different notes, via my work."

Tim Roth's acting career doesn't have a grand origin story. In fact, his first encounter with performance is the stuff of nightmares. It's a wonder that he stuck with the profession at all. In speaking about his childhood introduction to acting on The Bonnie Hunt Show, Roth described his first musical called "Dracula Spectacula."

Roth and his friend decided that it would be "hilarious to mess up the audition." Though he tried to muck it up, he failed and ended up landing a role instead. But Roth didn't shirk his responsibility, so he took the stage "in front of all the school bullies." But we remind you. This isn't your traditional inspirational tale story. Roth is no Rudy.

"I actually peed myself," he said. "I was that scared. I knew I was going to get beaten up later.  And I did." But there is a bit of a happy ending here. While Roth may have been traumatized during his foray into acting, he also found his passion on that stage. "While I was peeing myself," he says proudly. "I got bitten by the acting bug." 

Long before he starred in Black Panther, one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, and even before his breakout performance, playing Jackie Robinson in 42, Chadwick Boseman was a director and a writer. Truth be told, he didn't even really want to become an actor.  

"I started acting because I wanted to know how to relate to the actors," he explained to the Santa Barbara Independent. "When people ask me what I do, I don't really say that I'm an actor, because actors often wait for someone to give them roles. I'm an artist. Artists don't need permission to work. Regardless of whether I'm acting or not, I write."

Now that he's taking lead roles in award-winning films, Boseman might consider himself more of an actor than before, but his thought process is well grounded. "It took me being at Howard [University] and having a directing adviser and teacher who didn't believe that you could learn how to be a director without learning how an actor thinks and works and how to talk to them," he said in an interview with Esquire. "I became an actor because I was just trying to learn the whole process." It turns out that he has stayed an actor because he's really good at it.