Actors who begin their careers as adults usually find stardom, if attained, takes a lot of time and work. As oldtime comedy star Eddie Cantor reputedly said, "It takes 20 years to become an overnight success."
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Many plug away, working for years, but - if lucky - remain in the familiar face or character actor categories (some seem to like it that way, making a good living without much unwelcome attention). Others break out into genuine stardom, sometimes relatively late in their careers. While some become stars whose image and personality tend to be imbued in their roles (like Robert Redford) others are more star character leads (like Gene Hackman).
Some have established themselves as stage actors first and others, while often respected and familiar, have had to wait for that elusive part at the right time that made them really shine.While the quality of their post-breakout roles and films might sometimes be debatable, there's little arguing that their profiles - and pension funds - get a boost.
I was reminded of this when watching Helen Mirren (age: 74) and Ian McKellen (age: 80), unusually senior co-leads, in The Good Liar. Both actors have had long and distinguished careers on stage and screen but both became bigger movie stars than ever in recent years. In McKellen's case it was largely because of roles in two big franchises - as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies and as Magneto in the X-Men films. Mirren made many films including Age of Consent and Excalibur but more recently has become even more prominent: an unlikely action star (the RED movies) and an Oscar winner, for The Queen.
Speaking of queens, Olivia Colman worked her way up from TV and supporting roles to play Queen Anne in The Favourite, stealing the movie from established film stars Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz and winning an Oscar. She's made an upcoming Hollywood thriller, Them That Follow, but has also returned to TV and done voiceovers rather than gone on a big cash grab. It will be interesting to see where she goes from here. She's only 45 but given Hollywood's sexism she might be cast there as mothers, dowagers and eccentric characters.
Samuel L. Jackson (now 70) had small or supporting roles for many years in films such as Do the Right Thing and Goodfellas before his commanding turn in Pulp Fiction (1993) made his name. Jackson has made a lot of bad movies since, like the notorious Snakes on a Plane, but is one of those Teflon actors, like Michael Caine: he seems to retain his cred no matter what.
Jackson was mentored by another African-American actor, Morgan Freeman (who's 82). Freeman started acting professionally in 1964 but his breakout movie role didn't come until 1987 with Street Smart, for which he received an Oscar nomination.
He received another nomination for Driving Miss Daisy and his career was off and running with films like The Shawshank Redemption and Million Dollar Baby (the latter won him a best supporting actor Oscar). He's been a go-to actor, especially for authority figures - including God, no less - ever since.
Perhaps these and other examples help to show why actors persist in an industry full of rejection and hardship: the possibility of stardom, however remote, remains.