14 Celebrities Who Were Discovered By Chance
Talk about a lucky break!
A lot of your favorite celebrities broke into Hollywood by having the right connections or by going on auditions for years until landing their breakout roles. However, some celebs just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
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Of course, they all had to work to build their careers after the chance encounters that changed everything.
Here are 14 celebs who broke into Hollywood completely by chance:
1.
Unsuccessfully trying to cash an out-of-state check at a bank, Charlize Theron began pleading with the teller when talent agent John Crosby came over to help her, then gave her his card.
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She told Oprah, “I don’t take it for granted. I know all these actors who are probably more talented than I am. I’ve taken the chance and done my best with it.”
2.
Six-year-old Bow Wow was pulled on stage at a Snoop Dogg concert in Columbus, and his performance impressed both the rapper and the crowd.
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Snoop invited him backstage and gave him the nickname that became his stage name.
Bow Wow told the Chicago Tribune, “I was so little at the time that I was like, ‘Oh well, whatever.'”
3.
In 1992, Matthew McConaughey went to the Hyatt hotel bar to get discounted drinks with his college girlfriend and met casting director Don Phillips, who asked him to audition for a minor role in Dazed and Confused after he got the hotel manager to apologize for kicking them out of the bar.
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Matthew and Don had become fast friends after talking for four hours. Soon, Matthew was cast as Wooderson, which became his breakout role.
4.
After she was crowned Miss Fire Prevention in a local radio contest, the DJ asked 17-year-old Oprah Winfrey to read some lines on tape, and she left the station with her first job in broadcast.
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In a LinkedIn post, she wrote, “I hadn’t finished three sentences before [the DJ] called for another guy, then another, to ‘come listen to this kid read.'”
5.
Four-year-old Sarah Michelle Gellar was out to dinner with her family at a local restaurant when she was approached by a talent scout.
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Soon after, she was cast in Invasion of Privacy.
6.
While building his new label, music manager Scooter Braun was scrolling through YouTube when he stumbled on a video of a “kid singing who had 60,000 views in his church in Canada” — Justin Bieber.
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Scooter was completely blown away and had a feeling he could make Justin a huge star.
He told the Daily Goalcast, “I called every school district in that part of Ontario until his mum called to get rid of me and I convinced her to get on the first plane she and he had ever been on.”
7.
Ellen Pompeo was working as a bartender in Soho when she served an agent, who then asked her to come to an audition.
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She wanted to be an actor growing up but didn’t know how to go about it.
She told ABC News, “It came to me.”
8.
At 14 years old, Jennifer Lawrence was on a family vacation in New York City, walking around Union Square with her mom, when a man with connections to the modeling industry approached her.
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She told MTV, “My mom gave him her number because she didn’t know that was potentially dangerous and creepy, and then he called and said modeling agencies wanted to meet with me.”
9.
The night before accompanying his friend Steve Bisley to a Mad Max audition, Mel Gibson got into a bar fight, and his bruised face caught the casting director’s attention.
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They asked him to come back after his face healed, and a few weeks later, they cast him as the lead.
10.
In 1997, 19-year-old Ashton Kutcher snuck into a bar, where he met modeling scout Mary Clarke.
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She convinced him to try out modeling and helped him get signed with his first agency.
11.
Sharlto Copley was running a production company when his friend, writer/director Neill Blomkamp, asked him to play a small role in a short test film, which blossomed into District 9.
Jean Baptiste Lacroix / WireImage / Via Getty
Neill told the LA Times, “Sharl was always this guy who was extremely overt and larger than life and very funny. He also could create characters very easily, even though acting was never on his radar.”
12.
When he was 19 years old, Chris Pratt was a server at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company in Maui when he waited on actor Rae Dawn Chong, who offered to cast him in her directorial debut.
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That movie was never released, but after waiting tables for a few more years in Los Angeles, he landed his first major role on the show Everwood.
13.
Eva Mendes was pursuing a marketing degree when a casting agent stumbled on her picture in her friend’s portfolio.
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She dropped out of California State University so she could pursue an acting career instead.
14.
And finally, Harrison Ford was helping George Lucas audition other actors for Star Wars as a way to fund a remodelling project he’d taken on, and he was offered the role of Han Solo.
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images
In a Reddit AMA, he said, “I was approached with the offer of a job, which at that point, was all I wanted to hear.”
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