Many people guess, but few know that many movie stars, before becoming these very stars, spent a long time searching for themselves in life, trying themselves out and wandering in completely different directions. Some polished coffins, some worked as hairdressers, advertised jeans, and some even sold illegal substances. In this article, we will tell you about five star actors with a past that is hard to believe.
1. Sean Connery
Few people know that everyone's favorite James Bond tried a whole bunch of different professions before getting into the movies. Sean was born into a family of an ordinary worker and a cleaner, who would have thought that the first profession of the future agent 007 would be a milkman. At 14, he left school, and already at 16 he joined the ranks of the Royal Navy, where he studied furniture polishing, thanks to which the future actor worked as a coffin polisher. Then, in search of work, Sean got a job at the Royal Theater, and at the age of 21 he began to get involved in bodybuilding, and even took part in the bodybuilding competition "Mr. Universe", where he took third place. In addition to bodybuilding, Sean managed to play football as part of various Scottish teams. As a result, Connery chose the acting path, and a few years later the world recognized him under the mask of the spy James Bond. This role made him a favorite of women, and at the age of 59, Sean became the oldest actor to be named a sex symbol by People magazine. Ten years later, the same publication named him the sexiest man of the 20th century.
2. Danny DeVito
American actor, producer and director Danny DeVito was not a big man in his youth either, in every sense of the word. After finishing school, he entered a hairdressing academy and then began working in his father's hairdressing salon. He was inspired to become an actor by the fact that the Nicholson family was a co-owner of the hairdressing salon. Once, having heard that Jack Nicholson had become an actor, Danny went to the cinema to watch one of Jack's films, and he liked what he saw so much that he decided to become an actor himself. However, his path to cinema was not strewn with rose petals. He spent two years in Hollywood, where he constantly went to auditions, but did not get roles. During this time, he managed to learn how to work as a make-up artist and even worked as a security guard. In the early 70s, he began to appear in second-rate films, in the most episodic roles, he was not always even indicated in the credits. However, the breakthrough in his career was the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", in which De Vito worked with his old friend. The main role in the film was played by Jack Nicholson. After this film, critics began talking about the short actor with great charisma, which opened the way for him to big cinema.
3. Mickey Rourke
Despite the fact that Mickey Rourke was fond of acting since childhood and participated in theatrical productions while still in school, his path to cinema was long and quite interesting. Mickey was born into an ordinary family, but his parents did not get along, and soon his mother and children moved to a poor and criminal suburb of Miami. His mother remarried, the chosen one was a cruel policeman, with whom Mickey (by the way, his real name is Philip) did not find a common language, which pushed him to a "street" lifestyle. His social circle was filled with bandits, prostitutes and pimps, and he earned money by doing low-skilled physical work, such as digging canals for energy networks. Soon, the low-paid lifestyle got boring, and Mickey began to sell drugs, he was forced to stop this activity by an incident when he once got into a shootout. After that, the future actor borrowed 400$ from his sister and flew to New York, where he entered an acting school. In order to pay for his studies, Rourke again worked as a street vendor, a pool cleaner, and even a bouncer at a transvestite bar. He got his first role as an extra when Spielberg noticed him. A few years later, Mickey Rourke became world famous, and at the height of his fame in the late 80s, he was one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. Then, problems with alcohol, a wild life, and unsuccessful plastic surgeries brought him down from the skies, but that's a whole other story.
4. Danny Trejo
Mickey Rourke's path was very thorny, his criminal exploits look like kindergarten pranks compared to the harsh past of the American actor of Mexican descent Danny Trejo. His relatives, apparently, had a "positive" influence on him, since childhood they committed petty street crimes with their uncle. He was repeatedly brought to justice as a juvenile delinquent. As he grew older, his crimes acquired an increasingly serious nature, in addition, even then the future actor was heavily addicted to heroin. In the end, he ended up in prison for 12 years for robberies and drugs. In prison, Danny underwent a course of rehabilitation and got rid of drug addiction, and also became the Pennsylvania boxing champion in two weight categories at once: light and middle. The future actor got into cinema by chance, one of the crew members asked Danny to help him "get off the game", and as it turned out, the screenwriter of this film served time in prison with Danny. Trejo was invited to work as a boxing trainer for actors, and soon he was offered his first role in a serious film.
5. Jason Statham
Although the British actor Jason Statham was not so dramatic, he got into the cinema thanks to a combination of circumstances. Since childhood, Jason was involved in various sports, and practiced diving for more than 12 years. He never became a sports star, so he had to sell perfume and jewelry to earn money. In the late 90s, Statham was lucky and was offered to become an advertising face of a denim brand. The owner of the company that Jason advertised was the producer of Guy Ritchie's debut film "Lock, Stock, Two Smoking Barrels", and he proposed Statham for one of the main roles.
These are the unusual roads that people take to achieve fame.
