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“Never give up.” It’s probably one of the most overused phrases you hear as your career progresses. But there’s a good reason these adages are overdone: you never know when success might actually be around the corner.Since it’s easier said than done, we’ve compiled the testimonies of well-known celebrities who, like Sarah Jessica Parker, Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling, never gave up.
All of these people are now well-known, despite the fact that they did not become famous overnight. Nearly all had been rejected repeatedly, both personally and professionally, before they ever set foot in the door. Even some had experienced abuse from their families, and some had even lived in their cars. To gain motivation, keep reading!
- J.K. Rowling, author
Three years prior to the 1994 publication of J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the author had just gone through a divorce, was on government assistance, and was having difficulty providing for her young child. She couldn’t even afford the expense of photocopying the 90,000-word novel, so when she went shopping, she had to laboriously type each version before sending it to publishers. After numerous rejections, Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, finally accepted it because the CEO’s eight-year-old daughter fell in love with it.
- Writer Stephen King
King had hardships and was broke when he first began writing. He worked several jobs and lived in a trailer to support his family while pursuing their vocations, as did his wife, who was also a writer. They were so poor that they had to borrow clothes for their wedding and had stopped up using the phone because of how expensive it was.
King devised a system to compile the many letters he received rejecting his publications. In his book On Writing, he writes, “By the time I was 14… the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it.” I stuck a spike in the nail and carried on writing. He was turned down sixty times before selling his first short story, “The Glass Floor,” for $35. Not even his best-selling book, Carrie, was well-liked at initially. After dozens of rejections, he finally sold it to Doubleday Publishing for a paltry advance; the hardback sold just 13,000 copies there, which wasn’t very good. But Signet Books immediately consented to give King $200,000 of the $400,000 for the paperback rights. We’ve been successful!
- Jim Carrey
When Carrey was fourteen years old, his father lost his job, and his family went through difficult times. They moved into a VW van on a relative’s yard, and the young, aspiring comic took an eight-hour factory job after school to make ends meet. He was so dedicated to his career that, when he was 10 years old, he mailed his resume to The Carroll Burnett Show.
Even after Carrey, then fifteen, utterly botched his first on-stage comedy routine while sporting a suit his mother had custom-made, he didn’t seem to be phased. The following year, at sixteen, he left school to focus solely on comedy. He moved to Los Angeles shortly after, where he used to consider himself successful and park on Mulholland Drive every evening. One night around Thanksgiving 1995, he wrote a check to himself for $10,000,000 for “Acting Services Rendered.” Just before that day, he made his income with Dumb and Dumber. He deposited the fading check inside his father’s casket that he had been carrying about in his wallet.
- Tyler Dean
Perry had a challenging childhood. He was kicked out of high school, suffered physical and sexual abuse as a youth, and attempted suicide twice, the first time around age 22. At the age of 23, he moved to Atlanta and started doing odd jobs to support his theater career.
His difficult childhood provided some of the motivation for his 1992 writing, producing, and acting in I Know I’ve Been Changed, his theater debut. Perry used all of his savings on the show, but throughout its one-week run, just thirty people showed up. It was a total disaster. He took on more odd jobs to keep up with the production, often sleeping in his car to make ends meet. It wasn’t until six years later, during the seventh season of the show, that Perry finally made his breakthrough. He has now gone on to have a highly successful career as an actor, screenwriter, and director. In fact, Forbes named Perry the highest-paid individual in the entertainment industry in 2011.
- The actress Jessica Parker Sarah
Parker was born in a poor rural coal mining village in Ohio, the youngest of four children. Her parents separated when she was two years old. After that, her mother remarried and had four more children. Parker’s mother began dancing and singing at an early age in order to provide for their family of ten because her mother was a teacher. Being a truck driver, her husband’s joblessness was common.
Parker’s mother never stopped encouraging her children’s artistic endeavors, despite moments of poverty and financial difficulties. The family moved to Cincinnati, where Parker was able to enroll in a ballet, music, and theater school on scholarship. When Parker was eleven years old, her family took a trip to New York City so she could try out for a Broadway show. Following a triumphant voyage, the family relocated to New York, where she and her brother were both hired. Parker continued to work hard to secure roles, and eventually he was chosen to play the lead in the popular TV series Sex and the City.
- Colonel Sanders, Harland
Colonel Harland Sanders had already been fired several times in his profession when he began cooking chicken in his roadside Shell Service Station in 1930, at the age of forty, during the Great Depression. He served customers in his own neighboring home because his gas station lacked a proper restaurant.
Over the next ten years, he perfected his “Secret Recipe” and pressure fryer method, moving into bigger areas. In the press, even food critic Duncan Hines (yes, that Duncan Hines) praised his chicken. However, when the interstate was built through the Kentucky town where the Colonel’s restaurant was located in the 1950s, it drastically decreased traffic on the roadways, forcing the Colonel to close his business and retire almost completely broke. Worried about how he would make ends meet on his meager $105 monthly pension check, he looked for restaurants that would franchise his secret recipe. For each piece of chicken sold, he demanded a cent in payment. He drove about and slept in his car, being rejected over a thousand times before he found his first love.
- Shania Twain, the author
Actually, Twain’s career began more out of need than sheer willpower. When she was two years old, her parents split, and she rarely saw her father. Having grown up close to her mother and stepfather, Twain started singing in bars at the age of eighteen to supplement their income as they often struggled to make ends meet.
She recalls that in order for her to perform, her mother would wake her up at odd hours. Sadly, when she was 21 years old, a head-on incident with a logging truck on a highway claimed her mother and stepfather. After leaving her career to retire, Twain took on the responsibility of raising her three younger siblings, who were then in their teens. She decided against going after popular stardom until her sister and siblings were old enough to look after themselves, so she sang at resorts. Not until her youngest brother graduated from high school did she feel at ease relocating to Nashville in order to advance her career.
- Emily Blunt
Emily had a severe stutter between the ages of seven and fourteen. Blunt was rarely able to have a conversation with her peers before garnering Golden Globe nominations and landing notable parts in theater and film. She told W magazine that although she was intelligent and had a lot to say as a child, she was unable to communicate it. All it would do is torment me. I never thought I’d be able to sit and talk to someone the way I’m talking to you right now.”
That all changed, though, when a junior high school teacher encouraged her to try out for the school play, which, given how hard it was for her to communicate, was a really unpleasant task. The teacher persevered in applying little pressure, though, and suggested that she attempt character voices and accents to help her communicate, which worked. By the end of her teens, Blunt had overcome her stammer and was able to pursue her successful career.
- Oprah Winfrey
Oprah has encountered numerous obstacles in her public life, such as bigotry, remarks about her weight, and curious questions about her sexual orientation, to name a few, but she has never let any of them deter her from being determined and achieving her dreams. Her early accomplishments give her personal successes a lot more context.
Oprah allegedly experienced sexual assault as a young child and was frequently the target of harassment from her uncle, cousin, and family friend. She later became pregnant at the age of 14, giving birth to a kid who passed away two weeks later. Still, Oprah persevered, earning an all-expenses-paid college scholarship, graduating from high school with honors, rising through the television ranks to become a global celebrity, and starting her own network.
