Don't Quit: These Actors & Actresses Almost Gave Up On Their Dream

Laverne Cox

Source: ROBYN BECK / Getty

The Emmy-nominated actress told The Hollywood Reporter that it took years for her career to really take off. It wasn’t until she landed the role of Sophia on Orange Is the New Black, that her career really accelerated:

“When I moved to New York City in 1993, I thought I would be a superstar in two, three years tops. That didn’t quite happen,” she said. After some T.V. and movie credits, she said she was ready to throw in the towel. “It was a devastating realization. It’s like, OK, you’re 40 years old. Maybe that’s all God wanted for me in this business. Maybe this is all I’m supposed to do. Now I should just listen to what the universe seems to be telling me about this acting thing and try something else. Then I got this audition. It turns out that God had a different plan.”

Hit the flip for more actors and actress who were about to give up, but they kept on pushing!

Trevor Jackson

Source: @ParisaMichelle / Splash News

The Grown-ish star was about to be done with acting but his role on season two of ABC’s American Crime changed his mind. He went on BET‘s Black Coffee and explained:

“I remember I was going to quit acting at one point, and then I did American Crime, and I literally was watching John Ridley work, Regina King, Timothy Hutton, Andre 3000 and I was re-inspired. Even off screen [I was inspired], and I wanted to start directing.”

Uzo Aduba

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The Orange Is the New Black actress told Deadline that after a tardy audition, she thought acting wasn’t in the cards for her:

“I was crying on the subway all the way home, and not like, loud, audible crying, but the tears, the ones where you just can’t stop them from coming down your face. I just couldn’t stop it. I was sitting on the train, and I said to myself, ‘this is it, I’m done.’ I had never in my life before quit. Then, 45 minutes later, I got home and I got a phone call. I’ll never forget it for my entire life. I could be 98, and my grandkids can be like, ‘Grandma, when did you get Orange is the New Black?’ and I’ll say, ‘5.43 pm. September 14.’”

Millie Bobby Brown

Source: NBC / Getty

The Stranger Things breakout star told Variety after a few small roles on T.V., she was losing steam:

“I felt at one point I couldn’t do it [anymore], but then I got this [Stranger Things] and everything changed. Acting is like breathing to me.”

Zoe Saldana

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According to Bustle, when talking about working on Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Saldana told The Hollywood Reporter:

“Those weren’t the right people for me—I’m not talking about the cast. The cast was great. I’m talking about the political stuff that went on behind closed doors. It was a lot of above-the-line versus below-the-line, extras versus actors, producers versus PAs. It was very elitist. I almost quit the business. I was 23 years old, and I was like, ‘Fu** this!’ I am never putting myself in this situation again. People disrespecting me because they look at my number on a call sheet and they think I’m not important. Fu** you.”

Brie Larson

Source: Kevin Mazur/VF16 / Getty

The Captain Marvel star told The Sydney Morning Herald that she was about to quit acting when she got the role of her dreams, playing Toni Collette‘s daughter in United States of Tara:

“I was toying with the idea of either studying interior design or marine biology, but then I got a call.”

Jessica Alba

Source: Splash News / Splash News

According to SyFy Wire, Alba had a horrible experience shooting Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, especially with the director Tim Story:

“I wanted to stop acting,” she said. “The director was like, ‘It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica.’ He was like, ‘Don’t do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.’ And I’m like, but there’s no connection to a human being. And then it got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don’t want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, ‘Fu** it. I don’t care about this business anymore.’”

Letitia Wright

Source: Ian West – PA Images / Getty

The Black Panther star described how her mental health almost made her give up. According to USA Today, for her BAFTAs (British Academy Film Awards) Rising Star award speech, she said:

“A few years ago, I saw myself in a deep state of depression and I literally wanted to quit acting. The only thing that pulled me out of it was God, my belief, my faith, and my family, and an email from BAFTA asking me to become part of the BAFTA Breakthrough Brits, I was like: ‘Let me try again.’”

Jada Pinkett Smith

Source: Maury Phillips / Getty

According to RollingOut, at the Sundance Film Festival she explained:

“There were no questions in my early years. Maybe later on. I kind of lost my desire to be in this industry for a lot of different reasons, and I was actually thinking about going back to school for psychology. I was like, you’ve been doing this a long time, girl. Just sit back. I just had to wait until I was motivated again. I had to wait until something came along and sparked me because I had just lost the desire to be in this game.”

Michael B. Jordan

Source: Jamie McCarthy / Getty

The 32-year-old actor and producer told Vanity Fair:

“I remember when I first came to L.A., and me and my mom, we went to all these agencies trying to get representation and they passed on me—WME passed on me, CAA passed on me, Gersh, all these guys fu**ing passed on me.”

Jordan says he was about to quit when his The Wire co-star Andre Royo ran into him at an L.A. pool party:

“He was stressed out,” recounts Royo, 50. “He was like, ‘Yo, I’m not working enough, sh** is crazy, I think I’m going to go back to New York.’ And he was really on some ‘boo-hoo’ sh**. And I was like, ‘Yo dog, are you kidding me right now? You in your early 20s and you’re around motherfu**ers trying to feed families who ain’t working. Snap out of it.’”