Good-looking celebrities that did not become famous until they were at least 30 years old (or older)?

Kevin Costner came to mind.

It depends on how you define famous. George Clooney was a working actor in his twenties but became a star when he was in his thirties. Was he famous when he did The Facts of Life and Roseanne, or did it take becoming a household name with ER?

Austin Butler, "Elvis." Thirty-one August 17th.

“Who”, not “that”, OP.

Grandma Moses

Gary Cooper was late 20s, early 30s when he became a big name.

Jon Hamm & George Clooney.

Samuel Jackson

Sharon Stone was in her 30's when Basic Instinct came out.

Robert Redford b.1936 became famous in the late 60s with Barefoot in the Park (1967) Downhill Racer (1969) and especially Butch Cassidy the Sundance Kid (1969)

Humphrey Bogart was in his early forties when "Casablanca" made him a romantic leading man.

Harrison Ford was 30 when American Graffiti was released and not quite 35 when Star Wars was released in 1977. Alan Rickman was in his 40s, I think, when he did Die Hard.

Madonna

Annette Bening. She turned 30 before her first feature released (The Great Outdoors). But, she didn't "become famous" until The Grifters came out and she was nominated for an Oscar at 32.

Julianne Moore was in her mid-30s before she did the Jurassic Park sequel and got nominated for Boogie Nights. She was in her 30s even when she did The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. I don't think her soap opera era qualified her as "famous."

Jessica Chastain had already entered her 30s by the time her banner year of 2011 rolled around.

I would say the biggest name would be Martha Stewart. Nobody knew who that bitch was even when she was 40.

Morgan Freeman, late 40s

Jimmy Smits was 31 and pretty much unknown when he got the part of Victor Sifuentes in "L.A. Law" in 1986.

Bryan Cranston. Was doing ads and small bit parts when he got Malcolm in the Middle and then Breaking Bad.

Blondie's third album, Parallel Lines, became a worldwide hit in 1978, when lead singer, Debbie Harry was 33.

Rose West?

Jussie

Lucille Ball

Regis Philbin

Joan Collins did not become extraordinarily famous until "Dynasty" at nearly 50.

Sean Connery---32, "Dr. No."

Patrick McGoohan---32, "Danger Man" (aka, "Secret Agent Man").

Al Pacino---31, "Panic in Needle Park" (32, "The Godfather").

Richard Widmark---33, "Kiss of Death" (Oscar Nominee, BSA).

Burt Lancaster---33, "The Killers."

Al Pacino was 32 when The Godfather came out.

Gena Rowlands became famous (Oscar nominated, festival awards) in her late 30s/early 40s.

Off the AFI list: Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, Mae West, and Marlene Dietrich were all in their early to mid-30s when they became famous.

R25, See r24, re: Pacino; Lancaster.

Robert De Niro

A shame these beautiful people didn't become famous earlier.

Michelle Pfeiffer

Judith Lowry

Chris Meloni

Charles Shaughnessy

Thelma Ritter

Viggo Mortensen. Not famous until Lord of the Rings.

Mads Mikkelson

Oded Fehr

Sue Ellen didn't get the role that made her a household name on "Dallas" until she was 38-years old.

OP, perhaps you should rename your thread to:

“Talented actors/actresses and performers/entertainers who didn’t make it big until after 30.

Why?

Because a lot of the people on this list made because they were VERY talented, not because they were good looking.

Debbie Harry, Pat Benatar

Henry Kissinger

Rodney Dangerfield

The topic says, "GOOD-LOOKING".

Donna Mills

Clark Gable was about 30 when he hit it big

Irene Dunne

Burt Lancaster AND Kirk Douglas.

R11, I never considered Bogart good looking at any age

Angela Bassett

But he had flava R46

^^^ That flava was the 40 cigarettes he smoked every day.

They both had that flava R49 as they were both heavy smokers. I saw Lauren outside during intermission of an off-Broadway play" Women on the Verge" smoking away.

R46, You would say no to that?

I guess Sharon Stone is the oldest for attractive women that became famous after 30.

She technically didn't become a star until she was in her mid 30's. She had just turned 34 when Basic Instinct came out.

I wonder why it took so long considering how attractive she is...Anyone know?!?

R33, "Good-looking"?

To quote R40, some of these folks are two baggers.

R52, I think it's that Sharon Stone did a lot of lousy movies in the 1980s that wouldn't get anyone noticed: King Solomon's Mines and its sequel, Action Jackson, Police Academy 4. It wasn't until Total Recall that she had a decent role in a blockbuster.

It's easy to imagine Stone doing many of the roles that made Melanie Griffith and Kim Basinger stars during the eighties, so it could have happened earlier.

Kim Cattrall

Nigel Hawthorne

Walter Pidgeon

Alla Nazimova didn't start her film career until she was 37.

Tuhff

Uyfghu

Gene Hackman was in his late 30s when he finally started getting acting jobs.

[quote]Jimmy Smits was 31 and pretty much unknown when he got the part of Victor Sifuentes in "L.A. Law" in 1986.

R16 Jimmy Smits was already known for NYPD Blue by then.

No, R63, NYPD Blue premiered in 1993.

R63 The only thing Jimmy Smits was known for when he got L.A. Law in 1986 was that he'd been seen as Sonny Crockett's murdered partner in the first episode of "Miami Vice." This is what let to Tubbs being assigned Sonny's cohort.

Oh, and he'd also been a dayplayer on soap opera, All My Children .. some monk-like character named "Quon" LOL!

R66 - wow, I don't think I've given Jimmy Smits a thought in twenty years!

R63, R64, R65 Sorry and thank you for straightening out those dates. Growing old is a bitch.

R63=Joe Biden

Jeffrey Dean Morgan was around 40 when he got Grey's Anatomy.

R70 JDM was the American Sean Bean in the 00s 😄

Money

Hennifer Lopez with her songstress career Brat Pit Mahalia Jackson The one guy from the backdoor boys (black hair) Fergie (although she was in a weird band before the bep) many of the pussycat dolls Beyonce is rumored to be older

But according to this video it appears that celebs who are older but still wanna make it, most likely need to use the casting couch unless they are really talented.

Sean Bean GoldenEye didn't come along til he was already 36. That was 1995. He was born in 1959.

Tons of them

Very slightly under OP’s age threshold but: English Premier League footballer Jordan Henderson was long considered to be an overrated and mediocre squad player, as well as an ineffective replacement/placeholder team Captain (for legendary Steven Gerrard, at domestic and national team level). His own team’s supporters spoke about him like a scapegoat, an albatross, a dead weight. Until the season in which he turned 29 and Liverpool won the League Cup under his leadership. Then the narrative completely changed...

Don't Jon Hamm and Bruce Willis usually win these sort of threads?

Hamm was 36 when he got the role in Mad Men

Willis was 30 when Moonlighting ran

R74 Sean Bean was already rather notorious to British audiences years earlier than that, mostly for the films LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER and WHEN SATURDAY COMES.

Androgynous British glam-rock vocalist Phil Lewis did not make it big until he moved stateside and joined L.A. Guns in his mid-thirties, singing for musicians several years his junior. The move he made was a final salvo--he says that had it not worked out for him, he'd have given up professional rockstardom for good.

Prior to Phil's L.A. Guns tenure, he had been a twenty-something singer in small-time, struggling pub & club glam bands at the tail-end of the 1970s and the early 80s, namely the little-known cult bands Girl and London.

Lucille Ball. Queen of the B movies until I Love Lucy was born. I think she was 40 when ILL began.

Tom Skerritt didn't become a star until Alien, when he was 46 years old. And he is still working at 89.

Steve Buscemi

I've never heard Steve Buscemi being referred to as "good-looking" before.

R83 Buscemi was sort-of pretty in a strange, lopsided, jolie-laid indie way in PARTING GLANCES.

R83, you’re right. I forgot that part of the assignment.

Isabella Rossellini b.1952 Blue Velvet (1986)