Actors who were surprisingly old by the time they made it Big

She aged out of films, so she took the radio show to tv.

Leslie Nielsen. He'd been acting successfully for years but made it big and became a household name relatively late in life.

Sharon Stone

Ellen Burstyn

James Gandolfini

Christoph Waltz

Brian Cranston

Judi Dench

Olivia de Haviland

Clara Peller...

J.K. Simmons

R5 😆

Why are you shocked? She looked like a Grandma by The Lucy Show

OP, haven't you seen "Lucy Tells the Truth"? She says she's 34.

VV's best line ever when Lucy says that by telling the truth they'd all be much better friends. Ethel, drily: Somehow I doubt that.

Also o in this episode: Lucy deals the Bridge hands to five people, not the four playing.

R8 No she didn’t. Why hate?

Joel Grey

Olympia Dukakis

Laurel and Hardy

Joan Crawford (if you use her real birthdate).

My sister-in-law’s grandfather hit the big time in his late 70s.

He was the “Country Time Lemonade” grandpa

[quote]Actors who were surprisingly old by the time they made it Big

Made their own or someone else's Big, OP?

R15 their own or just generally entered the American public’s conscious.

Oh, dear, OP/R16.

And how's your head?

Estelle Getty.

Gloria Stuart

Regis Philbin

Alan Kim

Lucy was in her 20s when she signed to RKO Pictures, and 27 years old when she landed her first above-the-title billing ("The Affairs of Annabel," 1938). I would say that's hitting it big. Most young starlets fail to ignite and hightail it back to Dubuque.

Judith Lowry

Gloria Stuart made it big decades earlier.

R24 = R19

Ellen Corby. She had a long career in film playing small parts. She hit it big when she played Grandma Walton at the age of 61. She won three Emmy awards playing that part.

R24, Prior to “Titanic”, she had become a trivia question.

R26. Well, she got an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe supporting actress award for I Remember Mama (1948), so it’s not like she came out of nowhere—she also did guest shots on shows like Andy Griffith before The Waltons.

Dyke, ya know.

Alison Janney

Judith Lowry played Mother Dexter on Phyllis at the age of 85. I remember people would watch the show only to hear what she had to say. Lowry died when filming the second season.

R28, So, Grandpa and Grandma Walton were both queer?

R30, Have you met R23?

Burt Mustin

Angela Bassett didn't become well known until she was in her 30s

R14 I just realized that the grandfather in that County Time Lemonade advertisement played crooked Judge Fenton in Foxy Brown. Foxy and Claudia pull his underwear off and humiliate him.

Jessica Chastain. She's lied repeatedly about her age.

We discussed him a few weeks back: Clifton Webb. A success on the Broadway stage, Webb came out to Hollywood in 1935 to do a picture with Joan Crawford. But those plans were scrapped and he went back to Broadway. Hollywood came a-calling one more time, and he made his feature film debut at the age of 55 with "Laura" in 1944.

[quote] Webb came out

Did he really?

Samuel L. Jackson didn’t start getting good roles until he became sober in his early forties.

R39: Bradley Cooper said he didn't get great success until he got sober too. Although how he became a movie star instead of villain character actor is beyond me.

"Jessica Chastain. She's lied repeatedly about her age."

I remember she used to list her birth year as 1982 (it stood out to be because I was also born in '82). Now it's 1977

Abe Vigoda.

Discovered in an open casting call by Coppola for the Godfather.

Ruth Gordon

Thelma Ritter made her film debut at age 42.

R38, My son was not a fag!

F Murray Abraham

[quote] I always thought Lucile Ball was a young 20 something watching I Love Lucy re-reruns as a child.

How could she be a child and a 20 something at the same time? And how could she watch reruns as a 20 something?

[quote] F Murray Abraham

Oh don’t be that way, I’m sure Murray Abraham didn’t mean it.

Faye Dunaway was 26 when she had her breakout role in “Bonnie & Clyde” during her first year of filmmaking.

That’s not old, but it’s not YOUNG (especially back then) for being Hollywood’s latest It Girl.

26 has never actually been considered old for a breakout role in Hollywood, you’re pushing it way too far.

Faye was so gorgeous as Bonnie, cheekbones for days.

Depends on if they look even younger than they are but 26 is like middle aged in female actor years.

OP- Lucille Ball NEVER looked like someone who was in her 20's during l Love Lucy. She looked about ten years younger until the last episodes of the Lucy Desi Comedy Hour when time caught up to her and she looked her age.

R41: In acting they say you can add or take three to five years off your age.

Marie Dressler made her film debut in 1914 at age 46.

R49- That's not the point about Faye Dunaway back then. 26 years old was still quite young. It's the fact that in that movie and especially in the 1968 movie The Thomas Crown Affair she looked 36 not her actually age of only 26. Bonnie and Clyde she was only 25 years old- when it was actually filmed.

Sharon Stone worked regularly, but she didn't hit it big until her 30s.

Humphrey Bogart was born in 1899 or 1900, depending on the source. He worked on stage and started in movies in 1930, but his big break didn't come until 1936 with [italic]Petrified Forest[/italic]. After that he was in a lot of good movies, a few stinkers. Before that, he was a working actor doing a ton of junk.

Cate Blanchett

Sydney Greenstreet

Zara Cully was in her 80’s when she achieved fame as Mother Jefferson.

Dylan Cannon. She was married to Grant but wasn’t a movie star until her late 30s.

[quote]R50 Twenty-six has never actually been considered old for a breakout role in Hollywood, you’re pushing it way too far.

I acknowledged Dunaway wasn’t OLD… but the fact is her contemporaries Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, and Candice Bergen all made names for themselves in their early 20s. Which Dunaway was not.

Ellen Burstyn was almost 40, however, when she put herself on the map with “The Last Picture Show.”

Chloris Leachman

Billy Ported worked for decades in music and theater (Tony Award for "Kinky Boots") but was unknown to the general public until recent years.

Sorry, meant Billy Porter.

Jean Stapleton had a successful career in supporting roles on Broadway, including original casts of "Funny Girl," "Damn Yankees" and "Bells Are Ringing." But she was unknown to the general public until "All in the Family."

June Squibb

Marilyn was no spring chicken when she hit it big in Niagara (1953). By Hollywood standards she was a geriatric (27yo)

Rodney Dangerfield was in his mid-50s by the time he hit it big in 1980's "Caddyshack".

He was known only in the NYC comedy scene at the time.

^ where do get your information? He was cast in Caddyshack because he *was* already famous.

Doris Day was well into her thirties when she started playing virginal secretaries who marry Rock Hudson, she'd already had a long career as a big-band singer and B List actress when she finally hit the A List.

She really broke all the Hollyood rules for a woman, especially one who was blonde and attractive. She hit the big time at an age when.most actresses had given up and found a husband or a realtors license, she was headlining sex comedies at the age when Marilyn Monroe's career seemed to be ending.

Gabrielle Carteris FTW.

[quote] Gabrielle Carteris FTW.

How old is she now? In her 80s?

R72, Doris Day was in numerous A list movies long before “Pillow Talk” in 1959.

Sydney Greenstreet. He made his stage debut in 1902, but did not appear in films until he signed with Warner Bros. in 1941. His first film was The Maltese Falcon opposite Humphrey Bogart. He was 61.

R76 = R60

Estelle Getty for the win. She was middle-aged with fully grown kids before she decided to dip her toe into the acting pool. Harvey Fierstein once said in an interview that she was the only one who showed up at the theater driving her own car and having real-life skills like cooking and sewing.

Several people said that before Estelle Getty was famous, she used to go to every off-Broadway and hole in the wall theater performance. She was a true supporter of theater.

Bea Arthur

Danny Aiello was 40 in his first film.

Bea Arthur was 50 when she became a household name with Maude. And she looked like a modern 70. It's amazing how much older people looked back then.

Larry Bud Melman

R78, Estelle Getty and Thelma Ritter both married and raised children before entering show business.

Foster Brooks

Melissa McCarthy

R62 Grant who?

R87, Ulysses S., Rose.

R10 She absolutely did. She was 50 and looked old.

R10 You’re telling me she doesn’t look like a Grandma here????

Irene Ryan was 50 when she hit it big as "Granny" in The Beverly Hillbillies

Jenny Stewart

R40 Bradley Cooper can act. I used to fangurl Leo because he picks great roles but he’s charming but not an incredible actor. BC is absolutely spellbinding. The closest thing to Bobby D of the new breed.

R47 are you retarded or just a cunt.

Joy Behar.

Burt Lancaster was 32 when he made his first movie, and had no acting experience except for a supporting role in a Broaday play that he'd taken for the hell of it, when someone mistook him for an actor.

He was lucky to come along during the WWII manpower shortage! Hollywood would put anything in trousers of the screen then, even Sonny Tufts. But unlike Tufts, Lancaster actually learned to act, and play the Hollywood game, while Tufts just got hammered.

R96 you mean he drank?

Sonny Bono, of Sonny and Cher

Although he occasionally looked a child, Rami Malek was actually 36 when Mr Robot brought him to fame.

John Mahoney was 47 when cast in Moonstruck, and 53 when Frasier started. Often cast older than his actual age, he was only 15 years older than Kelsey Grammer.

[quote]Long interested in acting, Mahoney didn't make the transition to his craft until he was almost forty years old. Mahoney took acting classes at the St. Nicholas Theater and finally built up the courage to quit his day job and pursue acting full time. John Malkovich, one of the founders of the Second City's distinguished Steppenwolf Theatre, encouraged Mahoney to join Steppenwolf, and in 1986, Mahoney won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves (1987).

Hey! Doris Day was an award winning actress LONG before “Pillow Talk”!

She had 3 Sour Apple Awards from the Hollywood Women's Press Club for being the “Least Cooperative Actor/Actress.”

Billy Burke was 53 when she made her greatest mark in cinema as Glinda in "The Wizard of Oz".

Not an actor, but Julia Child was fifty when she got her first television cooking show.

Phyllis Diller.

[quote] Billy Burke was 53 when she made her greatest mark in cinema as Glinda in "The Wizard of Oz".

I had no idea. I thought she was in her 40s.