We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their favorite stories about famous people who "failed" before making it big. Here are the inspiring results.
Note: Not all submissions are from Community users.
1. Chris Pratt was homeless and lived in a van in Maui when he was 19. Almost 20 years later, he returned to Hawaii and was paid $10 million to film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
2. Lisa Kudrow was originally cast as Roz on Frasier but was fired two days into rehearsals. A year later, she landed the role of Phoebe on Friends.
3. Chrissy Metz only had 81 cents in her bank account when she booked This Is Us.
4. Sylvester Stallone was once so poor that he sold his beloved dog for $40 so he could buy food. Years later, he sold the script for Rocky, which brought him two Oscar nominations.
5. Vera Wang trained to be a figure skater but didn't make the Olympic team. Her fallback was fashion, and after a few decades she started her own company when she was 40.
6. Oprah Winfrey was fired from a co-anchor position when she was 23 and was told she was "unfit for television news." We all know what happened after that.
7. Stephen King's first novel, Carrie, was rejected over 30 times before it was published.
8. Lady Gaga was originally signed to Def Jam Records, but they dropped her three months later because "it just wasn't for them."
9. Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive – he didn't become successful until after his death.
10. Michael Jordan was rejected by his high school's varsity basketball team when he was a sophomore.
11. Jim Carrey auditioned for Saturday Night Live twice but didn't make it. He later went on to host the show three times.
13. Neither Amber Riley nor Naya Rivera made it through the first round when auditioning for American Idol, but they later landed life-changing roles on Glee.
14. Naomi Watts went on so many auditions that her "soul was being destroyed." She almost quit and moved back to Australia, but at 32 director David Lynch saw her headshot and hired her on the spot.
15. R. H. Macy opened four different stores, which all failed, before he finally moved to New York and opened what's now known as Macy's.
16. Lauryn Hill performed at the Apollo when she was 13 and literally got booed by the audience. Ten years later, she won three Grammy Awards.
17. Emily Dickinson wrote over 1,800 poems, but only 10 of them were published during her lifetime.
18. Gal Gadot was so tired of rejection that she came "as close as it gets" to quitting acting before finally landing the title role in Wonder Woman.
19. Katharine Hepburn was considered "box office poison" after a string of commercial flops, so she bought out her contract with the studio and then bought the movie rights to The Philadelphia Story.
20. Halle Berry moved to New York when she was 18 and had to live in a homeless shelter. Years later, she became the first and only black woman to win the Oscar for Best Lead Actress.
