After all, if you haven't found your calling by, say, age 30, it's pretty much hopeless, right? If you were going to make it, you'd have made it by now.

Picking a career is pretty hard, it turns out. Not only do you have to choose something you could see yourself doing for the rest of your life, but you also have to be somewhat competent at it. Most of us will just fall into something and go with it.

5 Alan Rickman Got His First Movie Role at 42

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

If you are an aspiring movie actor, how long would you plug away at it before deciding it's not for you? Like, if you've made it to your 40s without ever appearing in a movie, that's probably a sign that you're never going to have an action figure made from you, right?

Getty

Mid-Life Crisis Man! Gets drunk, chats up the college-age waitress and crashes his Harley into a Dumpster!

The Rock Bottom Moment:

So there was this guy named Alan who had gotten an art degree (because enrolling in drama classes "wasn't considered the sensible thing to do"), and by his late 20s was doing as well as you'd expect anyone with a degree to do. He was running his own graphic design business ... and that's when he decided to drop absolutely everything and sign up for acting classes. He even left his own company to concentrate full-time on acting, which doesn't do a lot for your financial security, it turns out.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

While studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Rickman was pushing 30 and supporting himself by working as a dresser for other actors (and we mean literally helping them put their clothes on). He did get to meet stage actors like Sir Nigel Hawthorne, but their interaction at this point was probably limited to "fetch me my leotards, boy."

BBC

"Now put them on, very slowly. Yes. Yes."

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

And this went on for years. Rickman farted around the theater scene for over a decade.

Then finally Rickman was cast as one of the leads in the stage version of the book Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The play was a hit and was soon adapted by Hollywood as Dangerous Liaisons. Boom! Success! Everyone involved in it became internationally famous!

Except Rickman, because they replaced him with John Malkovich.



Everyone knows Alan Rickman is famously terrible at playing creepy, evil characters.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

The Success:

However, Rickman's performance did catch the attention of producer Joel Silver, who two years later asked him to star as the villain in some action movie with some TV actor named Bruce Willis. Something about a bunch of terrorists taking over a skyscraper.