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HomeBlogCareers5 Celebs Who Made it Big – in the Wrong Career!
Got a dream? Good for you. It’s important to have goals – otherwise, how are you ever going to achieve them?
Still, as you leave education for the big, bad world, you should probably be aware that dreams don’t always come true. Even the best-laid plans can go awry, and often people find themselves walking down a different path to the one they’d anticipated. But this isn’t something to be afraid of – life’s little surprises should be a pleasure, not a pain.
Here are five great achievers in their fields who originally had very different plans…
Vera Wang
Vera Wang, one of the world’s great fashion designers, grew up wanting to be an ice skater. She competed in the 1968 US Figure Skating Championships, was featured in Sports Illustrated and even tried for the Olympic team. Upon being rejected, Wang turned to fashion, working first as an editor at Vogue and then as a director at Ralph Lauren.
Eventually, at the age of 40, Wang abandoned her previous career to pursue one in design. Her wedding dresses have since become the sine qua non among celebrities, and she counts Victoria Beckham, Chelsea Clinton, Kim Kardashian and Ivanka Trump among her bridal clients. Her net worth currently stands at $400 million.
Did her skating experience help develop her fashion empire? Wang thinks so. “When you fall down – which you have to if you want to learn to be a skater – you pick yourself right up and start again. You don’t let anything deter you,” she told Business of Fashion in 2013. “Oddly enough, it’s strangely like fashion – you have a limited amount of time in which to get a point of view across.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Today, Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the world’s most famous scientists. An astrophysicist, cosmologist and writer, he has won the 2004NASA Distinguished Public Service Medla, the 2015 Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, and was featured in the 2007 Time 100.
It might have been a shame, then, if he had abandoned science for his original teenage dream: becoming an amateur wrestler.
After being the captain of his school team, Tyson competed for Harvard as part of its wrestling team. Though eventually he deemed physics the more viable route, he still appreciates the glories of the sport, although we wish him luck inventing a move that can combine the two disciplines…
Audrey Hepburn
Hepburn is known for her startling beauty, iconic performances and easy charm. But acting was never the starlet’s first choice.
Hepburn had a fascinating early life. Born to minor Dutch nobility, she lived a relatively sheltered life in Brussels up until the Second World War, when her mother moved her to Arnhem in the Netherlands. Here, Hepburn joined the Arnhem Conservatory to study ballet, where she became a star pupil. In 1944, she suffered in the Dutch Famine, developing anaemia and edema. When the war ended, she moved to Amsterdam to continue her ballet training – only to be told that her weak health and tall frame meant she would never make prima ballerina.
Hepburn reviewed her options and decided to go for acting instead. We find it hard to pity her too much; things seem to have worked out in the end. Nor is she the only dancer-turned-actress to hit the big-time; this special group counts Brigitte Bardot, Mia Wasikowska, Sarah Jessica Parker and Zoe Saldana among its number.
Currently ranked as the world’s 19th richest person by Forbes, with a net worth of around $32.7 billion, you’d assume that Jorge Paulo Lemann has few regrets in life. But before the Brazilian made it as a billionaire investor, all he wanted to do was play tennis.
And he wasn’t too far off being professional. Having won the Brazilian National Tennis Championship five times, Lemann played at the Davis Cup and even the Wimbledon Championship of 1962. In fact, he has claimed that Harvard only accepted him because of his prowess on the court.
Unfortunately – or not, depending on how you look at it – Lemann lost his first-round Wimbledon match in straight sets. Realizing that he would never be a great, he trained at Credit Suisse and eventually founded the investment banking firm Banco Garantia. Since then, Lemann has become known through the finance world as a ruthless negotiator who is not afraid to cut his losses – a lesson that he perhaps learnt that day in 1962, on the grass of Wimbledon.
Harrison Ford
Okay, this one’s a cheat. Ford originally wanted to be an actor. But by the time he actually made it, he’d given up on the idea, opting for carpentry instead.
A self-described ‘late bloomer’, Ford had little to no success in acting for the first nine years of his career, securing only un-credited or ‘extra’ roles. Eventually, he turned to carpentry in order to support his family. The work suited him: as well as being a stage-hand for rock band The Doors, he was hired by George Lucas to do some work in his house. Things were going well.
But Lucas saw something more in the young carpenter and, after casting him as a small part in American Graffiti, got him in to help out with auditions for an obscure new project of his: Star Wars. Ford’s job was to feed lines to the auditionees as they sought to impress Lucas. But Lucas quickly realized that the most impressive man in the room was Ford. He offered him the iconic role of Han Solo and the rest, as they say, is history.
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5 Celebs Who Made it Big – in the Wrong Career!
Guest Writer
Updated Aug 15, 2024Save
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Got a dream? Good for you. It’s important to have goals – otherwise, how are you ever going to achieve them?
Still, as you leave education for the big, bad world, you should probably be aware that dreams don’t always come true. Even the best-laid plans can go awry, and often people find themselves walking down a different path to the one they’d anticipated. But this isn’t something to be afraid of – life’s little surprises should be a pleasure, not a pain.
Here are five great achievers in their fields who originally had very different plans…
Vera Wang
Vera Wang, one of the world’s great fashion designers, grew up wanting to be an ice skater. She competed in the 1968 US Figure Skating Championships, was featured in Sports Illustrated and even tried for the Olympic team. Upon being rejected, Wang turned to fashion, working first as an editor at Vogue and then as a director at Ralph Lauren.
Eventually, at the age of 40, Wang abandoned her previous career to pursue one in design. Her wedding dresses have since become the sine qua non among celebrities, and she counts Victoria Beckham, Chelsea Clinton, Kim Kardashian and Ivanka Trump among her bridal clients. Her net worth currently stands at $400 million.
Did her skating experience help develop her fashion empire? Wang thinks so. “When you fall down – which you have to if you want to learn to be a skater – you pick yourself right up and start again. You don’t let anything deter you,” she told Business of Fashion in 2013. “Oddly enough, it’s strangely like fashion – you have a limited amount of time in which to get a point of view across.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Today, Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the world’s most famous scientists. An astrophysicist, cosmologist and writer, he has won the 2004NASA Distinguished Public Service Medla, the 2015 Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, and was featured in the 2007 Time 100.
It might have been a shame, then, if he had abandoned science for his original teenage dream: becoming an amateur wrestler.
After being the captain of his school team, Tyson competed for Harvard as part of its wrestling team. Though eventually he deemed physics the more viable route, he still appreciates the glories of the sport, although we wish him luck inventing a move that can combine the two disciplines…
Audrey Hepburn
Hepburn is known for her startling beauty, iconic performances and easy charm. But acting was never the starlet’s first choice.
Hepburn had a fascinating early life. Born to minor Dutch nobility, she lived a relatively sheltered life in Brussels up until the Second World War, when her mother moved her to Arnhem in the Netherlands. Here, Hepburn joined the Arnhem Conservatory to study ballet, where she became a star pupil. In 1944, she suffered in the Dutch Famine, developing anaemia and edema. When the war ended, she moved to Amsterdam to continue her ballet training – only to be told that her weak health and tall frame meant she would never make prima ballerina.
Hepburn reviewed her options and decided to go for acting instead. We find it hard to pity her too much; things seem to have worked out in the end. Nor is she the only dancer-turned-actress to hit the big-time; this special group counts Brigitte Bardot, Mia Wasikowska, Sarah Jessica Parker and Zoe Saldana among its number.
Testimonials
Jorge Paulo Lemann
Currently ranked as the world’s 19th richest person by Forbes, with a net worth of around $32.7 billion, you’d assume that Jorge Paulo Lemann has few regrets in life. But before the Brazilian made it as a billionaire investor, all he wanted to do was play tennis.
And he wasn’t too far off being professional. Having won the Brazilian National Tennis Championship five times, Lemann played at the Davis Cup and even the Wimbledon Championship of 1962. In fact, he has claimed that Harvard only accepted him because of his prowess on the court.
Unfortunately – or not, depending on how you look at it – Lemann lost his first-round Wimbledon match in straight sets. Realizing that he would never be a great, he trained at Credit Suisse and eventually founded the investment banking firm Banco Garantia. Since then, Lemann has become known through the finance world as a ruthless negotiator who is not afraid to cut his losses – a lesson that he perhaps learnt that day in 1962, on the grass of Wimbledon.
Harrison Ford
Okay, this one’s a cheat. Ford originally wanted to be an actor. But by the time he actually made it, he’d given up on the idea, opting for carpentry instead.
A self-described ‘late bloomer’, Ford had little to no success in acting for the first nine years of his career, securing only un-credited or ‘extra’ roles. Eventually, he turned to carpentry in order to support his family. The work suited him: as well as being a stage-hand for rock band The Doors, he was hired by George Lucas to do some work in his house. Things were going well.
But Lucas saw something more in the young carpenter and, after casting him as a small part in American Graffiti, got him in to help out with auditions for an obscure new project of his: Star Wars. Ford’s job was to feed lines to the auditionees as they sought to impress Lucas. But Lucas quickly realized that the most impressive man in the room was Ford. He offered him the iconic role of Han Solo and the rest, as they say, is history.
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