Becoming a movie star is a really tough endeavour. Most actors never make it. And that’s even after years of grinding it out in community theaters in front of small audiences or in forgettable background roles. But there are the few lucky ones, like the five actors on this list, who skipped that hassle entirely and walked straight into a Best Picture winner to make their feature-film debut.
For some of them, that debut launched impressive careers. For one poor guy, it was tragically the beginning of the end. Let’s roll through the years, starting with a beloved ‘90s dramedy and ending with an indie that shook up the Oscars in the most awkward way possible.
1. Haley Joel Osment – Forrest Gump (1994)
Haley Joel Osment was almost a six-year-old (five when he started, turned six during filming) kid with a single Pizza Hut commercial to his name when he was cast as Forrest Gump Jr. That’s the son Tom Hanks’ title character ends up raising on his own after Jenny (Robin Wright) dies. It’s not a huge amount of screen time, but he made the scenes hit where it counts: the awkward first day of school, the quiet porch conversations, all the father-son conversations that give the movie’s final stretch its gut punch.
Forrest Gump cleaned up the Oscars that year, Best Picture included, and Osment didn’t let that momentum go to waste. Five years later, he was back at the ceremony as a nominee himself, this time for The Sixth Sense, where he plays a kid who sees dead people instead of one learning how to ride a bike. He lost Best Supporting Actor to Michael Caine, whom he’d later share a screen with in Secondhand Lions. Not a bad career arc for someone who started out selling pizza to cameras.
2. John Cazale – The Godfather (1972)
Every single one of John Cazale’s movies got a Best Picture nomination. It may have been a small sample size of five movies, but it’s no less impressive as a feat. He kicked off his perfect streak with the role of Fredo, the Corleone brother who’s more of a wet noodle than a monster. The guy everyone kind of feels sorry for, but also can’t stand. Cazale and Al Pacino were old stage buddies from their New York days, and that friendship is what got him in the room for Francis Ford Coppola‘s masterpiece in the first place.
Fredo could have been a total joke as a character, but Cazale made him so heartbreakingly human that audiences could almost see the insecurity eating him alive. Cancer took him away in 1978, five films into a career that should probably have lasted another thirty years. But every one of those movies is still considered untouchable.
3. Christopher Lloyd – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
The most recognizable image of Christopher Lloyd as an actor is him as Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown running through the Twin Pines Mall parking lot at night, screaming about his time travel experiments and the flux capacitors in the 1985 sci-fi comedy classic, Back to the Future. But long before he pulled that off, he was just another patient causing trouble in a mental hospital in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He plays the role of Max Taber, one of the inmates sharing a psych ward with Jack Nicholson‘s McMurphy.
It’s a small part in a huge ensemble cast. But that wild, unhinged twinkle in his eyes, which would later make Doc Brown feel like a mad scientist one would trust with their life, was there from the get-go. Lloyd had done loads of stage work before this, but no one had ever pointed the camera at his face until this movie came along. And what a movie to start with. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won practically every major Oscar that year, Best Picture included, and Lloyd spent several decades after that being one of Hollywood’s favorite weirdo. His fans probably wouldn’t have it any other way.
4. Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave (2013)
Lupita Nyong’o didn’t just make her debut in a Best Picture film; she also took home a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Patsey. That’s an impressive achievement when you consider that most actors in that situation would be perfectly content with people seeing their names when the credits roll. Even more impressive is that she beat out industry heavyweights, including Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lawrence, to clinch that award. Her raw, painful, and totally fearless performance as an enslaved woman whose suffering is so intense is arguably one of the hardest things to watch.
Nyong’o had trained at Yale School of Drama and done some behind-the-scenes work as a production assistant on other people’s sets, but this was her first real acting gig. Nowadays, she’s jumping between horror flicks like Us and blockbusters like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (where she played both Helen of Troy and her sister, Clytemnestra), with ease. Patsey, however, remains the role that told Hollywood she’s here to play.
5. Jharrel Jerome – Moonlight (2016)
Unlike pretty much everyone else on this list, Jharrel Jerome was a rookie, literally a freshman in college, with zero professional acting experience when he landed a role in what would become one of the most talked-about movies of the last decade. He plays teenage Kevin, the guy who shares a quiet, complicated bond with the film’s main character, Chiron (Ashton Sanders played the teenage version).
It’s an emotional role that could have easily been swallowed up, but Jerome held his own. The movie won Best Picture, though most people likely remember it for the La La Land envelope fiasco. That chaos didn’t slow Jerome down one bit. A few years later, in When They See Us, he bagged an Emmy for playing the screen version of Korey Wise, one of the five exonerated youths in the infamous 1989 Central Park case.
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