Hollywood loves a good Cinderella story. Particularly the kind where a relatively unknown actor shows up on a set, knocks it out of the park with their performance, and suddenly they’re dodging paparazzi and picking out outfits for the Oscars. It’s the dream of every actor, and when it happens, it’s beautiful to watch.
The five actors on this list lived that dream. They were basically working actors whom very few people would have recognized at the grocery store or on the street. But just one role, one movie, and one Academy Award nomination later, and their lives would never remain the same. Every single one of them has used that role and nomination as a launchpad for a glittering career. Here’s how they pulled it off.
1. Amy Adams – Junebug (2005)
Amy Adams paid her dues in Hollywood and then some. She spent years bouncing between bit-part TV roles and forgettable movies, including a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role in Catch Me If You Can that even Steven Spielberg later agreed should have made her famous. Well, Junebug certainly helped with the famous bit. She played this pregnant Southern chatterbox named Ashley who’s so aggressively cheerful it should be annoying, but instead it’s mesmerizing. She practically stole every scene she was in and scored a Best Supporting Actress nomination in 2006 for her efforts.
She ultimately lost out to Rachel Weisz, but nobody in the industry was shocked when she kept showing up at the ceremony year after year. That nomination opened every door in town. And over the next decade, she bagged five more nominations for Doubt, The Fighter, American Hustle, The Master, and Vice. She still hasn’t won it, currently tying her with Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter for the third-most acting nominations without a win in Oscar history. But that streak also made her one of the most versatile actors around. She can pull off any role, from Disney princesses to gritty drama, without breaking a sweat.
2. Jennifer Lawrence – Winter’s Bone (2010)
Chasing down a director uninvited is one of the boldest moves an actor can make, and that’s exactly what Jennifer Lawrence did. She auditioned twice in Los Angeles and was rejected for not having “the right look,” but she wouldn’t let it go. When the production moved to New York to continue casting, she followed anyway, flying out on a red-eye and showing up to the next round unannounced. That gamble landed her the lead in a gritty indie titled Winter’s Bone, shot on a shoestring budget in the freezing Ozark mountains. Lawrence was just 20 years old, with barely any credits to her name when she stepped into the role of Ree Dolly, a tough-as-nails teenager holding her family together while hunting down her missing father.
She secured a Best Actress in A Leading Role nomination for that performance, and she was the second-youngest ever to do so at the time. Not bad for someone most audiences had never even heard of. Two years later, she wasn’t just nominated; she won the Best Actress award for Silver Linings Playbook. In between, she became the face of The Hunger Games and turned into one of the biggest movie stars on the planet basically overnight. She snagged a fourth nomination for American Hustle, and by the time she hit 30, she was one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.
3. Hailee Steinfeld – True Grit (2010)
Hailee Steinfeld was just a 13-year-old kid with zero movie credits when she beat out fifteen thousand actresses for the role of Mattie Ross in True Grit. Her first scene in the movie had her going toe-to-toe with a grizzled horse trader named Col. Stonehill (Dakin Matthews), out-negotiating him so thoroughly he was left speechless, and she didn’t look out of place for one second. In fact, she had more screen time than Jeff Bridges, and most people, professional critics included, assumed she was the lead.
The Academy didn’t see it that way; Paramount campaigned her in the supporting category instead, and she still earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her spellbinding performance. That nomination put her on the map, and she never looked back. She went on to lead the Pitch Perfect franchise, star in Bumblebee (the one Transformers movie that didn’t make people want to scream), and even built a music career on the side. Her song, Love Myself, trended for a while. In recent times, she’s pulled off masterful performances in several prestige projects, including Hawkeye and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners.
4. Jessica Chastain – The Help (2011)
Juilliard is basically the Harvard of acting schools, but it doesn’t guarantee a thriving acting career. Jessica Chastain found that out the hard way. She trained at the prestigious institution, did some theater gigs to last a lifetime, and still didn’t get her first film role released until she was 31. 2011 was the year for her; she appeared in six movies that year, like someone, somewhere had suddenly flipped a switch, and she was everywhere. But The Help was the one that got people’s attention the most. She played Celia Foote, this sweet, awkward Southern wife who gets snubbed by the town’s social circle because she married the richest guy in town.
Chastain bagged a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance, and Hollywood had to notice her. A Best Actress nomination for Zero Dark Thirty followed the next year, and about a decade later, she finally took home the Oscar for playing Tammy Faye Baker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. That’s the one where she wore so much makeup she looked like a clown, but in a heartbreaking way. She went from near-unknown to an actual Oscar winner. That’s the kind of Cinderella story Hollywood loves.
5. Timothée Chalamet – Call Me by Your Name (2017)
Timothée Chalamet spent 2014 buried in one of the biggest movies of that year, and almost nobody noticed. He had a very tiny role in Interstellar, plus a handful of TV credits, nothing that hinted at what was coming. Three years later, his portrayal of Elio in Call Me by Your Name changed the trajectory of his career as an actor. It took him from a relatively unknown actor to the third-youngest Best Actor nominee in Academy history at just 22 years old, behind only Jackie Cooper, nominated at age 9 for 1931’s Skippy, and Mickey Rooney, nominated at age 19 in 1939 for Babes in Arms.
Chalamet didn’t just fade away like some one-hit wonders. He went on to lead the Dune franchise, play Willy Wonka in Wonka, and land a second Best Actor nomination for A Complete Unknown, where he plays Bob Dylan. He’s now one of the most in-demand leading men on the planet, pulling in both blockbusters and Oscar buzz.
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