It feels safe to say that it’d be difficult if not impossible for someone to pull the same trick that managed to get Donna Wilkes into the spotlight these days. If anyone remembers, she was still a teenager when she moved to Los Angeles and couldn’t legally work anywhere, so she lied about her age and even married, telling everyone that she was 18 when she was still 15. At the age of 17, after working two jobs for a while, she went into acting and was given a role in Jaws 2, and from there, her career started out and kind of went up and down with the various projects she took on in the years to come. The idea that she started work so early though is one that might make a lot of people voice their own opinion in regards to how she showed up on the scene and started working. To a lot of folks, it doesn’t sound like the safest way to go about doing things since younger stars tend to need a bit more representation and guidance when getting into the business. But it does sound as though Donna simply knew what she wanted to do and wasn’t going to mince words when it came to getting it done.
By the time she was old enough to be considered a legal adult any and all criticisms about her age were kind of a moot point since she’d already established herself in the industry and, more to the point, she’d grown up more in a few years than many people do in their entire lives since the pressures of having two jobs, being married, and getting into acting were trials she’d already gone through before she was even legally old enough to drink, so thinking that she had her life under control wasn’t too hard since she was already hanging with the adults when she was just a kid. Of course, when people learned this it was likely that they were a bit shocked to think that a kid had somehow managed to work her way into the business, but at the age of 18, there was nothing they could do any longer to keep her out, especially since she started acting a year before that. These days this feels as though it’s less likely to happen and would be too much trouble to attempt simply because a quick check of a person’s background could allow a person to discover just where a person came from and how old they really are. It’s possible to fool people without a doubt, but the effort that goes into this feels like it would be too great to really think about it unless there was a good reason for doing it.
Her career hasn’t exactly been stellar but it hasn’t been completely down in the dumps either since starring in any Jaws movie is at least worth noticing since like it or not, those that have been more than just another victim in any Jaws movie have gone down in pop culture history in one way or another. But being a part of the Days of Our Lives cast and guest-starring in many other prominent TV shows is enough to make Donna stand out just enough to be noticed by those that have been paying attention all these years. It’s definitely not enough to state that she’s a superstar or even close to being an A-lister, but at the very least it’s enough to say that she took a chance and found fame and possible fortune in the business in her own way and has made a comfortable living for many years. Her net worth would indicate that she hasn’t met with continued success, but that’s not hard to realize since looking at her filmography it’s very easy to see that a lot of the projects she’s been on are largely unknown and aren’t the type of movies that people are rushing out to see or find in order to sing her praises. Cynical as that might sound, her one bid at fame came a long time ago when she was still fairly young and had a shot at really breaking into something special. But when that time came and went it was obvious after that point that she was going to stick around, but that she wouldn’t be reaching any higher than she’d already gone.
Some stars keep rising after their first initial roles, while some take more than a little time to establish themselves as celebrities that people should pay attention to. It almost feels as though Donna was eager to let people see her and make her way into the business and leaped before realizing what it would take to really sustain a career in the movies and in TV. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but since she’s still around it feels safe to say she’s learned it.
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