Most high-paying careers are believed to take a lot of hard work, ambition, and in many cases, knowing the right people. Rarely does anyone land that dream job by only having one of the three aforementioned qualities working for them.
In the world of entertainment however, people tend to run into jobs because they have that indescribable "it" quality that people seem to gravitate and respond to without really understanding why. A number of models were just discovered in restaurants, actors and actresses get discovered in auditions they never intended to make, and singers get discovered in karaoke bars and small clubs all the time. These days, a number of personalities are even getting discovered on YouTube and social media. This is not to say that any waif can get a job in the entertainment industry. People do work extremely hard to get high profile careers, but every now and then someone gets discovered in ways they never intended. These ladies all seem to have hit the jackpot when it comes to getting discovered in some of the easiest ways possible.
14 Ellen Pompeo
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If you're one the many big fans of Grey's Anatomy out there, you might want to plan a quick stop at the SoHo Kitchen Bar & Grill in New York City. It was at this location that Ellen Pompeo was discovered. Was she performing some kind of evening entertainment for restaurant patrons? Well...sort of. Ellen was tending bar when a casting agent spotted her, liked her look, and asked her if she would like to do some work in commercials. Ellen took the offer.
The casting agent must have underestimated her at first. The commercial work turned into bit parts in television shows, which eventually led to the title role of Meredith Grey in Grey's Anatomy.
13 Sarah Michelle Gellar
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We all know things ended up pretty well for Sarah Michelle Gellar. Her role as Buffy Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is practically legendary. Who would have thought a goofy show about kids hunting monsters would have ever joined the ranks of classic television? Er, outside of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? of course.
Sarah Michelle Gellar was discovered at the age of four while eating in a local restaurant. It probably helps that this restaurant was in New York City, where discovery stories like this can actually happen.
Usually stories like this involve the subject going into commercial work. While Gellar did do a lot of commercials as a child, she started working on TV movies and television almost right away. She hasn't really stopped acting since 1983.
12 Eva Mendes
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Eva Mendes was well into her life when she was discovered. She was studying marketing at California State University in Northridge. The best part about Eva's discovery:
She wasn't even there when it happened.
Eva's neighbor was a photographer who had taken some shots of her and ended up using some for his professional portfolio. An agent was flipping through the photographer's work when he noticed the pictures of Eva. He tracked her down and began trying to convince her to do acting.
Eva eventually caved, left the University. She still took studying pretty seriously, as she almost immediately began getting professional instruction in acting. While getting trained in the craft, Mendes took some light work in commercials and bit parts. She even took a part in Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror. She says the performance was so bad that it has at times brought her to tears.
11 Shannyn Sossamon
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Shannyn lived in LA and was pretty much an all around entertainer. However, it never seemed that being a big star was really on her radar. She went to LA to become a dancer and attended Dance Unlimited. To earn a living, she did work in commercials but never really went after meatier roles in television or film. At night, she would DJ at local clubs. The DJ work eventually led to a DJ appearance at Gwyneth Paltrow's birthday party where she was discovered by casting director Francine Maisler.
Sossamon was soon cast alongside Heath Ledger in 2001's A Knight's Tale, a film for which she won an MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Female Performance. Not bad for just five years out of high school.
10 Evangaline Lilly
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Evangaline Lilly really lucked out in her discovery story. She was just walking down the street when she happened to catch the eye of a Ford Modeling Agent. The agent stopped her right there on the sidewalk and gave her a business card. She eventually called the number on the card and began getting work, but not anything truly noteworthy. It was mainly in commercials and non-speaking parts in television shows. She was pretty happy with where she was at, but a friend convinced her to try out for ABC's Lost. Lilly tried out, never expected to get cast, and even thought the show was mediocre (considering they weren't allowed to read full scripts). When she was cast, she almost didn't get the part due to troubles getting a work visa.
These days, Lilly is going to be the star of the first Marvel superhero film to feature the name of a female superhero (Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp). The Marvel movies are quite possibly the biggest thing on the planet. To think she was just pushed into acting by some guy on the street.
9 Angie Harmon
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Harmon always wanted to be an actress and had pursued it for some time. However, she mainly worked as a model in rather high profile magazines. Her first major cover was for a national contest for Seventeen Magazine where she beat out 63,000 other contestants.
It wasn't going to casting calls or trying out parts that eventually landed Harmon her first role. It was being lucky enough to sit next to David Hasselhoff on an airplane. At the time, The Hoff was huge thanks to his hit series Baywatch. Baywatch was so big in those years that he was working on a spin-off series called Baywatch Nights. He was so charmed by his conversation with Harmon that he gave her the co-starring gig (alongside himself) for Baywatch Nights right on the spot. In an airplane.
Since then, Harmon has pretty much been a fixture in hit television series with shows like Law & Order and Rizzoli and Isles.
8 Janet Leigh
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Everyone is familiar with Janet Leigh. Her scream in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is a legendary scene in cinema. She is also the mother of current scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis.
Prior to career that spanned over 50 films, Janet was discovered in a rather unlikely way.
Actress Norma Shearer was visiting a ski resort owned by Janet's parents. When at the front desk, Norma happened to notice a picture of the owner's daughter and was taken aback by her looks. She asked to keep the picture (which probably seemed rather weird to Janet's parents) and showed it to the right people at MGM. Leigh was soon given a screen test and shortly after that, she was a given the starring role of the 1947 film The Romance of Rosy Ridge.
7 Rebecca Black
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Rebecca's situation isn't quite as glamorous as the others on the list. She didn't exactly get big because of any kind of perceived "it" factor or raw talent.
Rebecca's mother and father found a production studio that, for a fee, would write and produce a song for an individual to sing in a music video. You didn't have to necessarily be talented, you just needed the money. It was just a fun thing to have your own legitimate single without having to do much work.
Rebecca posted her music video on YouTube thinking it would mainly be viewed by friends, family, and a few kids at school. Unfortunately the video and song were so bad that the video went viral and soon had millions of views. Obviously the comments were nasty and brutal because, you know, it's YouTube.
Despite being considered bad, Rebecca took everything pretty well and that charm struck a chord with a lot of people. She's portrayed herself in a number of projects, including a Katy Perry video, and voiced the character of Penny in The Legend of Kung Fu Rabbit.
6 Kate Upton
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Kate Upton wasn't exactly discovered by chance. Upton attended a call by a modeling agency and was signed almost immediately. She had quite a bit of work on magazine covers, but that was about it. Her own agency was beginning to worry that Upton "wasn't fashion enough."
One night, Upton was out with friends at a Clippers game and one of them took a video of Upton doing a chair dance version of "The Dougie." Due to the...we'll just say "bouncy" nature of the video, it quickly went viral after being posted to YouTube. Upton's career was saved and blew up to new heights. Upton now signs million dollar contracts and turned her modeling career into a full on acting career as well.
5 Jennifer Lawrence
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Jennifer Lawrence is probably the biggest actress in Hollywood. It was just a little over ten years ago when Lawrence was first discovered.
When Lawrence was just fourteen years old, she went on a trip to New York City with her parents. A complete stranger approached Lawrence and her family and asked to take a picture of Jennifer. The stranger asked for her mother's phone number and she was contacted almost immediately to do a screen test. Things happened so quickly that Lawrence just ended up staying in New York through the summer and taking small roles in movies and television. In a mere five years she ended up doing Winter's Bone, and Hunger Games just a couple years later. These two films are largely responsible for the current upward trajectory of her career.
4 Marilyn Monroe
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In 1942, a man named Jimmy Dougherty married his girlfriend Norma Jeane Mortenson. Norma was a rather attractive brunette with a troubled past who dropped out of school to go to work in a munitions factory in Burbank, California. Shortly after their marriage, Jimmy, a marine, was stationed in the South Pacific. His wife stayed behind in California and continued her work spraying planes to make them flame retardant.
While Jimmy was away, a photographer for Army publication Yank magazine was in the munitions factory that Norma worked in. He snapped a quick picture of her working and told her that she could most definitely go places in the modeling world. By the time Jimmy came back in 1946, Norma was blonde, working as a model, and calling herself "Marilyn Monroe". One year later, "Marilyn" and Jimmy would separate after the modeling career that practically fell in her lap soon turned into an acting career.
3 Natalie Portman
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Natalie Portman was discovered while having dinner at a pizza place after a dance class. While the "discovered in a restaurant" story isn't entirely rare, at least not for the ladies on this list, Portman wasn't approached to be an actress.
A man who worked for Revlon saw Portman and liked her looked. He initially approached her to do modeling for the company. Instead of jumping at the job and taking his first offer, Portman told him she'd rather be an actress. Four years later, when Portman was only fifteen, she would appear in Leon: The Professional. This film would put her on the map as one of the strongest young performers at the time. Everything went up from there.
2 Rosario Dawson
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Larry Clark and Harmony Korine are not conventional filmmakers by any stretch of the imagination. While planning out their film Kids, which would be directed by Larry Clark and written by Korine, the two decided they would pull their talent directly from the place their film was about. Clark and Korine hit the streets of New York and looked for people that most seemed to already be in line with their cast of troubled of teen characters. Many of the actors and actresses in the film were discovered in odd ways. Leo Fitzpatrick was discovered when Korine and Clark found him cussing violently at his skateboard. Rosario Dawson was just sitting on a stoop, totally minding her own business.
Many of the kids in the film went on to have pretty fantastic careers due film's attention that came brother from critical acclaim and controversy.
In addition to Rosario Dawson, the film also jump-started careers for Leo Fitzpatrick and Chloe Sevigny.
1 Charlize Theron
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Charlize Theron originally decided she was going to be a dancer, but a series of knee injuries made her decide she would have to abandon the dream and she decided to turn to acting. Since Theron was from South Africa and her native tongue was Afrikaans, she had an issue getting roles due to her strong accent. She would spend hours watching American television and mimicking the speech to try and hide the accent. Unfortunately, things weren't happening fast enough.
One day when Theron was out of funds, she went to her bank and tried to withdraw money from an account in South Africa. The teller couldn't make the transaction and Theron went into a bit of a rage and began screaming at the teller. It turned out that one the patrons of her same bank was Hollywood manager John Crosby. Noticing Theron's flare for the dramatic, he started finding Theron work. He first film role would be in Children of the Corn III.
It's interesting that Theron is one of two actresses on the list that got their break in a bad Children of the Corn sequel.
Sources: my.xfinity.com, foxnews.com
