You know the road to success is most of the times threatened by obstacles and failures. This is just the way things are and we’re sure you already archived tens of famous motivational quotes related to failure and getting where you want to get, without giving up on your dreams and plans. Luckily for everybody, history knows a lot of examples of people who reached stardom after failing miserably at the beginning of their careers and if Stephen King’s dozens of publishing rejections to his Carrie or J.K. Rowling’s struggles as a debutant author are already known to you, brace yourselves, as there are other people who seem to have traveled the same long and hard way to celebrity. And some of them even managed to fail after that too.
This isn’t that type of motivational article meant to shake you to the core and show you that you just have to follow your dream. Just as there are famous people who finally got a lucky break in their field and became successful and world – known, there are probably just as many who tried the same recipe and still failed. Maybe there isn’t a recipe to success after all, so this list of people who reached stardom after failing miserably is purely informative and special. Of course you need to follow your dreams and never give up on trying, just as it is reasonable to stop doing what you’re doing after you look evidence in the eyes and understand this is not the right path to follow. But let’s keep our hopeful demeanor and meet a bunch of humans who are somewhat… special from this point of view.
1. Walt Disney – The man who wasn’t afraid of changing the recipe
There are few people on the planet who don’t know what “Disney” is, represents or does. And while we are so ready to occupy our cinema seats every time Disney releases a new production and buy tickets to see the Disney parks (wherever in the world), the man behind this universal success had a tough start, not to mention a long list of failures before finding his own recipe to success. He was fired as an editor for lacking imagination, he started a few businesses that failed and pushed him to bankruptcy and finally he found his niche and his route to success, becoming what he is now.
2. Steven Spielberg – The man who knew what he was good at
Say Steven Spielberg and you promptly remember a long list of big budgeted blockbuster movies. But how was Steven’s path into the dark and full of terrors world of cinema success (an industry known for claiming dozens of innocent souls a day?). He is the type that never gave up on his dream, although he was rejected from the film school and when he finally managed to get in school, dropped out to become a movie director. The rest is history.
3. Raymond Chandler – The man who joggled with success and failure
He is the father of the modern American crime novel and there is no study of mystery literature which doesn’t mention his name. His Philip Marlowe detective became iconic for all detectives in literature and movies. But Chandler is not your regular Stephen King, who tasted failure and then never stopped climbing the success ladder. Chandler joggled with the two for his entire life. He tried journalism and failed, he tried to be an accountant and managed to become successful, he tried literature but it didn’t go so great, he had a soft spot for drinking and seducing women and he finally died alone and miserable. In between, he wrote the novels and the short stories that assured him his eternal place in American (and universal) literature and in Hollywood archives, while he managed to reach stardom after failing miserably and fail again and again. The fascinating thing about Chandler is that he preferred this roller – coaster of alternating success with a suicide attempt and generous portions of whiskey that had a bad influence on his life and writing.
So you see, the road to success is not always straight and up to the stars. There were the lucky ones who just needed a lottery ticket and then managed by themselves to get there, with hard work and ambition. Some didn’t even care about the obstacles but did what they were convinced they were meant for in this world. Some tested and re-tested and re-invented themselves until they became what they wanted to be. And then, there are the ones who failed and got up, failed again and played with stardom.
