Ann Dowd

What failed

She was paid a hundred dollars a day for sixteen days on a film that got her the best notices of her career. It grossed under $320,000 and never played more than twenty-one screens. The distributor declined to send screeners to awards voters because the film was going to lose money.

What happened next

She and her husband put six thousand dollars on their credit card and borrowed seven thousand more to press and post the discs themselves. She did not get the nomination. She kept working exactly as she always had, and four years later won an Emmy at sixty-one, after more than thirty years of small parts.

The point

She did everything right, backed herself with real money, and lost. The thirteen thousand dollars bought her nothing directly. Betting on yourself is not the same as being rewarded for it.