Morgan Freeman

What failed

He turned down a drama scholarship at eighteen to enlist as a fighter pilot, spent four years as a radar repairman, and realised on first sitting in a jet that the whole plan had been a mistake. He then spent six years on a children's television programme he had expected to leave after a couple, and by the mid-1970s was drinking two or three quarts of whiskey a week. When it was cancelled in 1977 he was thirty-nine and back to auditions and odd jobs.

What happened next

Street Smart in 1987 brought an Oscar nomination and the critics' prizes — and lost most of its money. Driving Miss Daisy followed in 1989, when he was fifty-two.

The point

Roughly twenty-three years passed between his first professional work and the acclaim. He was not idle in them and he was not undiscovered — he won stage awards through the same period. He simply was not famous, and there was no way to tell from inside 1977 that 1989 was coming.