Susan Lucci

What failed

Eighteen times she sat in an audience with a camera on her face and heard another name. Her surname became the generic term for a perpetual runner-up, and she made a television advert about it herself.

What happened next

She kept accepting the nomination. On the nineteenth, in May 1999, the presenter opened the envelope and said the streak was over.

The point

Most failure runs are private, which is what makes them survivable. Lucci's was broadcast annually. She turned up for the nineteenth knowing exactly how the first eighteen had gone.