Items18The creator’s order
  1. 1Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold SchwarzeneggerBorn 30 Jul 1947Arnold Schwarzenegger arrived in Hollywood as a seven-time Mr. Olympia with a heavy Austrian accent and was told his body and voice made him unemployable. The documentary Pumping Iron (1977) made him a personality, Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator turned his limitations into a screen persona,…0i
  2. 2Sylvester StalloneSylvester StalloneBorn 6 Jul 1946Sylvester Stallone was a struggling bit-part actor when he wrote Rocky in a matter of days in 1975 and refused to sell the script unless he could play the lead. The producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff took the gamble on a small budget, and Rocky won Best Picture and earned him nominations…0i
  3. 3Ricky TomlinsonRicky TomlinsonBorn 26 Sept 1939Ricky Tomlinson was a Liverpool plasterer and trade union activist, jailed in 1973 as one of the Shrewsbury pickets, a conviction overturned in 2021. Blacklisted from building work after his release, he performed in working men's clubs, joined the cast of Brookside in 1982 and went on to Ken…0i
  4. 4Quentin TarantinoQuentin TarantinoBorn 27 Mar 1963Quentin Tarantino left school at fifteen and learned film by watching it, working for years at the Video Archives rental shop in Manhattan Beach. Selling his scripts for True Romance and Natural Born Killers and the backing of Harvey Keitel got Reservoir Dogs (1992) made, and Pulp Fiction won the…0i
  5. 5Robert RodriguezRobert RodriguezBorn 20 Jun 1968Robert Rodriguez made his first feature, El Mariachi (1992), for about $7,000, part of it earned by volunteering for a clinical drug trial, and shot it in a Mexican border town with friends as cast and crew. Columbia Pictures bought and released it, and his do-everything approach led to Desperado,…0i
  6. 6Andrea BocelliAndrea BocelliBorn 22 Sept 1958Andrea Bocelli, blind since childhood, took a law degree and sang in piano bars to pay for lessons rather than following the conservatoire route into opera. A demo he recorded for Zucchero reached Luciano Pavarotti, and after winning the newcomers' section at Sanremo in 1994 he became one of the…0i
  7. 7Kevin SmithKevin SmithBorn 2 Aug 1970Kevin Smith dropped out of film school after a few months and shot Clerks (1994) at night in the New Jersey convenience store where he worked, paying for it with credit cards and the sale of his comic collection. Its success at Sundance launched his View Askewniverse films and a parallel career in…0i
  8. 8Jay-ZJay-ZBorn 4 Dec 1969When major labels passed on him, Jay-Z co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records in 1995 with Damon Dash and Kareem Burke and sold early records himself in Brooklyn. Reasonable Doubt (1996) came out on their own label through an independent distribution deal, and the ownership mindset of those years shaped a…0i
  9. 9Vinnie JonesVinnie JonesBorn 5 Jan 1965Vinnie Jones was a hod carrier who became a hard-tackling midfielder with Wimbledon's Crazy Gang and won the 1988 FA Cup. Guy Ritchie cast him as the debt collector Big Chris in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), and the screen version of his football persona led to Snatch, Gone in 60…0i
  10. 10Tyler PerryTyler PerryTyler Perry put his savings into his first play, I Know I've Been Changed, in 1992, and it flopped; for several years he restaged it, at times sleeping in his car. When it finally sold out in Atlanta in 1998, he built a touring audience on the Black theatre circuit, brought his character Madea to…0i