As I recall, Lord Byron said that one of his poems made him famous overnight, but I can’t remember which poem, or which year. Research time!
Lizzo was in music for years before people started to take notice. She had been in a couple groups and put out lots of songs before her album Big Girl Small World in 2015, which is when I saw her in Colbert. She put out another album in 2016. Her single “Truth Hurts” came out in 2017, but didn’t get much notice.
In 2019 her album Cuz I Love You came out and THEN “Truth Hurts” got big, and then it was go time for Lizzo! She was everywhere from 2019-2023.
Byron’s breakthrough year was 1812 with the publication of “Childe Harold.”
Tom Stoppard: 1967 (London premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead).
Nick Offerman: 2009 when he was cast in Parks and Recreation.
Robin Williams: 1978 (the year Mork & Mindy premiered)
Meryl Streep: 1979 (release of Kramer vs. Kramer)
Don’t sell them short. They did a couple of great tunes in “Listen People” and “East West.”
Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t judge a band from which I only know two or three hit singles, though those are all bubblegum. But I thought the same about the Monkees before I bought their box set “Music Box” for peanuts. It opened my eyes/ears and now I can admit that they were much better than their reputation and made a lot of good music.
Thanks for the info about Williams’ TV debut—I’ve got a nitpicky question about which year to place his breakthrough in, not that we’re doing anything here that’s definitive anyway. But If someone like Williams debuts in a new hit show on September 14, 1978 but wins an Emmy for it in 1979, appears on the March 12, 1979 cover of TIME, etc., do we count 1978 as his year or 1979? Based on the reasoning of the Beatles’ breakthrough being 1964, though they had their first hit records in the fall of 1963, I’m inclined to go with the more recent year.
While I was looking up Williams’ information in IMDB, I looked up Hoffman’s. That example is even better, since the official release date of The Graduate, the film that turned him instantly from a nobody into a movie star, was December 21, 1967. Obviously, his breakthrough year must have been 1968, when he was nominated for an Academy Award.
In my opinion, a “breakthrough” year is when somebody goes from “Who’s he?” (or “who’s she?” or “who are they?”) into a major star. Most people don’t have such years, and there’s no shame in breaking through over a period of three or five years’ good work–in Streep’s case, she’d been a rising star for a year or two before “Kramer vs. Kramer,” having well-reviewed but definitely secondary or tertiary supporting roles in Manhattan, The Deer Hunter, Julia and a few others in previous years. We can quibble about this later, of course–I just want to register my opinion on this as early as I can.
Graham Norton (who I believe is pretty well known in the US) shot to fame in the UK when he did a stint as guest presenter on The Jack Docherty Show. His brief period of filling in earned him a nomination at the 1997 British Comedy Awards as Best Newcomer, up against… Jack Docherty (amongst others). Norton won, and rapidly eclipsed Docherty and pretty much everyone else in the UK chat show world.
j
I don’t think Denzel had a breakthrough year. By 1992 or so he was a major movie star, but at that point he had been in the public eye for a decade, both on TV (St. Elsewhere) and in various movies. He was one of those actors who was always respected, his fame growing gradually, organically from one year to the next.
I was thinking 1965 for Dylan, not to minimize what he did in 1963.
Guns N Roses had a break though year in 1988 when their album Appetite for Destruction went to Number One on Billboard charts…
As we get closer to exhausting the list of true breakthrough years and artists, we naturally begin to expand the definitions. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but I’ve noticed the last few nominations (including my own—I agree that Denzel‘s fame was more gradual than it was sudden, as was Bogart’s) are pretty sketchy. Not that my own personal experience is any kind of authority, but I honestly have not even heard of one nominee (Nick Offerman) to this day, much less bowed down to him as a mega-superstar. No doubt, this is a personal limitation of my own, rather than a belittling of Mr. Offerman’s stardom, but I do need to wonder if my ignorance speaks to the limits of his universal fame. Maybe there are years in which simply no one has had a breakthrough to stardom? Probably so. I’m thinking that unless there is a loud chorus rebutting me, and claiming “Are you crazy? Everybody knows who Nick Offerman is!”, I’ll be inclined to categorize him as a TV star (?) but not as someone who is known throughout the world and has gone on to dominate his field (which I assume is acting?). May I hear from the chorus? Do you all recognize Nick Offerman as a giant who broke through to fame in the year 2009?
Heh - Looking back I just realized that 1996 is Norton, and for 1997 I just proposed …Norton (Graham). I just wish that had been deliberate.
j
John Denver had a rocky start (no pun intended).
His first solo album was only moderately successful. RCA told him, “We need an album with hits.” But his second album did even more poorly. And his third album was mostly covers, and was the worst of the three. RCA noticed a downhill trend and told him, “If you’re next album is not a hit, we’re dropping you.”
His fourth album, Poems, Prayers & Promises, was released in 1971 and contained the song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
So 1971 for John Denver.
This is beginning to look too Brit-centric but…
In my memory, Idris Elba went from generally unknown to star almost with his first appearance as Stringer Bell in The Wire (in 2002).
j
Samuel L. Jackson had been a respected but largely obscure character actor for a while - and then he walked in and stole Pulp Fiction from a whole bunch of much bigger stars and became a Hollywood icon basically overnight. 1994 was DEFINITELY his year.
Morgan Freeman had been a working actor, on TV, film, and stage since the mid-1960s, but he didn’t break through until the late '80s.
One could argue that his breakthrough year was either 1987 (in which he had his first Academy Award nomination, for Street Smart), or 1989, in which he had starring roles in Driving Miss Daisy (for which he received his second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actor), Glory, and Lean on Me. Either way, he didn’t really break through as a star until he was in his 50s.
Mary Martin in 1938. She was a complete unknown when she sung “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” on Broadway and immediately became one of their biggest stars.