RealityChuck. Ack. I should have remembered Clara Peller!
Granted – but my point was that he wasn’t an actor.
But that’s not what the OP was asking. The OP was asking for people who didn’t get into “the biz,” not people who didn’t get into acting.
R. Lee Ermey comes to mind. He was a real life Marine who served several tours of duty in Viet Nam, and spent some time as an actual drill instructor. He got a few jobs (most notably in “Apocalypse Now”) as a technical advisor, beginning in his mid-thirties, and started getting small roles in the war flicks he was working on.
Since he was an actual Marine drill instructor, I guess he wasn’t really “acting” in movies like “Full Metal Jacket.” But not ALL of his roles have been military ones.
Someone I desperately wanted to be included in this list was Mel Brooks. He was successful in the movies later on in his career, but he was doing his act from soooooooo young, it can’t really stand a mention.
Plus I just love Mel Brooks.
Apparently, quite a few of the cast of Soprano’s were also doing other stuff when acting came thier way.
astorian writes:
> Since he was an actual Marine drill instructor, I guess he wasn’t really “acting”
> in movies like “Full Metal Jacket.”
I’m not sure what you’re saying here, but let me point out that Ermey only spent 11 years in the Marines. He then enrolled as a college student and began getting small acting jobs. He also began working as a consultant on military matters for some films. Kubrick hired him as a military consultant for Full Metal Jacket and asked him to do a tape of some ranting that a drill instructor might do. Kubrick was so impressed by Ermey’s performance on the tape that he hired him to play the role. In any case, he was already long out of the Marines when he played the drill instructor in that movie.
Wendell, astorian is saying that Ermey was just doing what he did in real life - he was a Vietnam-era hard ass DI - the only difference was that he did it in front of a camera - ie, it was not much of a strech to play a hard ass DI, when he actually had been one in real life.
And 11 years, especially during the Vietnam era including 1 tour in-country and two tours in Okinawa, is not exactly a short stint. If you’ve ever had any experience with the military, you know that their training stays with you.
Folks, who the heck is Don Crosby? Father of Kim?
Apparently according to someone I’m chatting online with he was a practising dentist until the age of 67 when he retired and went into acting.
Any ideas?
From what I can find, Danny Aiello also seems to be up for nomination.
Feel the might of the Italian American power.
Wilford Brimley went from beign a bdoy guard, farmer, rodeo rider and blacksmith to pitching for Quaker Oats and filling grandpa roles everywhere. Still going strong at the age of 70 and controlling his diabetes.
Michael Clark Duncan got his oscar-nominated role in “The Green Mile” in his early fourties. He’s old, but he’s still ticking!
Before becoming an actor at age 29, Gabriel Byrne was an archaelogist, a schoolteacher, a short-order cook, and a bullfighter.
Pash
Chief Dan George, who played Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man, doesn’t appear to have gotten into acting until he was 51, took a decade off, and resumed the craft in motion pictures at 60.
I’d put Dale Dye on this list. Another ex-Marine who got into acting in 1985 at the age of 41 after a long and distinguished military career. Among other roles, he was the Captain in Platoon in the final scene that ordered the planes to drop their weapons on top of their position. “Drop everything you’ve got in my perimiter. For the record, it’s my call. Repeat: It’s my call. It’s a lovely fucking war…”
Bollywood star Amrish Puri did not begin acting in movies until he was 40. He subsequently made over 200 films. He is best known for his role as the villian Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Alastair Sim was in his mid 30’s before his first film.
critter42 writes:
> Wendell, astorian is saying that Ermey was just doing what he did in real life -
> he was a Vietnam-era hard ass DI - the only difference was that he did it in
> front of a camera - ie, it was not much of a strech to play a hard ass DI, when
> he actually had been one in real life.
If that’s what he was saying, that’s O.K., but it wasn’t clear to me that that was what he was saying. It sounded to me like perhaps he was saying that Ermey was still a Marine drill instructor at the time he played one in the movie. Look, let’s not argue about what astorian meant, since he’s the expert on what he meant, not us. If he wants to clarify what he meant, let him do so.
I also believe Gene Hackman was a late bloomer in the Movie Biz when he got his big break in “The French Connection”