Before they were famous: Rarely-seen breakout roles from Hollywood’s A-list stars

It took these Hollywood stars years to break into the A-list, but before they made it big they had starring roles in rarely seen flicks.

At this year’s SAG Awards, actress Kristen Bell sang an amusing parody of her Frozen ballad ‘Do You Want To Build A Snowman?’ in which she recounted how some of the most famous actors in attendance got their foot inside the glittering ballroom door.

There were giggles as she spotlighted Selena Gomez’s stint as the purple dinosaur’s playmate in Barney & Friends, Timothée Chalamet’s guest role as a patient in a TV ICU, and Demi Moore and Kathy Bates’ OTT performances on daytime soaps.

Bell (who made her own screen debut in an insurance commercial long before her star-making turn in Veronica Mars) is right: everybody has to start somewhere.

Reese Witherspoon looked unrecognisable in Freeway, released years before she became a star in Hollywood.

Before he was Wolverine, Hugh Jackman spent time performing as Coco the Clown at children’s birthday parties, recalling to Jimmy Fallon: “I was very lean on skills. There were no balloon animals or anything. I remember once, I was five minutes into my act and this kid shouts: ‘Mum, this clown is crap!’”

Even the so-called nepo babies must start at the bottom. Just look at Jennifer Aniston, whose dad John Aniston played the villainous Victor Kiriakis on Days Of Our Lives for decades. Aniston had many failed TV pilots (including one based on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) under her belt before she became Rachel Green on Friends. It was a similar story for George Clooney, who despite the fact his dad, Nick Clooney, was a TV anchor and aunt, Rosemary Clooney, a singer and star of the classic film White Christmas, spent years as a supporting player on The Facts Of Life, The Golden Girls and Roseanne before ER made him a bankable star.

Chadwick Boseman's little known thriller The Kill Hole was released years before his breakout appearance in Black Panther.

But did these now very famous faces have the “it” factor when they weren’t the star of the show, and the material was, shall we say, questionable? Or did it take the right role – and in the case of Aniston and Clooney, the right hair – for them to make their mark?

To settle the debate, why not look back at what some of the biggest and brightest stars did when they were almost famous.

Freeway: In this dark take on Red Riding Hood, made three years before her breakout role in Cruel Intentions, a young Reese Witherspoon plays a troubled teen runaway who is picked up by a creepy older man named Bob (Keifer Sutherland).

Zapped: Hot on the heels of her debut on Dancing With The Stars in 2013, a fresh- faced Zendaya appeared in this Disney TV movie. The style icon played a teenager who discovers a phone app gives her the ability to control people around her.

The Kill Hole: In one of the first major projects in the late Chadwick Boseman’s sadly short career, the talented Black Panther hero plays a war veteran haunted by past actions from his time serving in Iraq.

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Originally published as Before they were famous: Rarely-seen breakout roles from Hollywood’s A-list stars