Quick Summary
Breaking into acting or modeling often comes with rejection—but resilience leads to success. This post explores how Gisele Bündchen, Harrison Ford, and Meryl Streep overcame early career setbacks and casting rejections to become global icons. Their stories highlight essential traits like perseverance, self-belief, and adaptability—offering inspiration and insight for aspiring performers navigating the entertainment industry today.
Gisele Bündchen
Bündchen was born in Horizontina, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil in 1980, and grew up with five sisters. In 1993, her mother Vânia enrolled Gisele and her fraternal twin Patrícia in modeling courses. Though her mother’s aim with it was for her daughters to get a better posture and to become more confident about themselves, the whole experience ended up with Gisele getting discovered at a shopping mall by a talent agent from Elite Model Management agency. A modeling career started to seem like a serious option, as Bündchen participated in the Elite Model Look contest in 1995, where she placed second nationally in Brazil and fourth globally.
She formally decided to begin her modeling career in 1996, yet things did not go as smoothly as expected. Modeling castings and auditions resulted in one rejection after another, with Bündchen ultimately receiving a whopping amount of 42 rejections. As if the fact alone would not be discouraging, the reasons for rejections were particularly harsh. Casting directors specifically criticized Gisele’s physical appearance, namely her nose and eyes, and even openly doubted the possibility of her future chances as a model.
It did affect the young teen model, as she started to feel insecure about her appearance and abilities as a model. Yet she was encouraged by her father Valdir, who told Gisele to embrace her supposedly unusual facial features. Bündchen names this as the moment she decided to be resilient and persistent in the pursuit of her modeling dreams. Her breakthrough opportunity finally arrived in 1998 when she was cast in an Alexander McQueen runway show. The very same year she was cast for many other prestigious fashion brand campaigns, soon becoming one of the most recognizable, highest-paid, and in-demand models in the industry.
Harrison Ford
Born in 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, Ford grew up in a middle-class family and, surprisingly looking back at it now, was a very shy child. While successful as a boy scout, which later inspired the Indiana Jones character’s back story, and high school’s radio broadcaster on sports, Ford even later still felt he had to overcome his shyness. This led to him taking a drama class in the final quarter of his senior year in college. Not only did it help, with Ford becoming a self-proclaimed “late bloomer” but the experience also inspired him to pursue acting as a potential career.
Following getting expelled from college for plagiarism, and a summer spent performing in the theater in Wisconsin, Ford moved to Los Angeles, California to seriously pursue acting in 1964. He struggled to get cast in roles, with his first role arriving only two years later and it was an uncredited one at that. To make matters for Ford even worse, he had offended producer Jerry Tokofsky with a joke, which led him to get sort of blacklisted from getting cast. More minor non-speaking or speaking yet uncredited roles followed in movies and television up until the early 1970s, with Ford becoming increasingly frustrated with the way his acting career had been going. During auditions, he even received criticisms regarding his acting qualities and the likelihood of him making it in the industry. As the struggles prolonged, Ford had to start working as a carpenter to financially support himself and his family.
The carpentry turned out a blessing in disguise for his acting aspirations, as he did work all over the Los Angeles greater area, including with people from the entertainment industry, which opened new doors to auditions for Ford. Finally, George Lucas chose him for a role in American Graffiti in 1973, which led to more significant yet minor roles, until ultimately got cast in another Lucas-directed movie - Star Wars. The movie was a groundbreaking success, with Ford’s first major role receiving particular praise. It ended up being a star-making role, with Ford becoming one of the biggest names in Hollywood for the next nearly five decades.
Meryl Streep
Streep was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1949. Growing up, she received constant positive encouragement from her mother Mary, whose words injected her daughter with the confidence necessary to pursue her aspirations and dreams. As a teen, Streep starred in school plays, sang in school recitals, and even was a high school cheerleader, ultimately earning the title of homecoming queen in her senior year. It was not until 1969 when Meryl was in college that she realized she would like to pursue acting seriously as a career, following the college-wide acclaim of her performance in the school play of Miss Julie.
Following a stint of theater work in New York, Streep got inspired by the 1976 movie Taxi Driver, and notably the performance of Robert De Niro, with whom she later worked together, to pursue a transition to an acting career in film. She started to apply to casting calls for roles in movies, yet one audition seemingly ended these aspirations. In the same year, Streep auditioned for the lead role in the remake of the adventure film King Kong. Film producer Dino De Laurentiis was not pleased by the looks of Streep, harshly criticizing her appearance to his son in the Italian language. Unbeknownst to him, Streep understood the Italian language and directly revealed it to the producer. Ultimately, the audition ended with the casting of Jessica Lange and the role turned out to be star-making, while the rejection experience was disheartening to Streep, who returned to continue to work with stage plays.
Her performances on Broadway became a huge success, leading to Streep finally getting her first role, yet a small one, in a feature full-length motion picture film in 1977, in the drama Julia. Once again, the experience was not a good one, as Streep’s already limited performance unfortunately was cut or even edited. Streep recalls at the time she felt hatred towards the film industry, and that pursuing it was a mistake.
Yet actor Robert De Niro saw her on stage in 1978 and suggested she would join the cast of the movie The Deer Hunter. She decided to accept the opportunity primarily due to being together with her boyfriend John Cazale, who also was starring in the movie despite being diagnosed with lung cancer. Her empowering performance ended up earning her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and widespread acclaim, opening doors to a highly successful acting career that has now spanned nearly five decades and includes winning three Oscars and eight Golden Globes.
