Contents
Many successful people have long proven that higher education is not a mandatory item for building a career and achieving wealth. The heroes, or rather, the heroines of our today’s selection, went even further, having achieved worldwide fame and recognition, without even having a full-fledged school certificate.
10 Nicole Kidman
The childhood of the actress can not be called cloudless: when she was in high school in Sydney, her mother fell ill with breast cancer, so the girl had to drop out of school and devote herself to caring for her.
Despite the fact that she didn’t have time for school, she had time to try to break into the cinema: at the age of 15 she made her debut in the film “Christmas in the Forest”, followed by roles in the melodrama “Riding the Wind” and the TV series “Vietnam” , “Sesame Street” and others.
These projects opened her way to Hollywood, where she quickly managed to make herself known, becoming one of the most recognizable and highly paid actresses, and in 2003, for her role in The Hours, she was awarded an Oscar.
9. Winona Ryder
The school years of this actress also did not work out: when her family moved to the town of Petaluma in California, the girl had to go to a new school, where she could not study from the very first day.
Thin and angular Winona looked like a boy, so she was beaten and her parents had to transfer her daughter to home schooling.
She was fond of reading from childhood and studied diligently with tutors, so she grew up to be a fairly educated girl (her appearance also improved significantly over the years), but she never received a certificate, which did not prevent her from receiving several Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe statuette.
8. Uma Thurman
Nobody beat young Uma Thurman and she decided to leave school herself, because she wanted to become a model. After leaving school at the age of 15, she eventually moved to New York, where she achieved success not immediately: trying to become a model and actress, she worked as a dishwasher in her free time from castings and auditions.
Fortune smiled at her after the episodic role of Venus in the film by Terry Gilliam “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”, where Philip Kaufman drew attention to her and called her to the shooting of “Henry and June”. This role made her a “sex symbol for intellectuals”, and also conquered Quentin Tarantino, who finally turned Uma into a Hollywood star.
7. Hilary Swank
Hilary’s parents divorced when she was 15 years old, and her mother took her daughter to Los Angeles, trying to fulfill her dream of becoming an actress. In California, Swank attended South Pasadena High School but dropped out before graduating.
She described her training as follows: “I felt like an outsider. I didn’t feel like I fit into the team. I didn’t even feel that the teachers wanted to see me there and teach me. I just felt like I wasn’t noticed or understood.”
Thanks to the support of her mother, Hilary made her film debut in 1992, and after that she quickly began to get major roles, eventually achieving universal recognition as a dramatic actress.
6. Kristen Stewart
Another actress who dropped out of school due to bullying classmates. They began to offend little Kristen after they saw her in the film “The Safety of Things.”
Unable to endure, the girl flatly refused to attend classes, so her parents had to make concessions and allow her to continue to engage exclusively in acting.
However, Kristen understood that studying is important, so over time she began to take lessons from private tutors and even received a certificate when she was 19 years old. It happened at the time of filming the third part of the Twilight saga, just when her character Bella also graduated from high school.
Stewart herself said about this: “I understand that it’s too late, but it was important for me to get an education at least like that, so I’m proud of myself, because I was able to do it with honors.”
5. Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet was born into a family of actors: both of her parents starred in films and TV shows, but they could not achieve great success, so they were forced to earn extra money outside of filming.
When their daughter began to ignore school for acting classes and theatrical circle, they did not scold her for this, hoping that she could achieve more than they did.
And so it turned out: already in 1994, she attracted attention with her role in Peter Jackson’s drama Heavenly Creatures, after which her career quickly began to gain momentum.
4. Cameron Diaz
As a child, the future actress and model dreamed of becoming a zoologist, keeping a variety of animals at home: snakes, cats, birds, rodents.
As a teenager, her aspirations changed and for the sake of a modeling career, she decided to leave school, although she had very little time before graduation.
Already at the age of 16, she began to collaborate with brands such as Calvin Klein and Levi’s, starting to travel around the world and participate in shows and presentations.
She made her film debut in 1994 in the comedy The Mask with Jim Carrey, already a well-known model.
It is noteworthy that she also did not receive acting education, and went to the courses only after she was approved for the role in The Mask.
3. Charlize Theron
A future Oscar winner and a sex symbol for millions of men, she grew up on a farm surrounded by wilderness, where she lived until she was 13 years old until she was sent to boarding school. She could not finish it, or rather, she did not want to.
At the age of 16, she was seriously fascinated by the modeling business and dancing, for which she dropped out of school. Further events are almost a ready-made scenario for a motivational film: the first successes in dancing were overshadowed by a knee injury, after which her mother bought her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, which Charlize, not without difficulty, managed to conquer.
2. Demmy Moor
And again the story of a young girl who decides not to waste time on textbooks, as the podium beckons her. At the age of 16, Demi became a model, and after that she came to the cinema.
According to rumors, she became an actress at the suggestion of her neighbor Nastasya Kinski, who advised her to go to auditions.
One of her first jobs was a small role in the TV series General Hospital, after which offers began to come from directors from Hollywood.
1. Cher
Let’s finish our selection not just with an actress, but also with a successful singer, who began her path to fame at the age of 16, dropping out of school and moving from the town of El Centro to Los Angeles.
Having met her future husband and producer there, she recorded an album at the age of 19, and after another 2 years she made her film debut.
Having become a real music legend and one of the most famous singers of her generation, Cher, nevertheless, regrets that she did not finish school, which she spoke about several times in an interview with reporters.