11 Actors Who Landed Major Roles With Almost No Experience

Find out how these actors landed their breakthrough roles…

When Henry Golding was cast in a starring role in Crazy Rich Asians, he had never been in a movie before. While he at one point had worked at a prestigious hair salon in London, Henry had most recently been working as a TV presenter in Kuala Lumpur and hosting a travel show for BBC and Discovery Channel Asia. It was that gig that caught the attention of an accountant in the film’s Malaysian production office, who suggested Henry to director Jon M. Chu.

“[Jon] was like, ‘You can do this. We see so much of this character in this role for you, that if you bring who you are as a person, we’re going to nail this,’” Henry told Vulture.

Rachel Zegler was just a high school student with a passion for singing and musical theater when she was cast as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. When her friend sent her a social media post about an open casting call and she submitted an audition, she had no idea that just weeks later she would get a callback and would soon be meeting with the director himself. After almost a year of auditioning, she finally landed the part.

“It’s kind of crazy to look back on that girl who was singing show tunes in her bathroom, and I wonder what she would think of me now,” she told Variety.

Iman Vellani was also still in school when she auditioned for the lead role in Ms. Marvel. She had no acting experience when her aunt sent her a post about the open casting call and almost didn’t submit a self tape. Thankfully, she decided to send something in at the last minute — and just days later she was being flown out to Los Angeles.

“This happened through a WhatsApp forward. My aunt was a part of some Brown group chat that she never opens and one day she opened it and someone had forwarded this casting call and she sent it to me and I’m like, ‘Look this is what a scam is,’” she said on The Daily Show.

She continued, “I’m not an actor. I can’t. It was fully a blank page that said, ‘Send headshot and resumé here, Ms. Marvel casting’…Then they sent the sides for the self tape and an NDA and I was like, ‘Oh my God it’s real.’”

When Gabourey Sidibe was cast in Precious, she was a psychology student and working as a receptionist. She had quit taking part in local theater productions years prior — and when she was recommended to audition for the starring role in the film, she was hesitant to agree because she had just started classes. On the day of the audition, she decided to go.

“I didn’t think I had any business going to the audition, I didn’t think I could get an acting job with one audition. I wasn’t an acting student, I never wanted to act. The biggest thing I learned is that I was wrong about what I thought I could do. I thought I’d be a receptionist my whole life,” Gabourey told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Alexis Bledel had just graduated high school and had only been an extra in one film when she auditioned for Gilmore Girls. She says she ended up landing the lead role in part because of how little she knew about the entertainment industry. Alexis explained that she ended up at six different callbacks, which annoyed her at the time.

“Oddly, I wasn’t a very seasoned actor at all. I didn’t know the process,” she shared on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “I grew a tad bit impatient. I had a little attitude, and our boss really liked that a lot. She was like, ‘That’s our girl!’ I was like, ‘Are you guys going to bring me back again…?’ and she was like, ‘I like that, that’s perfect.’”

Camila Mendes’ starring role as Veronica Lodge on Riverdale was the very first part she landed. The audition process all happened right before she graduated from New York University, where she was studying acting, and some professors weren’t very happy about her absences.

“Some teachers were really cool about it, and some teachers… weren’t,” she recalled to Entertainment Weekly. “The goal is for me to be able to pay my loans. I was frustrated that they would get mad when someone’s trying to pursue the career that you’re teaching us.”

Before Hunter Schafer landed a starring role on Euphoria, she was working as a model and had plans to go to fashion school. When she came across the casting call for the show, she considered applying, even though she had never acted before — and then was coincidentally invited to audition through her modeling agency.

“I have not acted before and was not planning on it really either. I was modeling for about a year in New York and had my sights set on fashion school afterwards and then…I saw this casting call floating around on Instagram. It was for trans girls, who didn’t have to be experienced and it didn’t say ‘Euphoria’ or anything…I had been interested in trying acting and…I was interested in the craft but didn’t really push myself to do it. Then, my model agency rang me up a few days later and had me go in for an audition and it was the weirdest thing — it kept going,” Hunter told EW.

Jameela Jamil was working as a model and had hopes of becoming a comedy writer when her modeling agency suggested she attend an audition for The Good Place. While she wasn’t interested in pursuing acting and had no experience, she went through with the audition anyway — and ended up landing the role.

“I wanted to be a writer, and a comedy writer, in particular and I was forced, really, to go to the audition for The Good Place. And I was only kicking and screaming ’cause I thought that I didn’t deserve to be there in a Mike Schur comedy because I had no previous experience whatsoever, but they gave me the role ’cause Mike Schur is a strange, strange man,” Jameela told W Magazine.

Kunal Nayyar may have studied acting but he’d never landed a real role until The Big Bang Theory, aside from an uncredited part on NCIS. When he went in to audition for the CBS series, he says he had no idea what an important audition it would be.

“I had no idea I was going to get the role. I remember [co-creators] Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady laughing a lot and I just felt so much in my element. I’d just gotten my MFA in acting from Temple University and was high on life and just got back from the Royal Shakespeare Company in England,” Kunal told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wasn’t jaded and didn’t understand the weight of the situation. This was my second job, I played a terrorist on NCIS. I didn’t understand the gravitas of the situation and just walked in. That was so dumb!”

Rosario Dawson was still a teenager when she was cast in Kids. Looking back, she says she was hanging out on her front porch in New York City when she was approached by director Larry Clark and writer Harmony Korine. The duo were location scouting for the movie in which they were looking to cast non-actors. Rosario went in to audition and landed the role, kicking off her acting career.

“Larry said he was making his first movie and would I be interested. And Harmony was jumping up and down, like, ‘Oh my God, I wrote this character for you without even realizing. I didn’t even know you. You’re perfect for this character, you have to come in,’” she told Dazed.

When Nikki Blonsky landed her role as Tracy Turnblad in the film adaptation of Hairspray, she was just a high school senior who had no previous professional experience. She had seen a casting call for the role online and got several callbacks before flying to Los Angeles for a final audition. Then, when she officially landed the part, the film’s production company sent a film crew to the ice cream shop where she was working to surprise her with the news.

“They all just really took me under their wing and shared such love and emotion and joy with me and we bonded…[It] was like college and summer camp and everything rolled into one and amped up to a million,” Nikki told The New York Times of her first filming experience.