8 Famous People Who Found Success Later in Life

Julia Child

When you think of celebrity chefs, Julia Child is likely at the top of the list. Yet her path to culinary stardom wasn’t always obvious. She was born Julia McWilliams in 1912 and worked in advertising and journalism earlier in her career; she even worked as an intelligence officer in World War II. 

After the war, she married diplomat Paul Cushing Child, whose work took the couple to France in 1948. Not much of a cook when she arrived, Child was enamored by the art of French cuisine and began to cook more frequently. She opened a cooking school in 1951 and published her seminal cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961 — the year she turned 49 years old.

While this cookbook definitely grabbed the attention of the public, it was Child’s TV show that propelled her to true fame. The Childs returned to the U.S. in the early 1960s, and a pilot of a program called The French Chef aired on July 26, 1962. The TV series became a regular program on February 11, 1963, with a 50-year-old Julia Child as the full-time host. 

The French Chef was broadcast into U.S. living rooms from 1963 to 1973, earning a 1965 Peabody Award and a 1966 Primetime Emmy. Child continued to have an indelible impact on the American culinary scene throughout her 60s, 70s, and 80s before passing away in 2004 at the age of 91.

Christoph Waltz

With multiple Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs to his name, Christoph Waltz has become one of the most accomplished actors of the 21st century. But Waltz’s fame wasn’t always a sure thing. His first screen acting credit was the 1976 German TV movie Der Vetter im 7. Bezirk, and he spent decades as a little-known actor in Germany before his big break. 

Then in 2009, a 52-year-old Waltz appeared as Colonel Hans Landa in the Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds. His happenstance audition arguably saved the production, as Tarantino had been ready to table the film if he didn’t find someone suitable to play this pivotal character. 

The role changed the trajectory of Waltz’s career. His sadistic performance garnered international acclaim, earned him his first Academy Award, and transformed him into one of Hollywood’s most desirable talents. He has since starred in several major blockbusters, including 2012’s Django Unchained as well as two movies in the James Bond franchise — 2015’s Spectre and 2021’s No Time To Die.

Grandma Moses

Born Anna Mary Robertson in 1860, the artist later known as Grandma Moses spent much of her life as an undiscovered talent. Robertson always had a penchant for art, though her only drawing supplies as a young child were objects such as twigs and grass. At the age of 12, she left home to work for a wealthy family, who provided her with wax crayons and chalk to draw. 

In her 20s, she married Thomas Salmon Moses, and the couple eventually moved to New York where they purchased a farm of their own. In her downtime, she kept herself entertained by making needlework pictures and quilts. But in her 70s, a painful bout of arthritis left her unable to embroider.

At the suggestion of some friends, Moses pivoted to painting, which she could still do with arthritic hands. The septuagenarian began painting colorful depictions of rural farm life that caught the eye of New York-based art collector Louis J. Caldor, who helped her showcase her works in a 1939 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art titled “Contemporary Unknown American Painters.” 

Before long, Moses found herself at the top of the contemporary American art scene, and the press helped popularize the nickname “Grandma Moses,” based on a sobriquet she went by among friends. Moses exhibited her paintings into her 90s and painted into her 100s before passing away at the age of 101.

Colonel Harland Sanders

Few people in the fast-food world are more recognizable than Colonel Sanders — the face of Kentucky Fried Chicken clad in an all-white suit and a white goatee to boot. But before KFC’s success, “the Colonel” was merely Harland Sanders: a struggling yet determined businessman looking to make a living. 

Born in 1890, Sanders left home at age 13 to paint horse carriages and later worked as a train conductor, practiced law, sold life insurance, ran a ferryboat company, and manufactured lamps — none of which panned out in the long run. Then in 1930, at age 40, Sanders took over a service station in Corbin, Kentucky. He renamed it “Sanders’ Servistation and Cafe” and began selling the type of fried chicken he’d grown up eating. 

Travelers loved this, and Sanders realized fried chicken may be his ticket to success. He perfected his recipe in 1939, though as the story goes, he was rejected by 1,009 restaurants while trying to sell that recipe door-to-door. 

But in 1952, a man named Pete Harman opened the very first KFC franchise in South Salt Lake, Utah, after agreeing to buy the secret recipe. Sanders was 62 years old — and the Kentucky Fried Chicken brand only grew from there. 

In 1974, Sanders sold KFC to a management company, though he remained the public-facing spokesperson until his death in 1980. His name and visage, which still appears on the restaurant’s branding, soon became known in households across the country.

June Squibb

Though she’s now considered a leading lady in Hollywood, June Squibb wasn’t a household name until her 80s — roughly six decades into her career as a performer. Squibb moved to Cleveland in her early 20s to pursue a career in theater, and decades later, in her 60s, she broke into screen acting with her first movie credit in the 1990 comedy Alice. In one of her most notable roles, she appeared as Jack Nicholson’s wife in 2002’s About Schmidt. 

But Squibb’s big break didn’t come until 23 years after her film acting career began. At age 84, she played the role of Kate Grant in Nebraska, which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress — and put her on the radar of casting agents across Hollywood.

Squibb has since appeared in several major TV series such as The Big Bang Theory and Grey’s Anatomy, and she lent her voice to characters in Toy Story 4, Soul, and Inside Out 2. In 2024, at the age of 94, she received her first-ever cinematic top billing as star of the action comedy Thelma.

Joy Behar

Joy Behar is a comedian and actress best known for her role as a co-host of The View. But despite entering into comedy in her late 30s, it wasn’t until her mid-50s that Behar became a household name. 

In a 2010 interview with Parade, Behar explained that she decided to start a stand-up comedy career at age 39, saying, “I was broke after my divorce, and … I got fired from my day job.” She also spent the 1980s working as a receptionist and later a producer on Good Morning America.

Behar pivoted into screen acting in the late ’80s, appearing in the short-lived sitcom Baby Boom and the 1993 comedy Manhattan Murder Mystery. She also began taking on sporadic hosting gigs, which earned her a spot on The View during its debut season in 1997, when she was 54. 

At first she was hired as a fill-in for Barbara Walters, but she soon became a permanent panelist and fan favorite. Today, Behar is the only original panel member still on The View, which has earned 31 Emmys during that time, including the 2003 Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show.

Ray Kroc

Colonel Harland Sanders isn’t the only late bloomer in the fast-food industry — there’s also Ray Kroc, the man behind the success of McDonald’s. Kroc was born in 1902 and explored several potential careers in early adulthood, none of which stuck. He worked as a pianist, musical director, and real estate salesman before going into business with a man named Earl Prince in 1939. Prince had invented a machine he called a “Multimixer” to speed up milkshake production by making five of the frozen dairy desserts at once, and Kroc became his exclusive distributor.

In 1954, at the age of 52, Kroc visited a restaurant in San Bernardino, California, in the hopes of selling a few Multimixers. The restaurant was run by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald. Impressed by the eatery’s efficiency, Kroc worked out a deal to become the business’ franchising agent. In April 1955,  Kroc opened the very first McDonald’s restaurant east of the Mississippi River in Des Plaines, Illinois. He was 52 years old.

In 1961, at the tail end of his 50s, Kroc became sole owner of McDonald’s. The business mogul then quickly expanded the brand across the country, and both McDonald’s and Kroc himself became household names. Kroc served as McDonald’s CEO from his mid 60s until age 70, before retiring and purchasing baseball’s San Diego Padres. He spent his 70s serving as their owner until his death in 1984 at the age of 81.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Today, Laura Ingalls Wilder is celebrated for her Little House on the Prairie series — a classic work of children’s fiction. However, those books weren’t published until late in the author’s life. 

Wilder was born in 1867 and spent her childhood years moving about the American frontier, living in areas such as Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, the Dakota Territory, and the Indian Territory located in modern Oklahoma. After working as a teacher starting in 1882, she pivoted to writing around the age of 44, penning several agricultural articles for the Missouri Ruralist, McCall’s Magazine, and The Country Gentleman — though none thrust her into the national limelight.

In 1931, Wilder completed a draft of a memoir about her early childhood experiences titled Pioneer Girl. While it wasn’t published until 2014, publishers at the time advised Wilder to adapt the story into a work of fiction — thus the Little House series was born. 

The first book, 1932’s Little House in the Big Woods, came out the same year Wilder turned 65. In total, eight novels in the series were published throughout Wilder’s late 60s and early 70s.