16 Famous “Failures” of Wildly Successful People
Updated: Feb. 28, 2024
From Oprah to Einstein, your favorite figures have seen their fair share of famous "failures," mistakes, mishaps and losses
When someone’s extremely successful, it’s normal to think that they were always successful. But that is usually far from the truth. Even successful people have had their fair share of failures in their lives and had to fail time and time again before finally getting their big break. Those failures eventually led to emotional strength and self-assurance.
So here are some of the famous failures by wildly successful people. We hope their stories will build your confidence, while motivating you to continue on your journey despite any mishaps. Here’s the best part: They failed at the things they ended up doing the best.
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Simone Biles didn’t make the U.S. women’s junior national team
Simone Biles is reported to be “the most decorated gymnast in World Championships history,” according to Olympics.com. She has the most World gold medals, making it hard to believe that she didn’t make the U.S. women’s junior national team in 2011. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Biles explains how her loss inspired her to “train harder.” Despite the disappointment of not making the team, Biles went on to finish third in the U.S. junior all-around in 2012. Later, she won the U.S. senior all-around for the first time (the first of four, in fact!) in 2013. She’s an icon in the world of gymnastics, who was even awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022.
Sha’Carri Richardson did not qualify for the championships
Sha’Carri Richardson made history in 2023 after winning the women’s 100 meters at the Track and Field World Championships in Budapest. This win officially gave Richardson the title of the fastest woman in the world. However, some may remember that Richardson’s past includes the invalidation of her win in the 2020 Olympic trials. Not only was she given a 30-day suspension, but she was unable to compete in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Plus, she failed to qualify for the 2022 World Athletics Championships. These famous failures did not stop her from competing, as she went on to beat the late Florence Griffith Joyner’s 35-year-old 100-meter dash record to win her iconic title.
Martin Luther King Jr. got a C in public speaking
One of the many memorable moments of Martin Luther King Jr.‘s life is his “I Have a Dream” speech, but Dr. King wasn’t always a gifted public speaker. He actually got a C in his public speaking course during his first year of seminary school in Chester, Pennsylvania, according to the National Museum of African American History & Culture. This “failure” didn’t stop him from hitting the books, as Dr. King went on to become a straight-A student and the class valedictorian. This below-average grade also didn’t deter Dr. King’s speech-giving abilities—he gave more than 2,500 speeches during his lifetime.
Michael Jordan didn’t make the varsity team
The NBA All-Star didn’t make the varsity basketball team his sophomore year of high school. Instead, he was a starter for the junior varsity team for a few reasons, according to his former coach, Forbes reports. The coach had lots of seniors on the roster that year, Jordan was only 5-foot-10 at the time and putting Jordan on JV gave him more playing time than being a varsity benchwarmer. Some might look at this JV status as a famous “failure,” but it seems the extra play time did him well. Jordan won six NBA championships and four MVP awards, and is in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, according to Biography.
12 publishers rejected J.K. Rowling’s original Harry Potter
The Harry Potter universe spans many different mediums including books, movies, theme parks, toys, stage shows and more. Before all this success, author J.K. Rowling sent her synopsis to many different publishers and was rejected 12 times, according to Business Insider. Rowling tweeted two of the letters on social media to inspire other writers, since her first rejection letter went up on her wall, encouraging her to persist. Millions of fans are glad she did, because in 1997, Bloomsbury Publishing published the first 500 hardcover copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
A film school rejected Steven Spielberg three times
Steven Spielberg has directed Oscar-winning films and cult classics alike. His humble beginnings as an amateur child filmmaker, however, didn’t impress the film school at the University of Southern California. In fact, the university reportedly rejected Spielberg three times. Although his lack of a degree didn’t deter Universal Studios from ultimately hiring him, making him one of the youngest directors in the 1960s, according to Biography. Spielberg did eventually receive an honorary degree from the university in 1994 and became a trustee in 1996, the LA Times reports.
Walt Disney’s first cartoon character tanked
Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney go together like macaroni and cheese, but before mouse-ear mania, Disney had another character—Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Universal hired Walt Disney Studios to make 26 shorts starring Oswald. You’ve probably never heard of him, however, because Universal and the cartoon’s distributor, Charles Mintz, forced Walt out and took over the rights to the Rabbit series, the BBC reports. Disney‘s next creation involved no middleman and a different animal—a mouse. As Mickey’s popularity grew, Oswald didn’t keep up. Even though the Rabbit wasn’t successful, Walt Disney and his other creations were.
Apple fired Steve Jobs from his own company
The late Steve Jobs knows equally about success and failure. Apple’s founder dropped out of college to co-found Apple Computer before eventually clashing with the CEO that Jobs recruited for the company. Apple’s board sided with the CEO and stripped Jobs of his responsibilities, according to ABC. Jobs left the company without a definite plan, but he eventually started a new computer company, NeXT, and Pixar Animation Studios. In 1996, Apple Computer acquired NeXT after struggling, returning Jobs to his role before eventually starting the iPod and iPhone craze. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” Jobs said in a speech to Stanford graduates.
Beyoncé Knowles’s group lost Star Search
Girls Tyme might not sound familiar, but you know one of the members—Beyoncé. The group performed on Star Search in 1993 and lost to a rock band, but Beyoncé didn’t let that stop her. The singer went on to be part of Destiny’s Child, a successful solo artist and a multi-Grammy Award winner. It’s clear that Queen Bey can acknowledge her “failures.” In her song “Flawless,” an audio clip from her Star Search performance plays, Rolling Stone reports.
Albert Einstein failed his school entrance exam
Albert Einstein is arguably one of the most important and influential figures of physics in the 20th century. One might assume he’d be good at traditional learning, but the physicist and mathematician wasn’t exactly a whiz at school. After dropping out of his school in Munich at 15, Einstein took the entrance exam for a polytechnic school in Zurich. He flunked the botany, zoology and language sections, but passed the math one, according to History.com. Einstein kept studying and passed the exam the next year, although he struggled before eventually graduating. Struggling in school didn’t prevent him from developing the special and general theories of relativity and explanation of the photoelectric effect show, per Biography.
Katy Perry sold just 200 copies of her first album
Before she was Katy Perry, the “Firework” and “Roar” singer was Katy Hudson. Perry’s music was different at the time too. Critics liked her debut gospel record, Katy Hudson. Sales, however, show that listeners weren’t so keen on the album. According to Complex, the album was a “commercial flop” for Red Hill Records, selling only 200 copies. The American Idol judge made up for it later, though, and became the world’s highest-paid woman in music in 2019, Forbes reports.
Producers rejected 30 of Sylvester Stallone’s screenplays before Rocky
Before his “overnight” success, Stallone was an out-of-work actor desperate for a gig. Thirty screenplays were rejected before Stallone wrote the 80-page script for Rocky in three days, according to the Guardian. There are also some reports claiming 1,500 talent scouts rejected the actor too. Stallone got his time in the spotlight, as he insisted on playing the titular role of Rocky. The film won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1977, beating out Taxi Driver and All the President’s Men, and it also sparked the Rocky franchise that made Stallone a star.
The Grand Ole Opry fired Elvis Presley
In 1954, Elvis Presley covered Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. His act was so disappointing that talent manager Jim Denny reportedly told him to go back to driving a truck, according to Taste of Country. Presley got the last laugh when he signed a deal with Opry’s biggest competitor, the Louisiana Hayride, for 52 Saturday night appearances, launching his career and helping him reach new audiences.
Oprah’s first big-budget movie was a flop
Oprah Winfrey’s success in Hollywood spans TV, books and 15 movies, but not all of them were a success. The first big-budget movie Oprah produced and starred in was an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Beloved. One of her famous failures? Well, the movie tanked at the box office during the fall 1998 release, according to an interview Oprah gave to Vogue. Although her talk show was at the high of its popularity, it wasn’t enough to beat Chucky in theaters. Oprah recovered from her disappointment and learned a valuable lesson. “It taught me to never again—never again, ever—put all of your hopes, expectations, eggs in the basket of [the] box office,” she told Vogue. “Do the work as an offering, and then, whatever happens, happens.” This strategy has obviously worked for her.
Music played Jim Carrey off the stage during his first performance
It’s hard to think of Jim Carrey as anything but successful and funny. His first stand-up performance, however, was less than encouraging. Carrey told People that he had his first “real horrible experience” in comedy when he was just 15 years old, performing at Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club in Toronto. In one of his famous failures, Carrey’s act was reportedly so horrible that they played him off the stage and called him “totally boring.” Carrey came back on the scene two years later in New York before relocating to Hollywood, where he had some TV appearances before his big-screen debut in Finders Keepers.
Only 30 people came to Tyler Perry’s first play
Oprah Winfrey told her TV show audience that writing about difficult experiences could lead to personal breakthroughs, according to Biography. This tidbit of wisdom inspired Perry to write a series of letters to himself. They are the basis for his first musical, I Know I’ve Been Changed. The show covered topics such as child abuse, faith and forgiveness. It ran for one weekend, drawing a measly 30 people, total. Perry paid for the show and also directed, produced and starred in the production. Although his first time around wasn’t a hit, the show went on in several other cities unsuccessfully before a critical and commercial breakthrough performance in Atlanta. One of his next projects introduced Madea. The popular character appears in 10 different films where Madea specializes in funny and wise one-liners.
Sources:
- Olympics.com: “Simone Biles: All titles, records and medals – complete list”
- ABC News: “When Steve Jobs Got Fired By Apple”
- Biography: “Jim Carrey”
- Oprah Daily: “Every Single Movie Oprah Has Been In”
- ABC News: “Sylvester Stallone on Being a Struggling Actor Before He Wrote, Starred in ‘Rocky'”
- Fast Company: “How much is Harry Potter really worth?”
- CNBC: “15-Year Harry Potter Spell Brings Riches to Publisher”
Originally Published: June 19, 2020
