Yahoo Lifestyle I'm A Petty Patty, So Here's A List Of Celebs Getting Sweet Payback After Being Shunned, Bullied, Or Insulted
Landing on the r/AskReddit sub will send you down a rabbit hole that will take hours off of your life – hours that you will never be able to get back. And recently, I found myself skimming through hundreds of comments about celebrities who got the last laugh.
User u/Fronzie7 asked, "Frank Sinatra said, 'The best revenge is massive success.' What's a real-life example of this?" This led to a flurry of responses highlighting celebrities who've risen to the top despite the odds being against them.
Note: some entries have been edited and condensed for clarity.
1."George Lucas got the ownership of the toy rights to Star Wars because they didn’t think it would be successful. He made an absolute killing on those."
2."Michael J. Fox has a great story about when he started out. Some big wheel at the network didn't like him for the role of Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties."
"He was too short, not cute, not heartthrob enough, you're never going to see his face on a lunch box. But the producer cast him anyway, and the show shot to number one and stayed there.
Fox sent him a Family Ties lunch box with his face on it and then Back To The Future 1, 2 & 3 lunch boxes."
3."Sylvester Stallone. Casting agents told him he was too stupid-looking and he'd only get small roles as the thug who got beaten up. He said he literally went to every casting agent in NYC and got rejected by all of them."
"Even after he wrote Rocky and found producers, they didn't want him to star in it."
4."Ron McNair had the police called on him when he was little because he was Black and reading in a library. He grew up to be an astronaut, and the library he was kicked out of was later named after him."
5."Brendan Fraser getting the Oscar after being blacklisted from Hollywood for over a decade for speaking out about being sexually assaulted."
6."When Lady GaGa was in college, some of her classmates had a Facebook group called 'Stefani Germanotta, you'll never be famous.'"
"Pretty sure she proved them wrong."
7."Blockbuster laughed baby Netflix out of the room with their idea. Then later, grown-up Netflix killed Blockbuster."
Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images, Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images
8."David Tepper, after being passed on for partner multiple times at Goldman Sachs, decided to go work for himself. A few decades later, he bought his ex-boss's house (Jon Corzine) in the Hamptons for $43 million! He then proceeded to demolish the thing and put up an even more expensive mansion."
9."Harlan Ellison sent every writing award he received to one of his old professors who said he'd never be successful."
10."Dave Mustaine went on to have quite a career after getting fired from Metallica."
11."Freaks & Geeks got canceled by NBC. Judd Apatow then made it his mission to make every single teen actor on the show a massive star both in front of and behind the camera."
12."Tina Turner. She got away from an abusive husband with virtually no assets and went on to become a solo superstar!"
13."Lucille Ball auditioned for the part of Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With The Wind. After getting rejected by the studio producer, she met Desi Arnaz and became one of the most influential stars in the world."
"THE REVENGE: She founded her company Desilu and set up shop in the same office the producer rejected her in."
14."Taylor Swift’s re-recorded versions of her albums just recently surpassed the stolen versions in total number of streams. And she’s currently on the highest-earning tour of all time."
15."Brian Acton, who applied for a job at Facebook but was turned away, goes on to create WhatsApp and sells it to Facebook for $19 billion five years later."
16."John Gurdon was sent home from school with a report card, and on that report card was a note to his parents from the headmaster pleading with them to not let him go into the science field to waste anyone's time. 'Several times he has been in trouble, because he will not listen, but will insist on doing his work in his own way. I believe he has ideas about becoming a Scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous. It would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who have to teach him,' is what the report card said."
"Today, that report card is the only thing he has framed in his office, which is in a building that is now been named after him, after the many contributions to nuclear transplantation and cloning. He also has a Nobel prize. Also, he has been knighted. He has received many honors and awards in addition, and the only thing he has framed is that report card telling him not to waste anyone's time by trying science."Edit: link belowwww.wtvr.com/2012/10/15/john-gurdon-nobel-prize-teacher-letter
17."Hillary Swank. She played Steve's girlfriend or some nonsense like that on Beverly Hills 90210. She said in an interview that, basically, she got the call that she was being cut; I forget the reason. Shortly after that, she got the Boys Don't Cry role, and two Academy Awards later..."
18."The band Lynard Skynard named themselves after a teacher named Leonard Skinner who told them they wouldn't amount to anything."
19."When he was a student, Adam Sandler’s acting teacher bought him a beer and told him that acting wasn’t for him."
"Years later after the success Adam Sandler runs into him and introduces him as 'The only teacher who ever bought me a beer.'"
20."The Voice rejected Luke Combs at preliminary rounds cuz they didn’t think he was what they were looking for. Now he’s inducted into the Grand Ole Opry and one of the top-selling country artists, not to mention an all-around nice guy from everything I read."
21."The CEO of Dell said he should buy Apple and shut it down because it was unprofitable and he didn’t like Apple. Then Steve Jobs rolled out the iMac, and then the iPhone, and now Apple could buy Dell 10x over and still have cash left over."
22."James Gunn got canceled and fired from helming Guardians of the Galaxy by Marvel executives for old tweets when he was trying to break out in comedy. Stars joined together to make sure he would be reinstated. Got the job back and continued with massive success, eventually became head of DC universe on top of it."
