10 Hollywood Stars You Didn't Know Began Their Career In Soap Operas

8. Susan Sarandon

Born less than a month after Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon is another well established and widely respected Hollywood star who began her career working in television before breaking through into movies. Like Jones, she too first made a name for herself on TV with a role in an early 70s soap opera. Well before she took on the wild role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show which earned a cult reputation, Sarandon appeared in the ABC television daytime drama A World Apart as Patrice Kahlman. Only ten years later she would receive her first of five Best Actress Academy Awards, finally winning in 1995 for her performance in Dead Man Walking. While Sarandon still regularly appears in movies to this day, she prefers to take on smaller parts in independent movies, spending much of her time focusing on political activism.