20 Actors Who Had To Wait DECADES Before Hitting Big

There's a good chance you didn't know who Jacki Weaver was until she received a surprise Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her superb performance in 2010's Aussie crime thriller Animal Kingdom.

This was Weaver's first major role to get much play outside of her native Australia, by which point she was in her mid-sixties, and had an incredibly storied and diverse acting career behind her.

Weaver has been regularly acting since the early 1960s across theater, film, and television, and though well-regarded in Australia, she was virtually unknown elsewhere.

And so, her road to mainstream success spanned the better part of 50 years (!), after which she swiftly became a Hollywood regular, working with directors such as David O. Russell, Park Chan-wook, Woody Allen, and Steve McQueen, to name just a few.

Her performance in Russell's Silver Linings Playbook ultimately netted her a second Best Supporting Actress nomination, establishing her as a go-to screen matriarch.