Famous people who failed before they succeeded

Science, Nature & Culture · 6 min read

We usually meet successful people at the end of their story, with the trophy in hand. What gets left out is the rejection letters, the lost jobs and the years nobody believed in them. These stories are worth knowing, not because failure is fun, but because they show that setbacks are often part of the route rather than the end of it.

J.K. Rowling

Before Harry Potter became a global phenomenon, Rowling was a single mother living on state benefits in Edinburgh. By her own account, the first book was turned down by around a dozen publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it in 1997. The lesson here is persistence in the face of many polite refusals; a manuscript can be right and still be rejected many times.

Walt Disney

Disney's early company, Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, went bankrupt in 1923. He moved to California and started again, eventually creating Mickey Mouse and building an entertainment empire. The often-repeated story that he was fired from a newspaper for "lacking imagination" is widely told, though details vary by source. What is certain is that he faced financial collapse early and rebuilt.

Albert Einstein

A popular myth says Einstein failed maths at school; he did not, and he excelled in it. But he did struggle to find an academic job after graduating from Zurich Polytechnic in 1900 and ended up working as a patent clerk in Bern. It was during those years, in 1905, that he published his groundbreaking papers on relativity, the photoelectric effect and more. The lesson is that an unglamorous job did not stop original thinking.

Dhirubhai Ambani

Starting out with modest means, Dhirubhai Ambani worked at a petrol station in Aden, Yemen, before returning to India in 1958 with little capital. He began trading in spices and later textiles, and built Reliance Industries into one of India's biggest businesses. His story is a reminder that small beginnings and limited resources need not limit ambition, though business success also depends on timing and a great deal of risk.

Amitabh Bachchan

The actor was reportedly told early in his career that his voice was too deep, and he was rejected by All India Radio. He had many films that did not do well before Zanjeer (1973) made him a star. In later years, his production company, ABCL, ran into serious financial trouble around the late 1990s and early 2000s, and he returned to television with Kaun Banega Crorepati in 2000. The lesson here is about reinvention at any age.

Thomas Edison

Edison is often quoted as saying that he had not failed, but had found thousands of ways that did not work, in reference to his search for a practical light bulb filament. The exact words and numbers vary in retellings, but the spirit is accurate: his laboratory tested vast numbers of materials before settling on a workable design. Treating each failure as data is a mindset many scientists share.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah grew up in poverty and faced a difficult childhood. Early in her career, she was removed as a co-anchor at a Baltimore television station in 1977, reportedly for being too emotionally involved in stories. She then moved to a talk show in Chicago, which became The Oprah Winfrey Show, one of the longest-running talk shows in US history. Her path suggests that what looks like a flaw in one setting may be a strength in another.

Michael Jordan

Jordan is said to have not made his high school varsity basketball team in his sophomore year, as he was placed on the junior varsity squad. He later became one of the greatest players in the history of the sport and won six NBA championships. He is also credited with a famous line about missing thousands of shots and losing hundreds of games, which captures the idea that repeated failure is part of excelling.

What they have in common

Person	Setback	Turning point
J.K. Rowling	Many publisher rejections	Bloomsbury accepts in 1997
Walt Disney	First studio went bankrupt	Moved west, created Mickey Mouse
Einstein	Could not find academic job	1905 papers while working as a patent clerk
Amitabh Bachchan	Early flops, rejected for voice	Zanjeer in 1973; later KBC in 2000
Oprah Winfrey	Removed from a co-anchor job	Chicago talk show

Practical lessons you can use

• Separate the outcome from your worth. A rejection tells you about one attempt, not about you as a person.
• Collect feedback. Ask what went wrong, then adjust one thing at a time.
• Keep a day job or safety net while a creative or business plan grows, as Einstein did.
• Change the setting, not always the goal. Oprah found her fit in a different format.
• Give it time. Many of these breakthroughs came years after the setbacks.

Tip: Remember that survivorship bias is real. We hear from those who succeeded after failing, not those who failed and stopped. Persistence helps, but smart adjustment matters too.

Final thoughts

None of these people were immune to doubt. What they shared was a willingness to keep trying, to learn from what went wrong and to change course when needed. The next time something does not work out, treat it as an unfinished chapter rather than the whole book.