12 Underrated Facts About Actors Who Deserve More Love

Sam Elliott's father, Henry, worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This had a long-lasting positive influence on Sam, as he explained to NPR:

I was outdoors a lot in my lifetime. And I was with my dad… and his peers, who were all men's men and outdoorsmen. All had incredible work ethics and were all good men. And they were really the ones I think that I learned what kind of a man I wanted to be when I grew up.

While Sam aspired to be like his father, he also wanted to be an actor. Henry passed when Sam was only 18, and, according to the mustache-clad performer, his father died thinking his son was a “total idiot… he said 'you have a snowball's chance in hell of having a f*cking career in that town.'"

Henry never understood why his son wanted to be an actor, and didn't approve of the career choice. For his part, Sam said, “I didn't get to know him near as well as I would love to have,” and always just wanted to make his father proud.

Known for his performances in the likes of Juno, Oz, and Whiplash, J.K. Simmons has proven he can do just about any role with which he's tasked. 

After shifting from “being a jock to a hippie” in high school, he studied music in college. From there, Simmons worked on stage, then TV, and later movies, eventually winning an Academy Award for Whiplash in 2015. 

Along the way, he put his music prowess to use by delivering singing telegrams. The unique aspect of the job, as he told Jimmy Fallon in 2014, was that he wore a tutu on the job:

It was dudes with beards and otherwise sort of mountainy-looking dudes with tutus. It was my main source of both income and embarrassment.

In addition to the tutu, Simmons wore an opera mask and held balloons when delivering telegrams. 

At the turn of the century, Timothy Olyphant was an actor on the rise. Appearances in movies like Go (1999) and Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) brought increased attention to the performer. This was especially clear when director Rob Cohen received the script for The Fast and the Furious (2001). 

According to producer Neal H. Moritz in 2017, both Cohen and actor Paul Walker liked the script. When they approached studio executives at Universal Pictures, they were given one condition for casting Dominic Toretto:

If you can get Timothy Olyphant to play that role, we will greenlight the movie...

Moritz continued:

The luckiest thing that ever happened to us is Tim Olyphant turned us down.

After Olyphant declined, Universal suggested Vin Diesel, who had recently appeared in Pitch Black. He accepted the role and made it famous.

In addition to being an actor, Jeremy Renner is a musician, renovates houses, and enjoys being a father. He found acting while attending junior college in his native California. According to his former drama professor, Charline Freedman:

I would say within a month, I knew we had somebody very special in this young man.

Once Renner started acting, he never turned back. That said, his first paying gig as a performer wasn't for any screen or on any stage. As he revealed to the Los Angeles Times in 2010:

I'm at Modesto Junior College and this guy comes in and says, “Hey, you wanna make $50?” The job was to help train police academy cadets. They put me in this room the size of a closet and said, “They’ve got a call about a guy creating a ruckus. We want you to resist arrest.” “Got it.” He comes in, “Calm down, sir.” I start freaking out and kick him in the balls… It was fun.

Renner then opined that this may have actually enhanced his performance as James “Jem” Coughlin, a bank robber in 2010's The Town.

When tasked with a project for a communications class in high school, Willem Dafoe ended up recording some interesting conversations on video: 

I interviewed three different students in the student body… One considered himself a Satanist; one considered himself a nudist; and one was interested in legalizing pot.

The collection of students meant Dafoe captured unique shots, even talking to one of his subjects while they were on the toilet. The Satanist showed Dafoe his p*rnography collection, and the marijuana advocate (who also sold it) talked about some of his customers.  

When Dafoe began editing the footage, a teacher saw it and sent him to the principal's office. School officials called his mother, who exclaimed “Oh Willy! You're making p*rnography!" Despite Dafoe's assertions that the Satanist's offensive images were simply part of the video project, he was thrown out of school for the work.  

Another revelation from the actor was how he got his first name. “William James Dafoe” is his given name, but he chose to use “Willem” after a friend started calling him that. It ended up being a suitable moniker for his professional life as well.

Born in Benin, Djimon Hounsou left Africa and went to France to live with his brother Edmond when he was 12 years old. While in Lyon, the future Amistad and Gladiator actor was “extremely lonely,” while his brother had difficulty finding means to survive. By 19, Hounsou returned to Benin, but later returned to France.

Back in Lyon, he said he tried to bring one of his “f*cked-up ideas about being a boxer or making movies” to fruition. He failed at the former, so set out to do the latter. 

Soon after, Hounsou went to Paris. However, after his student visa expired, he became unhoused, not to mention living in the country illegally. As he explained to The Guardian in 2023:

It was almost impossible to live and to find a job in France at the time. So that’s how I ended up on the streets.

It was only through a chance meeting in Paris that Hounsou's circumstances changed: 

[I met] a very feminine gentleman, who was like: “Oh, you have a cool look; I have a friend who’s a photographer who’s looking for really cool faces.”

Hounsou took the man's card and, once the need for food and shelter got the better of him, the aspiring actor entered the world of professional modeling. He had been unhoused for months, but shortly after becoming a model, he was able to afford an apartment of his own.