12 Young Actors Who Made It Without Family Connections

Here are 12 young actors who made it without family connections — just hard work and tons of talent.

Margot Robbie

Raised in Australia by a single mom, with three siblings, Barbie star Margot Robbie had some very normal jobs before becoming one of Hollywood's biggest young actors who made it without family connections — she cleaned houses, and worked at a surf shop and at the Subway sandwich chain, as she told MovieMaker in a 2020 interview.

As a teenager, she landed a guest role on the Australian soap Neighbors, but impressed everyone so much that she ended up becoming a series regular. In her Wolf of Wall Street audition, she caught Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio's attention by spontaneously slapping DiCaprio. (You have to take risks when you don't have connections.)

The 34-year-old recently told Vanity Fair that fame arrived faster than she expected: “Something was happening in those early stages and it was all pretty awful, and I remember saying to my mom, ‘I don’t think I want to do this.’ And she just looked at me, completely straight-faced, and was like, ‘Darling, I think it’s too late not to.’ That’s when I realized the only way was forward.”

Her film Barbie, which she also produced, was nominated for eight Oscars, including for Best Picture. It won for Original Song.

Jenna Ortega

One of the fastest-rising young actors who made it without family connections, 22-year-old Scream and Wednesday star Jenna Ortega told MovieMaker she broke into the industry by pleading with her mom, a nurse, starting at the age of six. She grew up in the Coachella Valley, the fourth of six children.

“I initially wanted to start acting when I was six years old, but my mom said no. So I kind of pleaded with her for a while, and to shut me up, she got me this monologue book she got at Barnes and Noble,” Ortega said. “I did this monologue for her about my mom dying of cancer, and she taped it and she put it on her Facebook as a joke. I think she captioned it something similar to, ‘Oh, my little drama queen.’

"And a casting director just so happened to watch the tape and contacted my mom and said, ‘Hey, I have a friend who’s an agent. I think that your daughter should meet with them.’ So my mom kind of dug her own grave with that one.”

She most recently appeared in the hit sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and also recently appeared in Finestkind (above).

Zendaya

A child of two teachers, Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman appeared in a Black History Month play at her school in Oakland, California. She later joined the California Shakespeare Theater, where her mother had a summer job as the house manager.

She soon started getting modeling jobs and Disney roles. Now she's starring in Euphoria, Dune and the Spider-Man franchise, placing her among the most A-List of A-Listers, and out-achieving many, many better-connected young actors.

Last year, the 28-year-old starred in the blockbuster Dune: Part 2 and the acclaimed Luca Guadagnino film Challengers.

Barry Keoghan

Saltburn star Barry Keoghan, 32, had a very tough childhood. His mother was a heroin addict, and he stayed in 13 foster homes between the ages of 5 and 12. His mother would visit him and his brother — until she died.

"It was the worst day of my life," Keoghan told Ireland Unfiltered with Dion Fanning. "I was about 12 but there was something in me that I just took it and it made me stronger.”

He started appearing in school plays, and scored his first film role in  in 2011 when he answered a casting notice for a film called Between the Canals, which was released in 2011. He went on to appear in films including Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk and Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, as well as Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin — for which he recived an Oscar nomination — and Matt Reeves' The Batman in a small but unforgettable role as The Joker.

He recently starred in Apple's Masters of the Air. In addition to being on our list of young stars who made it without family connections, he's also an amateur boxer.

Daniel Kaluuya

The 35-year-old Judas and the Black Messiah Oscar winner was born in London and raised by his Ugandan mother in British public housing. When he was in school at age 9, "the teacher said I was difficult, and I thought, ‘I’ll show you,’” he told The New York Times in 2018.

He wrote a play, and it won a local competition and was performed at the well-respected Hampstead Theater, where Kaluuya went on to write and perform as a teenager.

He soon landed a role and became a writer on the British series Skins, which opened more doors. His breakthrough was Jordan Peele's Get Out, and his latest, NOPE, is a return to collaborating with Peele.

He will soon make his directorial debut with Netflix's The Kitchen, making him not just one of the young actors who made it without family connections, but also a filmmaker who did so, which carries its own challenges.

Selena Gomez

The Only Murders in the Building star's mother, Mandy Teefey, was 16 when she gave birth to the future singer-actor. She and Gomez's father, Ricardo, were married, but split when Gomez was five. "I blamed my mom a lot because I wanted a family so bad," Gomez once said on an E! special. "I wanted to have my mom and dad together. I remember just being angry with my mom."

But she came to appreciate her mother's sacrifices: "My mom gave up everything for me and had, like, three jobs."

Now 32, she's starring in Emilia Perez, which is generating significant Oscar buzz.

Simu Liu

Born in Harbin, China to parents who overcame significant competition to study engineering at Beijing University, he eventually emigrated with them to Canada, where they worked dishwashing jobs as they studied and eventually became aerospace engineers. In his memoir We Were Dreamers, he describes growing up with "tiger parenting" and the pressure to be "the star child, the studious academic, the obedient son."

It wasn't easy: He also recounts physical abuse and belittlement. “I generally think it’s better to bring these moments into the light and talk about them. It wasn’t to make my parents look bad, but it was to say: ‘We were an imperfect family and this is what happened to us. And we’re telling our story in the hope that other families will not make the same mistakes,'" he told The Guardian in May 2022.

Liu, now 35, eventually became an accountant at Deloitte. But after he was laid off, he decided to pursue his dream of a career as a stuntman and actor. Things worked out phenomenally well: He's one of the most in-demand young actors, and appeared with Margot Robbie in 2023's biggest film, Barbie.

Brie Larson

Larson, 35, who also broke out in Short Term 12, was raised by her mother after her parents' divorce when she was 7. They moved to Los Angeles with Larson's sister, living in a small apartment in Burbank.

"We had a crappy one-room apartment where the bed came out of the wall and we each had three articles of clothing," Larson told The Guardian in 2013.

Things worked out OK: She became one of the most acclaimed young actors in Hollywood when she won the Best Actress Oscar for 2015's Room. She became Marvel's Captain Marvel in 2019, and recently starred in The Marvels.

She'll next star in Fast X: Part 2.

Sydney Sweeney

Zendaya's Euphoria co-star Sydney Sweeney (above) has spoken about how her family lost their home and her parents got divorced as she spent her teenage years trying to break into Hollywood. “There were many, many years where I got told ‘No’ endlessly,” she told The Associated Press in 2021 when it named her one of the Breakthrough Entertainers of 2021.

“I got told I wasn’t good enough, I would never make it, I wasn’t pretty enough — all the time. And my parents were like, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’” 

She also earned acclaim for her work on the first season of HBO's The White Lotus for her recent turn in the very based-on-a-true story HBO film Reality. Her success has only increased, and her upcoming plans include a remake of Barbarella.

Like Robbie, the 27-year-old is among young actors who made it without family connections and then wisely moved into producing: Her film Anyone But You, which she executive produced, was a breakout hit last year.

She was also terrific hosting Saturday Night Live (above).

Zazie Beetz

The 33-year-old star of Atlanta and Joker was born to a German cabinet maker who immigrated to the United States in 1990, after the Berlin Wall fell, and a New York social worker.

She acted at Muscota New School and in community theaters, and told the Times of London that she spent the year before she landed Atlanta "broke and waiting tables."

Her thriving career has included roles in Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train, and she's also in the latest season of Black Mirror.

LaKeith Stanfield

Atlanta has been a launchpad for several young stars who made it without family connections, including LaKeith Stanfield.

Born in San Bernardino, outside Los Angeles, Stanfield, 33, told Fast Company in 2014 that he "grew up very poor in a fractured family that was dysfunctional on both sides, but I sort of put up these reflectors to most of the negative things that have occurred in my life."

His breakout role was in Short Term 12, written and directed by Shang-Chi writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton. It also featured Brie Larson.

He has also earned acclaim for Sorry to Bother You and his co-starring role with Daniel Kaluuya in Judas and the Black Messiah. The 32-year-old also appears in the recent The Haunted Mansion.

Jennifer Lawrence

The Kentucky-born child of a dad who owned a construction company and mom who owned a summer camp, Lawrence has said she never considered acting before a model scout spotted her, at age 14, when she went to New York City on a family vacation.

“Look,” the 34-year-old once told Vogue. “I grew up in Kentucky, I have brothers, we had to do sports, I was a horrible student, and I kept getting grounded every time my report card came out. Acting was never an option. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, well, you got a C in math; you’re grounded. But you can be an actor!’"

She later went on to win the Best Actress Oscar in 2012 for The Silver Linings Playbook and to become the highest-paid female star in the world in 2015 and 2016.

Her most recent release, the comedy No Hard Feelings, establishes her yet again as one of our most versatile young stars who made it without family connections.

Thanks for Reading This List of Young Stars Who Made It Without Family Connections

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Main image: Sydney Sweeney, one of the young actors who made it without family connections, on Saturday Night Live. NBC.