7 Famous People Who Hit Bottom — and Turned it Around

Black Cloud: It was a turn of events as disturbing as Dexter itself. In 2010, while Michael C. Hall, lovable serial-killer lead of Showtime’s pitch-black hit, was in the midst of filming season four, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The news had an eerie resonance for the actor, then 38: his own father had died of prostate cancer at age 39.  

Silver Lining: Hall kept his diagnosis a secret from his coworkers, and started an aggressive months-long regimen of radiation and chemotherapy the day after shooting wrapped. The treatment sent his cancer into full remission, and he not only was able to start season 5 of Dexter on schedule—and keep the large cast and crew gainfully employed. Hall says he“probably would have kept it quiet had the awards shows not come up, and I felt obliged to explain my lack of eyebrows.”What’s next for the guy whose two big-time roles—a good-hearted killing machine and repressed mortician (on Six Feet Under)—were all about corpses? “I can’t seem to get away from dead bodies,” Hall admitted recently. “Even if it’s my own.”   

Giuseppe Verdi conducts the Orchestra of Paris at the premier presentation of Aida in 1880. In 1840, at age 27, Verdi became despondent over the death of his beloved wife and both infant children, victims of cholera. He planned to give up composing but when he threw down a text a producer had sent it fell open to a quote that inspired him to write an acclaimed opera, Nabucco.

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Giuseppe Verdi  

Black Cloud: The great Italian composer fell into an abyss in 1840, at 27. His second opera had been a resounding flop, closing on opening night. Far worse: over the past two years, his beloved wife and both infant children had died, victims of cholera. Despondent, Verdi became a recluse, reading trashy Victorian novels and writing not a note. He planned to give up composing altogether. When a producer sent him the text for a proposed new Biblical opera, Nabucco, he threw it on the table in disgust.

Silver Lining: Call it divine inspiration or good fortune. But as the composer later recalled, “The roll of paper opened out; and without knowing quite how, I found myself staring at the page in front of me and my eyes fell on this line: ‘Va pensiero sull’ali dorati.’” (Translated: “Fly, thought, on the golden wings.”) The words—the opening of a chorus of exiled Hebrew slaves—gave Verdi a jolt: he saw the number as a metaphor for his nation’s patriots, struggling to free themselves from Austrian rule. He started writing obsessively. Nabucco proved to be a smash, and Verdi went on to become Italy’s most celebrated composer, writing works like Aida and Rigoletto. “Va, pensiero,” meanwhile, is a melody everybody in Italy knows by heart; in 2008, an Italian senator proposed making it the national anthem. Verdi is a classic example of the people who would turn their lives around no matter what happened.

Walt Disney works at the desk in Mickey Mouse Studios just outside of Los Angeles in 1933. After a disastrous early career in Kansas City, Disney headed out to Hollywood where he built an empire around a mouse, perhaps modeled on the tame mouse who shared the office where he was forced to sleep back in Kansas City.

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Walt Disney  

Black Cloud: Early on in his career, Disney proved to be a sputtering, crashing business dud. In 1923, at age 20, Disney started the Laugh-o-Grams company—an animation studio supplying shorts to Kansas City movie theaters. Always the visionary, he embarked on groundbreaking and vastly expensive projects like a combo live action and cartoon flick called Alice’s Wonderland. (Spoiler: It was no wonderland.) Big Walt lacked the financial acumen to back up his high-octane creativity.  He soon found himself virtually homeless, sleeping in his office (where he befriended a tame mouse) and taking showers at the train station. Just a year after opening his doors, he was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Silver Lining: Obviously, Disney didn’t let the setback knock him down. He spent his last dollars on a bus ticket, headed out to Hollywood and started the company that bears his name. Oh, and he created a slightly obnoxious little cartoon character named Mickey, based on that office mouse. He always claimed that his Laugh-o-Grams experience, painful as it was, laid the groundwork for his later success, and helped him avoid catastrophic mistakes. We’re still not sure who to blame for Epcot Center.

Actor Tim Allen is shown in this 1979 Kalamazoo Country Sheriff's Department booking photo after being arrested with more than 650 grams of cocaine at the airport. Allen survived his his 28-month prison term by making fellow inmates laugh. A friend dared him to stand up on an open mic night at a Detroit-area comedy club and Allen was an instant hit.

Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Department

Tim Allen

Black Cloud: “Bottom” doesn’t get much lower than a cell in a state penitentiary. But that’s where Tim Allen found himself in the early ‘90s when, after a hard-partying youth, he was arrested at the Kalamazoo airport with over 650 grams of cocaine. Allen later admitted he had all the makings of a “really good” drug dealer. But clearly it was time to find a new profession.

Silver Lining: Trying to survive his stint in the big house better than most of the cast members of Oz (binge watch it on Netflix!), Allen played to his strengths. When approached for “dates” he’d make the local neo-Nazis laugh. He put on comedy shows for other inmates, and even made the orneriest prison guards chuckle by using a picture of Nixon as a target in his cell toilet. Observing his fellow prisoners, he developed his signature “tool guy” persona. After he emerged from his 28-month term, a friend dared him to stand up on an open mic night at a Detroit-area comedy club. Allen was an instant hit, and went on to star in the hit Home Improvement, and beguile kiddies as the voice of Buzz Lightyear. From a prisoner in a state penitentiary, he can adapt with the circumstance and develop his career. “Sometimes you have to hit bottom to know where to go.” Allen later told a reporter about his turning around story.

Actor Jon Hamm in the 2001 show "The Division." A few years earlier Hamm appeared as a contestant and was rejected on the 1995 The Big Date Show. A haircut and wardrobe upgrade brought him to the hit Mad Men series and eventually to be People Magazine's “Sexiest Man Alive” (circa 2008).

AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Jon Hamm 

Black Cloud: True, getting shot down on a TV dating show isn’t a tragedy to match illness, death or prison time. But for a young waiter/actor hoping to strut his leading-man stuff, it hurt. Hamm was in his mid-twenties in 1995 when he was a contestant on The Big Date, a c-level Love Connection rip-off. With his floppy hair and surfer dude clothes, the future Mad Men star he didn’t impress bachelorette Mary, despite promising “fabulous food, a little fabulous conversation, ending with a fabulous foot massage for an evening of total fabulosity." Instead she picked Mark, a creepy self-proclaimed “stunt man” who promised he would “take her home later and show her my flexibility.”

Silver Lining: After watching the show with clenched teeth, Hamm cut his hair, got a nice suit and some attitude and eventually became the People “Sexiest Man Alive” (circa 2008) we know and love today. When Mary found out who she burned years later, she told reporters “I don’t really know who he is and have never seen the show. I have found love since and I wouldn’t trade him for a thousand Jon Hamms.”