Certainly there are actors who are phenomenal at their craft, having managed to marry their training and raw talent into a true art form, but there are thousands more with head-shots stapled to high school theater resumes just hoping that maybe they can trick some powerful fame generator into thinking they are talented. After all, you never hear stories about 40-year-old men and women quitting careers in data analysis to head to L.A. in pursuit of their true passion of neurosurgery. No, it's always a profession with no metric for quality they want, something anyone can luck into.

And it works.

There are plenty of stories of agents plucking people out of obscurity and making them famous, or more specifically, out of restaurants and off jumbotrons. Acting is the one career that can offer riches and renown without any formal training and the following five people are proof. They never intended to be world-famous or wealthy, it just sort of happened and their stories are what keep the greyhound buses to Hollywood full.