‘It’s never too late’ is a catchcry used to inspire potential late bloomers to achieve an ambition – climbing Mt Everest, writing a best selling novel, gaining a degree, painting a masterpiece …
It may seem little more than a hackneyed phrase one uses to make someone feel better yet there are myriad examples of people achieving greatness late in life.
Jacki Weaver had been working in Australian film, stage and television since the 1960s, but when she reached her 40s she found it increasingly difficult to be chosen for roles in television series and movies.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, she turned to the theatre where she acted in a variety of successful stage productions.
She was 63, when she gained a lead role in the Australian crime thriller, ‘Animal Kingdom’, which gained her an Academy Award nomination.
Two years later, Jacki Weaver was again nominated for an Academy Award for her role in ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ opposite Robert de Niro.
And since that time, her working life in film and television here and in America, has been hectic.
Most recently, at the age of 73-74, she played the ruthless CEO of Market Equities, Caroline Warner in the Paramont Network’s hit television series, ‘Yellowstone’.
Britain’s Margaret Ford was 93 when her first book was published and 96, when her second book lined the bookstore shelves.
An army wife, whose own career was as an accounts specialist, her first book was written after the death of her husband.
‘A Daughter’s Choice – A True Story of Hardship, Heartache and Hope’ was a bestseller in 2019, her second book, ‘A Soldier’s Wife’ was published in 2022.
Charles Darwin was a brilliant but relatively obscure naturalist until at the age of 50, when he published ‘On the Origin of the Species’ in 1859.
It was a bestseller in its time, but his theory on evolution was largely dismissed by the 1880s.
It wasn’t until the 1940s, that the once hotly debated theory of evolutionary adaption through natural selection became widely accepted and was adopted as the core concept of what would become known as the life sciences.
Raymond Kroc was in his 50s, when he convinced the McDonald brothers to allow him to franchise their hamburger restaurant known as McDonald’s in 1961.
He took the company on a journey of global expansion, which led to it becoming the most successful fast food chain in the world, based on revenue.
And that’s only four of the multitude who have, due to circumstance, happenstance or opportunity, achieved later in life.
