In need of some motivation? Well, say no more. This is a story about several A-list stars who nearly quit acting just before they became the movie stars they are today. Breaking into Hollywood is never an easy task, and for each aspiring actor or actress who has made it, dozens of others have failed to live up to their dreams.

Related: Drew Barrymore Explains Why She Is Taking A Break From Acting

From when Wonder Woman's Gal Gadot planned to throw in the towel just before portraying Diana Prince to when Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul starred in small TV commercials just to make ends meet, here are ten stars who nearly quit acting before they landed their biggest roles.

10 Gal Gadot

Gal Gadot
AP

Before becoming who she is today, Gal Gadot competed at the highest stage of beauty pageants and joined the Israeli Defense Force. The former Miss Israel told Jimmy Fallon that she had done so many camera tests, but none of them landed her a big role.

"I was telling my husband, 'I'm not sure how long I can take it,'" the actress said. After that, she received a phone call from Zack Synder, who co-wrote Wonder Woman, telling her to join a "secret" audition for the movie. The rest is history.

9 Mark Ruffalo

Mark Ruffalo
Shutterstock

Another super-hero actor who nearly quit is Mark Ruffalo. There was a time when he wanted to quit acting for good. After attending over 600 auditions to break into acting, Ruffalo contemplated throwing in the towel, but his mother wouldn't let him give up on his dream.

"I couldn’t do anything else and she told me if I tried to quit, she wouldn’t speak to me again," he said during The Graham Norton Show.

8 Kristen Stewart

Kristen Stewart
Shutterstock

Every fledgling actor and actress has their fair share of stories on how hard is it to get onto Hollywood's radar. One of them is Kristen Stewart who, according to the Twilight actress herself, almost quit the business after a series of failed auditions.

Related: Why Does Kristen Stewart Hate Being Famous?

"I also got so nervous for every single audition. I was just dying. I had one appointment left and my mom said, 'Have a little integrity and go to your last one.' And it was The Safety of Objects. If I hadn't gotten that, I would have been done," she said.

7 Aaron Paul

Aaron Paul
Men's Journal

Before landing the role of Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad, Aaron Paul used to appear on one small cereal commercial to next as the typecast of an anti-school "I don't care" kind of guy. That was before Vince Gilligan, the Breaking Bad showrunner, trusted him to portray the iconic character.

In fact, the character was nearly written off of Breaking Bad in the first season, but that didn't happen because Paul did a fantastic job at convincing the writing team that he was meant for the series.

6 Brie Larson

Brie Larson
Shutterstock

Before she was Captain Marvel, Brie Larson thought that it was "delusional" for think she'd make it big. Originally from San Francisco, young Brie ventured from one small cameo to the next. She even tried becoming a full-time pop star and released her debut album through Universal Music Group's Casablanca Records in 2005. The teeny-bopper album was a flunk and only sold 4,000 copies.

5 Noah Centineo

Noah Centineo
Getty

Not too long before becoming Netflix's hottest heartthrob, Noah Centineo almost called it quits on acting. Before going from 800,000 to 13.4 million Instagram followers in just a few weeks, the star struggled to land roles.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Centineo's career went nowhere after appearing on Disney's How to Build a Better Boy back in 2014. His 2018 Netflix movie, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, exploded and catapulted him to a whole new level of stardom.

4 Uzo Aduba

Uzo Aduba
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Before being cast as Crazy Eyes in Orange Is The New Black, Uzo Aduba was heavily considering her second career choice. As she told Essence, she even told her mother to change her name to Zoe to avoid stereotyping and merge her Nigerian roots with her Boston background.

Related: Jessica Alba Explains Why She Decided To Walk Away From Acting

"My heart never quit," the Emmy-winning actress said. "And that was the first time I felt my heart give out on me."

3 Max Greenfield

Max Greenfield
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Before New Girl, Max Greenfield considered becoming a writer after a series of disappointing auditions. Speaking to TheWrap, the actor admitted that there were times when he suffered from setbacks and self-doubts, especially since he didn't go to college and didn't find himself qualified for anything else but acting.

"I thought, maybe I’ll start at the very lowest point for a writer and see what happens with that because this doesn’t seem to be happening as an actor," he said.

2 Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson
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While most actors and actresses on this list were struggling to land roles, Scarlett Johansson, on the other hand, was a victim of typecasting and hypersexualization in Hollywood. She was extremely frustrated and even considered retiring early at one point.

"When I was working in my early twenties and even my late teens, I felt that I got somehow typecast as 'hypersexualized', which I guess at the time seemed OK to everyone — it was another time — even though it wasn't part of my own narrative," she admitted during The Hollywood Reporter's Drama Actress Roundtable.

1 Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper
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No one is immune to depression, even an A-list celeb like Bradley Cooper. At one point in his life after departing Alias following the second season, Cooper had little recognition and fell into a period of depression. He struggled to find his big break and then tore his Achilles two weeks after quitting faced with a long road to recovery.

He spent a lot of time on the couch after his injury and even convinced himself maybe it was a sign that acting wasn't meant for him. "At some point, you have to come to terms with 'the business just doesn't want you,' you know what I mean?" he told GQ, according to Looper. Fortunately, better days were just around the corner for Cooper, who was soon cast in the 2005 comedy, Wedding Crashers.

Next: Why Eddie Murphy Quit Acting For Six Years