40 Second Act Stories of Women Over 40
Vera Wang
Designer to the stars Vera Wangpursued figure skating in her youth and started her career as an editor at Vogue. At 38, she left Vogue to work for Ralph Lauren. Two years later, at 40, Wang began her iconic legacy as an independent designer.
Toni Morrison
After years of teaching and working in a publishing house, Toni Morrison published her first book, The Bluest Eye, just before her 40th birthday.
Regina King
Regina Kinghas been an acclaimed actress for decades, winning Emmys and Oscars for her magnetic screen presence. But it wasn’t until 2013, when King was 43, that she began directing. In September 2020, when King was 49, she made history with One Night In Miami… as the first Black female director to have a feature film premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Sallie Krawcheck
Sallie Krawcheck became the CEO and co-founder of Ellevest and owner of the Ellevate Network when she was coming up on her 49th birthday. Her mission to close the gender wealth gap through investing means that not only did her second act give her a chance to thrive, but she’s also paying it forward so other women can take charge of their money.
Jane Lynch
Jane Lynch has been a working actress for decades, but it wasn’t until her star turn in Gleethat the world took notice of just what a powerhouse comic actress she is. She was 48 when the series premiered, and her hilarious portrayal of Sue Sylvester netted her an Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award, among other industry honors and accolades. Lynch previously told Parade, “I was almost 50 when Glee started. Had I become quote-unquote successful and quote-unquote famous before 40, it would have been a totally different Jane unleashed upon the world. I would have allowed the opinions of others (especially on social media if that were around) affect how I felt about myself. I probably would’ve suffered a lot. I’m lucky that doesn’t have a hold on me. There’s no place for any of that to bother me. It just seems to have been my destiny that this happened to me later in life, and I’m glad.”
Dame Judi Dench
Dame Judi Denchis the type of star who’s been a household name for much longer than she actually has. She was revered for her work in theater in her native Great Britain, but it wasn’t until 1995, when she embraced the role of M in GoldenEye, that she rose to true icon status stateside. She was 60 years old at the time, proving that it’s never too late to “make it,” and make it she did: She’s had seven Oscar nominations (including a win for playing Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love), six BAFTAs, two Golden Globes and many, many more honors.
Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelowwas 40 when her hit film Point Break became an instant classic in 1991. In 2010, Bigelow, then in her late 50s, made history as the first woman to ever win Best Director at the Academy Awards for her critically acclaimed film The Hurt Locker.
Viola Davis
Viola Daviswas already an accomplished stage actress when she transitioned to film, but it wasn’t until 2008 in Doubt—when she was 43—that she achieved mainstream recognition for her gripping performance in just a single scene. In 2015, she won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress for How to Get Away With Murder, and in 2016 won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Fences. She was nominated for Best Actress for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottomin 2020. Davis has been vocal about creating opportunities for women of color in film and TV. She told Parade, “My whole thing is: if you acknowledge me as an artist, then you have to invest in me. If you don’t invest in me, then I die. If you say that you’re dedicated to inclusivity and diversity, then you have to have the courage to push the pendulum forward. That means you may have to invest in artists of color who may not have a name, who may not have a resume that shows they have box-office potential, because they may have never had an opportunity. That takes courage. If you don’t have the courage, then you can’t say that you have the investment.”
Kathryn Joosten
Kathryn Joostenwas a psychiatric nurse until her 1980 divorce. In 1982, she began performing in local and regional theater at age 42 — and in her 50s and 60s, she had star turns in shows like Frasier, Scrubs, The Drew Carey Show and Desperate Housewives (for which she won Emmys in 2005 and 2008).
Julia Child
In her 30s during World War II, Julia Childserved in the U.S. military’s Office of Strategic Services as a file clerk and cooked up recipes for shark repellent that are still in use today. After dining out in post-war France, Child fell in love with French cuisine and attended the Cordon Bleu culinary school, then trained privately with master chefs. It wasn’t until 1961, when she was 49, that Child released her iconic first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Wendy Williams
Wendy Williamswas the queen of radio for more than two decades when she launched The Wendy Williams Showin 2008. The show premiered when Williams was 44 years old. That move led to Williams appearing in numerous films and TV shows, including Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva, Steve Harvey’s Think Like A Manand Think Like A Man Tooand even a stage run as Mama Morton in Chicago. She told Paradeof getting older, “Always act gracefully. It’s definitely harder to be a 50 something woman than a man. A woman my age has a lot to prove in terms of her vitality in whatever she does for a living. No matter what happens, good or bad, I believe in being prepared and acting gracefully.”
Lynda Weinman
In 1995, Lynda Weinmanco-founded the Lynda learning platform with her husband, Bruce. She was 40 years old. In 2015, she sold Lynda to LinkedIn for a whopping $1.5 billion in cash and stocks. She left the company a month following the sale and now works in film production with her company, Another Chapter Productions, with credits on projects including The Social Dilemma.
Susan Boyle
Susan Boylewas in her late 40s when she auditioned for Britain’s Got Talentin 2009 with her haunting rendition of “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Misérables. Boyle’s first album, I Dreamed A Dream, became the U.K.’s highest-selling debut album ever, also setting a record for the highest first-week album sales in the country. She currently has sold a whopping 19 million records since her memorable TV moment.
Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart worked as a stockbroker and opened her own catering service early in her career. It wasn’t until she was all of 41 years old that she published her first cookbook, Entertaining, which led to her massive empire of Good Things.
Nina Zagat
Nina Zagat practiced law for two decades before co-founding the Zagat Survey with her husband, Tim. The famous burgundy booklets started as a hobby they took up while dining out and learning to cook in France. Upon returning to New York City, they published their first survey in 1979 when Nina was 37—but it wasn’t until 1982, when she was 40, that they first sold the Zagat Survey in bookstores. Google purchased Zagat in 2011 for $150 million; The Infatuation purchased Zagat in 2018.
Rea Ann Silva
The Beautyblender is an indispensable tool in most makeup kits, but do you know who invented it? That would be Rea Ann Silva. Silva said she was a struggling single mom working as a makeup artist on the show Girlfriends to make ends meet when she began cutting her own makeup sponges into egg shapes for product application and blending. Additionally, the struggle as a Latina to find any products suitable for women of color made her work even more important. “The biggest fail for makeup applications for many years is that there weren’t enough shades for women of color to actually look natural with makeup on, so you had to learn to become like a mixologist,” Silva told NBC News’ Know Your Value. “They would all be from light to a little bit darker, not really going into other ethnicities, the Latin colors, or African American colors or Asian colors.” It wasn’t until celebrities began stealing her sponges that she realized she may well have a hit product on her hands. Silva invented and founded Beautyblender in 2003 when she was 43 years old. “I never at that moment could have imagined that I’m sitting here talking to you right now as CEO and founder of a brand sold globally in the biggest stores in the world," she admitted. “I didn’t dream that big. I dreamt, like, ‘How am I going to support myself, pay rent, and have food and gas?’”
Grandma Moses
Anna Mary Robertson Moses, best known as “Grandma Moses,” didn’t start painting until she was 78 years old! She was a farmer, housekeeper and housewife; she previously embroidered gifts for others but turned to painting after arthritis made her prior hobby too painful. She wrote in her 1952 autobiography, “I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.”
Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball was called “Queen of the Bs” (as in B-movies) for years until she got her breakthrough with I Love Lucy. The show premiered when Ball was 40 years old.
Melissa McCarthy
Melissa McCarthywas largely relegated to supporting roles until she turned 40, when she first starred in (and won her first Emmy for) Mike & Mollyand became the breakout star of Bridesmaids. Since then, she’s become not only a critically acclaimed actress but also a marquee name with serious commercial appeal and irresistible comedic chops. When discussing her dramatic turn in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, McCarthy told Paradethat aging is a scary idea for many female professionals. “I think it’s a very current issue. Lee [Israel] was an incredible writer, that’s what she did; it was the only thing that she did. Her writing was still good, but she was a woman of a certain age. To suddenly be told that you are no longer valid, that you’ve come to a certain age and you’ve become obsolete. What do you do when the one thing you do is no longer an option? She wasn’t adaptable, she had no flexibility to go out and just get a different job, to go on an interview and charm someone. That was accurate to her life.” She added, “I just kept thinking, ‘What would any of us do if we’ve lost our one means to survive?’ She was on welfare at one point. She was going to lose her apartment, she was going to be homeless. It’s not like she had a bunch of friends that were going to take her in. What would any of us do? The thought that at a certain age instead of people being revered for their 30 years of experience, now it’s about that 20-year-old or that person who’s more fun at the party. It’s a strange thing that more experience has become outdated. I find that very odd.”
Leslie Jones
Leslie Jones is a comedy icon now, but it took her a long time to get there. She struggled with standup for years, bombing in front of audiences while opening for Jamie Foxx. “Jamie came on stage and the first thing he did was tell the audience, ‘Stop booing her, because she had more guts to get up here and try it, and y’all didn’t,’” she recalled. She said Foxx gave her the best career advice ever as a comic. “‘You’re like 19. You have nothing. You have no stories, you have no life,’” Jones said, quoting the Oscar winner. “He was like, ‘Go live, go have some bad jobs, go have some good jobs. Go get your heartbroken, go break some hearts…because you have no material right now.’ And that’s what I did.” Jones finally got her big break as a Saturday Night Livewriter and featured player in late 2013 and 2014, respectively, when she was 46 and 47 years old. She was upped to a full-time cast member in October 2014, making her the oldest person to ever join the cast. Her success on SNL made her easily transition to film, appearing in Top Five, Trainwreckand Coming 2 Americaand starring in 2016’s Ghostbusters. She’s back on the small screen as the ever-enthusiastic and infectious host of Supermarket Sweep.
Rena Nathanson
Bananagrams is a road trip staple, and we owe it to Rena Nathanson, who co-invented Bananagrams with her father Abe after a long, at times painful game of multi-generational game of Scrabble with her family. “At some point we became a bit frustrated and started wondering if we could make a word game that lets us all play on the same level and not take hours. So we start saying: ‘What if there’s no board? What if it’s a race? What if you don’t have to keep score?’” In 2006, Bananagrams went from a niche treat to mainstream, mass-market must-have — when Nathanson was 44.
Vivienne Westwood
Iconic designer Vivienne Westwoodmade waves in the punk scene but didn’t launch her first official fashion collection until she was 40 years old.
Youn Yuh-Jung
Youn Yuh-jung made history at 73, when she became the first Korean actress to win an Oscar, SAG Award, Independent Spirit Award and BAFTA for her role in Minari.
Robin Chase
Robin Chaseis the founder and former CEO of Zipcar. She started the company in 2000 when she was 40.
Connie Britton
Connie Brittonwas a working actress for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until Friday Night Lightsin 2006—just months ahead of her 40th birthday—that she achieved mainstream name recognition. From there, she starred in American Horror Story, Nashville, American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, Dirty John, 9-1-1 and The White Lotus. Britton previously told Paradeof her eclectic resume, “I always want to be challenged and feel like I’m doing something that feels a little different than anything else I’ve done. And increasingly too, along with that, I really want to play roles that feel reflective of our times, and specifically of being a woman in this time, because we are in very complicated times. I love playing characters who are complicated and layered. Any character I play I want to be really dealing with their own internal conflict with who they are, how they present themselves in the world, how they live in the world. It’s fun to play the bad guy and it’s fun to play the good guy. In my mind, I would prefer that no character that I play be all of one or all of the other because none of us is that.”
Octavia Spencer
Octavia Spencerworked steadily for nearly 14 years in Hollywood, but it wasn’t until her star turn in 2011’s The Help—when she was 41 years old—that she got the recognition she deserved. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role of maid Minny Jackson. She landed a second Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nod for Hidden Figures in 2016 and a third in 2017 for The Shape of Water.
Dame Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirrenwas an accomplished stage actress with a relatively long list of film credits to her name, but it wasn’t until 2001’s Gosford Park, when she was 56, that she truly achieved mainstream recognition stateside, getting her an Oscar nomination. Mirren won a Golden Globe, BAFTA and Oscar for her role of Queen Elizabeth IIin 2006’s The Queen, and Mirren’s reign has only grown since then: She’s starred in everything from the Fast and Furiousfranchise to L’Oréal beauty campaigns.
Tarana Burke
Activist Tarana Burke started the Me Too movement way back in 2006 as a means to give voices to survivors of sexual abuse, assault and harassment. It wasn’t until 2017, when she was 44 years old, that her campaign went viral. She has expanded her own activism with Girls for Gender Equity, which focuses on providing education and opportunities for young women of color, and will release her first memoir in September 2021.
Lynn Brooks
Lynn Brooks founded Big Apple Greeter in 1992 when she was 62 years old. Though Brooks passed away in 2013, the organization lives on in making visitors feel welcome in New York City’s concrete jungle still today.
Ina Garten
Before she was a household name in food, Ina Gartenworked in the White House while working towards her MBA, and while she liked the work, it wasn’t her dream. She later flipped houses, which gave her the idea and the funding to purchase her Barefoot Contessa market in swanky Westhampton Beach, N.Y. The shop’s success quickly led her to move its location several times to larger spaces within the Hamptons, serving clientele like Steven Spielberg. In 1999, when she was 51, she released her first cookbook, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. She made her Food Network debut three years later.
Ava DuVernay
Acclaimed director Ava DuVernaywas an indie and critical darling for nearly a decade, but it wasn’t until 2014’s Selma, released when DuVernay was 42, that she achieved mainstream recognition. She was nominated for Best Director, and the film for Best Picture and Best Original Song, winning the latter. Two years later, she was nominated for Best Documentary at the Oscars for 13th. She would go on to direct Disney’s A Wrinkle In Timeand achieve critical acclaim once more with When They See Us, which chronicled the Exonerated Five. The miniseries was nominated for numerous Emmys, with star Jharrel Jerometaking home the trophy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder began writing when she was 44 years old as a columnist. After the Stock Market Crash of 1929, she began penning the Little House on the Prairie series as a means of generating extra income for her family.
Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins was a writer for kids’ TV shows for years. Her first book in her first series of fantasy novels, The Underland Chronicles, was released when she was 41. She didn’t publish her first Hunger Games book until she was 46 years old.
Betty White
National treasure Betty White was a television fixture on variety shows, talk shows and game shows, but it wasn’t until she appeared on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1973 that she was given her due as an actress. She was 51 years old when she played the salacious Sue Ann Nivens. She has worked consistently as a bona fide star ever since, most famously as the dimwitted Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls.
Wendy Herman
Anyone who’s ever had to shop for their first bra knows it can be a harrowing experience. Wendy Hermanset out to make it a lot less scary with BRABAR, which she founded when she was 49 to take the guesswork out of sizing.
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffingtonbegan her career as a writer and conservative commentator (even slamming the Women’s Liberation Movement). She endorsed the Republican Party for years, most notably the failed Senate run from her husband, Michael. In 2004, she endorsed John Kerryin the presidential race, and in 2005, launched The Huffington Post, selling the brand to AOL in 2011. In 2016, she launched Thrive Global, which focuses on mental health. She previously told Paradethat her mother’s advice played a role in her decision to leave HuffPo to found Thrive. “She would always say to me, ‘Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s the stepping stone to success,’” Huffington recalled. “It’s about doing what you want even while you are afraid,” she says.
Kim Cattrall
Kim Cattrall worked in Hollywood for decades, but she wasn’t a household name until she embodied the iconic Samantha Jones on Sex And the City when she was 41. She told PEOPLE that she had some trouble finding work after SATC ended in 2004, but that she’s looking forward to new opportunities. “In my 50s, I felt things slipping away,” Cattrall, who now stars in Filthy Rich, said. “It was a gradual change, but the scripts were cut in half. [In Hollywood] you’re either an ingenue or a leading lady and then a divorced wife or a cougar. And I’m none of those things. So I wanted to examine that.” Still, don’t expect her to reprise her iconic lascivious publicist role again (which she won’t do for the SATC reboot And Just Like That…, either). “I always want to mix it up. I don’t want to deliver the same appetizer, main course and dessert in terms of roles. And times have changed. If Samantha came on now — and I see characters that emulate some of the qualities of that character — it wouldn’t seem as fresh as it was then,” she said. “It will never be like the first time. And that’s okay!” “It’s an incredible thing to have been in the business this long,” she added. “I thought the best thing for my life would be being an actress that worked. And I’m flabbergasted that I’ve gotten as far as I have.”
Joy Behar
Joy Behar worked steadily as a standup comedian for years, but it wasn’t until she was selected as an original co-host for The View in 1997, when she was 55, that she gained a wide audience. She briefly left the daytime talk staple in 2013, but returned for a fulltime seat at the table in 2015. She told PEOPLE in September 2021, “I’ve had to apologize, which I’m happy to do in order to save mine and everybody else’s job. I don’t care. Even if I don’t mean it, I’ll do it. Even if I look like I’m in a hostage takeover, I’ll still do it, because if you don’t do it, you lose your job and everybody else’s.”
Bea Arthur
Like Betty White, Bea Arthur had to wait until her own second act for the world to truly bring her her well-deserved flowers. She won her first Tony Award at 44 for Mame and got her star turn as Maude Findlay on AAll In the Family when she was 49, getting her spinoff Maude when she was 50. She won an Emmy for Maude in 1977, then another for her role of Dorothy Zbornak in The Golden Girls in 1988, when she was 66. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIhisq_5CUc
Tamron Hall
Broadcast journalist Tamron Hall was co-anchor of Today’s Take from 2014, a prestigious and coveted role for anyone in the industry. In 2017, NBC gave Hall’s morning slot to the short-lived Megyn Kelly Today. Instead of staying at the network in a lesser role, Hall ventured out on her own and launched her award-winning eponymous talk show in 2019—when she was 48 years old. She told Parade that creating a sense of community with her show was important to her. “I was a latchkey kid growing up when my mother and father were both working. I would come home, crawl up on the counter, get my Cap’n Crunch, do my homework and watch TV. But watching me get off the bus and go into my house ever so closely were our neighbors. Once I was inside, they would peek out from their front porch to check on me,” she said. “That was the community that I grew up in. So, I grew up in that environment, whether it was a neighbor or an actual relative, they were an extension of my parents. Community means everything to me, and I think that our show represents this.” Next, these 15 free career aptitude tests will tell you exactly what types of jobs you’d be great at!
