Daniel Kaluuya’s stardom was almost over before we knew it. In a cover story for Essence, the Oscar-winning actor talked with director Jordan Peele and admitted that before Peele offered him his breakout role in Get Out, Kaluuya’s first lead role ever, he had stopped acting and was ready to quit the industry.
“I've never told you this, but when you reached out to me and we had that Skype, I was really disillusioned with acting. I had stopped acting for like a year and a half,” he said to Peele in the interview. Kaluuya added, “I checked out, because I was just like, this isn't working. I wasn't getting roles, because racism and all this kind of stuff — so you reaching out was like, Okay, I'm not crazy. It’s proper. It's going to be all right.”
