Achieving success in show business is tough—and it can be quite tenuous to maintain a career as tastes change over time. It's hard enough to get some early success, but when a singer or actor achieves that rare second act comeback, it's pretty incredible to watch. Some of these celebrities made the jump from child to adult star exceptionally well, some of them rebounded after professional or personal struggles, and still others were considered stars in a particular decade and then re-made themselves years later (or used the nostalgia factor for new audiences). We honestly love to see it. If you're curious, keeping reading to learn about the most amazing celebrity career renaissances of all time.
Raven
Largely considered one of the greatest child actors we've ever seen (The Cosby Show, Hangin' With Mr. Cooper, That's So Raven), Raven-Symoné continued to work as an adult. But she really hit her stride in the '10s when she made her Broadway debut, hosted on The View, and starred in a spinoff called Raven's Home.
Jason Bateman
This one probably falls into the category of "great transition from child to adult actor," since Jason Bateman didn't really stop working. He told GQ in 2013 that when roles dried up for him in his 20s, he used fellow child star Ron Howard as inspiration for how to become relevant (and remain a kind person) in adulthood. Then along came Arrested Development. The rest is history.
Mandy Moore
Mandy Moore gave a lot to us in the '90s–'00s, from an incredible earworm in the song "Candy" to a breakout acting role in A Walk to Remember. Starring as the voice of Rapunzel in Tangled (2010) and the show This Is Us (2016-2022) reminded us how much we like her. In 2023, she told Forbes, "I mean, patience is an important virtue in this industry. Recognizing that for everyone, every artist, anyone that is creative, there’s going to be that ebb and flow. You should expect that. Things are going to be on an upswing sometimes and that’s a great time to celebrate and be grateful, but it’s also going to come with a down-swell and that’s okay."
Jennifer Lawrence
Public scrutiny really did a number of Jennifer Lawrence, whose initial mega-success with The Hunger Games was eventually met with backlash and led her to take a break from acting. But she returned to movies with Don't Look Up (2021) and has been working steadily since—with a more low-key, less public life.
Keanu Reeves
You can file this one under "actors who fundamentally advanced our understanding of their capabilities." Keanu Reeves had a dry spell in the '00s and '10s after being wildly successful in the Matrix movies. But when he reinvented his persona as the extremely tough and terrifying John Wick, fans came roaring back.
Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore has been in Hollywood for a long time, and as such, she's had multiple career transitions. Her first was from child actor to adult actor with movies like The Wedding Singer and Charlie's Angels, and then she became a TV personality with The Drew Barrymore Show in 2020.
Shania Twain
The '20s have seen a "Shania-ssance," with '90s pop star Shania Twain coming back into the public consciousness. After massive success in the '90s and '00s, she had several years of health and other struggles. But in the '20s, she saw a resurgence of her greatest hits on TikTok, took the stage with Harry Styles at Coachella, and did a bunch of tour dates.
Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris was Doogie Houser for a while—he portrayed the character so brilliantly that it was probably tough for audiences to separate him from the iconic ABC TV role. After a hilarious cameo in the first Harold & Kumar movie, we rediscovered him in earnest as Barney in How I Met Your Mother (2005).
Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson's has been in the limelight since childhood, so it's not surprising that her career has ebbed and flowed (although it's worth noting that she got "cancelled" after the Super Bowl halftime controversy involving her and Justin Timberlake in 2004). She's now had more than one Vegas residency, a 2022 documentary, new music, and a tour.
Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Stallone has had a multi-decade run of success, starting with Rocky and continuing with multiple re-iterations of his career. He took a three-year hiatus from films in the '00s, but (not surprisingly), his continuation of the Rocky character through various movies and a Creed reboot, not to mention starring in The Expendables, meant that we weren't without Stallone for very long.
Julie Andrews
It's hard to call The Princess Diaries a "comeback" for Julie Andrews on its face, since the world already knew and loved her for her classic movies like The Sound of Music. Tragically, a botched throat surgery impacted her voice; she continued to act in non-singing roles, but the 2001 Anne Hathaway movie (Andrews' first Disney role since Mary Poppins) gave us another iconic character to love.
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage experienced a career slump starting in the '00s, starring in some movies that he later regretted. He told 60 Minutes in 2023 that he was over-invested in real estate and suffered from the 2008 recession, moving to Las Vegas and taking jobs so that he wouldn't have to file for bankruptcy. Kick-Ass (2010) and then Mandy (2018) and Pig (2021) helped his star rise again.
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder was a massive movie success story in the '80s and '90s, parlaying her early roles (including Beetlejuice) into more adult movies like Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Age of Innocence, and Little Women. A shoplifting scandal in 2001 hurt her career; she later told Porter magazine, ""Psychologically, I must have been at a place where I just wanted to stop...And it wasn't like the crime of the century! But it allowed me time that I really needed, where I went back to San Francisco and got back into things that...I just had other interests, frankly." Then a role as a protective mom in Stranger Things launched her back into stardom in the '10s and beyond.
Tony Bennett
Literally deemed "rags to riches" by the New York Times, Tony Bennett went from being out of fashion musically and suffering from personal difficulties (substance abuse, about to lose his house) to a massive career resurgence with a new audience—including a performance on “MTV Unplugged."
Jennifer Coolidge
Jennifer Coolidge was our queen in the '00s, with roles in classics like American Pie, Legally Blonde, and Best in Show. She continued to work but was largely seen as just a comedic character actress before she started winning awards for her role in the satirical drama, The White Lotus (2021–2022).
Josh Hartnett
Millennial women loved (and still love) Josh Hartnett—we loved him when we were in our youth, thanks to movies like Pearl Harbor, The Faculty, and The Virgin Suicides, and we loved him when he starred in Oppenheimer and Trap in the 2020s. Long may he reign, to be honest.
Matthew McConaughey
The McConaissance, as it was known, brought Matthew McConaughey from '90s and '00s leading man status to a career hiatus in the '00s and then a subsequent reemergence as a more serious actor, with roles including Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective.
Cher
I wasn't the only one who cheered when Cher—who's reinvented her career more times than we can count but was seen as a figure of the '60s–80s—had an absolute grand slam musical hit with 1998's Believe that reinvigorated her singing career yet again.
Eddie Murphy
After being one of the biggest stars of the 1980s, Eddie Murphy had a career decline in the late '90s and made a number of family-friendly films (while his more adult comedies didn't land—especially after Dreamgirls in 2006). Dolemite Is My Name (2018) was a huge, huge comedic comeback.
Natasha Lyonne
Natasha Lyonne's first Hollywood career was in the '90s, with roles in movies like American Pie and the ahead-of-its-time But I'm a Cheerleader. Health and addiction struggles caused her to leave the limelight, but she came back as one of the best parts of Orange is the New Black (2013-2019).
Brendan Fraser
Brendan Fraser won an Oscar for The Whale in 2023, and it was one of the most starry comeback stories Hollywood had ever seen. Since being a mega-star in the '90s and '00s (including with The Mummy movies), Fraser faded from the spotlight because of a variety of factors, including being sexually assaulted by a Hollywood exec. But he made a triumphant return starting with some TV roles in the mid- to late-2010s.
Demi Moore
Demi Moore has been part of our cultural consciousness since the 1980s (including St. Elmo's Fire) but faced a massive (and quite sexist) backlash. She had her first career resurgence with 2003's Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. But it was her performance as an aging Hollywood star dealing with agism and sexism in 2024's The Substance that brought her back into the spotlight yet again.
Michael Keaton
Michael Keaton went from Beetlejuice to Batman—and became Hollywood's biggest star—but then had a bunch of misses. Playing a faded actor trying to make a career resurgence in Birdman (2014), the meta movie worked to remind everyone why they loved the actor. Several movie roles resulted from the acclaimed film.
Laura Dern
Laura Dern is a national treasure for two different generations of people. She first won our hearts in movies like Blue Velvet and Jurassic Park. She continued to work but turned heads (again) in the show Enlightened, then subsequently went up up up with roles in Wild, Big Little Lies, Little Women, and Marriage Story. Oh, and a Star Wars movie, no big deal.
Robert De Niro
After an impressive career throughout the '90s, Robert De Niro hit a "slump." He continued to work, and his momentum restarted when he was a terrific supporting player in Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Later in the decade, performances at SNL and roles in Joker and The Irishman rocketed him back into the mainstream.
Betty White
Betty White had already had a glorious career by any standard (see also: The Golden Girls as her first pinnacle). But when she had a role in the hit Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds rom-com The Proposal (2009), a Super Bowl commercial, and a hosting gig at SNL in quick succession, she became a hit with new audiences.
Marlon Brando
If the '50s were one of Marlon Brando's best decades, the '60s were one of his worst due to a string of flops following his signing a five-picture deal with Universal Studios, plus getting a reputation as being tough to work with. He and Francis Ford Coppola had to fight for Brando to play Vito Corleone in The Godfather, but it brought back his professional career in spades.
Ke Huy Quan
One of the sweetest aspects of Everything Everywhere All at Once was that the filmmakers ran across former child actor Ke Huy Quan (who had quit acting in part because there weren't opportunities for Asian actors at the time) on Twitter and thought of him for a key role in their film. Back in the spotlight, Quan won the hearts of just about everyone and ended up winning an Oscar.
Katharine Hepburn
Did you know that there used to be a literal "box office poison list," and Katharine Hepburn found herself on it? When Bringing Up Baby (1938) flopped, Hepburn cut ties with the studio system, signed on to the play The Philadelphia Story angled as her comeback, then adapted it as a movie with Jimmy Stewart that successfully rehabilitated her image. She literally staged her own comeback, in other words.
John Travolta
John Travolta was a '70s darling (Grease, Saturday Night Fever) but had hit a lull in the '80s. Quentin Tarantino, who has long displayed a knack at finding actors and casting them perfectly to get audiences to see them in a new way, did just that by casting Travolta as a hitman in Pulp Fiction (1994).
Tina Turner
If you get the chance, read Tina Turner's memoir. It is quite the story and doesn't pull any punches, including the grueling details of her abusive former husband Ike Turner. Tina fled from Ike with only 36 cents to her name and steadily rebuilt her solo career to achieve icon status.
Robert Downey Jr.
It would be hard to imagine a bigger second act than Robert Downey Jr. His trajectory in the '80s and '90s was legendary (Chaplin and Natural Born Killers to name a few), but substance abuse issues caused a very public fall from grace. An impressive performance in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) helped lead to Zodiac (2007), then Tropic Thunder (2008), then literally as the titular Iron Man (2008).
