10 Best Models-Turned-Actors, Ranked

We're a fan of big, bold takes here at /Film, so we'll come right out and say it: Models have it hard in Hollywood. And we're only being half-ironic when we say that.

Yes, getting paid tens of thousands of dollars to be photographed seems like glamorous work, and there's certainly no underestimating the mental benefit of having essentially helped set the standards for conventional beauty when competing in an industry that, unfortunately, is based in part on a person's looks. It also helps that the fashion and film industries are quite close, with agents and managers excited to discover clients that can find work in both.

All that being said, being a model isn't just a short cut to stardom. Even putting the physical and psychological pressures of the modeling world aside, those who come to acting from the modeling world often struggle to be taken seriously — for lack of a better phrase, they literally have to prove to casting directors and audiences alike that they're more than just a pretty face. The 10 actors below did that and more, leading careers that aren't just impressive for models-turned-actors, but for anyone who dedicates themselves so earnestly to the craft of performance.

These are the best models-turned-actors that we've seen so far.

If you only know Jamie Dornan as the guy from "Fifty Shades of Grey," you're doing yourself a real disservice. The actor is far more than the cutout of a romantic lead that he's best known for playing — though his struggle to be taken seriously stems back to the beginning of his career, when he was first trying to transition from modeling to movies.

Dornan began his modeling career by competing in the reality television series "Model Behavior" in 2001. Though he was swiftly eliminated, the experience generated enough momentum for the college dropout to pursue a career in style, and he was eventually able to break into the mainstream modeling industry traditionally. His acting career gradually developed simultaneously. The same year he posed alongside Kate Moss for British Vogue, he made his acting debut as Swedish Lord Axel von Fersen in Sofia Coppola's cult favorite "Marie Antoinette." In 2015, the same year he was cast as the sexually adventurous billionaire Christian Grey in the aforementioned film, Vogue ranked him as one of the top 25 male models of all time.

The apparent synergy might've been deceptively beneficial. Dornan has stated in numerous interviews that he came to modeling reluctantly, personally hates having his picture taken, and fought with his own agents over passing on undoubtedly lucrative gigs. At the same time, his best work — such as his performance as serial killer Paul Spector in "The Fall," one of the best British crime dramas — was overshadowed by both his modeling career and the critically panned but culturally ubiquitous trilogy that made him a true Hollywood star. The trilogy's end, the continued rediscovery of "The Fall" through streaming, a hilarious turn in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, and his recent, career-best performance in "Belfast" have led general audiences to catch up to his talent.

Most readers probably already know that Mark Wahlberg initially became famous through the music world — first as an accessory to his brother, Donnie Wahlberg, and the New Kids on the Block, then as the frontman of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. However, readers are likely less aware that the year after the latter group released their hit single "Good Vibrations," many Americans encountered Wahlberg for the first time as a Calvin Klein model.

The musical artist posed in CK skivvies on the cover of Rolling Stone to promote his group, unwittingly catching the eye of entertainment titan David Geffen, who selected Wahlberg to join a young Kate Moss for an ad campaign that would turn the latter model into a superstar of the industry. It's also regarded as a relatively controversial ad for that very reason. Moss, just 17-years-old at the time, has since recalled extreme discomfort during the shoot, so much so that a doctor gave her valium to cope.

Wahlberg, who was 21 at the time of the shoot, has expressed similarly complicated feelings about the ad campaign, especially as it exploded in popularity. When Paul Thomas Anderson approached him about playing a rising adult film actor in "Boogie Nights," Wahlberg thought the film industry wanted to exploit him in the same way the modeling industry had. Instead, Anderson gave Wahlberg an unexpected platform to prove himself as an actor.

In the decades since, Wahlberg has turned in several remarkable performances, including as boxer Micky Ward in "The Fighter" and his Academy Award-nominated supporting role in Martin Scorsese's "The Departed." "Boogie Nights" is still regarded as the best movie of his career.

Jennifer Connelly was in one of the most beloved movies in cinema history when she was barely out of middle school. Even so, she had a modelling career that predated that achievement.

When she was just 10 years old, the future Oscar-winner was appearing in advertisements on television and in print magazines. Her presence was such that a casting director decided to pass her headshot along to none other than Sergio Leone, who was in the process of developing his 1984 epic "Once Upon a Time in America." She was cast as the younger counterpart of Elizabeth McGovern's Deborah Gelly.

Connelly entered the entertainment industry with little passion for acting or modeling (she's described herself in interviews as having been moved around by the people in her orbit), but she was nonetheless sought after for high-profile work. In 1986, she starred opposite David Bowie in the dark fantasy adventure film "Labyrinth," which established her as a rising leading lady in Hollywood. 

She went on to star in several films (including "The Rocketeer," another cult classic), before she was cast alongside Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, and Marlon Wayans in Darren Aronofsky's breakout tragedy "Requiem for a Dream." Her performance as a co-dependent young woman struggling with addiction proved her potential and directly led to her casting in the 2001 film "A Beautiful Mind." For playing Alicia Nash, the wife of Russell Crowe's John Nash in the latter film, she won an Academy Award.

The once relentless pace of Connelly's career has finally slowed in recent years. Younger readers probably know her exclusively from "Top Gun: Maverick." In 2023, she produced the independent New Zealand drama "Bad Behaviour."

Grace Kelly is the prime example of a model-turned-actor who would be much higher on this list if her career had lasted longer than it did. Admiring the work of the great Ingrid Bergman, she moved to New York after high school and was able to join the American Academy of Dramatic Arts straight away thanks to a nudge from her uncle George, an acclaimed screenwriter who helped Kelly at the start of her career. While she certainly had enough professional support to have several readers dismiss her as a nepo-baby outright, she was apparently determined to use as little of her family's considerable financial resources as possible.

As many Kelly biographers report, she refused to let her parents pay her bills and was able to quickly find work as a model. It's certainly glamorous as far as survival jobs go. She landed a few small roles before being offered a role in the Gary Cooper 1952 Western "High Noon." While Broadway was all but ignoring her, Hollywood soon took notice of her unique talent. In 1954, she was cast in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" and the contemporarily acclaimed drama "The Country Girl." The latter film unexpectedly earned her an Academy Award, beating Judy Garland in one of the most shocking Oscars upsets of all time.

Despite her certain ascent to stardom, however, Kelly walked away from Hollywood at the age of 26, following her marriage to the prince of Monaco. She spent less than a decade in the entertainment industry in total, and she's still remembered as an actress in a league of her own.

Speaking of actors who had a little bit of a boost early on, Uma Thurman broke into the modeling industry as a Vogue cover girl at just 15 years old. It's impressive, certainly, though a little less shocking when you find out her mother is Nena von Schlebrügge, a prolific model herself who had also graced the cover of Vogue. In this context, one could consider her swift transition to acting as a break from the family business. 

Thurman was offered her first feature film role in 1987, two years after her Vogue debut, in a thriller titled "Kiss Daddy Goodnight" (that also featured a young Steve Buscemi). The following year, she booked a supporting role in Stephen Frears' Academy Award-nominated adaptation of "Dangerous Liaisons."

Thurman's acting career was clearly no flash in the pan by this point, but it wasn't until a fateful bit of casting in 1994 — and an unexpected nod from the Academy — that audiences began to understand what the scope of her career could look like. Of course, this was the year the newly anointed auteur bad boy of Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino, cast her as the face of his subversive crime comedy "Pulp Fiction." The film made both of them stars overnight, with Thurman earning an Academy Award nomination and the enduring adoration of a fellow model-turned-actor even higher on this list.

Thurman reunited with Tarantino for "Kill Bill," an action masterpiece that showcases her remarkable range as an actor. After its release, she most frequently played leading roles in romantic comedies during the subgenre's waning golden years in the early 2000s. She currently plays a supporting role in the "Red, White and Royal Blue" film series.

When you think of actors who started their careers as models, you'd be forgiven for imagining the journey as one of the easiest an aspiring entertainer could ask for. That assumption would be sharply challenged by Halle Berry.

When she was 19 years old, Berry — by all accounts a popular high schooler who nonetheless felt somewhat uncomfortable in the spotlight — was entered into a beauty pageant by her then-boyfriend. She ultimately won the title prize and went on to compete in Miss USA in 1986. Though she came in second place, that was enough to earn her a spot in the competition for Miss World, where she became the first Black woman to compete on behalf of the United States. She placed sixth. The attention was enough to land her a big-name talent agent, despite the loss, and she made her feature film debut the following year... right?

Wrong. Three years after Miss World, Berry had no agent and was at a genuine career crossroads. Determined to pursue acting, she moved to New York in 1989. Within three months, she had exhausted her savings and was forced to turn to her mother for help. Her mother declined, telling Berry that she needed to work things out on her own if she truly wanted to be in NYC. So Berry sought refuge in a homeless shelter. Though the actor was so hurt by her mother's rejection that the two didn't speak for a year, she believes it was the best thing her mother could've done for her.

Indeed, Berry worked it out, thanks to small TV roles and the keen eye of a young Spike Lee, who cast her in his 1991 film "Jungle Fever." A decade of solid acting gigs later, including 2001's "Monster's Ball" (above), she made history again as the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.

While earlier stories of industry nepotism reveal how several incredible Hollywood careers were launched, there's some credibility to the argument that Anjelica Huston might've just as easily been hindered by the interference of her father. Though the high school-aged Huston was certainly interested in acting because of her familial proximity to the business (her father, John Huston, was the two-time Academy Award-winning director of "The Maltese Falcon" and many other classics), his decision to engineer her acting debut in one of his own films seemed to thwart her ambitions instantly.

She decided to pursue a career in modeling afterward, having had some experience posing for Vogue with her late mother as a teenager. As she was gaining considerable momentum in the '70s through collaborations with her partner Bob Richardson, however, she decided to end the relationship and move to Los Angeles to explore a career in acting in earnest. Not long after, she met Jack Nicholson, whom she was with for nearly 20 years.

The two were co-stars in the 1985 film "Prizzi's Honor," which was directed by none other than John Huston. Though it was a critical hit that was nominated for several Academy Awards, it only won one: Best Supporting Actress for Anjelica Huston. She received two more Oscar nominations for her work in the films "Enemies, A Love Story" and "The Grifters." In 1991, she landed what is arguably her career-defining role in "The Addams Family," playing matriarch Morticia Addams. Huston has attributed the origins of her definitive take on the character to the world of modeling.

When Charlize Theron was growing up in South Africa, she had aspirations not of being an actor or a model, but of being a dancer first and foremost. She entered a modeling contest when she was 16 years old and wound up winning, which afforded her the opportunity to travel to Milan as a professional model. Even then, the career wasn't particularly of interest to Theron. Aside from allowing her to explore more of the world and distance herself from a tumultuous childhood back home, the real benefit was that the money would help fund her dancing career. Like Grace Kelly, she saw it as a survival job.

Sadly, she made it to the prestigious Joffrey School of Ballet in New York City only to suffer a career-ending injury during a dance class. Her mother thus encouraged her to explore her love of movies as an actor by purchasing her a one-way plane ticket to Los Angeles. After a somewhat inauspicious start in the direct-to-DVD "Children of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest," she landed supporting roles in the films "2 Days in the Valley" and Tom Hanks' "That Thing You Do!" She went on to play larger roles in "The Devil's Advocate," "The Cider House Rules," and "The Italian Job."

But it was through her transformative, Academy Award-winning performance in Patty Jenkins' "Monster" that Theron asserted herself as one of the best actors of her generation. In addition to her work as a blockbuster action star, she went on to earn two subsequent Best Actress nods for "North County" in 2005 and "Bombshell" (seen above) in 2019.

Jessica Lange has always seemed a rather eclectic creative soul. Her career in modeling came not through pageant work, connections, or contests, but because she was discovered by chance at a Parisian drug store during a period in which she was training to be a mime. As these things often go, steady modeling work soon led to another chance discovery — this time by a producer who wanted her to star in "King Kong." She drew immediate acclaim, earned the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, and the rest is pretty much history.

Lange is simply one of the most prolific and decorated actors working in Hollywood. She was nominated for her first two Academy Awards in the same year: Best Actress for playing the title role in the biographical drama "Frances" and Best Supporting Actress for starring opposite Dustin Hoffman in the romantic comedy "Tootsie." She won the latter award. She received three more Best Actress nods for "Country" in 1985, "Sweet Dreams" in 1986, and "Music Box" in 1990, before finally taking home the award in 1995 for her role in "Blue Sky."

She continued to land prominent roles throughout the 2000s, but garnered a whole new generation of admirers among younger fans and critics alike through her performance on Ryan Murphy's "American Horror Story" (seen above). The anthology series earned her a second Emmy Award (after 2003's "Grey Gardens" TV movie) and led to several further nominations and collaborations with Murphy. It also arguably created the circumstances for her Broadway debut in the 2016 revival of "Long Day's Journey into Night," which earned her a Tony Award. As part of an ongoing series of columns, /Film writer Jeremy Smith compellingly argued that Lange is the best actor of all time.

On any list that boasts the words "best" and "actor" in the title, Lauren Bacall would have to be included. In fact, if there's any disputing her placement on this list, it would only be because some might reasonably argue that she was always as much an established actor as she was a professional model.

In 1941, when she was 17 years old, Bacall began working as a model in New York City's Garment District, helping to sell the dresses of textile titans like Herbert Sondheim, the father of legendary Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim. She made her Broadway debut the very next year in the ensemble of a show called "Johnny 2x4." Following her theatrical turn, Bacall focused professionally on modelling for about two years, despite feeling ill-suited for the industry. All the same, it was through a cover for Harper's Bazaar that she was ultimately discovered for her feature film debut in "To Have and Have Not."

The 1944 film not only introduced her to audiences nationwide, but to her co-star and future husband Humphrey Bogart. They starred together in several of the peerless actor's best films, including "The Big Sleep" in 1946. On stage and screen, she soon became one of the most celebrated actors in the modern history of the craft. She won two Tony Awards, was nominated for multiple Grammy and Primetime Emmy Awards, and earned a nod from the Academy for Best Supporting Actress in 1997. Though she lost the latter award and was never nominated thereafter, she was eventually given an overdue, honorary Oscar in 2010.