Leslie Nielsen
After acting in small roles for many years, Nielsen was 54 when he landed his breakthrough role in Airplane!, which has often been voted one of the funniest movies of all time.
Richard Adams wasn’t published until his 50s. Adams served in World War II during his younger years and, like Stoker, became a civil servant, in what would later become the U.K.’s Department of the Environment. He wrote fiction in his spare time and told tales of a rabbit to his children on long car rides. The stories grew and became so complicated that he had to write them down. Eventually, when Adams was 54, a publisher picked up the now-beloved and best-selling Watership Down.
Margaret Thatcher became U.K.’s first prime minister in 1979, when she was 54.