12 Non-Actors Who Got Thrown Into TV Shows (And Nailed It)

Though she had a past as a burlesque dancer and had made a few attempts to get into acting, Phyllis Smith had given up on the dramatic arts by the time the 2000s rolled around - but not the entertainment industry. Working as a casting associate, Smith found herself reading lines with hopefuls auditioning for an NBC adaptation of the British sitcom The Office when opportunity came knocking again.

As Jenna Fischer, who would go on to play Pam Beesly, recalled on her Office Ladies podcast:

I think this is an interesting tidbit. Phyllis Smith, who plays Phyllis on the show, she was the casting associate for The Office. So when I auditioned for The Office, she read my audition scenes with me. [Director Ken Kwapis] was so taken with how she did her readings with the actors that he said to Greg Daniels, "I want her on the show. Can I give her a part on the show?" And so, Phyllis went from being a casting associate, which she had done for years with Allison Jones, the casting director... to having a part on this pilot.

The plainspoken character of Phyllis Lapin (later to become Phyllis Vance by marriage) was invented and added to the cast solely for the sake of including the plainspoken Phyllis Smith. In a show built on deadpan, she was a natural. Seven seasons later, she’d appeared in nearly every episode of the series’ landmark run, which in turn has launched her into other acting roles in The OA and the modern Pixar classic Inside Out. 

Steven Van Zandt had already risen to fame in the mid-'70s, both as a songwriter and performer in his own right, but more prominently as a member of childhood friend Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Then, in 1984, he quit the band to explore a solo career and found himself floundering for the next decade and a half trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life:

I literally went out into the wilderness. I’m not exaggerating. I walked my dog for seven years. I’d be out for eight hours a day just thinking, "How’d I get here? If I ever get back, what will I do?" I said to myself, "If I ever get back in, I’m not going to stop working. I’m never going to be in this position again where I can’t work."

Then, in 1999, an opportunity came to try something completely different: acting in one of television’s most storied series. Van Zandt auditioned for, and won, the role of Silvio Dante, Tony Soprano’s right-hand man in The Sopranos. Then he stuck around for the duration, appearing in the pilot, the finale, and every season in between. For Van Zandt, the transition from performing on stage to performing in front of a camera was a natural transition, as he told Today:

We all have every single personality trait inside of us. The craft of acting is finding it, awakening it, and giving it off - inhabiting the particular characteristics in the script. But I am this OTHER guy, and I am interacting with guys in THEIR characters. That made me fearless!

Shortly after landing the gig, Van Zandt rejoined the E Street Band, and he’s remained active in both worlds ever since.

Over the course of eight seasons, Game of Thrones recast the role of Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane twice. The first Mountain was Conan Stevens, who had to step out after Season 1 due to scheduling conflicts. Then came Ian Whyte, but he didn’t enjoy the role and backed away in order to play several minor characters instead, including the giant Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun.

For their third and final Mountain, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss selected a real-life giant. Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson was a former professional basketball player who had since been hard at work putting together perhaps the greatest strongman career of all time. The 6-foot-9, 420-pound dynamo mostly got the call to audition on account of his enormous size and visible strength, but Björnsson sealed the deal by picking an actor up over his head with ease, as he recounted in a Reddit AMA:

[HBO] contacted me and called me in for an audition. During the audition, I lifted the guy up (well, he asked me to), and they were really impressed.

Since wrapping up on Game of Thrones, Björnsson has continued to dabble in acting, but he’s also continued in his athletic passion, recently setting a new world record for deadlifting with 1,104 pounds. In other words, lifting that actor over his head was not a particularly difficult challenge.

Striving for medical authenticity, the showrunners of Grey’s Anatomy sought to cast real-life surgical nurses in the first season of the series for the purpose of realistically assisting their actors during tough surgery scenes. One such nurse, Kathy C. An, was such a hit with the cast that some began watching her work on actual open-heart surgeries to study for their roles - and, so, she kept being brought back.

As Bokhee, An has appeared in every single one of Grey’s 17 seasons. Winning fans at home through her expressive reactions, An would eventually be given the odd speaking line, including a handful in her native Korean. And audiences aren’t the only ones enamored with her performances; Sandra Oh once tweeted, “The nurse in that scene, Bokhee, is a real surgical nurse. She’s been with us since the beginning. She’s like my 2nd mom, she’s the best.”

Like many, Andy Buckley harbored dreams of a career as an actor when he was younger. Although he made it further than most - studying improv and sketch comedy at the Groundlings Theatre & School alongside Melissa McCarthy and Dax Shephard - like many, Buckley eventually had to give up on his dream and get a “real job” after winning nothing but bit roles for years. With a degree in hand from Stanford University, Buckley became a wealth management advisor at Merrill Lynch.

Then, years later, an acquaintance called Buckley out of the blue and told him The Office was looking to cast someone as Dunder Mifflin’s chief financial officer, and that Buckley might be perfect for the part, given his day job as a stockbroker.

Buckley gave it a chance, auditioning for writer and producer Michael Schur. As Buckley later recalled on the Office Ladies podcast, "I do the first scene and then the second scene. And Michael said 'Now, you’re like some kind of financial guy, right?' ...I figured that’s why I got hired."

As David Wallace, Buckley would go on to appear in 37 episodes, becoming a fan favorite due to his trademark managerial warmth. Since then, Buckley has appeared in countless shows and blockbuster films - and acting now qualifies as his real job. 

By age 20, Heather Morris had already experienced about as much success as a dancer as she possibly could. Touring as a backup dancer for Beyonce, Morris became one of three official “Single Ladies” dancers. When she was hired to teach the iconic dance to the cast and crew of Glee, Morris had been taking acting classes and attempting to branch out - but then serendipity struck.

The showrunners of Glee took a liking to Morris and offered her a background role as a cheerleader at William McKinley High. From there, she improvised her way into a few onscreen one-liners, and by Season 2, her Brittany S. Pierce, a ditz with a heart of gold, was added to the main cast. As Morris recalled to Vulture:

Basically, I was cast to play a third addition to the Cheerios - literally just a [mean] cheerleader, nothing involved, just “you’re going to be part of this trio with Quinn and Santana.” I had gotten a couple lines in the beginning, though I didn’t have a storyline, and they’d mostly hired me to be a dancer in the glee-club scenes.

I was in a scene with Mark Salling and Jane Lynch, this scene in Sue’s office when she’s trying to recruit us to be in her own rival glee club, when she was ranting on about how I was this Dutch girl from the red-light district, and he was this Jewish guy, and [creator] Ryan Murphy was watching and I heard this hysterical laughing. He walks in, like, “Heather Morris: You looked so confused, and it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.” It was literally from that moment on, it just kept getting worse and worse, the dumb things I was saying.

And while the one-liners may have gotten worse and worse, Morris’s acting certainly did not - she’s remained active ever since Glee wrapped up, and it is now her full-time career.