Perhaps in no line of work does luck play a greater role than in acting. Sure, talent is important. But to make it in movies or television, you’ve got to get some breaks.
It took decades for good fortune to kick in for Jonathan Goldsmith. He started as a stage actor in New York City, then went west with dreams of making it in Hollywood. He landed roles, but never broke out, never got a steady job, never made any real money. Was it frustrating? “Of course,” he told me. “You can be so close to [success], and yet it’s a million miles away. You’d drive by those studios and see everything that you wanted.” But the good roles and fame and riches they brought with them always slipped through Goldsmith’s fingers.
In 2006, nearly fifty years after he started acting, Goldsmith became a star when he was cast in commercials for Dos Equis beer as the Most Interesting Man in the World. The fates had finally smiled upon him. At the age of 68, he was an overnight success—but only because he never gave up. “I think actors are in many ways the strongest people in the world,” he says, because rejection and failure are their constant companions.
Even after being cast in that life-changing role, Goldsmith was nagged by self-doubt. “I said, they’re going to find out I’m not really the Most Interesting Man in the World. But I was having fun with it and I threw myself into it.”
The Dos Equis campaign lasted ten years, coming to an end when the Most Interesting Man in the World was sent rocketing off to Mars on a one-way mission. Goldsmith sums up the whole experience with a big smile—and even bigger understatement: “It worked out very well.”
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Jonathan Goldsmith came to Maine for a fundraiser for the York Hospital Hancock Family Fund for Healthy Aging. Next year’s fundraiser will be held at the Cliff House in Ogunquit on August 1.
