Late bloomer
Encyclopedia
A late bloomer is a person whose talents or capabilities are not visible to others until later than usual. The term is used metaphorically to describe a child or adolescent who develops more slowly than others in their age group, but eventually catches up and in some cases overtakes their peers, or an adult whose talent or genius in a particular field only appears later in life than is normal - in some cases only in old age.
This article discusses late-blooming children, adolescents and adults.
"Late Bloomer" is commonly used to refer to young children who develop skills such as language, reading or social interaction later than others of their age.
There are many theories of the way in which children develop, proposed by authorities such as Urie Bronfenbrenner
, Jerome Bruner
, Erik Erikson
, Jerome Kagan
, Lawrence Kohlberg
, Jean Piaget
and Lev Vygotsky
. Although they disagree about how stages of development should be defined, and about the primary influences on development, they agree that a child's development can be measured as a predictable series of advances in physical, intellectual and social skills which almost always occur in the same sequence, although the rate may vary from one child to another.
When a child falls behind their peers at some stage of development, their teacher may perceive that the child is "backward". There is strong evidence that this perception may become self-fulfilling: although the child catches up, the teacher may continue to rate their performance poorly, imposing a long-term handicap. Thomas Edison
's mind often wandered and his teacher was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. His mother then home schooled
him. Edison may have had some form of Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD), which is said to affect about 3 - 5% of children.
A notable example of a child who overcame early developmental problems is Albert Einstein
, who suffered from speech difficulties as a young child. Other late-talking children who became highly successful engineers, mathematicians and scientists include the physicists Richard Feynman
and Edward Teller
. Neuroscientist Steven Pinker
postulates that a certain form of language delay
may in fact be associated with exceptional and innate analytical prowess in some individuals.
Dyslexia
is a learning disability that may affect 3% - 10% of children. It is thought to be the result of a genetically inherited neurological difference from "normal" children, and has been diagnosed in people of all levels of intelligence. Studies indicate that 20% to 35% of U. S. and British entrepreneurs have the condition: by definition, late bloomers. Researchers theorise that dyslexic entrepreneurs may attain success by delegating responsibilities and excelling at verbal communication. Richard Branson
, known for his Virgin
brand of over 360 companies is a notable example, as is Charles R. Schwab
the founder and CEO
of the Charles Schwab Corporation. Pablo Picasso
, Tom Cruise
and Whoopi Goldberg
are other examples of dyslexics, considered "slow" as children.
The autism spectrum
of psychological conditions affects about 0.6% of children, characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior. Notable individuals with autism spectrum disorders include Tim Page
, a Pulitzer Prize
-winning critic and author and Vernon L. Smith
, a Nobel Laureate in economics.
During adolescence
a child goes through physical and mental
changes that lead to them becoming an adult. Adolescence is usually considered to start with the first stages of puberty
and to continue until physical growth is complete, although the World Health Organization
defines adolescence simply as the period between ages 10 and 20. There is a wide range of normal ages, but generally girls begin the process of puberty between the ages of 9 to 14, reaching adult height and reproductive maturity within 4 years, while boys usually start between the ages of 10 to 17, and continue to grow for about 6 years after the first visible pubertal changes. Adolescence is often a period of turbulent emotions and mood swings
combined with rapid intellectual development.
"Late Bloomer" can refer to children who suffer from delayed puberty
, who are late in reaching their full height. W.B. Yeats (age 30),Pierre Trudeau
(age at least 28),Mark Twain
(age 34), and Johann von Goethe (age 39) are all "late bloomers" in this last sense.
In most public education
al systems, children and adolescents of the same age are put in the same classes. Because of the wide variance in the onset of adolescence, this means that one class may include individuals who have not yet started puberty, others who are sexually mature
but not fully grown and yet others who are effectively adult. During this period, there is a high risk of an adolescent dropping out of formal education (due most commonly to intellectual boredom, bullying, or rebellion) without having achieved their full learning potential. The term "late-bloomer" may refer to such an individual who develops serious intellectual interests in their 20's or 30's and enrolls in college, where he or she performs particularly well and is subsequently able to establish a professional career.
Although there is a common perception that intellectual development peaks in a young adult and then slowly declines with increasing age, this may be simplistic. Although the ability to form new memories and concepts may indeed diminish, the older person has the advantage of accumulated knowledge, associations between concepts and mental techniques that may give them an advantage in some fields.
Some notable examples of late bloomers in different fields follow.
didn't begin his career until he was 28, having operated a graphic design company before then. He didn't get his first real break into theatre until he was in his 40s. Danny Aiello
did not start acting until he was 40. Peg Phillips
might be one of the best examples as she first pursued acting as a professional after her retirement from accounting. Although not a noteworthy actress Clara Peller
might be noted for having an even later start in entertainment. Richard Farnsworth
became an actor after 40 years as a stunt man, although he had had a few small uncredited roles when younger. Rodney Dangerfield
was an actor/comedian who didn't really start until he was 42. He had done clubs when he was younger, but stopped in order to work as a salesman. Zelda Rubinstein
was 48 before she had her first role, a minor part in Under the Rainbow
, but is more known for her "debut" in the Poltergeist film series
starting the following year. Chicago native, Chi McBride
, best known for the role as the principal in the series Boston Public, only got into acting when he was 31. Danny Glover
had a brief stint in the career of politics before he had involved himself in acting at 28. BAFTA winning British actress Liz Smith
did not become a professional actress until the age of 50.
Kathryn Joosten
also got a late start. Television star Judd Hirsch
from Taxi became active at the age of 36. George Wendt
who played Norm on Cheers became active at the age of 32. Brian Dennehy
had dreams of stage and screen at an early age, but chose to first pursue other interests such as service in the U.S. Marine Corps prior to becoming active at the age of 38. Irish actor Brendan Gleeson
, who appeared as Mad Eye Moody in the Harry Potter
films and alongside Colin Farrell
in In Bruges
, started acting at 34, having previous work as a school teacher.
In art "late bloomers" are most often associated with Naïve art
. This term is used for untrained artists so fits those who start late in life without artistic training. Hence the classic late bloomer is Grandma Moses
whose painting career began in her seventies after abandoning a career in embroidery because of arthritis. An even older example is Bill Traylor
who started drawing at age 83. Another painter who started late in life is Alfred Wallis
who began painting after his wife's death in his 60s.
became best known in her nineties when she helped straighten out irregularities in her husband's oil business after he went senile in his own 90s. Colonel Sanders
began his franchise in his sixties and can also be deemed a late in life financial success. In his mid-50s Taikichiro Mori
founded the business that made him, for a year or two, the richest man in the world. He came from a merchant family, but had been a business professor before his 50s.
dancer and choreographer Kazuo Ohno
did not undertake formal dance lessons until his late twenties and was 43 years old when he performed his first recital at Kanda Kyoritsu Hall in Tokyo in 1949. A decade later, he and colleague Tatsumi Hijikata
would achieve worldwide acclaim as the nucleus of the Butoh
dance movement.
Martha Graham dancer David Zurak took his first dance class at the age of 23 and built a successful career in New York City.
, who entered the NFL
at age 28, and went on to become a two-time MVP and Super Bowl
champion. Baseball pitcher Randy Johnson
, who made his Major League
debut at 25, but didn't reach superstar status until he was 30, might also be considered a late bloomer, Former NBA star, Hakeem Olajuwon
did not touch a basketball until he was 15, but his athleticism and fundamentals from the sports, soccer and handball, helped him advanced as one of the greatest bigmen to ever play in the NBA.
In shooting there have been two figures of note whose accomplishments occurred in their sixties or later. Joshua Millner
of Britain was 61 when he won his Olympic gold medal in Free rifle, 1000 yards. Swedish marksman Oscar Swahn
won two Olympic gold medals in the running deer, single shot event at the age of 60. He won his last medal, silver, at 72 making him the oldest medalist. In athletics Philip Rabinowitz set a sprinting record for centenarians.
Jonah Barrington, a squash player, overcame alcoholism to later become a 6 times British Open Squash champion, and was regarded as one of the fittest men on the planet.
Heavyweight champions Ken Norton
and Rocky Marciano
did not take up boxing
until their twenties, but both enjoyed successful careers at the highest level of competition.
Baseball player Josh Hamilton, a former number one overall draft pick, did not make his major league debut until the age of 26 due to years of serious drug and alcohol abuse. He has since been an all star several times and won the 2010 American League MVP award.
Anton Bruckner
is an example of a musical late bloomer. Although he played church organ some in his twenties he did not become a composer until his 40s. Singer K. T. Oslin
released her first album at age 47 which was a major country music
success. Al Jarreau
is also an example, who released his first album at age 35. AERIA Recording Artist Colie Brice released his 10th solo album Late Bloomer at 39. Elliott Carter
did not achieve compositional maturity until his Cello Sonata (1948), when he was 40. César Franck
and Leoš Janáček
also matured late as composers: Franck at 56, with his Symphony no. 1 in D; and Janáček at 50, with his first true breakthrough, Jenůfa" (1904). Iannis Xenakis
did not even begin studying composition until 30, with Messiaen. Leonard Cohen
did not release his first album until he was 32 years old.
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Though many filmmakers begin directing in their late 20s or early 30s, many of the most notable directors in film history waited until their mid-to-late-30s to direct their first feature. These directors include Nicholas Ray
, Alain Resnais
, Edward Yang
, Michael Mann, Paul Verhoeven, Frank Tashlin
, Robert Aldrich
, Satyajit Ray
, Anthony Mann
, Terry Gilliam
, Jerry Lewis
, Tsai Ming-liang
, Don Siegel
, Melvin Van Peebles
, Gaspar Noé
, Lloyd Bacon
, Alexander Kluge
, Mrinal Sen
, Jean-Marie Straub
, Ida Lupino
, Alexander Payne
, Ang Lee
and Jacques Rivette
. David Mamet
directed his first feature at 40, having already found success and been awarded a Pulitzer Prize
as a playwright
. Éric Rohmer
directed his first feature film at 39, though he didn't become a full-time filmmaker until he was in his late 40s.
Many notable directors started even later: Robert Bresson
, Jacques Tati
and Takeshi Kitano
directed their first features at 42; Maurice Pialat
at 43; Michael Haneke
at 47; Jim Sheridan
at 40 and his peer and fellow collaborator Terry George
at 46. Yevgeni Bauer
at 48. Clint Eastwood
, the oldest person to win the Academy Award for Best Director, directed his first film at 41.
One of the most shining examples of late bloomers in filmmaking is the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira
. Born in 1908, he worked sporadically in filmmaking from the 1930s. He completed his first feature film in 1941 called Aniki-Bobo. Due to circumstances beyond his control (difficulty in financing, having to deal with his family's business), he didn't complete his second feature film until 1971 (when he turned 63). 2 years later, he completed his third feature film, Benilde or the Virgin Mother (1973). Five years later, he made his breakthrough film (originally commissioned by Portuguese TV) called Doomed Love. After his critically acclaimed film Francisca (1981), he became a full time filmmaker (at the age of 73).
as of January 2009, of 540 elected officials 215 had worked in the legal profession and 189 had worked in private sector business. The average age of senators was 62. A lawyer or businessperson who moves into politics later in life is presumably putting existing skills to a new use, and should not be considered a late bloomer. However, some highly successful politicians come from unusual backgrounds.
Václav Havel
, born in 1936, was a playwright and writer with an interest in human rights. He became the voice of the opposition in Czechoslovakia
in the 1980s and President of Czechoslovakia at age 53 after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Ronald Reagan
, a former actor, union leader and corporate spokesman, was first elected to public office at 55 when he became Governor of California
and remains the oldest man to have served as U.S. President. Melchora Aquino
was an uneducated Filipino
peasant woman, the mother of six children, who became an activist in the fight to gain independence from Spain. Known as the Grand Woman of the revolution, she was 84 when the Philippine Revolution
broke out in 1896. Silas C. Swallow
was a minister who became a Prohibition Party
activist in his sixties. Marjory Stoneman Douglas
's might also fit. Her first environmental work of note occurred when she was almost 60, at 78 she founded "Friends of the Everglades", and she continued until she was over age 100.
The great proponent of Gaudiya Vaishnavism
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
or the Hare Krishna
movement in 1966 at the age of 70. Within the final twenty years of his life Prabhupada translated over sixty volumes of classic Vedic scriptures
(such as Bhagavad Gita
and Bhagavata Purana
) into the English language.
might be a classic example. She wrote two children's books in her late fifties, but her writing career did not gain note until her first novel at 70, written after the death of her husband. Harriet Doerr
published her first novel at age 74, and went on to great praise. A possibly more well known example might be Laura Ingalls Wilder
. She became a columnist in her forties, but did not publish her first novel in the Little House series
of children's books until her sixties.
Eugène Ehrhart
started publishing in mathematics in his 40s, and finished his PhD thesis at the age of 60.
Caspar Wessel
published his only mathematics paper at the age of 54.
Memoirist and novelist Flora Thompson
was first published in her thirties but is most famous for the semi-autobiographical Lark Rise to Candleford
trilogy, the first volume of which was published when she was 63. Frank McCourt
didn't publish his first book Angela's Ashes
which he later won the Pulizer Prize for until he was 66. "Children's author Mary Alice Fontenot
wrote her first book at 51 and wrote almost thirty additional books, publishing multiple volumes in her eighties and nineties. Kenneth Grahame
was born in 1859, joined the Bank of England
in 1879 and rose through the ranks to become its Secretary. Although he had written various short stories while working at the bank, it was only after his retirement in 1908 that he published his masterpiece and final work The Wind in the Willows
.
Charles Bukowski
published his first novel at age 49 after a lengthy career working odd jobs and then at a post office. Richard Adams's first novel, the bestseller Watership Down
, was published when he was in his fifties. Anthony Burgess
, the novelist best known for A Clockwork Orange
, published his first novel at age 39. William S. Burroughs
was also 39 when he published his first novel, Junky. The Marquis de Sade
published his first novel, Justine
, after turning 51. Henry Miller
published his novel Tropic of Cancer
at 44. Raymond Chandler
published his first short story at 45, and his first novel, The Big Sleep
at 51.
In other areas of writing, poet Wallace Stevens
started late in life after years as an insurance salesman and executive. Although he was first published at 38, his "canonical works" came out in his fifties. In philosophy Mary Midgley
had her first book when she was 56. Edmond Hoyle
wrote a booklet on whist
in his late sixties. To avoid unauthorized copies he wrote the copyrighted A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist at age 70.
The Indian writer and polymath Nirad C. Chaudhuri
wrote his autobiography The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
at the age of 54. He wrote a sequel to it Thy Hand, Great Anarch!
at the age of 90. He published his next work (and his final work) Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse at the age of 100.
Aron Ettore Schmitz published his first novel Senilità in his 38th year, however it was not until he published Zeno's Conscience that he made a breakthrough, aged 61. Even this was self-published.
Joseph Conrad
was one of the greatest authors in the English language. He could not speak a word of English until he was about 21. He only started writing in English at about age 32, and his first published works came out when he was about 37.
This article discusses late-blooming children, adolescents and adults.
Children
There are many theories of the way in which children develop, proposed by authorities such as Urie Bronfenbrenner
Urie Bronfenbrenner
Urie Bronfenbrenner was a Russian American psychologist, known for developing his Ecological Systems Theory, and as a co-founder of the Head Start program in the United States for disadvantaged pre-school children....
, Jerome Bruner
Jerome Bruner
Jerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist who has contributed to cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, as well as to history and to the general philosophy of education. Bruner is currently a senior research fellow at the New York University School...
, Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...
, Jerome Kagan
Jerome Kagan
Jerome Kagan was born in 1929, and grew up in Rahway, New Jersey, USA. Kagan is currently retired after being a professor at Harvard University in the Developmental program . He is one of the key pioneers of developmental psychology. He is Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology,...
, Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York, who served as a professor at the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard University. Having specialized in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory of stages of moral development...
, Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....
and Lev Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...
. Although they disagree about how stages of development should be defined, and about the primary influences on development, they agree that a child's development can be measured as a predictable series of advances in physical, intellectual and social skills which almost always occur in the same sequence, although the rate may vary from one child to another.
When a child falls behind their peers at some stage of development, their teacher may perceive that the child is "backward". There is strong evidence that this perception may become self-fulfilling: although the child catches up, the teacher may continue to rate their performance poorly, imposing a long-term handicap. Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
's mind often wandered and his teacher was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. His mother then home schooled
Homeschooling
Homeschooling or homeschool is the education of children at home, typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school...
him. Edison may have had some form of Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a developmental disorder. It is primarily characterized by "the co-existence of attentional problems and hyperactivity, with each behavior occurring infrequently alone" and symptoms starting before seven years of age.ADHD is the most commonly studied and...
(ADHD), which is said to affect about 3 - 5% of children.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, who suffered from speech difficulties as a young child. Other late-talking children who became highly successful engineers, mathematicians and scientists include the physicists Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
and Edward Teller
Edward Teller
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title. Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy , and surface physics...
. Neuroscientist Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
postulates that a certain form of language delay
Language delay
Language delay is a failure to develop language abilities on the usual developmental timetable. Language delay is distinct from speech delay, in which the speech mechanism itself is the focus of delay...
may in fact be associated with exceptional and innate analytical prowess in some individuals.
Dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
is a learning disability that may affect 3% - 10% of children. It is thought to be the result of a genetically inherited neurological difference from "normal" children, and has been diagnosed in people of all levels of intelligence. Studies indicate that 20% to 35% of U. S. and British entrepreneurs have the condition: by definition, late bloomers. Researchers theorise that dyslexic entrepreneurs may attain success by delegating responsibilities and excelling at verbal communication. Richard Branson
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies....
, known for his Virgin
Virgin Group
Virgin Group Limited is a British branded venture capital conglomerate organisation founded by business tycoon Richard Branson. The core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyle. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding...
brand of over 360 companies is a notable example, as is Charles R. Schwab
Charles R. Schwab
Charles R. "Chuck" Schwab is the founder and chairman of the Charles Schwab Corporation.-Early life:Schwab was born in Sacramento, California. Despite having the same name, he is not related to Charles M. Schwab, the American steel magnate of the first half of the Twentieth Century...
the founder and CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of the Charles Schwab Corporation. Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV , better known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and he has won three Golden Globe Awards....
and Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg is an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won...
are other examples of dyslexics, considered "slow" as children.
The autism spectrum
Autism spectrum
The term "autism spectrum" is often used to describe disorders that are currently classified as pervasive developmental disorders. Pervasive developmental disorders include autism, Asperger syndrome, Childhood disintegrative disorder, Rett syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise...
of psychological conditions affects about 0.6% of children, characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior. Notable individuals with autism spectrum disorders include Tim Page
Tim Page (music critic)
Tim Page is a writer, editor, music critic, producer and professor. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for the Washington Post and also played an essential role in the revival of American author Dawn Powell.-Career:Page grew up in Storrs, Connecticut, where his father, Ellis B...
, a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning critic and author and Vernon L. Smith
Vernon L. Smith
Vernon Lomax Smith is professor of economics at Chapman University's Argyros School of Business and Economics and School of Law in Orange, California, a research scholar at George Mason University Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a Fellow of the Mercatus Center, all in Arlington,...
, a Nobel Laureate in economics.
Adolescents
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
a child goes through physical and mental
Adolescent psychology
-Adolescence:Adolescence, the transitional stage of development between childhood and adulthood, represents the period of time during which a person experiences a variety of biological changes and encounters a number of emotional issues. The ages which are considered to be part of adolescence vary...
changes that lead to them becoming an adult. Adolescence is usually considered to start with the first stages of puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
and to continue until physical growth is complete, although the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
defines adolescence simply as the period between ages 10 and 20. There is a wide range of normal ages, but generally girls begin the process of puberty between the ages of 9 to 14, reaching adult height and reproductive maturity within 4 years, while boys usually start between the ages of 10 to 17, and continue to grow for about 6 years after the first visible pubertal changes. Adolescence is often a period of turbulent emotions and mood swings
Mood Swings
Mood Swings is an album by Koby Israelite released in 2005 on Tzadik.- Track listing :# "Dror Ikra" - 3:03# "Return of the Idiots" - 2:19# "It Is Not a War Here" - 7:05# "Ethnometalogy" - 5:08# "Europa?" - 2:49# "Hiriya On My Mind" - 4:53...
combined with rapid intellectual development.
"Late Bloomer" can refer to children who suffer from delayed puberty
Delayed puberty
Puberty is described as delayed puberty with exceptions when an organism has passed the usual age of onset of puberty with no physical or hormonal signs that it is beginning. Puberty may be delayed for several years and still occur normally, in which case it is considered constitutional delay, a...
, who are late in reaching their full height. W.B. Yeats (age 30),Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, , usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals,...
(age at least 28),Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
(age 34), and Johann von Goethe (age 39) are all "late bloomers" in this last sense.
In most public education
Public education
State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
al systems, children and adolescents of the same age are put in the same classes. Because of the wide variance in the onset of adolescence, this means that one class may include individuals who have not yet started puberty, others who are sexually mature
Sexual maturity
Sexual maturity is the age or stage when an organism can reproduce. It is sometimes considered synonymous with adulthood, though the two are distinct...
but not fully grown and yet others who are effectively adult. During this period, there is a high risk of an adolescent dropping out of formal education (due most commonly to intellectual boredom, bullying, or rebellion) without having achieved their full learning potential. The term "late-bloomer" may refer to such an individual who develops serious intellectual interests in their 20's or 30's and enrolls in college, where he or she performs particularly well and is subsequently able to establish a professional career.
Adults
A late blooming adult is a person who does not discover their talents and abilities until later than normally expected. In certain cases retirement may lead to this discovery.Although there is a common perception that intellectual development peaks in a young adult and then slowly declines with increasing age, this may be simplistic. Although the ability to form new memories and concepts may indeed diminish, the older person has the advantage of accumulated knowledge, associations between concepts and mental techniques that may give them an advantage in some fields.
Some notable examples of late bloomers in different fields follow.
Acting
The actor Alan RickmanAlan Rickman
Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman is an English actor and theatre director. He is a renowned stage actor in modern and classical productions and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company...
didn't begin his career until he was 28, having operated a graphic design company before then. He didn't get his first real break into theatre until he was in his 40s. Danny Aiello
Danny Aiello
Daniel Louis "Danny" Aiello, Jr. is an American actor who has appeared in numerous motion pictures, including Once Upon a Time in America, Ruby, The Godfather: Part II, Hudson Hawk, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Moonstruck, Léon, Two Days in the Valley, and Dinner Rush...
did not start acting until he was 40. Peg Phillips
Peg Phillips
Peg Phillips was an American actress best known for playing storekeeper Ruth-Anne Miller on the television series Northern Exposure....
might be one of the best examples as she first pursued acting as a professional after her retirement from accounting. Although not a noteworthy actress Clara Peller
Clara Peller
Clara Peller , was a retired manicurist and American character actress who, at the age of 81, starred in the 1984 "Where's the beef?" advertising campaign for the Wendy's fast food restaurant chain, created by the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample ad agency.-Early life:Born in Illinois, Clara Peller lived...
might be noted for having an even later start in entertainment. Richard Farnsworth
Richard Farnsworth
Richard W. Farnsworth was an American actor and stuntman. His film career began in 1937; however, he achieved his greatest success for his performances in The Grey Fox and The Straight Story , for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor.- Early life :Farnsworth was born...
became an actor after 40 years as a stunt man, although he had had a few small uncredited roles when younger. Rodney Dangerfield
Rodney Dangerfield
Rodney Dangerfield , was an American comedian, and actor, known for the catchphrases "I don't get no respect!," "No respect, no respect at all... that's the story of my life" or "I get no respect, I tell ya" and his monologues on that theme...
was an actor/comedian who didn't really start until he was 42. He had done clubs when he was younger, but stopped in order to work as a salesman. Zelda Rubinstein
Zelda Rubinstein
Zelda Rubinstein was an American actress and human rights activist, best known as eccentric medium Tangina Barrons in the movie Poltergeist and its sequels, Poltergeist II: The Other Side , and Poltergeist III . Playing 'Ginny', she was a regular on David E...
was 48 before she had her first role, a minor part in Under the Rainbow
Under the Rainbow
Under the Rainbow is a 1981 comedy film starring Chevy Chase, Carrie Fisher, Eve Arden, and Billy Barty.The plot is loosely based on the gathering of little people in a Hollywood hotel, to audition for roles as Munchkins in the movie The Wizard of Oz...
, but is more known for her "debut" in the Poltergeist film series
Poltergeist (film series)
The Poltergeist movies are a trilogy of American horror films distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the 1980s. The films revolve around the members of the Freeling family, who are stalked and terrorized by a group of ancient ghosts that are attracted to the youngest daughter, Carol Anne. The...
starting the following year. Chicago native, Chi McBride
Chi McBride
Kenneth "Chi" McBride is an American actor. He starred as Steven Harper on the series Boston Public, as Emerson Cod on Pushing Daisies, and recently appeared in Fox's drama Human Target.-Early life:...
, best known for the role as the principal in the series Boston Public, only got into acting when he was 31. Danny Glover
Danny Glover
Danny Lebern Glover is an American actor, film director, and political activist. Glover is perhaps best known for his role as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise.-Early life:...
had a brief stint in the career of politics before he had involved himself in acting at 28. BAFTA winning British actress Liz Smith
Liz Smith (actress)
Liz Smith, MBE is a British actress, best-known for her roles in the sitcoms The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family. She also appeared in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.-Early life:...
did not become a professional actress until the age of 50.
Kathryn Joosten
Kathryn Joosten
Kathryn Joosten is an American television actress best known for her regular role as Karen McCluskey in Desperate Housewives and for her recurring role in The West Wing as Dolores Landingham.-Early life:...
also got a late start. Television star Judd Hirsch
Judd Hirsch
Judd Hirsch is an American actor most known for playing Alex Rieger on the television comedy series Taxi, John Lacey on the NBC series Dear John, and Alan Eppes on the CBS series Numb3rs.-Early life and education:...
from Taxi became active at the age of 36. George Wendt
George Wendt
George Robert Wendt III is an American actor, best known for the roles of Norm Peterson and Tug Clarke on the television shows Cheers and Modern Men.-Early life:...
who played Norm on Cheers became active at the age of 32. Brian Dennehy
Brian Dennehy
Brian Mannion Dennehy is an American actor of film, stage and screen.-Early years:Dennehy was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Hannah and Edward Dennehy, who was a wire service editor for the Associated Press; he has two brothers, Michael and Edward. Dennehy is of Irish ancestry and was...
had dreams of stage and screen at an early age, but chose to first pursue other interests such as service in the U.S. Marine Corps prior to becoming active at the age of 38. Irish actor Brendan Gleeson
Brendan Gleeson
Brendan Gleeson is an Irish actor. His best-known films include Braveheart, Gangs of New York, In Bruges, 28 Days Later, the Harry Potter films, The Guard and the role of Michael Collins in The Treaty...
, who appeared as Mad Eye Moody in the Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
films and alongside Colin Farrell
Colin Farrell
Colin James Farrell is an Irish actor, who has appeared in such film as Tigerland, Miami Vice, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Recruit, Alexander and S.W.A.T....
in In Bruges
In Bruges
In Bruges is a 2008 black comedy crime film written and directed by Martin McDonagh. The film stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two hitmen in hiding, with Ralph Fiennes as their gangster boss. The film takes place—and was filmed—within the Belgian city of Bruges. In Bruges was...
, started acting at 34, having previous work as a school teacher.
Art
Naïve art
Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...
. This term is used for untrained artists so fits those who start late in life without artistic training. Hence the classic late bloomer is Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses
Anna Mary Robertson Moses , better known as "Grandma Moses", was a renowned American folk artist. She is often cited as an example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts at an advanced age. Although her family and friends called her either "Mother Moses" or "Grandma Moses,"...
whose painting career began in her seventies after abandoning a career in embroidery because of arthritis. An even older example is Bill Traylor
Bill Traylor
William "Bill" Traylor was a self-taught artist born into slavery on a plantation belonging to George Hartwell Traylor near Benton, in Lowndes County, Alabama. After emancipation, his family continued to farm on the plantation until the 1930s...
who started drawing at age 83. Another painter who started late in life is Alfred Wallis
Alfred Wallis
Alfred Wallis was a Cornish fisherman and artist.Wallis's parents, Charles and Jane Wallis were from Penzance in Cornwall and moved to Devonport, Devon to find work in 1850 where Alfred and his brother Charles were born. Shortly after this the children's mother died and this prompted the family to...
who began painting after his wife's death in his 60s.
Business
In business Irene Wells PenningtonIrene Wells Pennington
Irene Wells Pennington was the widow of Claude B. "Doc" Pennington, a wealthy oilman from Louisiana.When he was well into his 90s and losing his touch mentally, she had him declared mentally incompetent and took charge of his fortune, estimated by Forbes at $600 million.She straightened out...
became best known in her nineties when she helped straighten out irregularities in her husband's oil business after he went senile in his own 90s. Colonel Sanders
Colonel Sanders
Harland David "Colonel" Sanders was an American fast food businessman who founded the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain, now re-branded as KFC...
began his franchise in his sixties and can also be deemed a late in life financial success. In his mid-50s Taikichiro Mori
Taikichiro Mori
Taikichiro Mori was the founder of Mori Building.Forbes ranked him as the richest man in the world in 1991 and 1992. His sons, Minoru and Akira, currently head Mori Building and the Mori Trust, respectively. He graduated from the Tokyo College of Commerce in 1928....
founded the business that made him, for a year or two, the richest man in the world. He came from a merchant family, but had been a business professor before his 50s.
Dance
JapaneseJapanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
dancer and choreographer Kazuo Ohno
Kazuo Ohno
was a Japanese dancer who became a guru and inspirational figure in the dance form known as Butoh. It was written of him that his very presence was an "artistic fact."...
did not undertake formal dance lessons until his late twenties and was 43 years old when he performed his first recital at Kanda Kyoritsu Hall in Tokyo in 1949. A decade later, he and colleague Tatsumi Hijikata
Tatsumi Hijikata
was a Japanese choreographer, and the founder of a genre of dance performance art called Butoh. By the late 1960s, he had begun to develop this dance form, which is highly choreographed with stylized gestures drawn from his childhood memories of his northern Japan home...
would achieve worldwide acclaim as the nucleus of the Butoh
Butoh
is the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement inspired by the movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup...
dance movement.
Martha Graham dancer David Zurak took his first dance class at the age of 23 and built a successful career in New York City.
Games and Sports
In professional sports, an athlete's career usually ends in the mid-to-late 30s, so a player who breaks through in his late 20s/early 30s would be considered a late bloomer. One such example is Kurt WarnerKurt Warner
Kurtis Eugene "Kurt" Warner is a retired American football player. He played quarterback for three National Football League teams: the St. Louis Rams, the New York Giants, and the Arizona Cardinals. He was originally signed by the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent in 1994 after playing...
, who entered the NFL
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
at age 28, and went on to become a two-time MVP and Super Bowl
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...
champion. Baseball pitcher Randy Johnson
Randy Johnson
Randall David Johnson , nicknamed "The Big Unit", is a former Major League Baseball left-handed pitcher. During a 22-year career, he pitched for six different teams....
, who made his Major League
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
debut at 25, but didn't reach superstar status until he was 30, might also be considered a late bloomer, Former NBA star, Hakeem Olajuwon
Hakeem Olajuwon
Hakeem Abdul Olajuwon is a retired Nigerian-American professional basketball player. From 1984 to 2002, he played the center position in the National Basketball Association for the Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors. He led the Rockets to back-to-back NBA championships in 1994 and 1995. In 2008,...
did not touch a basketball until he was 15, but his athleticism and fundamentals from the sports, soccer and handball, helped him advanced as one of the greatest bigmen to ever play in the NBA.
Joshua Millner
Joshua Kearney Millner , also referred to as Jerry Millner, was a British shooter who represented Great Britain and Ireland at the...
of Britain was 61 when he won his Olympic gold medal in Free rifle, 1000 yards. Swedish marksman Oscar Swahn
Oscar Swahn
Oscar Gomer Swahn was a Swedish shooter who competed at three Olympic games and won several medals....
won two Olympic gold medals in the running deer, single shot event at the age of 60. He won his last medal, silver, at 72 making him the oldest medalist. In athletics Philip Rabinowitz set a sprinting record for centenarians.
Jonah Barrington, a squash player, overcame alcoholism to later become a 6 times British Open Squash champion, and was regarded as one of the fittest men on the planet.
Heavyweight champions Ken Norton
Ken Norton
Kenneth Howard Norton Sr. is a former heavyweight boxer. He is best known for his 12-round victory over a peak Muhammad Ali where he famously broke Ali's jaw, on March 31, 1973, becoming only the second man to defeat Ali as a professional .He and Ali...
and Rocky Marciano
Rocky Marciano
Rocky Marciano , born Rocco Francis Marchegiano, was an American boxer and the heavyweight champion of the world from September 23, 1952, to April 27, 1956. Marciano is the only champion to hold the heavyweight title and go undefeated throughout his career. Marciano defended his title six times...
did not take up boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
until their twenties, but both enjoyed successful careers at the highest level of competition.
Baseball player Josh Hamilton, a former number one overall draft pick, did not make his major league debut until the age of 26 due to years of serious drug and alcohol abuse. He has since been an all star several times and won the 2010 American League MVP award.
Music
Musical ability is inherent in almost all people, to a greater or lesser extent. However, those who develop it to a high level are generally encouraged to play an instrument or to sing at an early age. Late bloomers in music are generally composers or artists who became prominent later in life, but had displayed musical ability much earlier.Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...
is an example of a musical late bloomer. Although he played church organ some in his twenties he did not become a composer until his 40s. Singer K. T. Oslin
K. T. Oslin
Kay Toinette "K. T." Oslin is an American country music singer and songwriter. She is known for a series of top-ten country hits during the late 1980s and early 1990s, four of which topped the chart.-Early life and career:...
released her first album at age 47 which was a major country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
success. Al Jarreau
Al Jarreau
Alwin "Al" Lopez Jarreau is a seven-time Grammy Award winning jazz singer.- Background :Jarreau was born in Milwaukee, the fifth of six children. His web site refers to Reservoir, Inc., the name of the street where he lived. His father was a Seventh-Day Adventist Church minister and singer, and...
is also an example, who released his first album at age 35. AERIA Recording Artist Colie Brice released his 10th solo album Late Bloomer at 39. Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
did not achieve compositional maturity until his Cello Sonata (1948), when he was 40. César Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
and Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
also matured late as composers: Franck at 56, with his Symphony no. 1 in D; and Janáček at 50, with his first true breakthrough, Jenůfa" (1904). Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
did not even begin studying composition until 30, with Messiaen. Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
did not release his first album until he was 32 years old.
Filmmaking
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....
, Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
, Edward Yang
Edward Yang
Edward Yang , along with Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming Liang, was one of the leading filmmakers of the Taiwanese New Wave and Taiwanese Cinema. He won the Best Director Award at Cannes for his 2000 film Yi Yi .-Biography:...
, Michael Mann, Paul Verhoeven, Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin, born Francis Fredrick von Taschlein, also known as Tish Tash or Frank Tash was an American animator, screenwriter, and film director.-Animator:...
, Robert Aldrich
Robert Aldrich
Robert Aldrich was an American film director, writer and producer, notable for such films as Kiss Me Deadly , The Big Knife , What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? , Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte , The Flight of the Phoenix , The Dirty Dozen , and The Longest Yard .-Biography:Robert...
, Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...
, Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann was an American actor and film director, most notably of film noirs and Westerns. As a director, he often collaborated with the cinematographer John Alton and with James Stewart in his Westerns.-Biography:...
, Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
, Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...
, Tsai Ming-liang
Tsai Ming-liang
Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of Taiwanese Cinema, along with earlier contemporaries such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang...
, Don Siegel
Don Siegel
Donald Siegel was an influential American film director and producer. His name variously appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel.-Early life:...
, Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin "Block" Van Peebles is an American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist and composer.He is most famous for creating the acclaimed film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which heralded a new era of African American focused films...
, Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé is an Argentine filmmaker and the son of Argentine painter and intellectual Luis Felipe Noé. He graduated from Louis Lumière College and is the visiting professor of film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland...
, Lloyd Bacon
Lloyd Bacon
Lloyd Francis Bacon was a screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director.-Life:Bacon was born in San Jose California, the son of actor Frank Bacon, later the co-author and star of the long running Broadway show 'Lightnin' , and Jennie Bacon. He was not related to actor Irving Bacon whom he...
, Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge is an author and film director.-Early life, education and early career:Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany....
, Mrinal Sen
Mrinal Sen
Mrinal Sen is a Bengali Indian filmmaker. He was born on 14 May 1923, in the town of Faridpur, now in Bangladesh in a Hindu family. After finishing his high school there, he left home to come to Calcutta as a student and studied physics at the well-known Scottish Church College and at the...
, Jean-Marie Straub
Jean-Marie Straub
Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet were a duo of filmmakers who made two dozen films between 1963 and 2006...
, Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes...
, Alexander Payne
Alexander Payne
Alexander Payne, born Alexander Constantine Papadopoulos is an American film director and screenwriter. His films are noted for their dark humor and satirical depictions of contemporary American society.- Early life :...
, Ang Lee
Ang Lee
Ang Lee is a Taiwanese film director. Lee has directed a diverse set of films such as Eat Drink Man Woman , Sense and Sensibility , Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , Hulk , and Brokeback Mountain , for which he won an Academy...
and Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
. David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
directed his first feature at 40, having already found success and been awarded a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
as a playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
. Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
directed his first feature film at 39, though he didn't become a full-time filmmaker until he was in his late 40s.
Many notable directors started even later: Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
, Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati was a French filmmaker, working as a comedic actor, writer and director. In a poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly of the Greatest Movie Directors Tati was voted the 46th greatest of all time...
and Takeshi Kitano
Takeshi Kitano
is a Japanese filmmaker, comedian, singer, actor, film editor, presenter, screenwriter, author, poet, painter, and one-time video game designer who has received critical acclaim, both in his native Japan and abroad, for his highly idiosyncratic cinematic work. The famed Japanese film critic...
directed their first features at 42; Maurice Pialat
Maurice Pialat
Maurice Pialat was a French film director, screenwriter and actor noted for the rigorous and unsentimental style of his films...
at 43; Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke is a German born Austrian filmmaker and writer best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work...
at 47; Jim Sheridan
Jim Sheridan
Jim Sheridan is an Irish film director. A six-time Academy Award nominee, Sheridan is perhaps best known for his films My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, Get Rich or Die Tryin and In America.-Life and career:...
at 40 and his peer and fellow collaborator Terry George
Terry George
Terry George is an Irish screenwriter and director. Born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland much of his film work involves the Troubles in Northern Ireland...
at 46. Yevgeni Bauer
Yevgeni Bauer
Yevgeni Franzevich Bauer was a Russian film director of silent films, a theatre artist and a screenwriter. His work had a great influence on the aesthetics of Russian cinematography at the beginning of the 20th century....
at 48. Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
, the oldest person to win the Academy Award for Best Director, directed his first film at 41.
One of the most shining examples of late bloomers in filmmaking is the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira
Manoel de Oliveira
Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira, GCSE is a Portuguese film director born in Cedofeita, Porto. He began working on films in the late 1920s, but did not receive international recognition until the early 1970s. Since the late 1980s he has been one of the most prolific working film directors and...
. Born in 1908, he worked sporadically in filmmaking from the 1930s. He completed his first feature film in 1941 called Aniki-Bobo. Due to circumstances beyond his control (difficulty in financing, having to deal with his family's business), he didn't complete his second feature film until 1971 (when he turned 63). 2 years later, he completed his third feature film, Benilde or the Virgin Mother (1973). Five years later, he made his breakthrough film (originally commissioned by Portuguese TV) called Doomed Love. After his critically acclaimed film Francisca (1981), he became a full time filmmaker (at the age of 73).
Politics
It is common for politicians to achieve prominence late in life, often after a career in business, law or academia. For example, in the United States CongressCurrent members of the United States Congress
The 111th United States Congress, in session from 2009–2010, consisted of 541 elected officials from 50 states, five territories, and the District of Columbia...
as of January 2009, of 540 elected officials 215 had worked in the legal profession and 189 had worked in private sector business. The average age of senators was 62. A lawyer or businessperson who moves into politics later in life is presumably putting existing skills to a new use, and should not be considered a late bloomer. However, some highly successful politicians come from unusual backgrounds.
Václav Havel
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
, born in 1936, was a playwright and writer with an interest in human rights. He became the voice of the opposition in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
in the 1980s and President of Czechoslovakia at age 53 after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
, a former actor, union leader and corporate spokesman, was first elected to public office at 55 when he became Governor of California
Governor of California
The Governor of California is the chief executive of the California state government, whose responsibilities include making annual State of the State addresses to the California State Legislature, submitting the budget, and ensuring that state laws are enforced...
and remains the oldest man to have served as U.S. President. Melchora Aquino
Melchora Aquino
Melchora Aquino de Ramos was a Filipina revolutionary who became known as "Tandang Sora" in the history of the Philippines because of her age when the Philippine Revolution broke out in 1896...
was an uneducated Filipino
Filipino people
The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....
peasant woman, the mother of six children, who became an activist in the fight to gain independence from Spain. Known as the Grand Woman of the revolution, she was 84 when the Philippine Revolution
Philippine Revolution
The Philippine Revolution , called the "Tagalog War" by the Spanish, was an armed military conflict between the people of the Philippines and the Spanish colonial authorities which resulted in the secession of the Philippine Islands from the Spanish Empire.The Philippine Revolution began in August...
broke out in 1896. Silas C. Swallow
Silas C. Swallow
Silas Comfort Swallow was a United States Methodist preacher and prohibitionist politician.-Namesake:He was presumably named after Methodist preacher Silas Comfort , a courageous anti-slavery member of the Genesee, Oneida and Missouri Conferences. While serving in St...
was a minister who became a Prohibition Party
Prohibition Party
The Prohibition Party is a political party in the United States best known for its historic opposition to the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages. It is the oldest existing third party in the US. The party was an integral part of the temperance movement...
activist in his sixties. Marjory Stoneman Douglas
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an American journalist, writer, feminist, and environmentalist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development...
's might also fit. Her first environmental work of note occurred when she was almost 60, at 78 she founded "Friends of the Everglades", and she continued until she was over age 100.
Religion
Gaudiya Vaishnavism
Gaudiya Vaishnavism is a Vaishnava religious movement founded by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in India in the 16th century. "Gaudiya" refers to the Gauḍa region with Vaishnavism meaning "the worship of Vishnu"...
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness , known colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement, is a Gaudiya Vaishnava religious organization. It was founded in 1966 in New York City by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada...
or the Hare Krishna
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness , known colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement, is a Gaudiya Vaishnava religious organization. It was founded in 1966 in New York City by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada...
movement in 1966 at the age of 70. Within the final twenty years of his life Prabhupada translated over sixty volumes of classic Vedic scriptures
Vedas
The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....
(such as Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita
The ' , also more simply known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text, and in particular, as an Upanishad in its own right, one of the several books that constitute general Vedic tradition...
and Bhagavata Purana
Bhagavata purana
The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is one of the "Maha" Puranic texts of Hindu literature, with its primary focus on bhakti to the incarnations of Vishnu, particularly Krishna...
) into the English language.
Writing
Many writers have published their first major work late in life. Mary WesleyMary Wesley
Mary Wesley, CBE was an English novelist. During her career, she was one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 best-sellers in the last 20 years of her life.-Background:...
might be a classic example. She wrote two children's books in her late fifties, but her writing career did not gain note until her first novel at 70, written after the death of her husband. Harriet Doerr
Harriet Doerr
Harriet Huntington Doerr was an American author who published her first novel at the age of 74.-Early life:...
published her first novel at age 74, and went on to great praise. A possibly more well known example might be Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was an American author who wrote the Little House series of books based on her childhood in a pioneer family...
. She became a columnist in her forties, but did not publish her first novel in the Little House series
Little House on the Prairie
Little House is a series of children's books by Laura Ingalls Wilder that was published originally between 1932 and 1943, with four additional books published posthumously, in 1962, 1971, 1974 and 2006.-History:...
of children's books until her sixties.
Eugène Ehrhart
Eugène Ehrhart
Eugène Ehrhart was a French mathematician who introduced Ehrhart polynomials in the 1960s. Ehrhart received his high school diploma at the age of 22. He was a mathematics teacher in several high schools, and did mathematics research on his own time...
started publishing in mathematics in his 40s, and finished his PhD thesis at the age of 60.
Caspar Wessel
Caspar Wessel
Caspar Wessel was a Norwegian-Danish mathematician and cartographer. In 1799, Wessel was the first person to describe the complex numbers. He was the younger brother of poet and playwright Johan Herman Wessel....
published his only mathematics paper at the age of 54.
Memoirist and novelist Flora Thompson
Flora Thompson
Flora Jane Thompson was an English novelist and poet famous for her semi-autobiographical trilogy about the English countryside, Lark Rise to Candleford.-Early life and family:...
was first published in her thirties but is most famous for the semi-autobiographical Lark Rise to Candleford
Lark Rise to Candleford
Lark Rise to Candleford is a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels about the countryside of north-east Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England, at the end of the 19th century. They were written by Flora Thompson and first published together in 1945...
trilogy, the first volume of which was published when she was 63. Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt
Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....
didn't publish his first book Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes is a 1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt. The memoir consists of various anecdotes and stories of Frank McCourt's impoverished childhood and early adulthood in Brooklyn, New York and Limerick, Ireland, as well as McCourt's struggles with poverty, his father's...
which he later won the Pulizer Prize for until he was 66. "Children's author Mary Alice Fontenot
Mary Alice Fontenot
Mary Alice Fontenot , born in Eunice, Louisiana, was a noted author of regional children's books, best known for the Clovis Crawfish series published by Pelican Publishing, a collection of eighteen books featuring animals from the Louisiana bayou...
wrote her first book at 51 and wrote almost thirty additional books, publishing multiple volumes in her eighties and nineties. Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows , one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films....
was born in 1859, joined the Bank of England
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...
in 1879 and rose through the ranks to become its Secretary. Although he had written various short stories while working at the bank, it was only after his retirement in 1908 that he published his masterpiece and final work The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...
.
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
published his first novel at age 49 after a lengthy career working odd jobs and then at a post office. Richard Adams's first novel, the bestseller Watership Down
Watership Down
Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, about a small group of rabbits. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language , proverbs, poetry, and mythology...
, was published when he was in his fifties. Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
, the novelist best known for A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
, published his first novel at age 39. William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
was also 39 when he published his first novel, Junky. The Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
published his first novel, Justine
Justine
-People:* Saint Justine of Padua , a Christian martyr* Justine Frischmann, Britpop musician, lead singer of Elastica* Justine Henin , a Belgian tennis player* Justine Ezarik , an American lifecaster and graphic/web designer...
, after turning 51. Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
published his novel Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer (novel)
Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the...
at 44. Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
published his first short story at 45, and his first novel, The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first in his acclaimed series about detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978...
at 51.
In other areas of writing, poet Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
started late in life after years as an insurance salesman and executive. Although he was first published at 38, his "canonical works" came out in his fifties. In philosophy Mary Midgley
Mary Midgley
Mary Midgley, née Scrutton , is an English moral philosopher. She was a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University and is known for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. She wrote her first book, Beast And Man: The Roots of Human Nature , when she was in her fifties...
had her first book when she was 56. Edmond Hoyle
Edmond Hoyle
Edmond Hoyle was a writer best known for his works on the rules and play of card games. The phrase "according to Hoyle" came into the language as a reflection of his generally-perceived authority on the subject; since that time, use of the phrase has expanded into general use in situations in...
wrote a booklet on whist
Whist
Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was played widely in the 18th and 19th centuries. It derives from the 16th century game of Trump or Ruff, via Ruff and Honours...
in his late sixties. To avoid unauthorized copies he wrote the copyrighted A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist at age 70.
The Indian writer and polymath Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Italic textNirad C. Chaudhuri was a Bengali−English writer and cultural commentator...
wrote his autobiography The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is the autobiographical work of one of India's most controversial writers -- Nirad C. Chaudhuri. He wrote this when he was around fifty and records his life from his birth at 1897 in Kishorganj, a small town in present Bangladesh...
at the age of 54. He wrote a sequel to it Thy Hand, Great Anarch!
Thy Hand, Great Anarch!
Thy Hand, Great Anarch! is a 1987 autobiographical sequel to Indian essayist Nirad C. Chaudhuri's The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian...
at the age of 90. He published his next work (and his final work) Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse at the age of 100.
Aron Ettore Schmitz published his first novel Senilità in his 38th year, however it was not until he published Zeno's Conscience that he made a breakthrough, aged 61. Even this was self-published.
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
was one of the greatest authors in the English language. He could not speak a word of English until he was about 21. He only started writing in English at about age 32, and his first published works came out when he was about 37.
See also
- Child prodigyChild prodigyA child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
- Developmental psychologyDevelopmental psychologyDevelopmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
- Child developmentChild developmentChild development stages describe theoretical milestones of child development. Many stage models of development have been proposed, used as working concepts and in some cases asserted as nativist theories....
- Psychosocial development
- Delayed pubertyDelayed pubertyPuberty is described as delayed puberty with exceptions when an organism has passed the usual age of onset of puberty with no physical or hormonal signs that it is beginning. Puberty may be delayed for several years and still occur normally, in which case it is considered constitutional delay, a...
- Puer AeternusPuer AeternusPuer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy, used in mythology to designate a child-god who is forever young; psychologically it refers to an older man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level. The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation...
- Adolescent psychologyAdolescent psychology-Adolescence:Adolescence, the transitional stage of development between childhood and adulthood, represents the period of time during which a person experiences a variety of biological changes and encounters a number of emotional issues. The ages which are considered to be part of adolescence vary...
- Neurodevelopmental disorder
- Pygmalion effectPygmalion effectThe Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, often children or students and employees, the better they perform...
- Theory of cognitive developmentTheory of cognitive developmentPiaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to...