What Owen Wilson Did Before Becoming A Famous Actor

Thanks to his work –- and friendship –- with Wes Anderson coupled with supporting roles in some major '90s blockbusters, it was inevitable for Owen Wilson to become a Hollywood star. It took the actor six years before he landed a lead role opposite Jackie Chan in the western comedy "Shanghai Noon" (via IMDb), and since then Wilson has come to be one of the industries most successful players.

As it turns out, Wilson never actually made it his life goal to become an actor. Having been college roommates with Anderson, who "always wanted to be a director," according to Wilson, the idea of becoming an actor just fell into place. "I was an English major in college, and he got us to work on a screenplay together," Wilson told Interview magazine. "And then, in working on the screenplay, he wanted my brother, Luke, and me to act in this thing."

This "thing" was the 1994 short film "Bottle Rocket," which the trio then made into a feature film in 1996. While acting wasn't something Wilson was banking on, after "Bottle Rocket" the roles started to trickle in. "It wasn't something that I thought about as a kid growing up in Texas," Wilson said, adding that while he thought it could have been a possibility, "it seemed so crazily far-fetched to think that you could work in movies that I really didn't ever quite imagine it. It was just lucky."