Jeffrey Dean Morgan has revealed how close he was to quitting acting before landing three major roles on the bounce.
Morgan was in his mid-30s when he finally booked his breakout roles in Grey’s Anatomy, Supernatural and Weeds. He went on to land his best-known role as Negan in AMC’s hit horror series The Walking Dead in 2016.
However, he told Josh Horowitz on the latest episode of his Happy Sad Confused podcast that his former manager had given up on him before he became successful.
“I remember being in my mid-30s going, ‘This didn’t work out,’” the now 60-year-old recalled. “And my manager had just fired me right before I got the three shows. I’d been with her forever. And she was like, ‘You’ve aged out, bro. You missed your window.’ And she got rid of me and Max Martini at the same time and said the same thing to both of us.”
Unfortunately for Morgan’s manager, “I got Supernatural, Grey’s Anatomy and Weeds all at the same time, like within a week of each other,” he told Horowitz.
At the time, Morgan said he was “always hustling” to make ends meet.
“I would, you know, build fences or whatever,” he said. “Usually, it had involved hammers. There was always something to build for somebody.
“The problem was, I was in my mid-30s and I didn’t have an education and I didn’t know what else to do.”
Morgan went on to gain recognition as Denny Duquette, the charming heart transplant patient whose doomed romance with Katherine Heigl’s Izzie Stevens became one of Grey’s Anatomy’s most iconic storylines. He went on to star as John Winchester in Supernatural and Judah Botwin in Weeds before landing his career-defining role as baseball bat-wielding villain Negan in The Walking Dead.
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Morgan said the role on Grey’s changed his life. “TV was so different and 30 million people a week were tuning in to watch that show,” he recalled. “I went from an unknown nobody to I couldn’t leave my house.”
He continued: “I was just so happy. I felt like, ‘Okay, even if I die in Grey’s’ — and I knew that I was dying in Grey’s when I got the job —but I also knew that 30 million people a week were — actually I didn’t know that was going to happen — but that I was going to have a regular job. I was going to do at least five episodes.
“I could pay my rent and then as that built, I remember when it all was airing because they were all airing at the same time. Grey’s was airing and Supernatural was airing at the same time, and it was two totally complete audiences with very little bleed-over. But people realized that I could do two things. It was doing two different things. All of a sudden, where did this actor come from?”
Morgan has gone on to build an impressive television career, appearing in acclaimed series including The Good Wife, Watchmen and The Boys, as well as the superhero film The Losers.
He is currently promoting Amazon Prime Video’s new hit teen romance, Sterling Point, in which he plays a complicated father figure. It follows 17-year-old Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin), raised in New York City with her twin brother (Keen Ruffalo) and loving adoptive father (Jay Duplass), whose life takes a turn when she inherits her mysterious grandfather’s island in Canada.