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Michelle Monaghan is currently gaining immense acclaim for her phenomenal performance in The White Lotus season 3. She plays the role of Jaclyn, a self-centered actress who is on a trip with her two girlfriends on the show. However, this is hardly the first time that people are talking about Monaghan, who has been at the center of many acclaimed pieces of work.
Her achievements seem even more magnified when it is seen in the context of where she came from. Michelle Monaghan hails from the small town of Winthrop, Iowa, a town so small that the population was around 750 when Monaghan lived there. Even a movie theatre was 50 miles away and quite inaccessible to her in her younger years.
Yet, beating the odds, she made it big in the industry and is currently a revered name. Back in 2016, the actress discussed this in an interview with Interview Magazine, claiming that her shot to fame was a "fluke." Addressing her humble beginnings, Michelle Monaghan said:
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"It was very rural. I grew up in a town of 700 people, so we had no stoplight; my high school graduating class was 39 people. It was such slim pickings that I basically had one boyfriend all through high school. I didn’t grow up near a movie theater—it was 50 miles away—so I didn’t even really grow up watching movies."
She added about becoming an actress:
"It was a complete and utter fluke. But when I look back, in high school I did something called speech, and we did debate."
Michelle Monaghan's rise to stardom is an inspiration to many, especially those without the same access as the urban population. With her latest role in The White Lotus, the 49-year-old has further cemented her position in the industry.
"I didn’t know I was creative"- Michelle Monaghan on not recognizing her talent early on
The path that Michelle Monaghan went through was more winding than what many others had to traverse. Without the relevant exposure, the actress did not even recognize the talent she had for quite a while. She said this in the same interview.
Monaghan added:
"I didn’t know I was creative. That was, unbeknownst to me, an outlet that I was in search of. I remember enjoying it immensely, but I never saw the big picture. I never thought, “Oh wow, the next logical step would be to go to drama school.”"
Instead, Michelle Monaghan moved to Chicago to study journalism at Columbia College Chicago after her graduation, and there she slowly got into modeling. Her modeling career took off well and she worked in Milan, Singapore, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, before quitting her degree and moving to New York in pursuit of an acting career.
Even in New York, she modeled for a while before bagging credited appearances on shows like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2001, she finally made a film debut with Perfume.
Yet it was a while more before she got her big break. In 2002, she co-starred in Boston Public and has since not looked back.
Her major acting credits include Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Gone Baby Gone (2007), Mission: Impossible III (2006), and True Detective (2014), among many others.
The White Lotus season 3 finale will drop on April 6, 2025.
