Terry Crews on Going from NFL Backup to the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Terry Crews threw himself a draft party. That is the detail that makes the rest of the story work, because the party did not go the way he planned.

"I was very arrogant as a kid, and I had a big party," Crews told Rich. "I'm like, I'm going to get drafted, probably like fourth round, third round."

Then the rounds went by. First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. "All of a sudden, everybody goes home. I'm sitting there like, wait a minute, what just happened?"

The next day did not fix it. By 3:00 p.m., Crews had made his peace with the worst version of the outcome. "I'm like, I didn't get drafted. What the hey, man? This is over."

His wife told him to keep his chin up, that free agency was a door, that it did not matter how he got in. He was still wiping tears when the phone rang, and he had not realized the draft was not actually over. On the other end was Ronnie Jones, the linebacker coach for the Los Angeles Rams.

"We just drafted you in the 11th round."

What Crews does with that memory now is the interesting part. He is not sentimental about the NFL. He is grateful for it and then he moves past it. "I appreciate my NFL career, but it's always about what was next for me," he said, crediting his family and his wife, "who always let me know that there was more for me than this."

More turned out to be a broom. When Crews moved to Los Angeles with his family, the first job he took was sweeping floors. He is direct about why.

"I was that broke, I was that desperate, but also I was that willing. You have to get to a point where you are willing to start over from the bottom."

The break came the way breaks usually do, which is to say sideways and mostly by accident. He got invited to an audition, and he went because he was invited and because his wife pointed out he had nothing else going on. The show was BattleDome, which Crews described as "American Gladiators on steroids." He played a character called T Money. Wrestling meets a game show. He got the job.

"And all of a sudden, I'm an actor."

Flash forward 25 years and Crews is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which he called unreal, a dream he is living. But he did not let the arc end there, because he wanted to name the mechanism that got him from the broom to the star, and the mechanism was listening.

"My first movie, I didn't know what I was doing," Crews said. "Michael Rooker, who's one of the best actors in the game right now, he showed me how to do everything, and I just listened."

Then the line that lands the whole thing.

"I had all these people who were willing to tell me how to act because I was willing to listen. But if I walked in there and acted like I knew everything already, I wouldn't have gone far at all."

Eleventh round, floor sweeper, T Money, Walk of Fame. Every step of that required somebody willing to hear the word no and keep taking notes.