When you’re pursuing your dreams, there’s no guarantee that everyone in your life will be supportive. Sometimes, in order to go after what you want, you’ll have to disappoint a few people.

As the youngest of nine children, Boris Karloff found himself constantly under the watchful eye of his older siblings. The son of a civil servant, Karloff developed a passion for acting at the ripe age of 10 after he appeared in a school play. The young man immediately knew that he was destined to work as an actor, though his family had their own misgivings about the decision, and even attempted to change his mind.

“My older brothers saw which way the wind was blowing and put their collective feet down,” Karloff said during an interview with The Sentinel. “They sent me to King’s College to prepare for service in the Foreign Office - and decreed ‘No more plays.’ But I had other plans.”

Of course, his brothers’ doubts weren’t unfounded. For years, Karloff struggled to find consistent work as an actor. “I would get out of debt,” said Karloff during an interview with the Hartford Courant. “Then - no work - away went my savings, and I would go from one casting office to another listening to opinions that I was ‘too much one type.’”

The pressure became so difficult to handle that Karloff left the business altogether to become a truck driver.

“I not only got discouraged but rather disgusted,” Karloff said. “I made up my mind that I would rather be a successful truck driver than a starving actor who had his feelings hurt every time he worked.”

Luckily, this break from acting wouldn’t last too long, and Karloff returned to Hollywood. Later, he would win the role of Frankenstein’s Monster in the 1931 film, Frankenstein. It was a character that would launch Karloff into a life of success, finally proving any and all naysayers wrong.