How 16 famous stand-up comedians successfully broke into comedy

The "Everybody Hates Chris" star was eventually discovered in New York City, but he didn't always have the easiest path.

Rock grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York, and was bused to an all-white school, he told Ebony in 1999. He recalled staying up late to watch "The Tonight Show" on school nights but dropped out at 17 years old due to bullying.

"There were pickets with 'N-----, GO HOME ' signs. Even as late as 1982, there were race riots at my school," he told Oprah Winfrey during an interview.

Rock later earned his GED and became a busboy at Red Lobster while attending community college, performing at open mic nights in New York City.

While standing in line to pick up tickets to Eddie Murphy's performance at Radio City Music Hall, Rock read an advertisement for an open mic night at Catch a Rising Star. His audition was so well-received that he became a regular.

The stand-up comic, who grew up in Bedford, New Hampshire, has always been a fan of comedy. In fact, she told The New York Times that she had the phrase, "I love Steve Martin," written on her ceiling as a young girl.

Silverman began telling jokes onstage at 15 years old. She attended New York University, but after one year at school, she left to work at comedy clubs in New York City.

By 22 years old, she joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live" and remained on the show for a year.

The "Baby Cobra" comedian, who was raised in San Francisco, California, studied Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and performed at the school's LCC Theater Company. After graduating, she traveled to Vietnam on a Fulbright scholarship.

When she returned, Wong moved in with her parents and began trying her hand at stand-up.

"I think I was 23, and it was at this place called the Brainwash Café — it was very grimy, and it was half café, half laundromat, 100 percent homeless shelter. I mean, there were times where it was an open mike, and I'd be doing my three minutes, and there were maybe three people in the audience. And one of them would just be a homeless guy, and I could see his hand moving underneath his pants," she told Vanity Fair.

Eventually, Wong moved to New York City and lived in a SoHo loft with six other people, she told NBC News. The comedian recalled performing up to nine sets per night. With time, she booked slots on late-night shows like "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," which put her in front of a massive audience.

After attending the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington D.C., the "Chapelle's Show" star decided to pursue a career in comedy and went to amateur night at the Apollo Theater in New York City.

According to Chapelle, he bombed the performance.

"I just remember looking out and seeing everyone booing... everybody. Even old people. Who boos a child pursuing his dream?" he recalled on Bravo, adding, "That was the best thing that's ever happened to me because before that time I'd never bombed, let alone get booed off the stage."

Chapelle called the night at the Apollo "liberating" because he failed beyond his "wildest nightmares of failing."

"After that, I was fearless. To get into the New York comedy circuit. It's a very closed circuit, and I got in all these clubs in like a week, two weeks. That's just reputation," he said during the Bravo interview.

Voted class clown at her high school (along with "Teacher's Worst Nightmare") in Long Island, New York, the "I Feel Pretty" star showed early signs of comedic talent.

After graduating from Towson University, she studied at William Esper Studio and took up gigs as a waitress and bartender. She worked her way up at New York comedy clubs, including the Gotham Comedy Club, in the mid-2000s.

In 2007, she recorded a "Live at Gotham" episode for Comedy Central and came in fourth place on NBC's "Last Comic Standing." Even though she didn't win the competition, Schumer's on-air routine paved the way for appearances on late-night television, commercials, and on-air series.

After graduating from Hampton University, Sykes worked as a procurement officer at the National Security Agency for five years.

"I still had the same personality — I was funny at work — but it got to the point of, like, I'm just wasting my time here," she told Everyday Advocates.

In 1987, she entered a local talent competition and performed jokes onstage for the first time. Although she didn't win, she did find herself drawn to comedy. She kept working at the NSA, practicing her stand-up routines at night and on the weekends, before quitting and moving to New York City in 1992.

As she climbed the ladder in the New York City comedy clubs, Sykes caught her big break opening for Chris Rock at a club called Carolines on Broadway.

Notaro spent her childhood in Mississippi and Texas. As a kid, she wasn't deeply invested in her studies and dropped out of high school.

"I failed eighth grade twice, and then they moved me up to ninth grade. Then I failed that and dropped out," she told Vanity Fair. "My teacher would hand me a test, and I'd grade it myself with an F, then put my head down on the desk."

Notaro recalled working a series of jobs before moving to Los Angeles, California, where she did her first stand-up set — and eventually fell into a routine of performing five nights a week. She told Vanity Fair that few of these gigs were compensated.

In 2012, she was diagnosed with cancer in both breasts. The same day she received the call from her doctor, she went onto her regular slot at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles and opened up about her diagnosis, diverting from her normal set.

"It felt so silly and irrelevant to think about that stuff, observational jokes about bees and stuff, in light of what was going on with me," she told The New Yorker.

Instead, she kicked off the routine: "Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer."

The raw performance caught the attention of comics like Ed Helms and Louis C.K., who sold the audio on his website.

The "Comeback Kid" comedian, who grew up in Chicago, Illinois, had high hopes of becoming an entertainer from the time he was 7 — the exact age that he requested his parents allow him to audition for the lead in "Home Alone." He served as an altar boy at his church instead.

Mulaney watched hours of "I Love Lucy" and "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson," both of which convinced him that comedy was his calling.

After graduating from Georgetown University, he moved to New York City and landed a job as an office assistant at Comedy Central. Later that year, he successfully pitched the show "I Love the '30s" with fellow comedian Nick Kroll.

Murphy, who grew up in Roosevelt, New York, told classmates that he was destined for fame at school, he recalled in an interview with The Washington Post.

"I didn't go, 'I'm going to be a comedian' until I'm 15 and I heard Richard Pryor's 'That N-----'s Crazy' album," the "Norbit" actor said.

In a moment that Murphy marks as the beginning of his comedy career, he impersonated Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" at a talent show in the Roosevelt Youth Center. He also began performing sets at local clubs and commuted to New York City for gigs there as well.

"I remember when I turned 18, comics saying, 'Hey, man, I thought you were going to get famous when you're 18.' Then I got 'Saturday Night Live,'" he said, referring to his casting on the show at 19 years old.

Gaffigan struggled to find his career footing before pursuing comedy.

He majored in finance at Georgetown University and intended to work a well-paying, reliable job.

"Well, my father was the first one to go to college in his family. And I was raised to seek security. And security was wearing a coat and tie to work. So I studied finance, hated it, and then went to work as a litigation consultant. Was horrible at it. And so I was very much lost," he told "CBS Sunday Morning."

Disgruntled with his job, the comedian moved to New York City to work in advertising and began taking improv classes to overcome his fear of public speaking in the evenings.

"Someone dared me to do a seminar on stand-up. I did it. And it's wildly addictive. It's very empowering," he recalled.

Gaffigan began performing at comedy clubs at night, and after he was fired from his day job, he pursued comedy full-time, he told NPR.

"I think I'd been doing stand-up for seven or eight years, and I was not really getting much success or traction. And I would audition for things and the person that I would be auditioning for would literally leave the room. Just a lot of bad luck," he said.

He did catch a break, however, when he appeared on the "Late Show With David Letterman."

"My big break was appearing on [Letterman's show]. It was a big deal, and the weird thing is, because Letterman thought I was good, everyone changed their mind. It changed the narrative surrounding me, completely... It's just a strange transformation. Someone essentially turns on a light switch, and it just changes," he said.

Growing up in Massapequa, New York, the "Seinfeld" star was drawn to comedy from a young age.

"I was not a very social kid, but I did get a TV in my room — when my parents got a new TV, I got them to give me the old TV. I had a TV in my room and I never came out of the room again," he said on "The New Yorker Radio Hour" in January 2018.

Seinfeld said he watched hours of comedy, explaining that he "just couldn't get enough of it."

After taking on some theatrical projects while attending Queens College, Seinfeld auditioned at New York City's The Comic Strip in 1976 (he later returned to the club for his 2017 Netflix special "Jerry Before Seinfeld"). He became a regular.

Seinfeld then appeared in small roles on sitcoms like "Benson" and worked construction to pay the bills. Seinfeld's career picked up, however, after he landed a gig on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in 1981.

"To get asked to be on that show was like, 'Do you want to play in the World Series?'" Seinfeld told PBS of "The Tonight Show."

He added, "It went well… I had never been in front of 500 people before and that was the biggest audience I had ever seen at that time. I was nervous for a million reasons, but that was very overwhelming to me."

Raised in a small South Carolina town called Bennettsville, the "Master of None" star didn't know that comedy could be a full-time career, he told New York University's Alumni Magazine.

During his first year attending New York University, Ansari recalled attending a show at the Comedy Cellar and decided to try his hand at stand-up during an open-mic night. Determined to break into the comedy club circuit, Ansari stationed himself in Times Square to hand out flyers for the clubs to earn himself stage time.

"I think anyone who starts doing stand-up, you're kind of terrible for the first couple years. It takes a while before you really figure out what you're doing, but I was always very comfortable onstage so that definitely helped me out," he told the magazine.

As he gained credibility, Ansari performed at Comic Strip Live, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and MTV's "Human Giant," leading him to earn a place on Rolling Stone's "Hot List" as an up-and-coming comic.

The Louisiana-native left the University of New Orleans after one semester and worked as a shampooer at a salon, a vacuum salesperson, and an employment counselor.

Eventually, she tried stand-up comedy at local clubs in New Orleans. Finding early success, DeGeneres was named the "Funniest Person in America" by Showtime and began touring the country.

While she performed at The Improv in Los Angeles, Jay Leno, who she'd opened for previously, told Johnny Carson's booker to keep an eye on DeGeneres. She appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in 1986, later calling the segment "the turning point" of her career.

Hart grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a single mother and briefly attended the Community College of Philadelphia.

After a stint as a shoe salesman, he decided to pursue comedy, and his mother agreed to pay his rent for one year while he tried to make it.

Hart performed under the name "Lil' Kev the Bastard" at local clubs in Philadelphia, he told The New York Times. His early routines weren't met with positive reactions from the crowds, however. In one instance, Hart recalled an audience member throwing a half-eaten chicken wing at him.

During a performance at Laff House, a club in Philadelphia, comedian Keith Robinson saw potential in Hart onstage and took him under his wing, encouraging him to draw on hardships in his life to come up with his own unique voice as he took on shows in Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles.

Hart began touring his routine "I'm a Grown Little Man" in 2009 while also trying to build a presence in Hollywood, appearing in a Judd Apatow pilot for a sitcom called "Undeclared," an ABC comedy called "The Big House," and eventually "Think Like a Man," a 2012 romantic comedy that put him on the map.

The "Nanette" star hails from a small town in Tasmania but attended college at Australian National University, where she studied art history.

After graduating, she worked a variety of jobs — including a cinema projectionist and tree planter — before she became homeless, a period of her life she largely attributes to her then-untreated ADHD, and eventually returned home to her family.

"I was homeless for a while and mostly it was because I just kept hitting hurdles at Centrelink. I couldn't get the help I needed. So then I was adrift," she told The Sydney Morning Herald.

Nervous how her family would react to her as a member of the LGBTQ community, Gadsby was nervous to return home but eventually did move back.

It was while visiting her sister in Melbourne in 2006 that she found comedy. Gadsby entered and won the Raw Comedy competition, a national search for emerging comics.

"Comedy is great in that it's accessible to someone like me, from a low socioeconomic background, struggling in life. The gatekeepers are a lot stronger in other art forms," Gadsby told The Guardian.

"I started doing stand-up when I was 16, my junior year in high school. My two friends and I would sit at home watching stand-up. They kept saying I should try it, and so I did. And it went… OK. So when everyone was doing after-school activities or going to parties, we'd be going to open mics," the Staten Island-native told Maxim.

At 17, he formed a friendship with Nick Cannon, who was trying to get back into stand-up comedy, Davidson recalled. He accompanied Cannon on tour for a couple of years.

Davidson's career was off to a strong start, but he snagged his coveted role on "SNL" after making a cameo in Amy Schumer's movie "Trainwreck."

"I was so lucky. Amy Schumer is a good friend, and she called me up to do a bit part in 'Trainwreck.' She said, 'It's going to be a three-person scene, we're going to improvise some lines, and the scene will be you, me, and Bill Hader.' Well, s---! I love Bill Hader! So it was really fun, and not long after that, Bill calls and says, 'Hey, buddy, I recommended you to Lorne [Michaels]. You're going to need to come in and audition," he told Maxim.

Davidson became an "SNL" cast member at 20 years old.