Right before Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s TV career soared, his manager thought it was time he called it quits.
In a Monday, Aug. 10 episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, the “Walking Dead” actor, 60, revealed that a former manager dropped him as a client early in his acting career right before he landed breakthrough roles in shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Weeds” and “Supernatural.”
“I remember being in my mid-30s going, ‘This didn’t work out,'” he told host Josh Horowitz. “And my manager had just fired me right before I got the three shows and 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.”
The “Sterling Point” star described the toll of being a late bloomer in Hollywood, recalling years of filming pilots and occasionally booking guest-starring roles. He grappled with constantly “fighting it” and “wanting to quit” before one week changed everything.
“I got ‘Supernatural,’ ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Weeds’ all at the same time, like within a week of each other,” he said.
Morgan soon made a name for himself with roles as John Winchester on The CW’s “Supernatural,” Denny Duquette on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and Judah Botwin on Showtime’s “Weeds,” all shortly after his manager dropped him.
Morgan shared that the manager also dropped “Osiris” star Max Martini, 55, around the same time, adding that she did “the same thing to both of us.”
Jeffrey Dean Morgan reveals role that nearly made him quit acting
Before making it in Hollywood, the “Destination X” host considered leaving acting altogether after an unpleasant experience on a Season 3 episode of “Star Trek: Enterprise.”
“I played a Xindi alien and I hated it so much that I was like, ‘this is it, I got to do something else,'” he said, recounting being under a lot of prosthetics. “I was so claustrophobic, and not to mention, you couldn’t eat, and I was in it for 14 hours a day, and it just was an experience that I want to forget, and I still wake up sweating about it.”
He continued: “I was like, ‘What am I gonna do?’ Right? Like, I don’t know anything else.”
Morgan quipped that his father recalled him having “100 jobs” to help pay bills, with none of them being acting-related. He also described the “crazy” shift from “begging for work” and doing six auditions a day to not having to audition anymore in the last two decades.
He added that he still gets approached about his time on “Grey’s Anatomy” by new and younger fans who are discovering the show. “I walk through Washington Square Park, NYU, and I’ll get stopped by kids that are just watching ‘Grey’s’ for the first time,” he said.
Morgan currently stars in Prime Video’s “Sterling Point,” which premiered Aug. 5.