Most of the actors and actresses in Hollywood have impressive stories to share of their beginnings in the world of film. Some had it easy, and others struggled to find their spot under the sky of the place where dreams come true.
Jamie Farr, best known for portraying the role of the cross-dressing Corporal turned Sergeant Maxwell Q. Klinger in the CBS television sitcom M*A*S*H, belongs to the latter.
Farr fell in love with acting from early age when he made jokes in the face of his peers from Toledo who made fun of his nose.
Being born to parents who owned a grocery store and installed moral values in him, Farr somehow knew he could make it big if he believed in himself enough. On top of that, he also believed in God and it was his faith that opened doors for him in the film industry.
“… I believed God had called me to be an actor, to entertain – even help – people. And I’d worked hard at it,” he once said.
Namely, Farr took some acting lessons at the Pasadena Playhouse in California after he was cast in the 1992 production of Guys and Dolls. However, after this role he was deployed to Japan and Korea and when he returned home, his future in the industry was uncertain.
But one person who never lost faith in him and his talent has been his then girlfriend and now a wife of 60 years, Joy Richards. Farr couldn’t allow to buy her a ring at the time, but the two knew they were meant for each other.
He visited church very often and asked God to answer his prayers. And then, one day, God answered.
Farr learned that a new studio would be opening and producing a movie about the life of Jesus titled The Greatest Story Ever Told. He immediately called his agent and said, “Meyer, they’re putting on this movie about the Bible. Look, with my great Middle-Eastern face, there’s got to be a part in it for me.” Sadly, the studio initially said they didn’t want him, but then they changed their mind and offered him the role of Nathaniel Bartholomew. Shortly after, they changed the role and gave him that of Apostle Thaddeus who Farr later learned was Jude Thaddeus–Saint Jude, the Apostle of the Hopeless, and the figure Farr had been directing all of his prayers to.
When Farr finally asked Richards to marry him in 1963, he looked up at Jesus’s apostles and found St. Jude during the church ceremony. “I like to think that he was my best man,” he said.
Today, Farr is 88 years old and he’s still married to his wife and enjoys a beautiful career.
“I do so enjoy life that I’d hate to leave it,” he said in an interview in 2011.
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