What You Don't Know About Connie Britton

In the midst of enduring the painful losses of both her parents, Connie Britton played a football coach's wife opposite Billy Bob Thornton in a 2004 movie, based on a book, called "Friday Night Lights." "My role was cut to almost nothing," she explained in a Time interview. "They made my character mute." Therefore, when she was offered a similar role in a TV series based on the movie, Britton told Time she declined and dismissed the director, saying that she did not want to "spend year after year just being sort of a sideline character to a coach on a football show. Thank you anyway."

The director was not so easily deterred from his pursuit of Britton for the role. "He kept at me about it," the actor explained to Time, "and he was like, 'This is our chance...to give these women a voice.'" On the heels of her parents dying and 10 years following her "Jerry McGuire" letdown, Britton gave in. Upon accepting, she became invested in the stories of the women portrayed on the series. 

Though the TV show, beginning in 2006, was not an immediate ratings hit, devout fans eventually followed, and Britton could finally bask in her long-awaited fame. "'Friday Night Lights' turned Britton into something of an icon ... 'Jerry Maguire' may have been the best thing that never happened to her," The New York Times Magazine stated.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7r7XCpKCsr5mbwW%2BvzqZmbnFjbIRxe9ahmK1lqaTCbrDOp6tmo56kxG6twaisrWWTpLuvtcRmmauhpKm8r3s%3D