It’s never easy to switch careers — even more so when you’re in midlife. There’s more on the line, more pressure. Chances are you’re already working, raising a family, caring for family and going through the physical and emotional transformation that midlife brings. You’re already spinning so many plates that veering in a new direction, taking on a new challenge, and harnessing the unknown takes a hell of a lot more courage than when you were just starting out in your career.

The truth is, many successful people don’t start off in the field where they wind up – and many are in their late thirties, over 40 or beyond before this happens. Here are quotes from famous women who’ve been there, done that and worn the t-shirt including Victoria Beckham and Nora Ephron, who explain their non-linear career trajectories and why they took the U-turns that brought them to where they are today.

Victoria Beckham

On starting her own fashion label:

“I was very aware that people would have preconceptions because I was a Spice Girl and I was married to a footballer. So I knew what people were thinking, but I really didn’t focus on that. I was very focused on what I wanted to do … I liked the fact that I didn’t know a lot. Because knowing what I know now about the fashion industry, would I have had the guts to do what I did then? Probably not. I think I was quite innocent and naïve. There was a lot that I didn’t know. I think that was good because I probably would have been terrified. When people say, ‘Were you not nervous? The fashion industry is really scary.’ And I was a pop star, saying, ‘Hey, I designed a dress.’”

Michelle Obama

On constantly ‘switching’ roles:

“I was sitting in a sky-rise office, doing legal work that wasn’t fulfilling to me, and I couldn’t help but ask — what’s it all for?…If there’s some part of you that’s questioning your career, it’s important to listen to that. Our hearts sometimes know ourselves better than our minds do. For me, that meant pursuing a life of public service — a path I’ve been able to maintain since that major swerve. But even since I made that change, I’ve shifted roles and jobs as my life demanded it. Knowing that at the outset — that any career change will probably be followed by more changes, in varying degrees — can help you keep things in perspective if and when you start to re-evaluate things once again.”

Sheryl Sandberg

On going from working at the U.S. Department of the Treasury to Google:

“There are so many times I’ve seen people not make that jump because they’re afraid they’ll — and I’m doing this in air quotes, you can’t see me— ‘move backward.’ So let’s say you’re a lawyer and you’ve decided you don’t want to be a lawyer, you’d really rather be in marketing, and you’re 35… but you’re at a certain level and you’ve never done marketing so no one’s going to hire you at that level, so you’re gonna need to take a step back, meaning go down a couple levels. If you can financially afford it, and you’re gonna work the next, I don’t know, 30 years, who cares about ‘going down?’…I came in [to Google] as what we call the business unit general manager. The first team I ran at Google had four people. The Treasury had tens of thousands.”

Gwyneth Paltrow

On founding Goop at 36:

“I really liked acting … But at a certain point, it started to feel frustrating in a way not to have true agency, like to be beholden to other people to give you a job, or to create something, to put something into the world.”

Nora Ephron

On starting over, later in life:

“There’s no question that changing careers is the good result of a bad quality I have, which is a short attention span. But originally I went into movies not because I was burnt out on journalism but from economic desperation. When my marriage broke up, I had two kids and I figured I’d better get my act together because nobody else was going to help. That’s a realisation a woman comes to very late in life: It’s just me. So I started doing scripts because everyone was doing it. It saved me from having to live in the country or some fate worse than death.”

Julia Child

The American cooking pioneer on finding success in food in her fifties:

Child joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) only to make the now infamous switch to French cuisine, finding her peak success in her 50s. She didn't enrol in culinary school until age 37. "I was 32 when I started cooking. Up until then, I just ate."

Ava DuVernay

The director was in her forties when her work really broke barriers:

For her work on Selma (2014), DuVernay became the first black woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director, and also the first black female director to have her film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. “I was a film publicist, so I represented a lot of filmmakers and I was always around them. I [started thinking], ‘They’re just regular people, like me, with ideas. I’ve got ideas.’ That’s literally how it started. It was definitely a career change; I didn’t make my first little short until I was 32.”

Jennifer McShane, March 2021