Self Made Man / Live-Action TV

• Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock started out as a poor kid from a broken home in Boston. By working odd jobs from the age of 12 he put himself through Princeton and Harvard Business School and went on to become an immensely powerful and wealthy executive. Part of the show's Early-Installment Weirdness included him buttoning both buttons on his suit jacket in the first episode because he's ignorant of business fashion due to his humble roots.
• In All in the Family and The Jeffersons, George Jefferson started off as a janitor and, with the help of an insurance settlement, opened and ran a successful dry cleaning store in Queens, New York. He built it up into a chain and got enough money to "move on up" to a deluxe apartment in the Upper East Side.
• Beef: Danny assumes Amy was only able to start her own multimillion-dollar company because she married into 'art money' — her father-in-law Haru Nakai was a famous artist. However, Amy actually made most of the money herself by working very hard for years, and it is pointedly said that Haru left his son George with very little except for some valuable art pieces.
• Billions: Billionaire Bobby Axelrod is very proud to be a self-made man. He grew up in a working-class broken home and made his way as a pool hall hustler and horse track gambler before being exposed to the world of stock trading and financial investment. His wife comes from the same neighborhood, and they still maintain ties to some of their local haunts and friends. By contrast, the Axelrods' nemesis Chuck Rhoades makes a tiny fraction of their net worth in his job as US Attorney, but was born into a wealthy family and enjoyed a privileged upbringing.
• Deconstructed in an episode of Blackadder the Third, which parodies the rising industrialists in Regency England with Amy Hardwood's father, a farmer's son who invented the "Ravelling Nancy" and now owns more mills than the Prince Regent has brain cells (seven). Unfortunately, he seems to have squandered his wealth on god-knows-what and is currently dirt-poor.
• In Brass, Bradley Hardacre, a Magnificent Bastard industrialist, is a full-time parody of this trope. He is not the nice sort of self-made man.
• Stephen Colbert, as a response to one of Mitt Romney's comments, deconstructed this trope on The Colbert Report by claiming that being forced to acknowledge his 100+ staff had a role in his popularity removes all the significance of his many accolades. As a result, he fired all of his staff and attempted to continue the show purely by himself using nothing but a desk lamp, a dry erase board and an iPhone.^note Yes, someone else had to make those items. During his solo segment, he starts choking on a marker cap and falls unconscious after refusing to let someone help him via the Heimlich maneuver. After the commercial break, Colbert had rehired all of his staff, taking a stance of Let Us Never Speak of This Again.
  Colbert: The only accomplishments I value are ones I create entirely by myself. That’s why I’m not that crazy about my children.
• A villainous version occurs in Doctor Syn ("The Scarecrow") with General Pugh, who started in the ranks and expresses his disgust for the commission-purchasing system of the Georgian British army. It seems to make him worse than a highborn officer would be since he disdains "gentlemanly" conduct like not threatening civilians and instead goes for the ends justifying the means.
• Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was originally a farm boy from a small rural town who managed to better himself and eventually became a rich and successful lawyer and eventually a judge in California. This meant that he usually displayed more common sense than all his children combined — usually. Sadly deconstructed at the end of one episode after he had all but alienated his farmer parents because he was acting ashamed of his humble origins. He confesses to Will that, for all his Self-Made Man rhetoric, he didn't have it that rough since his parents were always there for him. In a later episode, he chides Will for not asking Phil for help out of a misguided desire to emulate Phil since people had opened doors for Phil too in the past.
• Game of Thrones: Given the feudal setting, very few characters accomplish much without their noble name, as moving between classes is nearly impossible. However, there are a few exceptions:
  • Varys had nothing, even less than Littlefinger, who was at least a minor noble, being born as a slave and prisoner. After he was castrated and thrown into the slums of the Free Cities, he became a pocket thief and whore. There, he learned to extract secrets from his clients. Gradually expanding his power, through his shrewdness and clever use of information, he eventually rose to become Master of Whispers, with a seat on the Royal Council.
  • Daario was a literal Son of a Whore who was once a slave, as his mother was a drunk whore who sold him to get more wine, but through his martial skill earned his master's respect and rose to nationwide fame and was eventually freed. He then moved up the ranks of the Second Sons, eventually becoming their leader and becomes the right-hand man to the Mother of Dragons. He also believes he'll return to nothing, and seems pretty okay with it.
  • Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish is born into the very lowest ranks of nobility, with holdings barely worth mentioning and being seen as the son of an upjumped merchant by the ruling class, but parlays his twin talents of manipulation and money-lending until he's playing cyvasse with kings and queens as pawns.
  • Xaro Xoan Daxos was a poor immigrant from the Summer Isles when he arrived in Qarth but became a member of the ruling Thirteen.
  • Daenerys Targaryen went from abused child to independent woman; from glorified sex slave to fully-realized Khaleesi; from penniless widow to commander of eight thousand elite soldiers and liberator of over two hundred thousand slaves. She remarks that she did the last two things in only a fortnight. She does enjoy the clout of the Targaryen name, however — as some (though not all) are more willing to follow her due to her claim on the Westerosi Throne.
  • Bronn starts the show as an anonymous sellsword and lands a knighthood for deeds performed in the service of House Lannister, making him eligible to marry into minor nobility.
• Gilmore Girls: Even though Lorelai Gilmore comes from money, she ran away from home as an unwed mother, got her first job basically because the inn's owner took pity on her, lived in a tool shed and less than twenty years later owned her own house and was part owner of her own inn.
  • Jess starts the series as a delinquent with a Junkie Parent and years of Parental Neglect under his belt. He managed to piss off everyone in town, and at the end of season 3, is informed he isn't going to graduate high school because he skipped too many classes. Luke kicks him out when he refuses to repeat the year, and he leaves town. In season 6, he returns full of Character Development, having written and published a short novel, and is working as one of three guys running a small publishing company. As of the 2016 reboot, he still works there.
• The Good Bad Mother: after the tragic death of her husband, Young-soon takes the only surviving pig to a new farm and sets it up all by herself. Not only does she do all the heavy lifting, but she does it while she’s pregnant.
• On Grand Hotel, Santiago is the rich owner of a posh Miami resort. When a staff strike hits, the remaining kitchen workers are surprised when Santiago strips off his coat to take the place of the absent head chef. He tells them how he started off working in a kitchen, taught himself to cook to become chef and won enough favor to become manager and then owner. He then opened up two more successful restaurants which gave him the cash to buy the hotel. He shows them all he's still an expert cook as he personally supervises the lunch rush amid the hotel's other issues.
• On Highlander, several Immortals were basically born into nothing and (thanks to their long lives) became huge successes.
  • Amanda was a homeless thief in the 9th century who, thanks to her expert skills at theft, is now so rich she barely even knows how much money she has.
  • It may have come from killing a priest and stealing a jeweled cross but it's still impressive how in just a few decades, John Durgan went from an illiterate backwoods hunter to a cultured millionaire art expert who speaks nine languages.
  • Carl Robinson was born a slave in the 1850s South and by the 1990s had briefly become a major league baseball star (sadly, he had to fake his death after a duel with another Immortal and start all over).
  • Hilariously subverted with Duncan's long-time friend Fitz who, over the centuries, constantly works to get himself money only for it to end badly. The biggest example is when in 1929, Fitz has become an actual millionaire...at which point the stock market crash wipes him out.
  • Duncan himself was born to a humble Scottish clan and worked over centuries to become rather wealthy (even if he doesn't flaunt it) and train himself as an expert warrior.
• The IT Crowd: Subverted when the billionaire businessman Douglas Reynholm brags that "When I first started Reynholm Industries, I had just two things in my possession: a dream... and six million pounds."
• These have been suspects (as well as victims) from time to time on Law & Order in its various forms. At least one case notes some of the less admirable qualities common in the Self-Made Man — a sense of entitlement (because they have already worked hard enough that the world owes them acceptance of their success) and a tendency to be very thin-skinned when it comes to criticism and political viewpoints.
• Mad Men: Don Draper casts off his old life (literally) and rebuilds himself as the best ad-man on Madison Avenue after the Korean War.
• Stymie Bundy in Married... with Children accumulated half a million dollars.
• Invoked on Party of Five (2020) when Emilio frets he isn't living up to the legacy of his father who long boasted of coming to America with just $50 and building himself up into a successful restaurant owner. New nanny Natalia just chuckles that "no one makes themselves from nothing. Fifty dollars? How long do you think that will last?" She presses that the man just ended up getting help from fellow immigrants and that asking for aid is okay.
• Danny Wilde, Tony Curtis' character in The Persuaders!, is a self-made millionaire who grew up in the Bronx. The contrast between him and Roger Moore's character, British aristocrat Brett Sinclair, is frequently played up for humorous effect.
• Lionel Luthor in Smallville started his fortune with half the insurance money he collected when he had his parents killed in a fire (the other half went to pay the killer). He's not actually happy about this and tries to pretend to be descended from Scottish nobility.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand:
  • Quintus Batiatus is a successful owner of gladiators, making him wealthy but a low-born Roman citizen. His ambitions for political office are not taken seriously by the Roman aristocracy.
  • Marcus Crassus (whose real-life counterpart was quite possibly the richest man in history) earned his wealth and power through his strength and intelligence rather than by lineage. The Roman Senate has a particular dislike for him as a result.
• General Martok in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine clawed and hacked (probably literally at times) his way to flag rank in the Klingon forces despite his poor birth and the opposition from aristocracy. He was a badass by Klingon standards.
• Succession: Logan Roy, billionaire and patriarch of his family, is a self-made man who brags about working hard in a car garage in his youth. This stands in stark contrast to his children, who were handed everything, including cushy jobs in his media empire if they want them. For this reason, there is a huge cultural divide between him and his children, and he does a poor job of concealing his underlying contempt for them.
• Nikos Karabastos from Brazilian soap opera Uga Uga was originally an employee of a toy factory who, tired of his employers not seeing the merit of his ideas, started his own toy factory.
• Wolf Hall has Thomas Cromwell confess his origins as the son of a Putney blacksmith when he's newly hired by Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey, a butcher and innkeeper's son, is delighted to find another working-class man in his world of Upper Class Twits. Cromwell survives Wolsey's fall and joins Henry's privy council, swiftly taking the position of Master Secretary and becoming the king's Number Two. Most people he deals with find having to deal with (and sometimes answer to) a lowborn man anywhere from faintly distasteful to morally offensive.
• In the fourth season of You (2018) Kate is one of the seven children of famous millionaire Tom Lockwood. She hates her father and how he uses people and carved her own path as a successful art gallery owner. She's amazed her father expects her to come work for his company, arguing she's fought hard to make it on her own without his help. Scoffing, Tom informs Kate that every job and opportunity she's had, he made for her. He got her into her first internship, every job, magazine stories and even squashed a sexual harassment suit against her then-boyfriend Kate had no idea about. Kate is stunned to realize she's never been doing this on her own and owes her success to her father who now wants a "return on my investment."