Octavia Spencer made it in Hollywood in so many ways, we’re losing count. From winning an Oscar, starring in a best picture winner and leading a comedy with Melissa McCarthy, the Alabama native has a résumé aspiring actors dream about. But she just revealed the moment she knew she had a future in the business.

While promoting the third season of her Apple TV+ series “Truth Be Told,” Spencer recently appeared on the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast where she discussed her successful career in show business as well as her Alabama upbringing.

Prior to acting, after she graduated from Auburn University, Spencer worked behind the scenes as a location casting assistant. She said, when looking to cast smaller parts on various projects, directors would often say they wanted someone “like Octavia,” using her as a reference point to fill the role. She would typically decline, but she changed her mind when she worked in casting on the Warner Bros. production of “A Time to Kill.” She said director Joel Schumacher did not ask her to read for a part, despite assuming she would be asked.

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Spencer said she asked the director if she could play a character who started a riot in one scene. “Joel Schumacher said to me, ‘No, honey. No. Your face is too sweet,’” she recalled. “He said, ‘But you can read for Sandy’s nurse.’

“I read for Sandra Bullock’s nurse, and I didn’t know at that time the course he would be setting me on.”

In the 1996 film adaptation of the John Grisham novel “A Time to Kill,” Spencer plays the nurse treating Bullock’s law student Ellen Roark after she is assaulted by racist townspeople. She has a crowd-pleasing moment towards the end as they announce the fate of Samuel L. Jackson’s Carl Lee Hailey.

After discussing Spencer’s process and experience moving from one small part to another in her career, well before she won her Oscar for “The Help” in 2012, Maron asked when she really felt like she arrived in show business. It all came back to playing that nurse in the John Grisham movie.

“It’s gonna shock you,” she said. “The very first part I got, with Sandra Bullock. I felt like I had arrived because someone was paying me to pursue my dreams.”

Bullock won her first Oscar 13 years later for “The Blind Side,” while Spencer would win hers just two years after her first co-star.

The Montgomery-born actress and Auburn alumna has three best supporting actress Oscar nominations to her name for performances in “The Shape of Water,” “Hidden Figures” and “The Help.” She won for the latter. During her speech, she thanked the state of Alabama.

Spencer has barely taken a breath since her debut in 1996′s “A Time to Kill.” In 2020, she earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie thanks to her work in the Netflix show “Self Made: Inspired By The Life Of Madam C.J. Walker,” which she produced with LeBron James.

She co-starred in the Alabama-set re-adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” on HBO Max, in collaboration with Oscar-winners Robert Zemeckis and Anne Hathaway. Add the Apple TV+ series “Truth Be Told,” plus the films “Dolittle,” “Onward” and “Superintelligence.” She also appeared in the Apple TV+ film “Spirited,” co-starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds.

Spencer was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 2022.

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