Melissa McCarthy almost quit acting

Melissa McCarthy almost quit acting before she landed her role in ‘Gilmore Girls’.

The 45-year-old actress had been struggling to get a job and set herself a deadline to walk away from the profession, but then bagged the role of chef Sookie in the series.

She told heat magazine: "Acting wasn’t working out, I was getting rejection after rejection, I wasn’t even getting auditions – I couldn’t get a job to save my life.

"I always said if I don’t get anything substantial by the time I’m 30, I’m done. And a week before I turned 30, I got ‘Gilmore Girls’.

"Things weren’t ‘bad’ but I had been working two jobs and I got to a point where I thought, ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I beating myself up?’ Acting never would have left my life, I would’ve acted in some way, but I’m so fortunate that this is now my occupation."

And the ‘Ghostbusters’ actress is still stunned at how far she’s come in her career.

She admitted: "I still find it surreal doing interviews and understanding why anyone would want to talk to me. So to try and get my head around the idea that anyone wants to see me act, that in itself is ludicrous."

Melissa – who has daughters Vivian, nine, and Georgette six, with husband Ben Falcone – is set to return to ‘Gilmore Girls’ in a new Netflix series and is delighted to be a part of the show again.

She said "We were trying for three months but it was always like three-card Monte – when I had a gap in my schedule, they were in lock down, when they were out of that, I was out of the country. It was a nightmare, but finally a big piece came out of my schedule and it worked.

"I would have been so sad if I wasn’t a part of it. I did it for seven years, it was a big part of my life.

"And it was also when I decided to leave behind production because up until that point, I was balancing between the two."