From CNN Living

President Ronald Reagan was an actor and wasn’t elected to public office until he was 55.

Sadly, the down economy has put a lot of workers over age 50 in the unenviable position of needing to find a new profession. Don’t believe that old cliché about middle-aged dogs and new tricks, though; lots of wildly successful people found big success in careers they began after their fiftieth birthdays.

Here are just a few examples…

7. A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

The founder of the Hare Krishna movement was 69 years old before he started the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

In his native India, Prabhupada had been a chemist and a Sanskrit scholar in Calcutta, but in 1965 he came to New York City with just fifty bucks, a pair of cymbals, and a desire to spread the teachings of Lord Krishna.

Prabhupada got off to a modest start by sitting on a sidewalk in the East Village and chanting, but by the time of his death in 1977 his legions of followers were rumored to be thousands strong…