My worst moment: How Leslie Odom Jr. almost quit acting before 'Hamilton' made him a star

"I almost didn't make it here," Leslie Odom Jr. said in his Tony acceptance speech in 2016. There's a story behind that, and he tells it here.

It's almost impossible to imagine anyone else originating the role of Aaron Burr in "Hamilton," which earned him that Tony. Odom doesn't pretend his path has been easy. "It took a really long time for things to congeal and move in the direction I wanted," he said. Much of that is discussed in his new memoir "Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher and Never Stop Learning."

After taking Broadway by storm, Odom has appeared in movies (mustachioed in "Murder on the Orient Express") and TV (the forthcoming CBS All Access series "$1" set in a post-recession Rust Belt town).

When asked to share his worst moment for this column, he noted that "it was more