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Julianne Hough<\/strong> may be one of the most successful pros to come from Dancing With the Stars<\/em>, though she candidly opened up about her financial struggles when she first moved to Los Angeles before she joined the show.<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up in Utah. I\u2019m the baby of five and actually became the youngest and only American to ever win the World Championship in ballroom and Latin dancing,\u201d Hough, 37, shared in an Instagram<\/a> video uploaded by Dhar Mann<\/strong> on Saturday, September 20. \u201cAt 15 years old, I was like, dance is not the only thing for me. I want to be an actress. I want to be a singer. I want to go to Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n In pursuit of her aspirations, Hough moved to Los Angeles and shared an apartment with a handful of women who worked as models. While her roommates “would wake up at four o\u2019clock in the afternoon and get $12,000 checks in the mail,” Hough said she “was getting $33 overdraft fees and hustling my butt, just trying to go to central casting and go on every audition that I could think of.\u201d<\/p>\n Hough experienced a major setback when she wasn’t able to afford her rent six months after moving to L.A. \u201cI was like, \u2018What am I gonna do?\u2019 And then because of my experience as a ballroom and Latin dancer, Dancing with the Stars<\/em> was a new show<\/a>, [and] the producers of the show asked me if I would be a dancer on the actual TV show,\u201d she recalled. \u201cI was like, okay, I\u2019ll do it. I ended up doing the show and won my first two seasons back to back. It was like a ripple effect. I felt like the stars were aligned.\u201d<\/p>\n Hough joined the cast of DWTS<\/em><\/a> in 2007, and she competed as a pro on five seasons before being named the show’s co-host<\/a> in 2023. Additionally, she quickly proved she’s more than just a dancer when she signed a record deal as a country music artist and launched her acting career with the 2010 film Burlesque<\/em>.<\/p>\n Parade Daily\ud83c\udfac\u00a0<\/strong>SIGN UP for Parade\u2019s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\ud83c\udfac<\/strong><\/p>\n When Hough’s career was thriving, she explained that the same couldn’t be said for her personal life. \u201cMy dogs were killed by coyotes. My marriage started unraveling, but my career, my friend group, everything that I had known really started taking a different shape,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was very much like probably the darkest time.\u201d<\/p>\n The Safe Haven <\/em>actress went on to share how she got through those experience. \u201cYou can\u2019t rush feeling, you can\u2019t rush the timeframe that you need to go through to learn a lesson,” she said. “But I will say that I poured my energy into self-care. I poured my energy into things that brought me joy, which are friendships and really invested into others.\u201d<\/p>\n She also revealed how she overcomes moments of feeling lonely. \u201cI think that the minute you feel isolated or lonely, the minute you can think about serving someone else,\u201d she said. \u201cIt brings you so much joy and momentum and literally changes the frequency and vibration in your whole body. But it\u2019s a journey and it\u2019s a process and it doesn\u2019t happen overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally reported by Parade<\/a> on Sep 22, 2025, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n