Years ago, a struggling salesman named Chris Gardner locked himself and his toddler inside a public restroom at a train station. He pressed his foot against the door so no one could push in and cried as quietly as he could so his son wouldn’t wake up.
That scene, recreated by Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness, is based on Gardner’s real life. He was broke and betting everything on a stockbroker training program with no guarantee of a job at the end. If you’re between jobs right now, five films in particular offer something better than a pep talk: a map for the emotional and physical terrain you’re standing on.
You could be in one of five stages after job loss:
Grief
Redefining success
Risk
Reinvention
Resilience
Each film gets one right and each points to something positive you can do this week to push forward.
1. Grief: Up in the Air
George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate contractor whose entire job is flying into cities to fire strangers on behalf of bosses too cowardly to do it themselves. Director Jason Reitman cast real people in the multiple Oscar-nominated film who had recently been laid off and asked them to react as they had in the actual moment.
Watching those real reactions shows you that the shock and grief you feel after job loss are a normal response, not a personal weakness. The film gives you permission to sit with that reaction long enough to name it, which is the first move toward working through it instead of stuffing it down.
Do this: Before you fire off applications that same afternoon you talk to HR, protect two things the job used to give you for free: structure and contact. Block your week into working hours and schedule three real human conversations (not networking asks) in your first seven days.
2. Redefining Success: The Devil Wears Prada
Andy Sachs lands a job at a fashion magazine that “a million girls would kill for,” then slowly loses herself trying to keep it. When she walks away from the job, she chooses a life that actually fits her values. When a layoff makes the choice for you, it’s easy to feel powerless, but you still get to decide what comes next. Losing a job can be the nudge that makes you ask whether you really wanted it in the first place.
The underlying theme in The Devil Wears Prada is the same one you get to explore while you’re in between jobs: What do you actually value in a job position? A forced exit is one of the few moments you get to reset that answer instead of inheriting it.
Do this: Before your next interview, write your own definition of a good next job in three specific metrics. For example: “pays at least X,” “no Sunday-night dread,” “one skill I want to build.” Score every opportunity against your list.
3. Risk: The Pursuit of Happyness
Back to Chris Gardner. What’s easy to miss in The Pursuit of Happyness is how calculated his desperation actually was. He didn’t quit his sales work to chase a fantasy. He kept selling medical equipment out of his bag while grinding through the brokerage program, squeezing more calls into fewer hours because he couldn’t afford a wasted minute.
That’s the difference between a leap and a bridge. The reckless version of starting over burns everything down and hopes. The durable version keeps one income stream alive while the next one gets built.
Do this: Name your bridge before you jump. That might be freelance work, a part-time role, savings with a hard end date or a partner’s income you’ve openly discussed. A calculated risk has a floor. Draw your floor before you need it.
4. Reinvention: Daddy Day Care
Eddie Murphy’s character and his best friend get laid off when their vegetable-based cereal flops. Broke and out of options, they turn the one thing they have, kids and a house, into a daycare business. What saves them isn’t some clever new plan. It’s noticing what they already have and putting it to work.
Daddy Day Care is a comedy, but the story is the norm for a lot of corporate professionals. When workers change jobs, most change fields entirely. A 2025 Indeed study of 35M profiles found that 64% of people who switched jobs between 2022 and 2024 also switched careers.
Your next role could be a repackaging of what you already do well.
Do this: Run a skills audit that ignores your job title. List what you did day to day, such as managed vendors, calmed angry customers or turned chaos into a schedule, and brainstorm three industries where those skills can be of use.
5. Resilience: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Walter Mitty manages photo negatives at Life magazine and escapes his reality through daydreams, right up until the magazine goes digital and his job is on the chopping block. If your team is the one being restructured, Mitty’s arc is uncomfortably current. LHH’s 2025 report found that 46% of business leaders admitted to cutting jobs because of AI and warned that displaced workers need to rebuild their skill sets.
Waiting for the fantasy version of your comeback to feel safe is its own kind of daydream. Confidence in a job search isn’t a feeling you wait for. You create it yourself. One completed course, one published post, one coffee meeting that actually happens. Each action is proof to yourself that you can get through this.
Do this: This week, take one action that a future employer could see. Publish a short piece on what you know, enroll in a course or reach out to someone for a letter of recommendation. Confidence can be rebuilt after a layoff. You just have to tend to it.
Start Your Watchlist Here
The credits never roll on these characters at their lowest point, and they won’t roll on yours either. Pick a film that matches the stage you’re in and start there.
Still stung? Up in the Air.
Not sure what you want? The Devil Wears Prada.
Ready to leap? The Pursuit of Happyness.
Feeling boxed in by your title? Daddy Day Care.
Waiting to feel confident? The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Stories about people who’ve been through a job loss can get you laughing and remind you that you’re not alone. Sit back, watch a few and give yourself some grace. Then, with your dignity intact, go out there and show the world what you’re made of.
Featured image from Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock
