You first knew actor/actress from a role different from one they're widely known in.

Cafe Society
1

Let me see if I can word this so it makes sense.

Long ago, a movie called Can’t Hardly Wait came out (in 1998). I loved it immediately upon first viewing. It became one of my favorite movies and I must have seen it at least ten times in the year that followed.

Anyway, Scrubs started in 2001, although I didn’t start watching it until 2010.

And as soon as Turk came on the screen, I thought, “Hey! That’s the drummer from Can’t Hardly Wait!”

It’s just kind of funny because, my guess is that for most people, it would probably be the other way around. Most would probably already be a huge fan or watcher of Scrubs and then, if they ever saw that movie, would go “Oh, hey, it’s Turk from Scrubs.”
Not for me, though. Sorry, Donald Falson, you were always “The drummer from Can’t Hardly Wait” to me. Turk came second.

Do you have anyone this applied to in terms of how you first saw them?

2

Robin Wright is known to me only from* House of Cards*, although she apparently had done some acting before.

3

Leslie Nielsen. I was first aware of him in Airplane! and the Naked Gun series. It was only much later I saw his earlier dramatic work.

4

Inconceivable!
( Had to be done. Board rules.)

5

Bruce Willis as David Addison in Moonlighting was my first celebrity LOOOOOVE. I like him just fine as an actor and big action star, but I’ll always love David Addison. Most people I mention this to have never seen the TV show, if they’ve even heard of it.

6

Amy Adams in “Junebug” is close for me but since she was nominated for supporting actress, I’m not sure it counts. I think for a lot of people it was her later roles that she is known for. Even with Junebug she had lots of small prior roles on her IMDB profile.

7

Hugh Laurie in Blackadder; I tuned in to House because I wanted to see if he could handle a dramatic role.

Matt Dillon from My Bodyguard. Adam Baldwin also was very memorable in the film, but I hadn’t realized it was him until after I saw him in Firefly.

8

When I was living in Minneapolis in 1996, my evening ritual included PBS and several Britcoms, one of which was “As Time Goes By”, starring Judi Dench. It was only afterward that I started to see her in American and American-released productions and realized she was actually a pretty big star.

9

I think my earliest exposure to Harry Dean Stanton, Sam Waterston and that Bridges dude was a little-known film called Rancho Deluxe.

10

You joke, but when I first saw The Princess Bride, I went “Hey, that’s Kelly Capwell” …

11

Olivia Coleman of *Broadchurch *will always be Sophie from Peep Show to me.

Peter Capaldi is The Doctor (Who) but I know him as Malcolm Tucker from The Thick Of It.

There’s a ton of these examples I come across as I stumble through popular media, but I can’t think of any others right now. Of course.

12

To me, Clive Owen will always be Lev Arrin, the protagonist (and star of far too many live-action cut-scenes) of an old and very broken computer game called* Privateer 2: the Darkening*.

13

Being a child of TV, there were a whole bunch of actors I knew from the Twilight Zone rather than the roles that made them famous. Jack Klugman, William Shatner, Robert Duvall, Agnes Moorhead, Burgess Meredith, etc.

When I saw Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, I thought, hey, it’s the patient from Little Shop of Horrors!

I got a twofer from the film Mr. Roberts. Jack Lemmon in an early role in what turned out to be his last one.

14

Forget MASH (the movie), Animal House, Klute, etc. To me, Donald Sutherland will always be the satellite boffin in Sebastian. (Although he did appear in The Dirty Dozen just before that.)

15

My wife likes The Young and the Restless. To me Victor Newman will always be the guy from Rat Patrol.

16

I think of Paul Reiser as being from My Two Dads, rather than Aliens or Mad About You.

17

I knew him first as Max’s (Peter Riegert’s) Scottish sidekick Oldsen from 1983’s Local Hero. “You say the darndest things Marina” (a whole generation of kids will know him first as the villain’s sidekick in Paddington. “He used to be a Doctor Who?!”)

There are tons, but these come to mind immediately:

I first saw Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise, but really noticed him (enough to know his name) as the freakyscary killer in Kalifornia. It took me a long, long time to figure out why people kept calling him a “pretty boy.” I guess it’s from A River Runs Through It, which I’ve still never seen.

There was a time in my life when I watched soap operas and I knew Demi Moore as Jackie Templeton on General Hospital. I loved her voice. She stood out from everyone else.

This is more recent, but I discovered Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone (which got her her first Oscar nomination and the role of Katniss in The Hunger Games), but she had been in a few movies before that that I should have seen.

I first saw Thor’s Stellan Skarsgård (as well as Emily Watson) in 1996’s Breaking The Waves. It was Emily Watson’s first film role, but Skarsgård had been in tons of things prior.

I first saw Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne in 2006’s The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro. He played such a slimy scumbag I hated him until The Theory of Everything.

I first saw Benedict Cumberbatch in 2006’s great movie Amazing Grace. He’s listed as being in Starter For 10 with James McAvoy, which came before Amazing Grace and we saw it in the theater, but I don’t remember him. I’ll have to watch it again. I’m sure I’ll say “Oh yeah, that guy!”

Before the Star Trek reboot I had seen Chris Pine in a tiny fun little movie called Bottle Shock. Two years before that he was in a movie I really liked, Smokin’ Aces, but I don’t remember him in it.

Speaking of the Star Trek reboot, after seeing it I made it a point to look up who played just-born Kirk’s dad in the movie, because I thought the scene and the acting was amazing. It was Chris Hemsworth. I’ve kept a (very close) eye on him ever since.

18

In 2006, I bought the film Zathura for my kids out of a DVD cutout bin for like $4. It was awful, an adaptation of the children’s book by the same name (which was basically* Jumanji *in space).

It also had Kristen “Bella Swan” Stewart and Josh “Peeta Mellark” Hutcherson in what I’m pretty sure are among their very first roles. Easily five years before either of them was famous.

19

I first knew Josh Charles from *Sports Night *where he was the nerdy second banana of the sportscasting team who never got the girl. Then I see him on The Good Wife, where he’s supposed to be the hot, powerful, sexy Will Gardner? Um…I don’t think so. I never believed him in that role.

20

I think you mis-remembering Sports Night.

He was Dan Rydell. He was the cool and charming one. It was Casey that was nerdy.