Carrie Snodgress. Got terrific notice in Diary of a Mad Housewfe, but never followed up and dropped out of acting for years to follow Neil Young and raise their disabled child.
I remember seeing the film Young Einstein when it came out in 1988, and was quite impressed with talents of Yahoo Serious (Greg Pead). Not only was he the star in the film, but he wrote, directed, produced it.
I was sure we would see more from him. But his career seemed to kinda… fizzle.
Treat Williams. He starred in Hair, then Prince of the City. He blew me away in a TV movie about Jack Dempsey. All this was 30 or more years ago. He got plenty of roles after that, but he never really hit it big.
Billy Crudup - Sure, he’s been the lead in some big movies, and works constantly, but never really hit the name recognition and award nominations circuit.
Nothing could be saved from Lucas’ terrible directing. I think even Haley Joel would have bombed in that movie.
He was the voice of MasterCard for years though (the long-running “Priceless” campaign), so he’s probably doing alright.
Two other actors came out of our college at the same time as Woody Harrelson- Clint Allen and Leo Geter. My money would not have been on Woody.
Looking at the imdb, it seems Geter has gone into production now. Good for him!
This site reminds me of the old Iconophile website, where the author would rant about female actresses who’d made some huge mistake that destroyed their careers (in his opinion) mostly by having breast reduction surgery or otherwise altering their appearance, except that you people are not ranting. An excellent source for information on this sort of thing, but vanished from the Web.
I liked Victoria Pratt in Cleopatra 2525, in fact, all three leads in that series were smoking hot – Jennifer Sky and Gina Torres were the other two – and none of them is exactly a household name. Pratt and Torres seem to be getting regular work but not in big movies or big roles, and Sky appears to have vanished from the radar.
I’m not surprised Micheal Pare went nowhere, I never saw him in any role that was not a Beef McLargeHuge kinda role. He does quietly menacing kinda well, that’s about it.
My nominee would be Stephanie Hodge. Most people remember her as the wife from Unhappily After After or The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. She’s got a lot of TV work doing wives and moms. Funny thing is, in her standup she’s hilarious and raunchy. She can play a hard-drinking, hard-eyed southern woman about as well as it can be done, to hilarious effect. But TV has a way of rounding those edges off, which probably explains why that aspect of her persona never took off and got her into superstardom.
Evidence:Stephanie Hodge on femininity.
Is it fair to count either of these actresses? Sara purposely quit acting to raise a family and Chlumsky took an extended hiatus to go to college.
Powell has worked steadily on British TV and in the theatre, though.
I’ve heard he’s very difficult to work with.
My pick would be Bruce McGill. I remember seeing him back in Animal House (playing D-Day) and thinking he’d be the guy who would go on to be a major star. But while he’s had a solid career he never rose out of the supporting level.
Christian Slater. He was all set up to be the Next Big Thing, but IIRC drugs did his career in. Now he stars in B movie knock-offs.
It’s funny you said Wiseguy. The first person I thought of was Ray Sharkey. He flamed out spectacularly, but he was a great actor.
I always wondered about Tony Todd. He has tremendous presence on screen. He gets steady work in crappy horror films and supporting roles.
Another one from Wiseguy, Anthony Denison. Great on the too soon cancelled Crime Story then he replaced Wahl on Wiseguy. Handsome, good actor, but never became a big star.
Speaking of Animal House: Tom Hulce. What happened? It’s not like he ever depended on his looks.
The other guy from Animal House that I was sure would make it big was Tim Matheson, who played Eric Stratton, they frat guy who seduced Dean Wermer’s wife.
He had that easy Jack Lemmon (in his prime), cocktail-party, polo-shirt smooth manner. If Tim had come on the scene after Mad Men became popular, he probably *would *have made it big. Instead he wound up as the cheated-on husband in a bunch of Lifetime movies IIRC.
I loved it when he took Mrs. Wermer up to his room, and he loosened his tie in that James Bond way… and all he was wearing was a toga and a tie.
Paul Mercurio, an Australian actor. Back in the early 90’s, was in a movie, “Strictly Ballroom”. Later, was ‘Joseph’ in an excellent TV mini-series about that Biblical character. After that…I guess he’s been working steadily, but nothing I recognize. He was SO darned cute. (maybe still is, lol).