Val Kilmer also suffers from his reputation of being one of the most difficult actors to work with in the world.
She was Katy.
Cite? I’ve followed her career for a good many years, and never heard anything about a bout with cancer. IMDB, Wikipedia and her official site mention nothing, and googling “cancer survivor Bernadette Peters” with and without quotes comes up empty as well.
Not meaning to be contentious, just genuinely curious…
Right you are. Boone was her boyfriend.
I’ve never seen the big appeal of Judge Reinhold. He always struck me as being a good second-banana, comedy relief kinda guy. Great in a role like he had in Beverly Hills Cop, but not so good as a leading man. He’s a young equivalent of Jeffrey Tambor. I think he was screwed when they tried to get him to carry movies, and he couldn’t pull it off. His movies tanked, and once a leading man it’s hard to go back to comic relief.
If this thread comes back ten years in the future, Nathan Fillion will make my list if he doesn’t break out and have a great movie career. He’s got more leading-man charisma than any actor I’ve seen in a long time. Put him in the right role, and he’ll knock it out of the park.
Yeah, considering his reputation, and the number of bombs he’s been in, I’m amazed that he gets as much good work as he does.
For a while there he was doing a lot of good stuff - I really thought his work in Narc was excellent, for example. Haven’t seen him since then, though. His career comes in fits and starts.
My bad. My brain mixed her having cancer with another actress or her constant involvement with charities.
Tatum O’Neal, after she won an Oscar for her role in “Paper Moon” and was a co-Star of “Bad News Bears”, who would have guessed she would completely disappear for the next 30 years (due to drugs and bad decisions)? Not Momma Jimmmy’s Little boy.
There was a late 80’s early 90’s moment that I a ** Julie** Doc Hollywood and Mr. Saturday Night Warner had “it” and would be a star, maybe not Julia Roberts, but maybe like Sandra Bullock a few years back.
**
Jennifer** Flashdance** Beal’s ** film future looked awful bright at one point.
I would certainly guess that Mark Hammill post-1983 would be a bit more remarkable than it was
He popped up in an episode of ER.
True. SNL once ran a parody of a preview for a Brian De Palma movie (a Hitchcock rip-off called The Clams) that featured the line: “Every year, Brian De Palma picks the bones of a great director so he can give his wife a job.”
As for other once-promising careers that have stalled, a short time back there was a thread in Cafe Society about Tim Roth. For awhile, he was always on the short list of watchable British actors but, after 2001, he seemed to disappear. He has been more visible recently but it’s only been in supporting roles in a Jennifer Connelly thriller and in a TV movie shown on Lifetime.
How about Kurt Russell? He’s basically been making movies his whole life (he got his first TV role at the age of six), he’s done credible work in comedies, dramas, and action movies, but he’s never been able to break out into the top tier.
I don’t know, I think Russell was in the top tier there for a few years. Movies like Executive Decision, Tango and Cash, Tombstone, Backdraft, Escape from New York… Not all of them were good, but they were all marketed with his starring role being a major selling point. For a while there, he could carry movies.
Jeannie Tripplehorn.
In the early 90’s she had a lead role in two highly sucessful films, Basic Instinct and The Firm, and then came Waterworld. Looking at her IMDb filmography, I can only identify Mickey Blue Eyes and Very Bad Things out of the 15 or so roles she has had since.
Savion Glover. After wowing everyone with Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk he just faded.
In terms of quality rather than quantity I’d add Whoopi Goldberg to the list. She’s capable of exceptional work and deserved the Oscar for Ghost (though not as much as for Color Purple), but the vast majority of her work for the past 15 years has been lucrative but totally forgettable schlock. Surely there’s a script out there for a woman of her talents to shine in.
Black actresses in general run into a lower glass ceiling than most: Cicely Tyson is one of the most brilliant talents in the business and she always seems relegated to playing maids or made-for-TV melodramas. Such a pity.
Christian Slater seems to have taken a nosedive after “Broken Arrow” just barely cleared its budget domestically, and “Very Bad Things” didn’t turn a profit. Of course, one could argue that him taking those roles in those movies were already part of the nosedive.
Val Kilmer had a great run up until “Heat”. Then came the big-budget flops, “The Island of Dr. Moreau”, “The Ghost and the Darkness”, “The Saint”, and “At First Sight”. That’s a lot of flop movies in a row for one actor to have top billing in.
I thought of another one - Elizabeth Shue. She was everywhere as a teen and early twenty-something - Karate Kid, Adventures in Babysitting, Back to the Future series, Cocktail - and then in her first “adult” role she was nominated for an Academy Award for “Leaving Las Vegas”.
After that, not much. She did “The Saint”, which bombed, and she’s been in a few good films since, but not as a leading figure. Come to think of it, her brother Andrew hasn’t been seen sice “Melrose Place”.
I have a theory - as with Jeannie Tripplehorn, acting with Tom Cruise makes anyone look good, and then they get big leading roles and find that they really aren’t that good at all.
If I had been a bettin’ woman in 1967 (instead of 6 years old 
), I would have wagered the farm that Scott Wilson would have been a superstar. Check out his 1st half-dozen or so films - http://imdb.com/name/nm0934113/
In The Heat of the Night
In Cold Blood - as killer Dick Hickock
The New Centurions
The Grissom Gang
The Great Gatsby
Obviously, he’s had a great career since as a solid character actor, but I get the chills every time I see him in “In Cold Blood” and “The Grissom Gang”. I don’t know why the time wasn’t right for him. I think he’s amazing.
VCNJ~
I’ve always thought that everytime Peter Scolari watches an episode of Bosom Buddies he breaks down and sobs “It could been me! It shoulda been me!”
On a slightly more serious note, I always thought Julia Duffy was a lot better actress than she was given credit for, and could have made the jump into legitimate movie roles. Maybe never a big star, but a successful and credible player.
Rachel Ward was in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and The Thornbirds, and we all thought, holy crap, a beautiful actress who can really act and doesn’t have a whiny, shrill voice! Cool!
… and then she just sort of drifted off into second-banana parts, except for a few (And the Sea will Tell)…