More Star Trek: Didn’t Denise Crosby leave TNG for “better opportunities”, or was that just a cover story? All I can remember of her after she left was that she showed up in the lead role of a very short-lived series that was set in the Florida Keys or the Bahamas or somewhere. Nothing after that, aside from a couple returning guest appearances on TNG.
Andy Richter gave up his spot as Conan O’Brien’s co-host in 2000 to pursue a film career, which ended up consisting of bit parts in comedies that nobody saw. He eventually got his old job back when Conan took over the Tonight Show and followed him to TBS.
Paul Campbell, who played Billy Kekeiya in the 2000s Battlestar Galactica, left midway through season 2 to do other projects, and has since proceeded to co-star in the failed Knight Rider remake and do a whole lot of nothing otherwise.
You’re welcome. Thank you for the inspiration. Didja get that royalty check yet? 
Mischa Barton. She left The O.C. and hasn’t been in very much since.
Yes, but the other problem is that for a few select people, it’s true. They do need to make a move. See Clooney. Or Travolta. How do you know if you’re a potential star if you never take that shot? I imagine it would be a very tough career decision.
he needed time off, his leg was bothering him.
This is important. No one can predict in advance how far he or she is going to get. Every one of them, with the advice of agents, has to try to time things just so. It’s simply a fact that most of them are going to fail, because there’s only so much room at the top. But how will they know unless they try?
Murray’s greatest line, in angrily yelling at Chevy : “Medium talent.”
Minor trivia: if you remember the pilot episode of ER, her character had attempted suicide at the beginning of the episode. The original plan was for the character to have died. I think the deal was that the producers liked her, so they had the character survive.
Richter was the lead in two or three sitcoms which were both really funny and really weird and so never won any ratings. That’s technically failing by Hollywood standards, but doing good material that turned out not to be popular isn’t a stupid move.
The story I heard was that she was “let go” after pressing too hard to have her character developed more. Like Nichelle Nichols in TOS, she basically wanted more to do than just sit or stand at a console and say the same few lines every week.
Nichelle, BTW, was on the verge of quitting herself but was talked out of it by none other than Martin Luther King. He convinced her that she was an important role model for young blacks.
Andy Richter Controls the Universe was an amazing show. It really should have lasted longer.
Hmm. And then Worf was promoted to Tasha’s position, and his character was developed more. A good move, because Worf was a great character, but it makes me wonder if there wasn’t a certain amount of “rubbing it in” going on there. Wil Wheaton related the story about how he requested permission to take a role in movie, which would have required his being off the TNG set for a time. The producers denied him, explaining that Wesley Crusher was going to play an important role in the first couple episodes of the next season and so they needed him on-set. So Wheaton turned down the offered movie role, only to find himself written out of the first episode of the season. He described it as the producers’ way of letting him know who was in charge.
OTOH, Roddenberry was still alive and involved when Crosby left the show, while Wheaton’s situation happened after Gene’s death, and Wheaton didn’t seem to think Gene would have pulled that kind of crap.
Geez, it sounds like the show was being run by Dickens characters.
"Please, sir, may I do a movie? I mean, if you won’t be needing me anyway – Wesley can just be concentrating on his studies and be out of the picture for a while and NOT saving the ship and making the adults look foolish for a while – I mean, it’s not like my character is indispensable – "
“NO! You little pipsqueak! Get back in line! How DARE you try to develop your career as a young, up-and-coming talent! We’ll SHOW you! Now we’ll MESS with your career, just to show you who’s BOSS!”
:rolleyes: 
Poor Wil! I wonder what movie it was.
I also really like the series in which he was a tax accountant/private-eye. It was akin to the later Bored to Death, but withouth the hipster angst.
The same thing happened to the Ptl. Bobby Hill and Andy Renko characters on Hill Street Blues. They were shot at the end of the series premiere and were supposed to have been killed, but Bochco liked the characters too much to let them die.
Agreed. I really enjoyed it.
There’s one on ensemble show; they become convinced that the show should revolve around their character, or that some vast expansion of their character would improve every single episode. And when it doesn’t become ST:Tasha Yar’s Adventures, they huff and bitch and screw up production and finally quit or get booted.
The poster gal, IMHO, is Andrea Thompson, who was convinced she was the real star of B5 and huffed her way into getting erased.
George Takei missed several episodes in TOS because he was in John Wayne’s masterpiece on the Vietnam war “The Green Berets”. So perhaps a live Roddenberry would have let Wheaton miss a few episodes although the producers did give the people what they wanted by getting rid of Wesley (not by spacing him as I hoped).
We have some people mention Farrah Fawcett. I wonder if the same could be said of her co-star Kate Jackson. Jackson was unhappy with the quaility of the scripts, she refused to wear a bikini, most of her scenes have her standing behind the bar because she was wearing jeans and she didn’t like Cheryl Ladd (Farrah and Jaclyn Smith she liked). She had been offered the role of Dustin Hoffman’s wife in “Kramer vs Kramer” and Aaron Spelling refused to let her go. Meryl Streep got the role and an Academy award nomination with it. Jackson did have some success several years later with a four season run on “Scarecrow and Mrs King”. Interestingly the ratings, which declined slightly when Farrah left, really went into the dump when Jackson left although the public was probably tiring of the bad scripts like Jackson was.
TV may be a star-maker but the type of fame it produces is like phosphorus; it may burn as hot and intense as movie fame but it also burns out more quickly. That’s why many actors who achieved stardom on TV shows seem to drop off the radar once their series ends. Movie fame, in contrast, is seen as longer-lasting and more substantial.
And this on a show that not one year earlier had replaced its lead actor. Not smart.