I was reading this other thread in Cafe society where people have examples of actors who “stole the movie” via a single scene.
This reminded me of another thing that I noticed recently that surprised me.
Can you give examples of actors or actresses that you think did very well in a movie or TV show, and then after that just seemed to fall off the face of the earth?
A classic example would be Jaye Davidson who was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actor) for his work in The Crying Game, appeared in one other movie, and then quit.
Another one would be Elizabeth Hartman who was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Actress) for her debut role in A Patch of Blue but had a very brief career.
But there are some poeple that are even more obscure. Here is an example of the kind of thing I’m looking for in this thread. Last week I pulled up Netflix Instant Watch to take another look at the funny comedy Midnight Run with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. I remembered at the time a short scene with the daughter of Robert de Niro’s character and on my second viewing I was confirmed in my impression that she did very well with her very short screen time (less than five minutes).
Here is her scene. Background:
Robert De Niro is an ex-policeman, now a bounty hunter, who is trying to get the bounty on a sympathetic mob accountant who skipped bail (Charles Grodin, who embezzled mob money and gave most of it to charity.) They are being pursued by the FBI who wants Charles Grodin to testify and by the mob who wants to kill them. Circumstances force the bounty hunter to go ask his ex-wife for money. Robert De Niro left the Chicago police force after being framed by some dirty cops acting on the orders of a mob boss (the same one that wants to kill the accountant.) His ex-wife is now remarried to another policeman and has a child from her second marriage. Robert De Niro has not seen his ex-wife or his daughter for nine years. The young actress does a wonderful job of showing the reaction of someone whose absent father just drops in out of the blue. youtube (she is on from about the 2:00 minute mark to the 6:45 minute mark)
I looked up the actress (Danielle DuClos) and was amazed to find out that this is pretty much all she’s done. I wonder what happened?
Speaking of Caddyshack, that is the fourth (and final) credit on IMDB for Sarah Holcomb, the actress who played Maggie. She also had a notable role in Animal House, leaving her with one heck of a batting average. I think the drugs got her.
I don’t see too many movies anymore, and I have never had cable, but Caddyshack was a cultural icon, and it always surprised me that it’s young star seemingly vanished from the face of the Earth afterwards…
Glad he’s still alive, and still working, but you have to admit he’s well below the Hollywood radar, by anyone’s objective standards.
According to IMDB, Elizabeth Hartman’s career (or at least her first and last movies) ran from 1965 to 1982. She’s a sad case, was deeply depressed, especially in the last years of her life. In the latter years of her life she abandoned Hollywood, divorced her husband, moved back to Pittsburg, and died in a five-story fall from her apartment in what was believed to be a suicide in 1987, at the age of 43. Cite
I first noticed/was smitten with her as the go-go dancer Barbara Darling in the movie You’re A Big Boy Now.
And Daryl Hannah and Minnie Driver and…what the hell happened to Leelee Sobieski? For a brief time she was an it-girl, and lately, just like Daryl and Minnie, you’ve never heard of 75% of the movies she’s in.
Mia Sara never left showbiz; she just stopped being impossibly young and gorgeous. Happens to the best of us.
Claudia Wells dropped out of acting for the better part of two decades (she made an indy film in the 90s), but spent the downtime running a business and raising a family; and now she’s acting again after voicing a couple of “Back to the Future” games. Her new film, Alien Armageddon, opens in late July. It has few names I’ve ever heard of attached to it, which is not a good sign.
One classic example is Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie Bucket in the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka and then never acted again. He says his parents were not stage parents and encouraged him to look at it as an experience, after which he went back to being a regular kid. He’s now a large-animal veterinarian and loves his work.
Every now and then I wonder what happened to Erzsébet Földi, who played Roy Scheider’s daughter Michelle in All That Jazz. She was appropriately cute for her age (with potential to be a stunner when she matured), was very natural, and was a helluva dancer.
The article says she tried out for The Blue Lagoon, didn’t get the role, and quit show business. There are reports elsewhere that she became a Born-Again Christian, which is certainly her prerogative; but it’s also certain (to me) that her absence is a loss.
I read that a few years back. I’m glad you posted it.
Here’s my contribution: Kaki Hunter. A cute, funny actress from the Porky’s movies, and played opposite Meat Loaf in Roadie. She finished off the Porky’s trilogy, and, aside from a singe appearance on television in 1991, never acted again. I read a few years ago that she had some sort of white-water rafting tourism/instruction business, far from Hollywood.
The same year as Caddyshack, O’ Keefe also appeared in a role that garnered him a lot of critical attention as Robert Duvall’s son in The Great Santini. In fact, on the basis of that performance, O’ Keefe for a time was on the short list of the most promising new actors of the 80s.
