But even an actor who never broke out of supporting roles is doing better than many, many other actors out there. Really, any actor mentioned in this thread is lucky to have done as well as he or she did, given the competition out there.
Well, in the context of trying to make it big in Hollywood, every single actor whose name any of us recognizes has “made it big.”
Though in the context of stars who were hyped up to be the next big thing but then kind of fizzled out, someone like Gretchen Mol comes to mind.
Well “making it big” and “being a great actor” are two different things. To be honest, I have never watched “Saw” but I remember the movie had about a dozen sequels. Frankly it struck me as torture porn, but it was undeniably successful.
Though I did find one of the deathtraps amusing …
Link is mildly NSFW:
Should we try to find a subjective way of defining “making it big”?
Being top bill on at least three movies produced by a major studio, for instance.
The whole MST3K crew, while they might not be ACTORS in the strict sense of the term, are some of the smartest, funniest people around, and I expected would do very well after MST3K. Instead, they have drifted into relative obscurity, with some of the leads doing Rifftrax (Mike Nelson, Crow and Tom Servo) and some of them (Joel and the gang) doing Cinematic Titanic. They SHOULD be household names, or at least highly paid comedy scriptwriters, but I suspect they are happier snarking it up big time.
MST3K was always obscure.
Did you know Seth Green was in “Hotel New Hampshire”?
There’s a guy who seems to never go away by sheer force of will. And good for him, I say.
The Misties are, and always will be, A-listers in my book!
When I saw the first Spiderman movie, I thought Tobey Maguire would be a big, big star.
He’s done ok, I guess, but hasn’t really done much since then.
Everything I’ve ever seen Kevin McKidd in he’s been great. I thought Rome would catapult him to superstardom, but he hasn’t done much since then. He was in a show called Journeyman which I thought was excellent and cancelled way too soon, but he didn’t really take off. Ray Stevenson, who played Titus Pullo in Rome, seems to have been in more stuff.
ETA: I see that McKidd was in Grey’s Anatomy a bunch, which I’ve never seen. Still, would love to see him in the right movie role.
Looks like they’ve done a few things. Also interesting they have producer, actor, writer, art, music credits, all that, which is more than a lot of performers!
When I was in middle school I had a huge crush on Holly Robinson, now Holly Robinson-Peete, but after 21 Jump Street ended she just disappeared.
Same with Heather Thomas from The Fall Guy and Catherine Bach from The Dukes of Hazzard.
The other day I watched a Star Trek movie, The Undiscovered Country for the first time in something like two decades, when I was eleven or twelve.
Now, when I was a kid I didn’t realize one thing: the actors are terrible. Except for Nimoy, everybody else was amateur hour. Sorry, Trek fans, but that’s what I really thought.
And then there was Iman, who I’d forgotten was even in the movie, and I barely knew her as anything but that gorgeous model David Bowie married.
She was actually quite good. In part by comparison with you-know-who, but she also had presence, and could deliver lines with conviction and emote and so on. She should have been in way more stuff during the nineties.
In the mid-1980s, I was constantly telling people that Mare Winningham was going to be a major movie star. She’s had a solid career, but nothing on the grand scale that I anticipated.
I remember making similar predictions about Fairuza Balk (someone upthread already mentioned her).
Still, I don’t fault any actor for not “making it big.” Just making a living as an actor (without needing a “day job”) is a truly remarkable achievement.
I don’t know how hard she tried but her exotic looks and strange accent have to be limiting.
I know. It’s really limited Arnold Schwartzenegger’s career. I thought he would make it big after that documentary he was in about lifting.
She was Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper!
Not that I care a bit, but I remember after “That 70’s Show” ended reading that Topher Grace was so enormously talented he was going to go on to be a huge huge star. A la Shia LaBeouf.
His career may have been big but it’s certainly been limited. Lucky for him being a muscle head with a strange accent limits him to big budget action movies.
Twins was a pretty decent comedy.