Dunno about Facts of Life, but Clooney was never a regular on Roseanne and was never going to be. You could just as easily say Senator Fred Thompson “left” Roseanne.
When I read the OP, I thought immediately of Michael Moriarty. He left Law & Order in a well-publicized fit of martyrdom about 10 years ago and not only torpedoed his career, but seemed to suffer some kind of minor mental breakdown in the process. Nary a peep from him since.
BTW, didn’t Jeff Conaway leave Taxi because of substance abuse problems? Protecting your health is hardly a career mistake.
Assuming protecting his health had anything to do with it, which is doubtful. More likely was that he decided to quit acting so he could pursue cocaine abuse full time. A poor decision both physically and professionally.
Ron Howard is another TV personality who, like Penny Marshall, was smart enough not to try acting in movies, but rather knew his real talent was behind the camera.
Neither is Julianne Moore’s (who played Frannie on ATWT).
As for others who left something successful:
Joe Perry leaving Aerosmith was a huge mistake for him. Of course, they didn’t do too well without him, either. And, thank goodness, he came back.
Oh, and have we forgotten the entire cast of Seinfeld?
Michael Moriarty moved to Canada, but he has worked steadily ever since, in a wide variety of films, T.V. movies and T.V. series. He won an Emmy in 2002 for his work in James Dean. It’s to his credit that he has maintained his career while suffering from problems with alcohol and mental illness.
Of course, any time you try to judge career decisions, you are going by subjective measures. I consider anyone who can continue to earn a living as a working actor to be a success, and anyone who has a regular paying gig on more than one successful television series in a lifetime to have hit the jackpot. It’s also hard to judge the “what if’s.” You can say that Shelley Long would have been better off staying on Cheers, but who knows? Maybe the Diane/Sam relationship would have grown too tiresome, and the show would have ended years earlier than it did. Maybe Shelley would never have been able to transition to movies at all.
And of course, while money’s nice, it isn’t everything. Staying in an environment that you hate and that doesn’t allow you to be creative may be more painful than slashing a few zeroes off the end of your salary.
Not an unknown reason… Ted Danson wanted fresh blood. That sounds nastier than I intended, lemme try again: Becker’s ratting started to sag a little, so the producers decided to rejuvenate the cast a little (after contract squabbles that had Farrell and other supporting cast members not showing up to work for a bit).
Ted Danson supported a move to toss out Farrell, the idea being that she should be replaced with a woman with “different chemistry” – one that would let them see-saw between “will they or won’t they?” Originally the producers wanted to avoid a “Sam and Diane” scenario, but with sagging ratings they brought in “sweet” to be the polar opposite of Danson’s “sour” for a similar type of “sexual tension.”
Farrell’s season ended with the cliffhanger of Farrell’s character kissing Ted Danson. She was completely taken by surprise when she was dismissed.
I saw an interview with Danson in which he said “this is definitely better” and there was a really nasty undercurrent to the way he was talking that suggested he had more to do with turfing Farrell than what was made public. Seriously bad vibes from him. Speaking of “gone and back again”… Sherry Stringfield left ER used to complain quite publicly that they “sabotaged her career” so she was suddenly unable to get film roles… now she’s back on ER.
Holy crap! IMDB says Moriarty is 6’4"??? :eek: Wow with that round babyface, I never would’ve thought…
Has the nature of his mental illness ever been publicly disclosed? I remember him insisting that he was fired from Law & Order because he was threatening to sue Janet Reno, and later I saw him in a very bizarre interview (in Canada) in which he was dishevelled (looked like he’d been sleeping in his clothes) and he was saying that God had told him he must takes his family and flee the United States.
That’s a fairly accurate analysis with regards to “Cheers” and Shelley Long. As I recall reading at the time, Long had alienated much of the cast and crew so much that her presence on the show was considered to be a ticking timebomb. Had she not left show when her contract expired in 1987, there was a good chance “Cheers” would have imploded like “Moonlighting” and “Designing Women” did and not lasted for another six years.
As for Long’s attempt at a film career, hindsight is 20/20. When she left “Cheers” in 1987, she already enjoyed some success starring in Outrageous Fortune. (Of course, her co-star in the movie, Bette Midler, was also the #1 female box office draw at the time so that probably had a lot to do with it.) In fact, one could argue that her chances looked a lot better than Burce Willis who was also trying to make the transition to movies at the same time. Unfortunately, while she certainly could’ve found a niche in Hollywood doing romantic comedies, Long was in her late 30’s and, as mentioned previously, had a reputation for being “difficult.” Thus, roles in movies calling for a funny blonde America’s Sweetheart-type went to people like Meg Ryan who (at the time) was younger, cheaper, and more agreeable.
Booker was Roseanne and Jackie’s boss the first two seasons, and also had the hots for Jackie, who didn’t feel that same way about him. He was on the show almost every week. I think that made him a regular.
There has been no formal public announcement of exactly what is going on with Michael Moriarty. But it’s pretty apparent from incidents such as the ones you mention (wacky interviews, his arrest after a bar fight, his often bizarre appearance – there was clearly something not quite right when he accepted his Emmy) that he has problems. It also seems clear that some of those problems are alcohol related. These issues were a hot topic of discussion even while he was still appearing on Law & Order.
A little investigation reveals that on an apparently official website, which hasn’t been updated since 2001, Michael was posting serialized chapters from his book The Third Person: The Memoir of a Recovering Alcoholic.
He is a truly talented actor and as I said before, I find it remarkable that he’s had the career he’s had while going through these personal struggles.
FWIW, a lot of people who suffer from mental illness also develop substance abuse problems (sort of like areally bad coping mechanism of “self medicating”). The appearance I saw where he said God spoke to him, I thought seemed rather schizophrenic. Hence I was wondering if his illness had ever been publicly disclosed.
Not that it’s anyone’s business, but sometimes there are incidents and it comes out in the media, like Margo Kidder’s well-publicized bi-polar episode. (She has since been much, much healthier with next to no symptoms BTW.)
Anyway… forget the hijack, carry on with career oopsies…
Roseanne has always ONLY included family members in the opening credits. Even near the end when David and Mark appeared every week, often more than their spouses, they were never given “regular” status.
So if you want to call Clooney a regular, there’s nothing in the credits that prove otherwise.
Denzel Washington is just a smoking hot, top notch actor who has the ability to pick a most excellent movie and run with it, and then his next five movies are so average.
[One post hijack]Roseanne must have set the record for the most Oscar winners ever on a TV series. At one point its semi-regulars and recurring characters included Estelle Parsons (Beverly- Roseanne’s mother), Shelley Winters (Nana- Beverly’s mother) and Red Buttons (Jake, Beverly’s annoying boyfriend), all of them Oscar winners (Shelley Winters twice). I’ve alsoseen Allison “Willow” Hannigan and Leonardo DiCaprio in recent episodes before they were famous.[/One post hijack]
Crispin Glover. Refused the offer to repraise his role in the Sequels to “Back to the Future”. While Christopher, Lea, and Micheal all went to relatively sucessful careers, his highlight is “Charlies Angels”.
Umm, Crystal (Natalie West) was listed in the opening credits, as well as being shown hovering around the table, for the first few seasons and only became a “Conner” later on. I in fact divide “Roseanne” episodes into three groups, the first divider based on Crystal appearing in the opening. (The second divider is that lottery mess.)
The actor who probably made the most astonishing series of wrong decisions was George Raft. He had an interesting life in that he associated with gangsters, and was concerned about his image in that if he played a gangster, people may think he was a gangster. he turned down roles in Dead End, High Sierra, and The Maltese Falcon. And Double Indemnity. And he didn’t turn down the role in Casablanca as at that stage Humphrey Bogart had become the star that Raft could have been (although it is arguable that Raft would never have made the Bogart roles as effectively, and hence they may have not had the same impact on his career).
I guess the real mark of how badly they affected his career is that he is little known today, apart from film buffs who appreciate older movies.
Did he really refuse? Or did Zemeckis, et. al., simply choose to work around him? BTTF2 went into production not long after the Letterman incident, and I was under the impression that that put any “offer to reprise his role” out of court.
