But she didn’t get her start on Friends. She played Jeanie in the short lived Ferris Bueller series.
The Dick Van Dyke Show ran on TV well before the movie Bye Bye Birdie
CalMeacham, The Duck Factory was in no way a hit; it ran maybe five episodes.
watsonwil, I challenge you to name any hit film with Gary Coleman in it.
Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera aren’t movie stars, but they are big stars who got their start on television: Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club. Or so I’m told; I don’t have cable.
Just checked the IMDB. The Dick Van Dyke show started i 1961, and Van Dyke had a history in TV stretching back ten years before that. Bye Bye Birdie was 1963, so he definitely qualifies.
Fiver – sorry, I missed the bit about the TV series being a “hit”, and I didn’t realize that TDF ran so few episodes. Nevertheless, Carrey was the star of that show, which he was not on In Living Color. I’m still amazed that, the first time The Comedy Channel ran “Earth Girls Are Easy”, it didn’t even mention Carrey’s name (the only of the three aliens they treated as ananymous). He still hadn’t made it, not until “Ace Ventura”.
Wasn’t Jennifer Lopez a Fly Girl on In Living Color.
This doesn’t really count, but Jack Nicholson was on a few episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, way before Easy Rider. Seeing him on the show is pretty neat, because he hates TV and this is one of the few, if only, sightings of him on a sitcom.
How about Goldie Hawn? She started out as a girlfriend on Good Morning World(not a starring role, granted), then moved on to her big hit on Laugh-in (not a sit-com, but she was big in it), then went on to several starring roles in the movies.
In the bizarro world:
Shelly Long after leaving Cheers.
McLean Stevenson and Wayne Rogers after leaving MASH.
Lisa Bonet after leaving the Cosby show.
Jay: “Good Will Hunting? You mean that movie with Mork From Ork in it?”