Channing Tatumn has to be the poster boy for this. Ugh.
I recently watched the movie The Gift. After it was over, I looked up the guy that played the villain (and who actually wrote and directed the movie) to see if he had ever written or directed before, convinced that I had never seen him act before.
Not only had I seen about ten movies with him in them*, he was in the movie Black Mass which I had just seen about two months previously. And I didn’t remember him at all.
*Uncle Owen in the Star Wars Prequels, Tom Buchanan in the DiCaprio remake of Great Gatsby, Ramses in that Exodus movie with Christian Bale, the dad in The Odd Life of Timothy Green, a soldier in Zero Dark Thirty, etc
Maybe you’re thinking of Damian Lillard.
She was nominated for an Oscar, but never won one. She got a Golden Globe for Working Girl, a movie I didn’t care for. I thought she was credible and solid in Nobody’s Fool, but she had far more flops than good movies.
Joel Edgerton, BTW
yeah, when I read his name I immediately connected him as the guy who played Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo movie, and he pretty much nailed it. A memorable performance. I can’t remember much else about him, or about the Scooby-Doo movie, but he does broad comedy just fine. I would never have thought of Freddie Prinze also being in the movie as the handsome Scooby, but he was there. Forgot about him.
Have to vehemently disagree with this. Unless you meant that her skill gets overlooked because of her demeanor. Margulies turns in very solid work on The Good Wife, and had some fantastic scenes as Carol Hathaway on ER.
Well, Natalie Portman is a Harvard grad who’s co-authored two papers in peer-reviewed journals, so she’s got something to fall back on if need be. I think she’s pretty good. She was probably the best actor in the Starbucks Wars prequels…though that’s a pretty low damned bar.
Nitpick - Paxton’s character wasn’t the one left on the ground. He played the lunar module pilot; Gary Sinise was the astronaut who was pulled from the mission.
I want to except Alyson Hannigan from that list. Her character had only one memorable scene/line, but she ran with it.
January Jones. Why, oh why does this non-descript hack get work? She has ONE facial expression, vacuous with a side of constipated. She’s not even terribly pretty, and figure-wise, she’s a stick with boobs.
Who was the woman who played Captain Furillo’s wife on Hill Street Blues? Her. I’ve even seen her on other things too, but she’s not memorable enough for me to know her name and not interesting enough for me to look her up,
Is there a better fit to the OP?
Ooh, I have a good one – Michael Cera. He had a brief period of lead roles an seems to have retreated into complete obscurity.
If you’re talking about Furillo’s love interest whom he married in a quickie ceremony before a judge, that would be Joyce Davenport played by Veronica Hamel. FWIW, I’ve always thought she was attractive, though not spectacularly so.
No, his wife at the start of the series
Not to mention, she’s known for playing Willow in Buffy and Lily in How I Met Your Mother.
The rest of the cast are either only known for American Pie or, as is the purpose of this thread, actors who keep popping up but are never remembered.
Though maybe add John Cho to the exceptions list, even if he’s just a minor character.
This is really the defining er, definition. I recently watched the Jude Law *Alfie *and halfway through he met up with a blond character and it took me several scenes before I realized it was Sienna Miller, despite knowing full well before the movie began that it was the role that brought her to prominence [sic].
Shatner was perfectly good as James T. Kirk.
He was divorced at the start of the series, but Barbara Bosson played his ex-wife. In any case, it’s surprising how few of the cast of Hill Street Blues were successful afterwards.
Barbara Bosson was married to HSB creator Steven Bochco, which may or may not have contributed to getting a lead role. In anty case, whatever chance she had at maintaining stardom was pretty much undone with the disaster known as Cop Rock.
Geena Davis. My wife and I have marveled repeatedly at how good her agent must be.
He was perfectly good as TJ Hooker, too. For that matter, in his earlier TV appearances on shows like The Scary Door, he was no worse than any of the other actors (e.g. James Franciscus, Robert Duval, Charles Bronson, et. al.) in their early appearances. Shatner did turn in some really so-bad-I have-to-look-away performances as a guest star on other people’s shows in the 1970’s. I recently watched the episode of Columbo where he played a murderous actor. He wasn’t just bad. He was coked-to-the-gills bad. The thing is, every guest star on Columbo (and similar shows) was that bad. Patrick Mcgoohan was, arguably, so bad that TV as a technology should have been scrapped lest something like his performance happen again.
I’ve seem some good performances from Shatner in the Naked City, too.