LeVar Burton is the guy that Troy always talks about on Community.
Demonstrating that my previous post was intended as a joke, I’ll admit I’m old enough to remember Kurt Russell when he was doing Disney movies like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.
Counselor Troy? 
Me too!
Apparently Ryan Gosling (Drive, Blade Runner 2049, Only God Forgives) started as a kid, on kid’s TV and The Micky Mouse Club. However, for me, he’ll always be Young Hercules (the third spin off from the Hercules and then the Xena TV series.)
TCMF-2L
It’s a natural progression. He started as a slave, learned to read, then ended up as chief engineer on a starship.
I don’t know if anybody watched or not, but it’s Bill Nye.
I was negative-2 when “Roots” was shown and I still primarily think of him as Kunta Kinte. I was like -15 when the Beatles hit it big in the US, and I don’t think of Ringo as that guy from the kids show.
Fair enough…
Another example - I first encountered Joyce Bulifant in a Saturday morning program called “Big John, Little John” (featuring Robbie Rist!), so learning that she had a real career (in Airplane, and the Mary Tyler Moore show) was a bit of a surprise…
And Lynne Marie Stewart, a.k.a. Charlie’s mom on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
Check out the cast lists for Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre and Tall Tales & Legends. There must be a whole generation of children who first encountered Ed Begley, Jr. as Ichabod Crane, Mary Steenburgen as Little Red Riding Hood, etc…
Bryan Cranston as the frazzled father in Malcolm in the Middle for 7 seasons, before getting his big bad breakout role in Breaking Bad.
Or appearing on “Lost in Space”.
Natasha Lyonne, Opal on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, ended up as Nicky in Orange is the New Black.
Holy cow, I thought I knew all the future stars from that show! Thanks!
Or, “Gilligan’s Island.”
I watched Malcolm in the Middle from beginning to end while it was on TV . For me, MitM was his big breakout role. It was a while into Malcolm before I realized he was Tim Whatley on Seinfeld as well.
When the casual viewer of Malcolm in the Middle would make a comment on how surprised they were that he was such a good actor (WRT Breaking Bad), I always suggested they go back and actually watch that show. Even while it was on, that is, not ‘in retrospect’, it was clear how good he was. Bryan was acting (and sometimes skating) circles around everyone else.
I agree 100%! He was deceptively brilliant on MitM and I was a HUGE fan. At the end of the final season, Bryan Cranston had just turned 50, and so did I. I loved his work on that show so much, I emailed him asking for an autographed photo as a 50th birthday present. I received one in which he coincidentally was wearing the same shirt as in my favorite scene (where he tried to eat a meal without chewing because of a cracked tooth - “The key is relaxing the esophagus!”)
https://dai.ly/x4wfvif - scene begins at 14:00 minutes.
I wrote back thanking him and congratulating him on the new show, BB, which was supposed to start filming. He replied with a really nice email and mentioned that one of the characters was to have the same name as me. I’m reasonably confident it was really him writing, as the grammar idiosyncrasies were the same as on his obviously homemade website. I’m assuming he outsources fan mail and web design nowadays!
Jeremy Irons appeared on British kid’s TV before becoming… well, Jeremy Irons.
Sorry, can’t get an embedded link to work on my phone, so here’s an old-fashioned URL: 'PLAY AWAY' with Jeremy Irons - YouTube