Greg Evigan.
I think My Two Dads was kind of the end of his career, whereas it was the start of Paul Reiser’s. Prior to My Two Dads, he was a soap star and had another series, BJ and The Bear.
Peter Scolari is the name that immediately popped into my mind upon reading the OP. Perhaps we should start calling these people “Scolaris,” a subset of the group “Pete Best.”
That would be Greg Evigan, later of TekWar.
I would say that of the three McKean would be the worst off of all of them (but by no means bad off).
Christopher Guest starred in and directed his famous mockumentaries.
Harry Shearer, in addition to his own radio show, is a regular voice actor on a small show you might have heard of, The Simpsons.
McKean was more famous before them before the movie (for Laverne & Shirley of course), but other than one-time roles in films and tv series, nothing really stands out in his career.
Keeping on topic, the guy who played McKean for the whole Lenny & Squiggy thing didn’t do much. IIRC, he has MS and his acting days are pretty much over.
Oh, it’s far worse than that - Conaway was the STAR of Grease on Broadway; back in the day, John Travolta had second or third-tier role. Then, after Travolta hit it bit and did the movie, Conaway had to play the lesser role.
I didn’t about ivylass’s statement on his embracing fundamentalism…kinda like Kirk Cameron who went from that awful Alan Thicke sitcom to starring in those Left Behind movies…?
Actually a better comparison would be David Landers (Squiggy to McKean’s Lenny)
For that matter, what’s Cindy Williams doing now that Penny Marshall is a big movie director?
yep - Squiggy has MS. He is the voice of the…Penguin? or some other character on the Oswald the Octopus cartoon that features Fred Savage as Oswald’s voice. I really do need to stop watching tv with my 4-year-old daughter…
For that matter, Henry Winkler to Ron Howard. Both are directors, but Howard is the much more successful one. This represents a kind of full circle. Howard was supposed to be the star of Happy Days, but he was eclipsed by Winkler’s Fonzie, who became a cultural icon of the 1970s.
I’d take the careers of some of these “losers.” Most of them are fairly successful.
I’ll bet Peter Scolari lives in a posh, seven figure house and drives a luxury car.
Heck, I’ll bet Henry Winkler is a MULTI, MULTI millionaire.
Phillip Michael Thomas, though. That’s the best answer! 
Weird Science had Ilan Mithcell-Smith and Anthony Michael Hall as stars along with Kelly LeBrock. AMH has managed a reversal of fortunes of sort with the Dead Zone on USA, LeBrock did a few movies and IMS…got a degree in Medieval Studies.
Mean while, supporting actors Robert Downey Jr and Bill Paxton have had much better careers.
Dunno if he’s become a fundie more recently, but about fifteen years ago, he flaked out of a dinner theatre appearance and just packed up and blew town. Left the producers scrambling and highly miffed.
Frankly, when I heard his name attached to the show, I was surprised to hear he was still working.
Actually, Winkler, Howard and John Ritter went from being close friends to forming an “extended family.” They and their wives met every Tuesday for dinner. I doubt there’s any jealously there.
Mark Hamill and Jonathan Frakes have both directed several movies, in addition to acting and voice-overs. They ain’t hurting.
Adam West has been pretty successfully milking his “Batman” status for years. After a long time of doing comic conventions and the like, it’s giood to see that he’s done voice on Fairly Oddparents and played a villain on Black Scorpion asnd a former TV superhero (imagine that!) on some other show.
As for Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, things are never as awful as they appear. Karloff was doing poverty-row pictures in the 1940s and 1950s just like Lugosi (The Ape, Voodoo Island, Frankenstein 1970). Lugosi made films in the 1950s that had nothing to do with Ed Wood (Mother Riler Meets the Vampire, The Black Sleep, which also had John Carradine). Lugosi also had a Vegas Show in the 1950s and continued to do stage work (although , to his continuing disappointment, he rarely was offered anything but Dracula).
I think Karloff finally managed to break out of the film slums in the late 1950s – he did Peter Cauchon on Broadway in l"Alouette, then got parts in several Roger Corman films that brought him to the attention of other directors, so he got parts in higher-budget bad movies. Eventually he was in some genuinely good movies, like Targets.
Heck, John Carradine’s career followed a similar path. He was doing truly awful stuff well into the 1960s before things swung around. I suspect that, had Lugosi lived longer, he would have shared in the revival of fortune that his fellow horror stars did.
I think that a lot of the “also-rans” have had much nicer careers than we (the viewing public) know. Unless we see someone on the screen, we tend to assume their career in show-biz is over, when in fact they’re doing quite well.
A lot of folks go into showbiz not to become big stars, but to be able to make a living doing what they like - acting, writing, directing, etc. It’s just the public that tends to equate “not seen” with “not successful”.
Present company excepted, of course!
Tim Rice vs. Andrew Lloyd Webber is a given here. While Tim came up with the ideas for their second & third show (JCS & Eva Peron), Andrew’s successes with future shows and lyricists have totally eclipsed Tim (and everyone else in the genre, past & present). Tim’s Blondel and Chess were both damn good, but he just couldn’t get any real success.
Thank God for Elton John, the Lion King & AIDA.
There’s also Benny & Bjorn of ABBA. While they have written the moderate successful Chess, they can’t seem to get Kristina fran Duvemala going. In the meantime, the people putting on Mamma Mia! are making beaucoup bucks. B&B must be crying all the way to the bank with their songwriting royalties.
Mark Hammill is doing dinner theater in Springfield.
And regularly does the BiMonSciFiCon with ALF. . .and many more!
Not too shabby, IMO.
Michael McKean’s married to Annette O’Toole, so he’s got that going for him.
How about Billy Cristal compared to everyone else on the cast of Soap? Some of the others had good careers in other sitcoms, but he’s the one who became a major film star.
[hijack + trivia moment]
By the way, this thread title reminds of the Ray Charles song: “It shoulda been me - with that real fine chick!”
If you haven’t heard it, you really need to get his Greatest Hits - the Atlantic Years. An amazing CD with some comparatively lesser-known stuff on it.
[/hijack + trivia moment]
What happened to mark Hamill (star of the 1st star wars movie)? He should have had a role in the later series.
:dubious:
He’s been mentioned several times in this thread.
I was going to say Denise Crosby, because her career didn’t seem to do much after she left STNG, but I see on IMDB that she’s had about 20 TV & Movie roles since then, which is 20 more than I’ve got, so…