…television actors, and movie stars / headliners. These are two different and unrelated questions, so it should probably be two threads, but oh well.
Anyway, two movies I watched recently made me think of these. The first is By Bye Love. I watched this and thought, “damn that’s a lot of television actors.” (Decent movie, by the way.) So let me define the two questions compactly for quoting:
What movie has the most television actors?
To qualify, the movie must have at least one major role played by a non-television actor. An actor is a “television actor” if they have either had a recurring part that appeared in at least a dozen or so episodes of a show, or have a show where they are the main character. And the movie cannot be based on a previous television show. (So nothing like Firefly, for example.)
The aforementioned Bye Bye, Love has:
- Paul Reiser - Paul on Mad About You
- Amy Brenneman - Amy on Judging Amy
- Danny Masterson - Hyde on That 70’s Show
- Eliza Dushku - Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Amber Benson - Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Stephen Root - Jimmy James on NewsRadio
And proof that it is a “real movie” with “real movie stars” is provided by Matthew Modine and Randy Quaid. You have to admit, that’s a crapload of tv actors in there. Any movie with more?
What movie has the most stars?
They don’t need to have been a big star at the time of production. They don’t even need to have a big part. But they do need to have become a a headliner at some point in their career. (Read as: Cast as a lead in any movie that got actual wide release in theaters.)
I got the special edition of True Romance for Christmas. (Which was the perfect gift, as I now remember why it’s my favorite movie of all time.) I of course sat there with the dvd for about four hours like a mental patient despite the fact that an NFL game meaningful to the Giants was on. I’m thinking no movie has more headliners.
True Romance has:
- Christian Slater
- Patricia Arquette
- Dennis Hopper
- Val Kilmer
- Gary Oldman
- Brad Pitt
- Christopher Walken
- Samuel L. Jackson
- Michael Rapaport
- James Gandolfini
- Chris Penn
- Tom Sizemore
That’s a crapload of stars. Any type of role counts, so animated films might have a shot here.
Incidentally, True Romance has its fair share of television actors:
- James Gandolfini - Tony on The Sopranos (I declare that HBO is tv for this thread.)
- Patricia Arquette - Allison on Medium
- Michael Rapaport - Dave on The War At Home
- Bronson Pinchot - Balki on Perfect Strangers
- Kevin Corrigan - Uncle Eddie on Grounded For Life
The fact that neither of these movies came out in the past 10 years is interesting in that the line between movies and television has been blurring more and more recently.