Iggy Pop may qualify as another music example. It’s my impression just from having traveled in the UK/Europe and talking to Brits/Europeans in the US that he’s pretty well-known there, even among people in their 20s. It’s been my experience in the US that among people my age (late 20s) or even a few years older then Iggy has something of a cult following but is generally considered B-list at best as a celebrity.
There were several famous Hawaiian born Sumo wrestlers whom I suspect were better known in Japan then in the US.
Ignorance fought on Gilliam. I never knew he wasn’t British! Admittedly, I haven’t watched much Monty Python.
(Psst! See the post right before yours!)
Yes, House made him much more famous in the US. Not in the UK. Hugh Laurie was already A-league famous before House, or at least B-league with longevity promoting him to A-league, and House has never been shown on terrestrial TV - it’s quite popular here, but not so much that everyone would know the lead actor.
So the average American knows him more now. The average Brit doesn’t. He was already damn famous in the UK. I thought your OP was about people who became more famous out of their home country than in?
I’m not sure John Barrowman counts, exactly, either; he was born in Scotland and holds very strongly to his Scots roots - I saw a ‘who do you think you are’ show where he was with his family and he was talking in definite Glasgow Scots. He’s only ever been famous in the UK. He’s American, yeah, but kinda like Greg Rusedski is. 
The comedians mentioned definitely count. Ruby Wax was HUGE in the 80s in the UK. Also Loyd Grossman. (Not a typo).
Bizarrely, the lift from the Covent Garden tube platforms to the surface (you have to get the lift - it’s much too far for stairs or escalators; the stairs are for emergency use only) has Loyd Grossman’s voice telling you about local sights and not to use that station on Sunday afternoons.
Just to say that AFAIK they weren’t huge in the UK, either, but I really love their version of Que Sera Sera.
Yeah…I suspect if you mentioned Hugh Laurie to an American the reaction would be ‘the guy from House, right?’…meanwhile, mention House to a Brit, and the reaction would be ‘that’s Hugh Laurie’s show, right?’
Bill Bryson
Well, I guess I didn’t know how big he was in the UK. I was thinking he was Jamie-Foxx-circa-1991-*In-Living-Color-*before-Ray-kind of famous there. People knew him, but he wasn’t top billed.
I guess I need to be much more specific with my posts from now on, and know what the hell I"m talking about.
It’s fair enough that you didn’t know how well-known he was over here before House. He was a household name (heh) twenty years ago; he did go out of circulation for a while, but everyone knew who he was.
I’ve seen him on British panel shows since, introduced in an ironic way as being famous in the US, because it’s like they’re introducing someone who’s already damn well known but with the reputation of also being newly famous. If that makes sense.
Jim From Neighbours. Aussie bloke, recognisable face to anyone who ever watched more than five minutes of TV in the late eighties. We grew up with with him - he was Scott’s Dad!
Alan Dale, that’s it! Now he’s on pretty much every major syndicated US show, hyperbole allowed.
We will always, but always, think of him as Jim From Neighbours but he’s successful in the US as something more than that now.
Yeah sorry, but you found her anyway. And you don’t happen to want to buy a tennis racquet, do you?
What about Natalie and Nicole Appleton? Basically unknown in the United States but fairly famous pop-stars in the UK. But there’s the issue of whether they count as Americans; they apparently lived in the United States for much of their childhoods but they were born in Canada.
James Marsters is getting some pay in the UK, ironically, after having played a character who is UK accented on USA TV…
Jimi Hendrix and Chrissie Hynde became very big in the U.S., of course, but both were successful in Britain first.
Krokodil writes:
> (Psst! See the post right before yours!)
Excuse me, Krokodil. That was a very confusing thing that I did. I read your post. I was agreeing with you, and even more I was saying that in mentioning Dean Reed you had probably picked the best example of the category in the OP that any of us would ever be able to come up with. I thought that I should add a link to Dean Reed’s Wikipedia entry because most Americans have never heard of him.
Eddie Constantine. In his peak, he was one of France’s most popular actors (and singers). He’s completely unknown in the US (he was born in LA, but became a French citizen after his movie success).
Rodriguez, the folk singer, seems to be virtually unknown in America, but he’s huge in South Africa. Bigger than Dylan or Baez or any of those, I’d say.
Don Lane had some success in the US, but when he moved to Australia he became huge here. He had a very popular long-running night time variety show on TV.
Personally I couldn’t stand him. Apart from anything else, he was friends with Uri Geller and would defend psychics from criticism. Infamously, he had a run-in with James Randi. I hope that clip shows the whole incident - I couldn’t bring myself to watch it.