"One Hit" Actors

Cafe Society
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Can’t say I agree. Julie Louis-Dreyfus has had the most post-Seinfeld success, but all of them have had success to various degrees.

For one, Jerry Seinfeld went into the show as a stand-up comedian who had been given a sitcom. He was not an actor by profession, and has never shown an inclination to be one. He still did stand up before, during, and after his run on the show. He was making millions of dollars a year doing stand-up for at least 15 years after Seinfeld went off the air. I’m not sure how often he still tours, but he was by no means sitting at home doing nothing. He also created the short interview series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, it ran for like 6 years on the small-time streaming network Crackle, but then got picked up by Netflix and I believe is still going on.

Jason Alexander probably had the strongest acting resume going into Seinfeld and had a background in stage (he won a Tony in 1989), and while he hasn’t been as successful as JLD, he’s kept busy as well. He went back to doing stage acting somewhat regularly after Seinfeld, and had his own TV series albeit only for one season, he’s appeared in smaller roles throughout too. I think it’s hard to qualify him as a one-hit guy. It also kind of ignores he was already kind of an established actor going into Seinfeld–he had his role in Pretty Woman, he also had a decently big role in the Jack Black vehicle Shallow Hal. He did voice work in several animated movies, and he also was the voice of Duckman which is a show that has kind of been forgotten to time, but it was one of the better known “adult” cartoons of the 1990s and ran for a number of years.

Michael Richards is probably the closest on the cast to a one hit wonder. He actually had some comedic acting roles under his belt that occurred either before Seinfeld or coterminous with it, he was the bad guy in the John Ritter vehicle Problem Child in 1990, and had a few smaller roles in wide release comedy films that came out during the same time he was on Seinfeld. He also had probably 20+ acting credits for random guest appearances or small character roles on various TV shows. However Richards is somewhat of a special case, in 2006 he went on stage at the Laugh Factory doing a stand up bit and got heckled, and infamously responded by screaming racial slurs at the hecklers for 45 seconds straight. That mostly ended his career, so it’s hard to say if he’d have done anything after that.

I’d object to Don Knotts on a few grounds. For one, he never had what I’d identify as a huge break out role where people expecting “more” from him. He had been steadily working for about 9 years before he got cast as Barney Fife, and his run on Andy Griffith was “a career” by any measure because of how much money and residuals and etc you get for being the #2 star of such a major TV show that ran on network television for so long. Remember being on network TV was a huge deal in the 1960s when there was only 3 networks, and Don was on network TV for 8 years and 162 episodes of that show.

But after Andy Griffith he largely continued to get similar levels of work–never the star, but often a comedic foil. Another big run he had was over 100 episodes of Three’s Company as Mr. Furley (when the role got recast), which was one of the major comedies of the late 1970s/early 1980s. Two very big TV runs on network TV, plus a good 70+ credits doing character actor work, just hard to see that as anything like what OP was talking about.

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I think Knotts’ trajectory was kind of the opposite. Barney Fife was so popular that Knotts actually did break into movies and did leads for a time. That was exceptional, especially someone coming from a sitcom where he or she wasn’t the lead. Whereas Andy Griffith had A Face In The Crowd early, but after that couldn’t break into the big screen world at all.

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Forget ye not Stanley Spadowski in UHF.

Sort of a pre-Kramer Kramer character, and more suited to my comedic tastes.

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Googling, Don Knotts was in both the stage and film versions of No Time For Sergeants with Andy Griffith, after having been a soap actor and on Steve Allen’s variety show.

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Yeah, Knotts was the lead in Mr. Limpet, The Reluctant Astronaut and The Love God? (and possibly more - those are the ones that just leap to mind).

Griffith, I think, could have gotten dramatic roles after Face but did not enjoy playing such a dark character, and so deliberately avoided the kind of roles he had demonstrated a capacity for.

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She was Wonder Woman’s little sister back in the '70s.

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While there’s always been the perception big time TV stars couldn’t get work in film in older eras, I think it’s exaggerated. I think it’s more that just because you starred in a really well known, national TV show, the studios weren’t going to treat you like a movie star, so it means if you wanted to do film work coming from TV, you very likely had to do smaller tier movies or smaller tier roles. So someone who is used to being the lead actor on set for 8 years in a TV production, faced with being a supporting role in films, may simply opt to not go that route. Keep in mind that while the upfront $ paid to network TV stars may not seem huge, it was still fairly comfortable for its time. But TV residuals used to be way higher, there’s been recent dealings by SAG-AFTRA with the studios as it pertains to streaming video that have really gutted residuals for a lot of TV actors. However in the old days you could likely earn a living off a syndicated TV show with > 100 episodes for the rest of your life.

Tom Selleck never got into numbers, but he mentioned in an interview once in the 2010s that Magnum P.I. had never completely gone off TV ever since its original air date, and he mentioned that as the lead he gets a comfortable check every time it is shown in syndication. As an example of how big some of these checks can be–Justine Bateman who was arguably like 4th billing on Family Ties (after Michael J. Fox, Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter) was reportedly still earning around $80,000/yr in the 2000s from Family Ties syndication. This was a show that at the time was basically only playing on TV Land. It was also not even that big of a hit TV show. Family Ties was never drew a #1 seasonal rating in its 7 year run. In 84 / 85 / 86 it was a top 5 TV show, but the rest of its 7 year run it ran a low lower–it was not in the top 40 in season 1 and 2, fell to 17th in season 6 and 35th in season 7.

When you’re bringing in stable money for not working, the incentive as a TV lead to take “bit roles” in movies probably is lower, some guys have done it because they really like acting and really want to act in movies.

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I don’t know that Don Knotts got rich off The Andy Griffith Show. From what I’ve heard, most TV actor contracts back then only paid for the first few airings of a show. No one thought that those shows would be rerun for years, and in some cases decades, to come. By the time he was on Three’s Cpmpany, long-term residuals were more a part of the TV business, so that was probably a better source of long-term income for Knotts.

I heard somewhere that Dawn Wells got some good advice before negotiation her contract for Gilligan’s Island, and was the only cast member to receive anything for the years of reruns.

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Ginger. Last one standing, but who would know?

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Tippi Hedren.

Literally her first screen credit was The Birds, followed by the less-successful and less-acclaimed Marnie. Then a supporting role in A Countess from Hong Kong (which didn’t help the careers of anyone involved in it.) After that, lots of one-shot appearances on TV and a few smaller movies. She’s had a long career as a working actor, but nothing that approached her first two films.

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A few of those mentioned I’m not sure I would agree with. Cuba Gooding, Jr. for instance. He’s well known for at least four big movies spanning 11 years (Boyz n the Hood, Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men, and Men of Honor) as well as being in some still-pretty-big movies like Rat Race. He was the lead in several of those. He also did some total flops like Snow Dogs and Lightning Jack but he certainly has more than one hit movie on his CV.

I know Mark Hamill has been discussed to death already but really, he’s well known as being Luke Skywalker and nothing else. I’m not quite sure that he qualifies for the OP as he was in more than one hit movie, but he played the same character in each movie. He’s known as Skywalker. Full stop. People have noted in this thread how much other work he’s done, which is all true of course, but the world still knows him as Luke Skywalker. In fact, before this thread, the only thing I could say I knew him from was a guest spot on The Simpsons and a bit voice part (pre SW) in the bizarre, vaguely pornographic animated movie Wizards. I had no idea he voiced the Joker in Batman, and I watched that series when I was a teenager.

George Lazenby fits the criteria for sure, and apparently by choice. He’s known as a one-off James Bond, coming in right on the heels of the hugely popular Sean Connery and… literally nothing else. He had a few bit parts in total flops and then nothing. Interestingly, he turned down offers to play Bond in at least 3 of the subsequent Bond films as well as playing Jesus in Life of Brian. I recall reading an old interview where said something like “I’m so desperate for work I’ll even do it for free” but of course he said that while turning down playing friggin’ James Bond. IIRC he became a real estate agent or some such later in life.

Tippi Hedren certainly counts. She did The Birds and then Marnie but she’s known for The Birds and that’s it. I’m not exactly the world’s biggest Hitchcock fan but I like his stuff and had never even heard of Marnie until recently — it’s certainly not one of his better known films.

I wonder if this is the nature of hit films. It’s easy for us to associate a particular actor / actress with a particular part, so much so that subsequent work just feels wrong. I think Mark Hamill is a good example. He’s an excellent actor – and has certainly improved as he’s aged – but he’s so associated with Star Wars that for any live-action film he does the immediate reaction is “Hey! Luke Skywalker is in this!” I’ve felt this when watching anything with Daniel Radcliffe or Emma Watson in it. It’s hard to not see the Harry Potter characters in a non-HP film that they’re in.

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I remember the late Christopher Reeve mentioning he had a hard time getting work because of this type of reaction—“Hey! It’s Superman!!!”. He might actually qualify for this post because he really had limited movie roles aside from Superman,

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Were the careers of some of the people named in this thread mainly limited by their lack of talent?

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Hard to say to be honest. Acting is a weird field. Actual talent at acting is an important element of your success. However, so is being “marketable” in certain roles, and some of that is based on things outside your control. Getting in the room with the right people at the right time, to get the right roles, and then the industry perceiving you in a certain way because of those roles and giving you more roles is all part of it. Marketability is something that gets built, and it’s based on a number of factors, many of which are outside the direct control of the actor. Reputation also can change how you’re perceived by the people making the decisions, there’s plenty of good actors who took a few bad roles and really saw their careers tank because of it.

Some of them were also undermined by extracurriculars, drugs, personal issues, being difficult to work with etc.

Tom Hanks talked about it once in a pretty revealing way, Hanks isn’t the self-deprecating sort that says he’s just lucky, but he does ascribe to the theory that luck was a major part of his success. He says being good at movie acting is kind of something that came naturally to him, and he feels like he’s gotten really handsomely rewarded for something that he doesn’t find terribly difficult. But he also acknowledges the trajectory of his career had some progression to it where luck was definitely involved, and had things broken another way he very easily could have had a lesser career. Keep in mind Tom Hanks is in fairly rarefied air. He has been a leading man in major Hollywood blockbusters since the late 1980s, has suffered no serious career setbacks, has experienced no prolonged periods in which he was unable to get leading man roles, has received critical acclaim and even his “worst” movies have usually at least still ended up in the green.

There’s more to that than just being good, there’s tons of inflection points in a career like Hanks, many other actors got to those inflection points, and each point you reach you can go the right way or the wrong way, and it’s not always obvious at the time which is which. Accumulate too many wrong ways (and for some actors the # of wrong ways you can go is 1) and it’s all over.

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I dunno, it’s hard to forget his seminal work in " Caligula".

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Hamill was doing other voice work pre-SW and post-SW. He’s also been in a lot of odd indie movies that I know of mainly because his name stands out, like Slipstream and The Guyver and a couple of bigger films like Corvette Summer and The Big Red One (neither of which I saw).

The think that startled me the most was that I saw he had a fan letter published in the magazine FXRH (Special Effects by Ray Harryhausen) back before he became famous. I realized at that point that Hamill was a Fan who had had his Greatest Wish (and Greatest Tragedy) come true – he got to star in a huge SF/fantasy franchise.

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There have been many actors who are hugely popular and make hit movie after hit movie after hit movie and yet have absolutely no talent – John Wayne comes immediately to mind. Clearly a lack of talent does not / did not hurt their marketability. Other actors are typecast and their talents lay in something other than what their known for. Jim Carrey and Robin Williams are known for their comedy, which I personally find stupid, but their dramatic acting is excellent despite the fact it’s rarely utilized. It seems like, at some point, a movie can be sold to the public purely on its cast: a big name star can make a shitty movie turn a profit (usually). The Simpsons cashed in on this phenomenon for years (and maybe still does, I don’t watch it anymore) by having some big shot actor or actress do a guest voice in a single episode and would heavily advertise the fact that Bigshot is guest starring that week. Their talents were irrelevant, only their name was important. King of the Hill did this too to a lesser degree but it was still just as annoying.

Personally I like watching movies where the actors have actual talent. I remember watching a movie called A Single Shot some years ago and noting in the opening credits that Jason Isaacs was in it. Cool, I thought. He’s a good actor and I always liked his characters. However, as the movie progressed I couldn’t spot him. Finally the movie was over, the end credits rolled, and I had never spotted him. So I looked for his name, noted which character it was, and went back to one of his prominent scenes. Holy shit. There he was. No wild makeup or other effects, he was just so damn good at playing his part that he was literally unrecognizable to me. That is sign of a good actor. Judi Dench, Eddie Redmayne, and Bryan Cranston are also in the same league.

Having said all that I think a lot of the people mentioned in this thread are / were good actors but for some reason or another – Hollywood is a business, after all, and ultimately money is the driving factor – those one-hit actors just kind of get the short straw afterward. .

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Agreed. But, if you ask me “Hey, you know that big hit movie Mark Hamill was in?” I’m going to answer “Yeah. Of course. Star Wars.” If you ask me “Hey, you know that big hit movie Cuba Gooding, Jr. was in?” I’m going to ask “You mean Boyz n the Hood? Or Jerry Maguire? Or A Few Good Men? Or do you mean…” There are several possible answers for the Gooding question, but really only one for the Hamill question. Which isn’t to denigrate the work of either; both actors have respectable Hollywood CV’s. But Hamill is tied to Star Wars about as closely as one can associated with a particular work.

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I’m going to defend the Duke a little bit. John Wayne liked money, and studios liked him making money for them. He produced a prolific number of films, and by number most had shit scripts and poor storytelling and are forgettable–note that they were fun, but forgettable (I think a lot of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s movies will hold up equally poorly–and I like Dwayne.) But there’s a number of films where ole Marion Morrison actually deployed his acting chops that I think show he had genuine thespian skills. Specifically: The Searchers, True Grit, The Longest Day and The Shootist–all of those hold up well and are well acted, by both Wayne and the rest of the cast.

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Horst Buchholz got a big Introducing Credit in The Magnificent Seven in 1960, then a supporting role in a Billy Wilder movie, One, Two, Three, and then his career evaporated like an ice cube on a red-hot skillet. He still got some work, but it mostly petered out.

Edited to add, I agree with Martin_Hyde about John Wayne, he could act, but he was mostly never asked to do it and walked through his role because he was John Wayne in everything. He was a lot like Burt Reynolds, who could act, and whose career would have been a lot more impressive if he had just stopped taking Hal Needham’s phone calls.