Seeing famous actors before they were famous

And in the short-lived series E/R

And in the wonderful bad-film sequel Return of the Killer Tomatoes

Matt Damon played the anti-Semetic cheater who pinned it on Brendan Fraser in School Ties.

He also had a nice part in Pat and Mike before he changed his name to Charles Bronson

He also had a nice part in Pat and Mike before he changed his name to Charles Bronson.

He can also be seen in the Bill Murray movie “Scrooged” as a dinner guest in all his mullet haired glory.

And Damon Wayans is one of the firemen in the movie “Roxanne”

Lindsay Wagner, prior to getting outfitted for her bionic limbs, was a salesgirl in an Adam-12 episode; she couldn’t help get the shoplifter because she was too vain to wear the glasses she needed and so couldn’t identify the face.

As a follow-up to my post above: Having rewatched Firefly, I of course concluded with the movie, Serenity. This time I recognized the actress in the video that Mal and his crew sees when they land on the planet Miranda. The video is a holographic projection of a woman explaining what happened to the people of Miranda, and the video ends with her being attacked by one of the crazies. The actress in the video is Sarah Paulson. Maybe not a household name, but she’s been in some high-profile stuff lately.

Yeah, in a movie theater seat…

Not before they were famous, but the other night I caught an old episode of Kojak with F. Murray Abraham, Eli Wallach, Jerry Orbach, and Michael V. Gazzo (Pentangeli in The Godfather: Part II). That’s a hell of a lineup. Charles Kimbrough (Jim Dial on Murphy Brown) and Richard Herd (lots of stuff) were in it as well.

I remember this 1979 PSA, but at the time no one knew who Robin Givens was.

There was a show in the 50s called “Circus Boy” starring an 11 year old actor named Mickey Braddock. He became famous under his real name a decade later in a TV show about a struggling rock band called The Monkees. His real name? Micky Dolenz. He is still touring with his Monkees bandmates Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork, minus the late Davy Jones.

Jimmy Stewart in After the Thin Man

Jack Black in Mars Attacks

Hugh Laurie in* Sense and Sensibility*

Johnny Galecki in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Sarah Silverman in Greg The Bunny

McLean Stevenson in the boat at the beginning of this 1967 Benson and Hedges commercial.

Rachael Leigh Cook did a This Is Your Brain on Drugs PSA.

I just saw Brittany Murphy in a season one episode of “Frasier”. She had one line.

[Nitpick] Vince Vaughn had been a working actor for over a decade when Zoolander came out, including some pretty high profile roles in Swingers and Psycho. [/nitpick]

She spoofed herself in the first episode of Robot Chicken.

Any questions?

And also the small indie film The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

That was ten years after he started on Black Adder. It was after he had a TV show called *A Bit of Fry and Laurie * (which it could be assumed he starred in). It was after Jeeves and Wooster (since he was Wooster its safe to say he got some screen time). Also after Peter’s Friends in which he was a equal part of an ensemble cast. He was certainly famous before *Sense and Sensibility *even if you were not aware. I still think of him as the guy from Black Adder.