Charles Bronson as the “half-breed” Harry Star on Bonanza’s The Underdog
And her daughter Ryan Fenelli was played by a very young Yasmine Bleeth, later of Baywatch fame.
Speaking of young actors, Robert Sean Leonard played Douglas Bridge in Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (opposite Newman and Woodward) and was also a student in Dead Poets Society. Then he went on to get an MD and work opposite Gregory House.
He was also Major Healey, Larry Hagman’s buddy at NASA on I Dream of Jeannie.
I’ve been watching ***Twilight Zone *** on Space the last couple of months. Every episode, I recognize someone who would make it big later—Robert Redford, William Windom, Lloyd Bochner, Edgar Buchanan, Sherry Jackson, ad infinitum.
Charles Bronson was famously in the Vincent Price 3D movie House of Wax under his real name, Charles Buchinsky. He played Price’s silent assistant. I can’t say that I spotted him, though. I was clued in before I saw the film.
I was surprised to see Torin Thatcher, who played so many wonderful villains (almost invariably without hair , in Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Hawaii, Witness for the Prosecution, and the Star Trek episode Return of the Archons, although he DID have hair playing Pendragon in Jack the Giant Killer. ) showing up much younger and with his hair in the H.G. Wells fantasy The Man Who Could Work Miracles. It was like suddenly recognizing Patrick Stewart with his hair (and John Rhys Davies without his facial hair) in the BBC/PBS I, Claudius.
Jemaine Clement.
John Ratzenberger from Cheers was an extra in the boat assault scene in A Bridge Too Far, right behind Robert Redford.
She also played an officer in the wonderfully awful Remo Williams – The Adventure Begins.
I swear, I’m starting to think Ratzenberger has been in more movies than the Wilhelm scream.
We went to a Shakespeare production at a festival in Ashland, Oregon a few years back. One of the extras caught my attention as being familiar, but I couldn’t place him for a bit. Then it hit me: The creepy prison director Dr. Frederick Chilton (Tony Heald) of Silence of the Lambs!
He was the Navy chief in charge of the refueling detail in Firefox, and a rebel commander at the base on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.
He has played a character in every single Pixar movie to date, since Toy Story. Not always a main character every single time, but he’ll have at least a line or two.
Speaking of Star Trek actors, while channel surfing one time, I ran across a scene that I thought had to be from a Holodeck Episode, as it had all of LeVar Burton, Avery Brooks and Kate Mulgrew.
Turns out, it was a TV movie, Roots: The Gift.
ETA: and reading that page, apparently it also had Tim Russ, but I didn’t see him personally.
And around the same time, one of the NASA employees in Superman II, trying to figure out if the Moon astronauts said they saw “a girl” or “a curl.”
He’s also in Metalocalypse. There’s is always a surprising amount of big names in Metalocalypse. Most are metal related, but others like Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell are regulars.
Jason Alexander in this McDonalds commercial. He also shows up as a hardware store cashier in The Mosquito Coast.
Tim Russ was in Spaceballs, in the scene where they’re combing the desert. He’s the one dragging the Afro pick through the sand who says, “We ain’t found shit!”
He was in Superman, the Movie, also, as a missile officer who tries and fails to tell the rogue missiles to self-destruct (“Function negative, sir!”)
Interestingly, his credits for the two films are:
Superman: 1st Controller
Superman II: Controller #1
Seth Macfarlane was on a couple of episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. Mind you, this was after his success with Family Guy.
I wonder if he got paid for that gig, or if he was just doing it for shits and grins?
Chandler Bing as the voice of Benny in Fallout: New Vegas
In light of his upcoming series The Orville, I think we can assume him a fan of the genre.