I believe that would be none other than Noel Coward (though I don’t recall the context).
A good rule of thumb: anyone who wins an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress will pretty much never be heard from again.
-Marisa Tomei
-Juliette Binoche
-Mira Sorvino
-Dianne Wiest
-Mercedes Ruehl
-Whoopi Goldberg (real name, incidentally: Caryn Johnson)
-Brenda Fricker (“My Left Foot”)
-Geena Davis (Actually HAD a decent career for awhile)
-Olympia Dukakis
I always thought Karen Allen could have been a big star after Raiders of the Lost Ark. She did a movie version of The Glass Menagerie with Joanne Woodward and John Malkovich, and I liked her in Scrooged. Then she did that schlocky computer movie. Now she’s too old. ouch
When Bill Campbell did The Rocketeer I thought he would be the next big romantic/action hero type, but no: back to doing low-budget junk and Shakespeare festivals until “Once and Again” came along.
With Mark Hamill, of course, ahem, there’s the acting issue…but I think he mostly got typecast as Luke Skywalker forever. Though he played Mozart in “Amadeus” on the stage to good reviews, IIRC.
The cute guy who played Tony in West Side Story went off to Europe to do theater or something immediately after shooting ended; by the time the movie was released and interest in him was peaking, he was unavailable…and then they just forgot about him. Hel-lo!
Weird how this stuff works, that’s for sure.
Whatever happened to Elliot Gould? At the risk of sounding like Joe Queenan: Did both he and Ryan O’Neal get on Barbara Streisand’s bad side?
She does have abook out right now. I also saw her on VH1’s “The List” recently. But yeah, she’s mostly retired. Not that she had any talent to begin with.
Actually, Mark Hamill does a LOT of little productions, character work, like playing villains in cheesy sci-fi productions, he writes his own comic book series, and does TONS of voiceovers. He really is enjoying it, and I like him.
He makes a KICKASS villain, btw!
Bad Career Advice:
Molly Ringwald (from what I understand) was offered both the female lead in Ghost and Pretty Woman. Her (now fired) agent/manager advised her not to do them.
A couple I’ve wondered about:
Sandy Farina. Did the film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the 70s, but didn’t seem to do anything else. It couldn’t have been the badness of the movie; the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton managed to survive.
Jessica Harper. We saw her in Phantom of the Paradise in about 1974, then not again until the early 1980s, when she appeared in Shock Treatment. Then nothing since.
What happened to Farina and Harper? Anybody know?
I think that a lot of the one hit wonder phenomenom is due to the limited acting range of the people involved. THey were perfect for one specific role, but their limitations showed when they were asked to play different characters. Mark Hamill and Keir Dullea being perfect examples. They didn’t have the range for other projects.
However sometimes actors overcome this in time and finnally do learn to act. John Travolta being the great example. He looked like a one hit wonder with Sat. Night Fever, dropped out sight after a string of duds, then ressurected his career with Pulp Fiction. He obviously spent time learning his craft. I never like him much in his early career, but I think he has become a fine actor in the later years. From what I gather, Mark Hamill is in the process of doing the some thing.
Bee Gees and Peter Frampton had careers before the movie (well, Frampton had an album, if not a career). So they had some recognition to fall back on, after making an incredibly bad move. Sgt. Pepper, in retrospect, wasn’t the sort of thing one could build a new career on, so the new kid took the fall. cf. Elizabeth Berkeley, Showgirls
He also does the lead character in the computer game “Wing Commander.” And he’s not too shabby; way better than anybody in the godawful movie of the same name.
Oh yeah, I forgot about Wing Commander.
I find Mark Hamill DAMN sexy.
You sometimes hear British performers talking about how they’d like to “break into America” and how hard that can be. Two actors who are well-known in England but who are one hit wonders in the U.S. are Rik Mayall, who was “Drop Dead Fred” (with Phoebe Cates) and Linus Roache who played an extremely attractive gay priest in “Priest” the movie. This is a slightly different take on the one hit wonder thing because it suggests there are other reasons for it than limited range or just bad luck.
This is, of course, absolutely ridiculous. Richard Beymer was a well-known quantity before WSS (why else hire a guy who couldn’t sing for the part?) and continued to make several high-profile films afterwards (most notably The Longest Day, The Stripper, and the title role in Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man). However, it soon became exceedingly clear that he was a rather flavorless screen personality and the parts stopped coming his way. That’s when he decided to go back to the stage (in NY, not Europe), as well as pursue other interests.
As for Elliott Gould, he still makes tons of movie and TV appearances (most notably on Friends), but he was never known as a “dramatic” actor; though much of his comedy did have a bit of an edge, even his best dramatic work (The Long Goodbye) relied on his affability and sardonic nature. This may explain why the more heavyweight dramatic roles for actors his age seem to have gone elsewhere (though I think he did a fine turn in American History X)
I might agree with this list with the exception of Juliette Binoche who is a big film star in France and doesn’t choose to make many English-language films. However, if you check the adds of “Chocolat” she is listed as the co-star along with Johnny Depp.
BobT is right - Juliette Binoche is a very big star in France, and has made 6 or 7 movies since The English Patient, and has won or been nominated for many (at least 10) major film awards in her career. She is definitely not a one-hit wonder.
Wasn’t Mark Hamill on the shelf for a while after getting into some hideous wreck?
NO! He was in accident while filming the first Star Wars, and so for the next one, they created the Wampa scene to explain the scars on his face. It wasn’t a horrible one-he broke his nose, and had some scarring, but it wasn’t as major as some make it out to be.
ArchiveGuy: Elliot Gould is on Friends, that’s true, but Al Pacino isn’t and neither is Robert Redford or Clint Eastwood. Whereas these 70s stars have maintained their high profiles for 30 years Elliot Gould’s fame faded rather quickly in comparison, don’t you think? While it’s true that the musical movie genre of the sixties and early 70s is way out of fashion comedy-with-an-edge never has been as far as I know.
Of course, but AP/RR/CE were (are) all charismatic leading men; even at his peak, Gould still worked on the margins of quirky comedic/character roles. (Even then, Redford’s visibility has had little to do with acting in the past ten years) Apples & Oranges. I think George Segal and Alan Arkin are better comparisons. Unlike more traditional dramatic roles, the parts just aren’t there for Gould’s “type” the way they were in his youth.
Yeah, but you usually don’t associate 62-year olds with “edgy” humor (at least not on film); comedy that pushes the boundaries traditionally is the province of a younger set. No doubt Gould may still be open to edgier material, but you do have to make a living in the meantime.