Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, and Jeff Goldblum all play aliens in Earth Girls Are Easy, but only Goldblum was a household name at the time, I’ll wager.
Before she was THE BIONIC WOMAN and he was, uh, all kinds of stuff, Lindsey Wagner and Ed Begley Jr were college-age newbies on this ADAM-12 episode.
I guess I’m getting whooshed, but yes, I’m sure.
Skimming the thread I see several Seinfeld episodes have been mentioned, but not the one that I first thought of. “The Pilot” deals with the pilot episode of a sitcom based on Jerry’s life. A pre-Law & Order: SVU Mariska Hargitay auditions for the role of Elaine and a pre-Ellen and very pre-Entourage Jeremy Piven is cast as George.
Hey, remember The George Carlin Show, with George as a seen-it-all cabbie who expounds on topics various and sundry at the local bar?
No?
Yeah, it maybe wasn’t what you’d call a hit. But it did give early work to Clark Gregg and Jenna Elfman.
Et voilà! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SqbLZJhtoY
Only part of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9DNhJIfzKw, but it also has Martin Balsam, Robert Blake, Sylvia Sidney (before her breakout role in Beetlejuice), Judith Lowry (Mother Dexter from Phyllis), Frank Sutton (from Gomer Pyle), and Richard X. Slattery (from everything).
I watched too much TV in the '60s–I recognized Paul Burke from his voice. eek
The Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story The Time Warrior had both Boba Fett and Dot Cotton.
Bruce Willis was in an episode of “Twilight Zone” where he was the only character, but he played two different personalities which talked to each other. Does that count? Maybe if it was directed by Wes Craven?
Heh, that’s awesome: first they’re announcing the barometric pressure, then we see an already-balding Robert Duvall in a getaway car, then Ed Asner gets nostalgic?
[Homer Simpson]
“It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened!”
[/Homer Simpson]
Ever wonder what Erik Estrada was doing before starring in CHiPs? No? That’s a stupid question; I apologize for asking it. Anyhow, the answer is “an episode of BARETTA with Tommy Lee Jones.” (M. Emmet Walsh was in that one too, and arguably counts.)
Sgt McKenna in The Gallant Men, a much underrated and sadly forgotten show. 
I don’t think that link goes where you think it goes.
Pretty sure this link goes to IMDb’s listing for a LOU GRANT episode that gave early work to up-and-comers Peter Weller and Brian Dennehy as neo-Nazis.
(They’re unknown white guys in uniforms! Of course you cast a lean one and a fat one!)
A 1957 “Studio One” version of the War of the Worlds titled “The Night America Trembled” had Ed Asner, Warren Beatty, Warren Oates, Vincent Gardenia and an uncredited John Astin.
A tonsured Ed Asher! Who knew he was a Franciscan?
Nor it does. :smack:
As amends, rubbish 70s British SF series The Tomorrow People once starred a pre-Doctor Peter Davison and a pre-Trillian Sandra Dickinson: the show was gob-smackingly awful, but it did at least give us Georgia Moffatt.
Here’s one of the rare COLUMBO episodes where we don’t know whodunit, and so can’t tell whether our hero is innocuously rattling the killer or just irritating the hell out of some guy who wasn’t even there. Anyhow, you can see old Dabney Coleman and young Marc Singer on screen before they graduated to leading-man status.
NM
Teri Garr’s cut-off date would’ve been '68, if her STAR TREK appearance had been the pilot episode of a Like-An-American-Doctor-Who-And-His-Miniskirted-Companion spinoff as intended. Still, even if that had happened, she’d have beaten the deadline on this episode of THAT GIRL, alongside a pre-Meathead Rob Reiner, who that very month turned a mere twenty.
Before that, Harmon and a pre-AIRPLANE/STARMAN/et cetera Robert Hays did an episode of LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY together.