Comeback of course implies that they had to have an impressive career, then sink (or plunge), and then come back to an impressive career. I don’t consider a box office bomb or two a plunge, but an extended period of time (a few years or so) when they were either doing dreck or pretty much forgotten.
Some would claim John Travolta but I don’t really count him myself. He started out huge and then became almost invisible but it was largely by choice, and because he took good care of his money he never had to do Love Boat or Horny Kids at the Beach IV type vehicles. OTOH he did go from “genteel has been” to A-List after Pulp Fiction.
My nominees would be:
William Shatner- Star Trek made him world famous but it also made him unemployable (at least in anything good). He was doing lots of episodic guest shot appearances and really low budget movies and by his own admission living hand to mouth (largely due to alimony and taxes- at one point he says he lived in his camper) in the 1970s. The success of the films helped make him bankable again and then T.J. Hooker was a hit, and in the past few years- long after Kirk is dead- he’s had probably the best role of his career on Boston Legal.
Another sci-fi vet:
Martin Landau- Starts off with the hit series Mission Impossible, then does Space 1999 with his then-wife— not Star Trek by a considerable site, but nothing to be greatly embarassed by, but then a lot of drek. To me his nadir would be playing a mad scientist with an army of basketball playing robots in The Harlem Globetrotters On Gilligan’s Island (yes, that’s a real movie) followed by years of episodic appearances in forgotten series and TV movie roles (Return of the Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar Man, a Kung Fu reunion movie, etc.). I think his big turnaround was being cast in an excellent role in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (a film virtually reshot as Match Point but with an English setting and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the Landau character).
In 1994 he played Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood- a movie that bombed yet strangely you rarely meet anybody who hasn’t seen- and won- deservedly (personally I’d have gone with Samuel Jackson, Jr. but Landau was a worthy co-nominee) the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Since then his work hasn’t been exactly stellar but there’s plenty of it and no more robots playing basketball. (I wondered if when he was filming Ed Wood, enacting the washed up Lugosi doing dreck in his later years, if he drew on his experience of Globetrotters/Gilligan and the really low-budget sci-fi conventions he attended [the ones that hired him and his ex-wife because, by his own admission, the promoters couldn’t afford Trek cast members.)
I almost want to mention Christopher Lee, a man who has done some super godawful dreck in his career (including the Horny Kids at the Beach movies) yet resurfaced to star simultaneously in two of the biggest trilogies ever made (Lord of the Rings and Star Wars prequel) with pivotal roles in each. However, in interviews Lee always seemed to have the most pragmatic “keep your chin up and cash the checks, we’re all going to die anyway so just have fun” attitude towards his career, and I don’t think he was destitute so much as he just took anything that was handed to him with a paycheck, so it wasn’t so much a comeback as a nice bonus to have big budget movies handed to him.
In terms of visibility Eric Estrada seems to have resurfaced nicely. While he’s not CHIPS caliber anymore in terms of fan mail and salary, I’m sure his career has been lucrative in recent years, and I understand he works a lot as a villain and character actor in Spanish language television.
Who are some others who fell low and climbed back?
I’m sorry but William Shatner is washed up. As long as he’s shilling some bullshit in cheesy commercials, he’s washed up. “Big names” in the entertainment industry don’t appear in such commercials if they have the whole world available to them on a silver platter. Perhaps they’ll throw in an appearance for a charity type foundation, but not doing normal commercials.
My vote is Charlie Sheen.
Had an awesome bit part in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and had the lead in Platoon. Then had a bunch of meh roles for a while and sought out the assistance of controlled substances to ease the pain. The hookers helped too.
Now he’s the lead in Two and A Half Men which is a very popular and supposedly funny prime time comedy. I say supposedly funny because I’ve never watched it to confirm or refute the claim.
The utterly loathesome Jerry Stiller had a huge career comeback with both “Seinfeld” and “King Of Queens”
I am not sure why he enrages me so, but he may well be the celebrity I would most enjoy see being stomped by a vicious pack of PCP-crazed Hells Angels…
I would say Margot Kidder and Natasha Lyonne, just based on them still being alive at all no matter what kind of work they’re getting. Both of them went from uniquely talented, sexy actresses to being majorly messed up, to the point of living on the streets.
Lyonne dated Edward Furlong for a while. It’s too early to tell if he’ll have a comeback but it’s fair to say he’s hit bottom; he was on the news last week for being in a psych ward/rehab for substance abuse and for making suicidal and homicidal threats to his estranged wife.
His career has never really suffered though; he’s always been in demand. (His Chaplin was a phenomenal performance that I’m surprised isn’t more famous.)
I think “whore” is more appropriate than washed up. I’m not sure Shatner has been hotter than he was this decade.
A good nomination, but somehow when the downfall is from drugs or booze, it hardly seems surprising when they turn it around after kicking their demons. RDJR is impressive because of the magnitude of his comeback (Iron Man included, natch).
I like the ones that went into obscurity only to return to relevance.
Fitting this category-
Jackie Earl Haley- My choice. He hadn’t done SQUAT since being a second rate child “star” yet returns to an Academy Award nomination and leading roles in a few high profile tentpole films.
to a lesser extent:
Jason Bateman- He went from child star in the 80s to unemployable to the indie/thinking man’s comedy god. Plus, he threw in a few box office roles (Hancock) along the way.
Gotta be Frank Sinatra. He was huge in the forties and was the first entertainer to have female audiences screaming, ala the Beatles. Had a decent movie career during that decade as well and was making tons of money.
Then during the early fifties he was in the toilet, playing small venues in places like Dallas and Eva Gardner was occasionally paying his travel and other expenses.
Then came his role in From Here To Eternity (a role for which he got paid only $8,000 - pocket money for a star of his previous stature), and he was not only back on top but became much, much bigger than ever.
His down time made quite an impression on him and apparently caused much of the workaholism that characterized his post-comeback life. I recall reading once that after running into a formerly famous celebrity who everybody had forgotten about, Sinatra remarked to his daughter Nancy that no one was ever point to him and say “That used to be Frank Sinatra.”
How about the strange case of Warren Beatty? After producing back-to-back Best Picture nominees that both got him nominated for Best Actor and Writer and Director, he spends eight straight years with a single movie to his credit: ISHTAR, the archetypal flop. And then comes the '90s, and suddenly he’s Dick Tracy and Bugsy Siegel and there’s yet more Oscar nominations and he’s everywhere again all of a sudden.
You said you’re not counting Travolta because he “became almost invisible” and was a “genteel has-been” until Pulp Fiction? Beatty famously starred in the movie that, even decades later, is still used as the go-to shorthand for Massively Publicized Flop.
Paula Abdul (major pop star, then nothing until American Idol, now nothing), and to a lesser extant Teri Hatcher (Lois and Clark, then B-movies, now Desperate Housewives).
How about Thomas Haden Church? Household name for Wings and that other show I can’t remember (Ted & someone?), then nothing until a Best Supporting Actor nod for Sideways.
I was going to go with Russ Tamblin. You couldn’t see a musical in the '50s or '60s without him being featured. Then he drops off the map until Twin Peaks
