Um …
… nevermind.
I can’t tell if you’re joking here or if you actually somehow missed hearing the news, but Heath Ledger hasn’t been working recently on account of being dead. He died not long after making The Dark Knight and while the Terry Gilliam movie (The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus) was still in production.
Am I being wooshed here? Heath Ledger and Patrick Swayze are dead.
Speaking of Batman, there’s Michael Keaton. He was great in Toy Story 3, but other than that hasn’t really done much of note over the past 20 years.
Alicia Witt has an IQ around 200, so I figure she saw through all the Hollywood bullshit. Hollywood is not kind to those who see through the bullshit.
Elizabeth Shue plays herself in Hamlet 2, where Steve Coogan’s ridiculous drama teacher laments her decision to leave the acting world and go into nursing. That movie’s way better than it should be, by the way.
I’m guessing the Heath Ledger thing has to be a whoosh.
I guess we must have different definitions of “horrible,” because i think she looks like a pretty normal person.
Alicia Witt’s alleged IQ seems to climb higher every time her name comes up. First it was “genius,” then “160,” then “180,” and now it’s almost supernatural. 200 is, obviously, beyond the reasonable limit of any test Ms. Witt has ever taken in her entire life.
In fact, she’s been acting steadily for twenty years, but just isn’t a big star. She never really WAS a big star, so I don’t know why that constitutes a failure on her part.
Yow, that’s all insane.
She does look horrible there. I thought she was the cutest thing in the world as Enid. 
Speaking of Heath, just saw Knight’s Tale again. Sucks that he’s gone. He was charm all over the place.
What about the other kid from American Beauty? I only remember seeing him in Ghost Rider, nothing between or since. (Although I see he was in Hunger Games which I haven’t seen yet)
She’s great as Amy Pond in Doctor Who.
Ha. Actually she has a small recurring role in The Mentalist as a blind woman who knows the real Red John.
According to Wikipedia, Wes Bentley had major substance abuse problems starting soon after American Beauty, so that presumably hurt his career. It looks like he was actually in quite a few movies between American Beauty and Hunger Games, but they’re mostly things I’ve never even heard of.
I always like to bring up Rick Moranis in threads like this. He quit acting at the height of his popularity, because his wife died of breast cancer. He felt that his career was less important than his kids having a parent at home, so that’s what he did.
Patrick Swayze wasn’t exactly an amazing actor, and there’s only so many hearthrob roles in Hollywood that, say, Johnny Depp (gorgeous AND can act) couldn’t fill. And then Swayze died, of course.
In a lot of cases, drug addictions, dropping out to raise a family, or having a very difficult personality (as in Sean Young’s case) usually explain what happened to someone’s career if they were sufficiently talented.
Michael Keaton is a much more bizarre case – good actor, fits into a lot of ‘everyman’ roles, but seemingly dropped off the Hollywood radar. It seems he and Cuba Gooding, Jr. must share the same agent, since Keaton made a couple of dire movies – he was a snowman in one – and that seems to have killed any momentum he had.
C’mon, man! Roadhouse, Steel Dawn. You know, classics.
Peter Lazer. Not a star but had a respectable TV acting career going then landed a great role in Hombre with Paul Newman and then stopped acting altogether.
Helen Slater?