I often thought of Emile Hirsch, he did that loner movie, got on Oprah’s show, was supposed to become a star after Speed Racer, then nothing. Although he landed a part in Oliver Stone’s Savages this summer, though not the lead.
Josh Hartnett? Bueller?
You will find many many former stars and starlets on ABC Family, from Molly Ringwald, Helen Slater, the redhead from Melrose plays a mom on Pretty Little Liars, the flying dude from Heroes (married to the Dixie Chicks member) playing a dad on The Lying Game…
Right time, right choice, right script. Patricia Arquette did a string of films, and with slim picking on movie roles, turned to tv, got a gig on Medium that earned her an Emmy.
about Michelle Williams, I recall when Dawson’s Creek debuted, Katie Holmes was the star, landing a Rolling Stone cover and whatnot. I didn’t think too much of Michelle back then.
Leelee Sobieski, a downturn of film roles, then she had a baby and did a police drama gig this year.
I wanted to deviate with lost potentials of folks who I thought would be huge stars. I remember seeing an actress on As The World Turns named Peyton List who is/was stunning and everyone swore up and down (well in the soapworld) she would make it in Hollywood. Unfortunately, she was pretty enough to land guest roles but never became a star. Though she still has time as she’s only 26. BTW, she played Roger Sterling’s second wife, Jane Siegel on Mad Men, folks joked that she should have played Megan, as the current portrayer is seemingly sucking at this role and that it is higher-profile.
I hate to be mean, but Sobieski also suffered from the problem of not being a very good actress. She is very pretty and I’m sure she has some sort of basic acting competence, but in every role I saw her in she was as wooden as a basketball court’s floor.
To be fair, when you’re depicting superheroes (or villains) in full combat getup, Hollywood Chubby (i.e. real-world normal weight) tends not to look very impressive onscreen.
(Also, to be fair, that particular director didn’t seem very skilled at depicting women attractively onscreen.)
Here’s one I just thought of: Lili Taylor. Her first notable role was in Mystic Pizza with Julia Roberts in 1988 and for about the next 11 years she was an Indie film darling on the strength of performances in such films like Dogfight and **I Shot Andy Warhol **. Then, she got a big part in a big movie: the overblown brain-dead remake of The Haunting. The film was a box office disappointment and while the careers of her co-stars Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Owen Wilson were unaffected, she was soon doing mostly guest shots on TV shows and small roles in small films.
I saw Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid the other day. That was a real career killer; hardly anyone in that went on to do much of anything afterwards.
All kidding aside, I was thinking of Rachel Ward. She was in that, the female lead in The Thorn Birds mini-series, Against All Odds, and that was about it. IMDb shows quite a few more roles, up to 2007, but in nothing I’ve ever heard of.
If this is chubby, I’ll take it; every day and twice on Sunday.
Yeah, I get that, but we’re the people they’re trying to sell movie tickets to. I think we’re entitled to point out when Hollywood standards are wrong.
But this thread is about why Hollywood careers fail, so I think showing what the Hollywood establishment was thinking is also relevant. Of course she wasn’t fat. However, if casting directors started thinking of her as fat, then that would help explain why her career tanked.
OK how about short, soft and not very athletic looking. I don’t care how much leather you put her in, I would never think that Batwoman could take on the weakest henchman.
