The medium small statured black comedian on the first season or two of MAD TV with the baritone voice. I always thought he was going places, but he didn’t, and now I’ve forgotten his name.
Billy Campbell, of The Rocketeer and TV’s Once and Again. He makes me weak in the knees.
Remember when Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari were on Bosom Buddies? Sure you do. I coulda sworn that Peter Scolari was going to be the breakout star of that show – not a big movie star, probably, but a household name, sure. Tom Hanks? He’d be the next John Ritter: funny, charming, not untalented in his way, but no big deal. Can I pick 'em or what? 
I always preferred Peter Scolari to Tom Hanks in their BB days, and thought he was the funnier and cuter of the pair.
Does anyone remember Dennis Christopher? He made a pretty good impression starring in the 1979 film Breaking Away, and can still be seen around in various movie and TV roles, but never seemed to hit the big time the way one might have expected.
I always thought that Billy Zane got the short end of the stick. The guy’s got dashing good looks and is a passable actor. He could certainly be filling some of the roles that producers look to Vin Diesel to cover. :rolleyes:
I also thought James Van der Beek was going to be big after Dawson ended. Guess he just picked some bad roles.
Skeet Ulrich could have been very big. A younger carbon-copy of Johnny Depp, he was Neve Campbell’s boyfriend in the first “Scream” movie. IIRC, he decided to quit the acting biz altogether. Not sure why.
Edward Furlong. Sure, he’s made a few movies since T2, but how sad is it that they didn’t give him the role of John Connor in T3?
Orlando Jones? He was a writer on the show too. Had small parts in Office Space and Evolution, and was the spokesman for 7-up for a while (Make 7, up yours).
Very funny guy, but he has seemed to disappear.
I used to love the TV show In Living Color, and my two favorite performers were the token whiteys, James Carrey and Kelly Coffield. James started going by Jim, and the rest is history. Kelly, on the other hand, has vanished entirely.
Dagmara Dominczyk - you’d only recognize her as Mercedes in The Count of Monte Cristo. She’s born Polish but has lived in the US most of her life. I think that she is a great actress and is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. She also has the most enchanting accent I’ve ever heard (at least in THCMC). I figured she’d get big roles rolling in after TCOMC but so far she hasn’t done much of anything. There is still time enough though.
Zooey Deschanel - you’d recoginze her from Elf most likely but she’s been in all sorts of shows and films over the years. She is a great actress with an immense bredth of talent and I have always been pissed that she never gets leading roles so that she can showcase it. Her agent gets her plenty of work - just not the right kind of work IMHO. However, she is slated as Trillian in the upcoming film version of HG2G so maybe her time has finally come – please don’t let it suck.
I don’t know how Cary Elwes didn’t become a major star after The Princess Bride. Same goes for Karen Allen after Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Not that Treat Williams has ever had to beg for food, but after Hair I thought he would become a superstar.
I heard that Karen Allen went through several years of serious drug problems; real shame.
I thought that’d happen for both him and John Savage in the same movie, who was also good in The Deerhunter. They can both act and sing; John Savage has a striking, intense look.
Patrick Bergen had a breakthrough role playing Sir R.F. Burton in The Mountains of the Moon; I thought he’d be a big star.
You should see him now. I was reading (my wife’s) Star magazine and they had an article about him. Apparently he lost out on T3 b/c he was into drugs. It looks like he’s gained about 30 pounds.
As for the OP, here’s a vote for David Rasche. I thought Sledge Hammer! would launch him into superstardom, but insteafd he made some forgettable movie and TV appearances and has more or less vanished.
You know the funny part oft his is when you remember watching actors whose names and credentials you can no longer recall. I’ve got an actress who played in some TV series that I’ve forgotten and her name–oh, yeah [mid-post memory burst] is Margaret Colin (?). Cute, gorgeous legs, and I thought–she’s going to be big. But her parachute never opened, and it;s sad I can recall even the name of the TV show I saw her on.
I sorta-kinda know Karen Allen (she a FOAF) and I don’t think she had a drug problem–she just preferred raising her son in semi-normal environments, as I get it, to raising him in Hollywood. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.
Christian Bale: Not completely unknown, but not an A-List actor either. I figured he would become a household name and a huge star with American Psycho. Now I predict he’ll really boom with the new Batman movie.
Malcolm McDowell: Yeah, he made it big with movies like if… and A Clockwork Orange, but that was more than thirty years ago! I’m still hopefully waiting for his comeback. It could happen if he got a really great part in a movie because he’s a great actor.
… :wally
can’t even recall…
I never could quite understand how this guy didn’t get as big as Mel Gibson either. Someone (who knows more than I do) told me he is pretty big in “theater”.
A friend of my wife’s played a CD from a guy named Eric Sardinas, and I wondered why he wasn’t a “Big Star”. But then I listened to it a few more times and figured it out. 
He’s good, but not “Great”.
Batman Begins will make Bale into a huge star, I have no doubt of this. I haven’t been so excited (geeked) about an upcoming movie in a long time. I think this will finally be “Batman done correctly.” And Bale has the talent and the looks to become huge as a result. If only they could’ve gotten a Superman movie off the ground ten years ago with Bruce Campbell in the suit, he would’ve been perfect.
Any McDowell fan should watch Time After Time. He totally carries that movie!
I thought Savion Glover would be a huge star with his huge dancing feet.
One of his best movies, of course! It’s too bad it was released around the same time as Caligula.
With impeccable timing, The Hollywood Reporter today says that
That’s a new “Alias”/“X-Files” type show from the producer of Survivor. I’d say that’s not nowhere.
Also, for the 2 posters who have already mentioned Oded Fehr, he’s in the same article, having also been cast in a new TV series. (I can’t recall what, and the article requires a subscription to read online). But both of these actors are working steadily, with at least a shot at being big stars still within the realm of possibility.