Adam Sandler. The human equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard.
Adam Sandler. The guy did bits on “Remote Control” that barely registered on the humor meter, somehow got onto “Saturday Night Live,” and then became a huge star. And I keep asking myself why? how? WTF?
Damn, Roadfood beat me.
Well, okay, how about Stevie Ray Vaughn. This doesn’t fall under the same category as Adam Sandler, seeing as how SRV actually had talent. I used to go see him at a small club in Austin, and I just assumed that he’d always remained a local or regional star. But when he died, I was living in Chicago, and everybody knew who he was. Until then I never knew how big he’d become.
Robin Williams. This guy started out as a cast member in two failed sketch shows, The Richard Pryor Show and the 1977 revival of Laugh-In. After those, he was cast as a wacky alien on Happy Days, but only after John Byner turned down the part. Mork and Mindy was a smash hit, but after the series ended, his first two movies, Popeye, and The World According to Garp, were both box-office flops. It wasn’t until Good Morning, Vietnam, for which he earned the first of several Oscar nominations (and finally the award itself, for Good Will Hunting) that his career really took off and he was launched into mega-stardom.
James McAvoy. The first time I saw The Last King of Scotland, I went: “…Mr. Tumnus?”
(This was before I knew about the TV miniseries Children of Dune, but the point still stands.)
heh. I remember defending him to people back before the first FOTR came out. I said, they picked him because he’s got three big points in his favor:
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He’s from New Zealand, where they’re filming the movies, which is a plus.
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He’s actually a talented director. Granted, it takes some doing to spot the creative visual styling in Bad Taste and Dead Alive, but the man’s got an eye.
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He’s accustomed to working on effects-heavy films, so he’ll be right at home in Tolkien’s fantasy world.
I’m gonna vote for Demi Moore also. She did a fully nude spread in some men’s magazine back in, oh, maybe 1980 (?); and OMG, she was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen in my life!
She’s the only girl from a stroke book that I can think of who went on to be a major main-stream movie star.
(I’ll be in the, uh, shower.)
Morgan Freeman.
I remember seeing him in Glory and thinking, hey, it’s Easy Reader from the Electric Company! Cool! It’s good to know that guy got at least one other gig in his life.
George Clooney.
Usually when I like an actor, it is the kiss of death for that person’s career.
When I first saw George Clooney on ER, I was so happy that “the guy from Roseanne” was getting work. He had previously been known as “I think that guy on Roseanne was on the Facts of the Life.” Even when he started getting some attention for being the hot doctor on ER, I was a little sad because I assumed that meant he was destined to become “what ever happened to that hot guy on ER?”
He’s doing pretty well for himself these days.
I was very surprised when Arnold Schwarzenegger became a big star in the 1980s. I’d seen him in Pumping Iron and in a TV-movie about Jayne Mansfield (he played Mickey Hargitay). I thought he was kind of interesting, but didn’t see any real star-power there. Boy, was I wrong!
I only knew him from the prior-to-the-drama ER sitcom, as well as Return of the Killer Tomatoes. I never watched the ER drama and did quite a double take when I heard that he was some sex symbol star.
Hillary Swank, from The Next Karate Kid to two Oscars?
It’s pretty much just due to her looks, right? I was thinking about it the other day when I saw a trailer for some shitty movie she’s in. Has she ever been in a good movie? Are the Fantastic Four movies the best of her work?
Alba was in Sin City, which is probably the best movie she’s ever been involved with. I just looked at her IMDB page, and she’s been in a surprisingly small number of movies since Dark Angel, most of them awful.
I wonder if the same people who saw Peter Jackson’s potential in Braindead and Meet the Feebles also saw Sam Raimi’s potential in Evil Dead II and Crimewave.
<hijack>One of my friends from high school went on to film school, and he said that the two most important films in American history were Citizen Kane and Evil Dead II.
When he came back for summer vacation one year, he told me that one of the guys he had classes with was filming a movie that would make him a big star. It was Brendan Fraser, in School Ties.</hijack>
Garth Brooks, at least when compared to other artists who debuted the same year. His debut album came out at roughly the same time as Clint Black’s debut. Listened to side-by-side, Black’s debut was clearly superior in almost every way, at least in my opinion. While Brook’s album was composed of fairly generic, professionally-written country songs probably chosen for him by his record company, Black’s album was entirely made up of songs he’d written and composed himself (in fact, I believe the only unoriginal song Clint Black ever recorded was “Desperado”, for an Eagles tribute album). That originality lent Black’s album a “different” quality - i.e. it didn’t sound like every other debut country album coming out at the time. His voice was unique, while at least initially, Brooks didn’t sound all that special.
I think the key thing that ultimately led to Brooks’ greater success was the song The Dance on his debut album. That one song was probably the best song on either album, even though every song on Black’s album was better than the remaining tracks on Brooks’ album.
On succeeding albums, Black’s songwriting improved incrementally from one album to the next. But while Brooks’ first album was made up of songs written mostly by 3rd- and 4th-tier songwriters, the one big hit meant that on the next album he was handed songs by Nashville’s top-tier songwriters. That put him completely over the top.
I mean, let’s face it. Clint Black was an honest-to-goodness country singer who knew how to craft a good country song. Garth Brooks was a wannabe rock singer who didn’t (at least in the beginning) know the first thing about picking a good country song. But thanks to one big hit, he ended up having great country songs dropped in his lap.
Will Smith and Queen Latifa. Even Ice Cube’s moderate mainstream success shocked the heck out of me. I can’t help thinking of hip-hop artists as ‘mine’…so it is like one of my own has made the big time. I know…that’s stupid.
Who’da thunk that the rapper that rapped over a beat-box of the Sanford and Son theme song would have become such a huge star?
Not quite the same, but Spongebob Squarepants. I remember seeing about 5 minutes of an episode when I was in high-school, thinking “God… I need to tell people about this ridiculous piece of junk I just saw.” Within the semester, the Spongebob craze had taken off.
I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and I guess the craze hit here a little later than elsewhere. It was popular by 2000, but I know I saw the episode a while after I started grade 9, that year.
It’s interesting to compare Hank’s career to his Bosum Buddies co-star Peter Scolari’s. Scolari said after doing the series, they kept running into each other at casting calls; they were being auditioned for the same type of roles. But Hanks’ career eventually took off and Scolari’s didn’t (although he has been a successful actor by most standards).
And Hanks’ career wasn’t an overnight success story. As Cal noted, his career in the eighties was in some pretty lightweight films. He had a couple of early successes like Splash and Big but he also made The Man with One Red Shoe, Volunteers, The Money Pit, Nothing in Common, Every Time We Say Goodbye, Dragnet, Punchline, The Burbs, Turner & Hooch, and Joe Versus the Volcano - all of which would be forgotten if Hanks hadn’t later became a superstar. It wasn’t until 1992 that Hanks started consistently having hits and opening movies as the lead (A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13)
Adam Carolla
Was a wacky voice on a radio show in the morning.
Went on to have several television shows, two nationally syndicated radio shows, hosted network specials, all kinds of things. If you have ever heard him read his Social Security history and see that he made something like 60 thousand dollars over 15 years before he made it, many of the years he declared 0 dollars for pay. It’s quite remarkable that he is not, in his words, literally a millionaire.