I grew up in Trinidad and we didn’t get PLCL, so I had no comparison to make. Add to the fact that we had like 2 channels at the time (pre-cable), and Ferris Bueller became one of my can’t-miss favorite shows. 20 years later, she’s *still *Jeannie Bueller in my mind.
I actually think of Geena Davis first from “Tootsie” (which is also her first IMDB listed role).
MTM’s variety show “Mary” had newcomers David Letterman, Michael Keaton and Swoosie Kurtz. And it was awful.
I first saw John Travolta as a potential juvenile deliquent on a commercial for Big Brothers.
I remember Brad Garrett as an auto mechanic on Seinfeld.
Debra Messing was one of Seinfeld’s girlfriends. I can’t remember her flaw.
Many of the actors that had roles on Seinfeld went on to more fame. Here’s a list of them. http://www.populationstatistic.com/archives/2005/03/25/famous-seinfeld-girlfriends/
But before that he racked up credits including Return of the Killer Tomatoes, the first place I ever saw him AFAIK.
Sylvester Stallone as a thug in Woody Allen’s Bananas.
Everyone posting in this thead actually remembers seeing these people, in these roles, before they were famous? Impressive.
Kate Mulgrew will always be Mrs. Columbo to me.
As for Debra Messing’s Seinfeld girlfriend flaw… Given Seinfeld’s standards for girlfriends, I suppose her flaw would be that she, uh, didn’t have any!
Think about it!
I remember Jane Leeves (Daphne in Frasier) as a wild-haired secretary in some sitcom set in the music business (just looked it up - throb).
Also, speaking of big hair, how about Joan Cusack as Melanie Griffith’s friend in Working Girl (even though she wasn’t quite an unknown then)?
Don’t know about everyone else, but the one I actually posted (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Michelle Trachtenberg from her role in All My Children), I do remember. I recognized her when I first saw her on Buffy as her AMC character. I also remember Leonardo DiCaprio from Growing Pains.
Mostly, I just see older movies/shows and think “hey, I don’t remember that guy being in this!” though.
Teri Hatcher was the one without flaws but he couldn’t believe it. I think Messing was married and separated… That was a flaw.
She was racist.
Heck, I remember Harrison Ford’s first screen appearance, as a bellboy in the James Coburn movie “Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round”.
There was a hot but young buxom blonde who caught my attention as a band member with Mallory in FAMILY TIES, and then was a policeman’s daughter in a short-lived drama HEART OF THE CITY. I looked for her name in case she ever got famous later.
Christina Applegate.
For mine, yes! 
Hopefully for the others too.
(I’m actually posting because I should’ve clarified that the Alanis reference either was her on You Can’t Do That on Television. Though anyone who knows anything about early Nickelodeon or her career should’ve known that.)
I didn’t say she was without flaws, I said she didn’t have any – as in they’re real, but absent…
Wayne “Hello, Newman…” Knight was on that show too.
Tom Hanks inMazes & Monsters
A local station has been playing that, while bait-n-switching it with claims that it’s “Columbo.” I look at her and say, “I know that nearly every feature is perfect, but she’s never done it for me.”
“She’s too sympathetic,” says my wife, who is convinced that men prefer crazy women.
“No, I’d say too hard, but that’s not it. She is just the opposite of sexy.”
And, FTR, I really did try to remember Bruce Willis after his appearance on TZ. I expected good things, and got them. Just not GREAT things.
ETA: I’ve said it before, but perfection is overrated. You agree. Witness the back and forth about several stars in the hot or not thread.
I’d forgotten about that! I remember when I first started watching Ally McBeal that I knew I’d seen her before. It bothered me for a long time until I flashed back to all that vomit in the closet. Yuck!!!
I’m not sure just how much of a “before he was famous” this was*, but I went and saw a movie once called **The Favor **. My friend and I were the only people in the theater (probably for a reason!). Brad Pitt played one of the five main characters, and I’d never seen him before. A while later (Legends of the Fall maybe?) when he became big, I was all “Hey, it’s that guy from that movie!.” Bill Pullman was in it too, and I had more of a “Hmm, I recognize him from somewhere” vibe. He had smaller parts in Sleepless in Seattle and A League of Their Own, which are two of my mom’s favorite movies. (And I never saw Spaceballs until I was an adult).
*By which I mean this would have been early to mid 90s. I can’t remember when Thelma & Louise and some of his other things came out.