Ziva Rodann made her TV debut in 1956 (on The Adventures of Hiram Holliday, with Wally Cox) before hitting the big screen in 1957 with Pharaoh’s Curse, followed by more television work in 1958 (on Man Without A Gun and Behind Closed Doors) and 1959 (Mr. Lucky, Not For Hire), after which she of course kept acting in the 1960s (Perry Mason, Rawhide, Batman – that’s her playing Nefertiti to Victor Buono’s King Tut – and et cetera).
she appeared on You Bet Your Life in '58 with her buddy Candice Bergen and her dad.
Bernard Kay made his television debut in '57 before doing a TV movie in '58, followed by getting a recurring role on a TV miniseries in '59; he kept acting in the '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s and '00s, right up until his most recent credit here in the '10s in a third-rate Charisma Carpenter movie.
(Quoth the IMDB reviews: “Bad acting, bad script, pacing was 100% predictable and there was not one cliché left uncopied … went downhill quite fast, crumbling into boredom and a general lack of purpose … so bad it’s almost epic … wooden acting, predictable plot through the middle of the film and unsparkling dialogue all conspire to make this hard work to get into … linear and predictable with extra characters that really do nothing to advance or even influence the story.” And et cetera.)
Sally Field’s next movie has the role of her mom going to Norma Michaels, who has IMDB credits dating back through the '00s and '90s and '80s and '70s and '60s back through to her television debut on The George Gobel Show in '54.
Richard Chance is an actor who obviously doesn’t qualify for this thread, since his birth announcement in Variety Magazine came after the deadline.
But the point is that his mom is Bobbie Chance (who misses it much closer, having acted in 1960s movies like Beach Blanket Bingo and How To Stuff A Wild Bikini), and his dad is Larry Chance (who did pre-'58 TV westerns ranging from Annie Oakley to Broken Arrow to The Adventures of Jim Bowie to Tales of the Texas Rangers).
You could apparently make a case for Richard L. Bare, but I don’t feel like doing that. Instead, I’d like to mention his ex-wife, Julie Van Zandt, who was in a whole bunch of TV shows before the end of '57.
Leslie Randall appeared with Dustin Hoffman in Last Chance Harvey not too long ago, after playing actor/writer/producer/director on Joan and Leslie in 1970 after getting work on 1960s shows like The Monkees and I Dream of Jeannie after earning 1950s TV credits before the deadline – as an actor, of course, but also As Himself on episodes of The Ed Sullivan Show.
Barbara Jefford made her screen debut as the title character in a made-for-TV version of Tess of the D’Urbervilles before the deadline, and after the deadline played Ophelia for a made-for-TV “Hamlet” on The DuPont Show of the Month, followed by work in the '50s and '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s and '00s and '10s.
Elizabeth Sellars got TV work in '51 and '52 and '53 before making it onto the big screen with Bogie and Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa in '54, and then back on the small screen in '55, and back on the big screen in '56, and did a TV movie in '57, and did a DuPont Show of the Month version of “The Count of Monte Cristo” in '58, and a made-for-TV version of “The Philadelphia Story” in '59, and so on, and so on.
Delena Kidd is still with us and still acting, but her TV credits only to back to 1958 and so don’t qualify for this thread.
But she’s married to Gary Raymond, who just this year did a cheap flick with Shannon Tweed and Jerry O’Connell’s less-talented kid brother – decades after Raymond was a castmember on Rat Patrol starting in '66, a decade after his TV debut in '56.
Don Francks racked up a few early TV credits before the end of '57 – as a regular on shows like Burns Chuckwagon from the Stampede Corral and Riding High when he wasn’t getting work on The Adventures of Tugboat Annie – and in the '60s you could see him on Mannix and The Wild Wild West and Mission: Impossible and The Man From UNCLE and et cetera.
And in the '70s, you could see him on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood – and hear him, as Boba Fett, on the legendarily bad Star Wars History Special. At that, in the '80s you could hear him voicing Doctor Claw, with his daughter Cree Summer voicing Penny, opposite Don Adams as Inspector Gadget, and that’s beyond awesome.
He kept getting work as a growly voice actor in the '90s and '00s – as Sabretooth, in various X-MEN incarnations – and he’s kept getting live-action work through to here in the '10s, sure as that’s him as the elderly Nicolae Rumancek on Hemlock Grove.
Lisa Gastoni got TV work in '57, and she kept acting in the '60s and '70s – so that’s her on Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond, and that’s her as the striking Italian twentysomething in Gidget Goes To Rome – and she’s still at it in the '00s and '10s, since she has a small part in an upcoming film starring twentysomething du jour Emilia Clarke (who apparently somehow fit it in between playing Daenerys on Game of Thrones and her post-production role as Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys).
Judy Tyler, who played Princess Summerfall Winterspring on Howdy Doody, is, sadly, no longer with us – but Toby Tarnow, who played Princess Pan of the Forest before doing a made-for-TV version of Anne of Green Gables in '56, and then went on to get yet other small-screen work in the '50s and '60s and '70s and '80s, is.
Before doing everything from Star Trek to Days of our Lives to Get Smart to Knight Rider, Sharon Acker did a made-for-TV version of Macbeth as Lady MacDuff with a pre-007 Sean Connery as the big guy.
That’s not the role she beat the deadline with, but I figure it’s worth mentioning.
In her seventies, Geraldine McEwan was an elfin Miss Marple as surely as David Suchet was Poirot – and in her sixties, she was Miriam (and he was Aaron) in a TV movie about Moses (as played by Ben Kingsley, with Christopher Lee as Ramses).
And in her fifties, there was Robin Hood with Kevin Costner. And in her forties, she starred in the TV-series version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; and in her thirties, she got all kinds of small-screen work – on Profiles In Courage with Brian Keith, and on Out Of This World with Boris Karloff, and on various other 1960s TV shows – and in her twenties, she made her small-screen acting debut back in '55, after making her big-screen acting debut (in, of course, a film called There Was A Young Lady).
Doris Day, if she wasn’t previously mentioned.
Not seeing any TV acting credits that qualify, but plenty of early TV credits, so sure. See also Roberta Maxwell, who has a couple of movie roles coming up this year, after getting a healthy amount of movie work in the '00s (she was Jake Gyllenhaal’s mom in Brokeback Mountain) and the '90s (as Sean Penn’s mom in Dead Man Walking) and the '80s (as Shelley Duvall’s mom in Popeye), and et cetera through the '70s and '60s back through to her youthful TV hosting days in '58 and '57.
As per IMDB, smiling octogenarian John Clark is still acting long after he was the doctor in Jagged Edge in the '80s, long after doing The Jerry Lewis Show in the '60s. And before that, he was acting on The DuPont Show of the Month in the '50s, after making his debut in a TV movie in the '40s.
Barbara Feldon made her earliest TV appearances back in '57.
Wanda Ventham, who spent last year as the great detective’s mom on Sherlock, doesn’t qualify, because she didn’t get into TV work until '59, after her movie debut in '56.
But that film also featured young Sylvia Syms – who you maybe remember from Operation Crossbow with George Peppard and Sophia Loren – who was likewise still acting on-screen in 2014 (and 2013, and 2012, and 2011, and 2010), sure as she was acting in the '00s (in an Amanda Bynes movie) and the '90s (in a Melanie Griffith movie) and the 80s and the '70s and the '60s and the '50s (when she did [del]Moonraker[/del] The Moonraker). And before that 1956 film, she’d racked up various TV credits in 1955.
(IMDB also credits her with half-a-dozen Jack Paar Tonight Show appearances from 1958 to 1962 – which also doesn’t count, but gives you an idea of what she was up to.)