August 6, 2015

Five Once Popular Actresses Who Faded Away

It’s not easy to make it famous. Sometimes an actor will have to really pay their dues before finally getting a success. Teri Hatcher bounced around all kinds of minor roles before Lois & Clark and of course Desperate Housewives finally made her a name. Lauren Graham had minor roles in virtually every 90’s NBC sitcom, some were supposed to last like NewsRadio but none ever did. Until Gilmore Girls made her a star, and she was great in the Parenthood series which NBC finally ended last year. And Megan Mulally was an unknown face appearing all over the place, until her breakout role as Karen on Will & Grace finally made a star our of her.

But many are not so lucky, and the saddest thing is when they have an opportunity which should lead to amazing things…but doesn’t. Awhile back I talked about how actors get screwed over by typecasting, but sometimes that isn’t even to blame. Not through any faukr of their own, they just never land the right role and kind of fade away.


Here are five examples of actors who have faded away despite the fact they were very popular at one time but just never landed that critical success which would keep their career moving.



Marcy Walker
Marcy_Walker_as_Liza
One of the few soap operas I watched in the late 80’s was Sana Barbara. The hot couple in that show were Cruz and Eden. Eden was played by Marcy Walker. Walker was on fire during that time, she was just super popular as part of the ultra hot couple. But then she made some bad choices. The first was an unsold pilot about lawyers. Then she got cast on a series which did sell, and in fact she left her soap opera to commit to this series. The show was “Palace Guard” and lasted like two episode. It was so boring! Walker went back to soap opera’s but never did get that magic back. She has lately has stopped acting altogether. Oh, and what about Cruz? He was played by A Martinez and honestly he should be on this list too.





Corinne Bohrer
Corinne-Bohrer-free-spirit-8712534-795-995
I really like her but she seems doomed to forever be a commercial actress. She had small roles in minor movies and appeared in other TV shows in quick guest spots including Friends, Will & Grace, and Veronica Mars. She is best remembered, by me, as Trickster’s side-kick Prank in “The Flash” tv series in the 90’s. Prank was kind of an early version of what would become Harley Quinn in the Batman Animated Series. She also had two very short lived TV series. One was the forgotten Eliot Gould comedy called E/R, and the other called “Free Spirit” which I talked about once. That sucked because it was a romantic comedy with two leads with zero chemistry. Today she seems to mostly appear in commercials, which is a shame because I thought she had potential.








Shelly Long
Shelley-Long-shelley-long-13530991-473-600
Talk about making bad choices. Shelly Long was huge in Cheers. And when she made the movie Outrageous Fortune (which was a really, really good movie) her star grew even brighter. When she left Cheers to star in movies full time it was huge news, how would Cheers go on?? Well it turns out it went on better than she would. She ended up making awful movies (Hello Again, Troop Beverly Hills) and eventually just became a Hollywood joke and a perfect example of why you don’t leave a hit series to make movies. In later years she popped up in TV in Modern Family and reprising her Diane roll on Frasier, and did make her mark in The Brady Bunch Movie, but for the most part she remains an example of someone who had it all, and watched it vanish.









Linda Blair
Linda-Blair-linda-blair-33511196-1800-2150
Ok I am just going to say it, Linda Blair was hot. However, she is also sadly underused. I am not sure if typecasting is really to blame for this one. Usually an actor is typecast because no one could them in any other role besides the famous one. Did people really think all she could do was be covered in make-up while vomiting pea soup? Oh yeah, if you don’t know she was Regan in The Exorcist. And after that movie, she just kind of did horror movies and Exorcist spoofs but never really went anywhere.








Jennifer Grey
jennifer-grey-premiere-captain-america-the-winter-soldier-03
Ah yes, she could be the poster child for actor’s who had it all and then watched it fade away. The worst part is why her career fizzled. She was a huge name when she appeared in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller. She was awesome in both movies! Then she had plastic surgery. To be fair, she did kind of have a big nose. And it is true that she needed the surgery, it wasn’t just cosmetic. However, the surgery made her unrecognizable. I mean literally, she just didn’t look the same awesome girl we loved in the 80’s. She looks great, and is really awesome, but the work dried up. Even she acknowledged she went into surgery famous and came out a total unknown. She still works, and was recently on Dancing with the Stars, but man is she an example of brightest star in the sky one minute, totally forgotten the next.







Course that was only five, I could go one and one. Did I miss your favorite example of a good actor who just didn’t make it?

No comments:

Post a Comment