Actors and Actresses that never became Stars but should have.

Mia Sara, from Legend and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Why did she never became a star?

She could act and she was beautiful but yet....

Looking at her Filmography, she never gotten a BIG role after Ferris Bueller.

Either she was never given the opportunity or she just picked the wrong project.

Another actress that never made it big was Elizabeth Perkins.

She was the talk of Hollywood after the release of BIG but she just never quite made it to the top.

2 other actresses from the 80s that should had become stars:

Ione Skye

and

Jami Gertz

Hollywood is very unforgiving!!

Mia Sara seemed to be making a fair push at one stage, Legend and Time Cop had the potential to be bigger than they turned out which may have made a difference, but she then seemed to divert into TV, sadly, for them at least I think oppertunities for actresses are much more limited than their male counterparts.

On the actors front although by no means non existent I always puzzle why Michael Biehn and Bruce Campbell didn't become more prominent Hollywood leads.

Michele Carey. I think she was mindblowingly sexy back in the day, but she didn't do much. Maybe she came along too late (late 60's), as Hollywood was moving away from glamour.





Imagine her as Tiffany Case.

Then you've got Jennifer Warren in the 70's. I don't think she'd have ever been a "star", but she should have had a better career.

Having rewatched MANHUNTER and seen TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA over the last week, I'm gonna throw out William Petersen. Great performances in both of those movies, and then he dropped off the radar completely, at least as far as cinema goes.

Elliott Gould.

You could say he's had a decent career, but I believe everyone - including himself - was expecting much, much more out of his career after the success of M*A*S*H.

Izabella Scorupco could have had a much bigger Hollywood career had she made some better choices.

Phoebe Cates is another one of the 80s darlings who could probably have had a bigger career, only I believe it was her own choice to scale back her work after marrying Kevin Kline.

GOULD.

Pamela Franklin most of all, but also:

Angharad Rees

Barbara Shelley

Yvonne Romain

Melanie Laurent. Talented and quite beautiful.

FieldsMan wrote:

Melanie Laurent. Talented and quite beautiful.

Looked her up in Google. She's still got time to become a star. ;)

Diane Lane, another Hottie Actress from the 80s!!







So hot in Rumble Fish, the Outsiders and her role of Ellen Aim in Streets of Fire was just amazing!

Her role as a burned out punk rock girl teen band member in Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains is said to have inspired Lady Gaga's image!!

Why did she not become a multi-million dollar salary actress?

I'd rather had her from the 80s become famous than Demi Moore.

Then there is Linda Fiorentino, another 80s actress....

she was robbed of a Best Actress nomination in The Last Seduction because it was shown on HBO before it went to the movie theaters!!

I'd still plow her. Move over, Brolin.

Diane Lane has had a 20+ year career in Hollywood. She just never was one of "the" actresses of the moment. She's like a band who has released 10+ albums who all achieve some level of success, without ever having a "breakout record".

Elvis Presley? I'm not the only one who believes he displayed some genuine talent in his early efforts, before the Colonel put him in a conveyor belt of bad movies. Of course, it never stopped him from becoming famous.

A more recent example of the "whatever happened to her?" phenomenon: Thora Birch.
She got her big break in "American Beauty", blew Scarlett Johansson off the screen in "Ghost World" and then... nothing.

Nancy Allen should have become a bigger star. In fact, she was one in the late '70s and early '80s thanks to her marriage to director Brian DePalma. They did four movies together, one of which was a horror flick (Carrie), the other a comedy (Home Movies) and the remaining two were suspense thrillers (Dressed To Kill which was a blockbuster hit and Blow Out which was a box-office failure that still received acclaim). After that, she branched out on her own, appearing in lighter-hearted fare and sci-fi adventures, but none of them were very successful until she struck gold with RoboCop which is her most successful film to date, but after that, she did Poltergeist III, the dreadful RoboCop sequels and TV-movie/straight to video fare. Shame really as she has always been talented and engaging.

Diane Lane's co-star in Streets Of Fire, Michael Pare, should have been a star IMHO. He was actually involved with Nancy Allen in the mid '80s and Stallone wanted to cast him for Expendables 2. Richard Bradford who starred in the '60s series Man In A Suitcase should have also been a major star I reckon.

Nancy Allen is a dreadful actress, though I suppose that never held back a thousand other 'stars'.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Nancy Allen is a dreadful actress...

Veerhoven told me it was the real thing. No stop-motion involved.

Allen was actually quite versatile as not only could she do dramatic thriller stuff, but she was adept at comedy as well as she showed with the underrated 1978 Beatles homage I Wanna Hold Your Hand and the upbeat screwball comedy pastiche Not For Publication, directed by Paul Bartel. I think she could have gone further in her career if she did grittier roles like Lewis in RoboCop.

What about Jan-Michael Vincent?



After years of appearing alongside movie tough guys like Robert Mitchum, Charles Bronson, Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds, he had a major starring role in the surfing epic Big Wednesday and that was supposed to take him to the big leagues, but he instead ended up doing 'B' movies and will always be best known as daredevil combat pilot Stringfellow Hawke in the hit '80s action series Airwolf. It's a pity that a director like Tarantino didn't give his career a boost like he did Travolta's and Willis' with Pulp Fiction.