Actors/Actresses that Hollywood didn't know what to do with

I knew what to do with that tang.

Patti LuPone never starred in a picture.

Her one woman show, done under the tutelage of Mike Nichols, WAS great, but that doesn't necessarily translate to the screen. I am not even sure what Kate McKinnon is going to do now that she's left SNL. Briefly becoming amusing characters does not a film career make. It's not like Lily Tomlin did "Ernestine: The Movie". Most of these characters get old after ten minutes.

The talented comedic ladies of Mad tv. They were all so funny that they should have been given more parts in films. Instead studios hand out roles to even the dullest SNL alumni like candy but ignore women like Nicole Sullivan, Debra Wilson, Stephnie Weir, and Mo Collins.

I'm surprised Jane Greer didn't have a bigger career. She was stunning.

Whoopi did fine

Anne Heche

Whoopi was a huge star for a regular window of time (about five to ten years) for an actress.

Kate Nelligan should have been bigger. She was amazing on stage, but most of her movie roles fizzled.

R6 She is an Oscar winning actress who has to moderate a a shitshow everyday at 11:00 am, I wouldn't say she did fine, maybe OK.

Ann Reinking.

She was born in the wrong era. In the 30s through the 50s, she could’ve been a huge musical star.

It isn’t just her dancing; she had an ebullient, intelligent presence that lent itself well to non-musical roles, especially comedic ones, but she never took off in film because the parts to match her talent were few and far between.

Gena Rowlands. For whatever reason, only her husband knew how to fully utilize her great talent.

Or, the industry saw this performance, R11.

Sean Young

Lesley Ann Warren

R10, how many actresses who won an Oscar 30+ years ago are still in movies in a big way? Not sure she "has" to be on The View either. She must be set by now,

Jude Law

She was a pretty good comic actress. She was at her best doing that.

^^^ sorry I mean Whoopi.

Maggie Smith

R16 Let's just look at her fellow nominees from the year she won. Annette Bening, Lorraine Bracco, Diane Ladd, and Mary McDonnell still work a lot and none of them have been reduced to moderating a daytime talk show, with an apparently toxic backstage environment.

Lorraine who? Who Diane, Mary? Annette i remember vaguely.

Whoopi is the bigger celebrity. So she's not in the occasional movie. Big deal.

Julia Ormond

Richard Pryor, another black standup, never quite found an outlet for his talent on the screen. In the seventies he came closer, but by the eighties, he was reduced to tripe like The Toy. The energy and insight from his stage act never transferred into a movie role. I wonder how he might’ve fared in film or TV had he lived up to now.

Lily Tomlin. Sheer talent.

R16, it's not about her financials. It's about the fact that she was never given much chance to do straight drama, where she excelled.

I believe the young RDJ was entirely wasted (pardon the pun) save for Less Than Zero, which tapped into his beauty, ebullience, unhappiness and androgyny.

He would have made a superb Tadzio-like character for a Merchant Ivory-like project, but I think he was so unusual no one knew what to do with him.

Alison Elliott

Lily Tomlin and Richard Pryor were household names for a couple of decades, especially impressive for Pryor considering was a true nutcase. Like, lighting yourself on fire nuts. Tomlin has a Netflix show in her late 80s. Is this thread for the intellectually disabled? Not everyone has to be a film star to be incredibly famous.

Lorraine Newman

Lee Merriweather

Julie Newmar

R29 - this is not about whether they were/are famous. It about whether a director/producer/screenwriter/studio/etc. ever was able to tap into what they actually do best.

Got it?

Lily Tomlin and Richard Pryor were best at comedy (though both had good dramatic chops as well), and both had many, many specials, comedy albums, and vanity projects, as well as films that showed off their skills. Both were in multiple smash box office hit movies above the line. Compare them to say, Joan Rivers (who I found funnier) and her film output.

Anna Sten - but we all know that story.

Tuesday Weld

Hurd Hatfield

Jayne Mansfield

Anne Archer. I thought she was such a cool beauty in Fatal Attraction. (Why would he cheat on THAT?) She was in a couple of the Patriot Games movies but she didn't have a big film career.

I was thrilled to see her again as Dennis and Dee's mother on It's Always Sunny.

Joan Blondell

Martin Short Gregory Hines

Tracey Ullman

Yvonne DeCarlo

Miss Kay Lenz

Pearl Bailey

Rene Russo

R17 I counter that Jude Law was an A-list leading man for about 10 years. When his looks left him, he is now in A-list hot-adjacent lead roles like Dumbledore and Watson (is the 3rd Holmes Watson ever coming out?)

Gary Cole has played a myriad of supporting characters but rarely lead roles, despite his conventional good looks and hair. He could have been a great Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, or Sam Neill's Jurassic Park character Dr. Alan Grant.

Anne Archer? Scientology.

R42 that hasn't stopped meeeeeeee!

John Cusack.

Kate Jackson

Lisa Nicole Carson

Lisa Nicole Carson has mental health issues and that is why her career stalled like it did.

Am i the first to mention Vivian Vance? Datalounge d is slacking.

I always thought Anne Archer and Rene Russo were the same person.

R41, Jude Law was never an A-list leading man. You have to be able to carry a movie for that

Linda Hunt

R42 Yep she is proof that their claims of Hollywood power is really a paper tiger. If they couldn't make Anne Archer a star, they have no power.

I first saw Anne Archer in "Lifeguard"(1975), playing Sam Elliott's former girlfriend.

Anne Archer's mother was Marjorie Lord.

Bess Flowers

R24, Great point. I think hollywood found what to do with Richard Pryor in Eddie Murphy. Sometime timing is everything.

Hollywood figured out what to do with Richard Pryor. I mean he made lots of hit films that are still watched. He had an iconic on-screen partnership with Gene Wilder. I'd call them the Crosby and Hope of their generation. I have never not enjoyed one of their films together.

And, I don't think The Toy was as bad as people think. It was a remake of a foreign film, so it had pedigree. Pryor and Gleason were funny and had chemistry, though they were two people who would have chemistry with anyone. And, I love the fact that Richard Pryor basically fangirled about shooting a film with Jackie Gleason.

I think they just didn't know what to do with him as his drug abuse and MS started affecting him.

R56, Even Pryor himself bad mouthed "The Toy" on the Tonight Show.

Sandra Bernhard - King of Comedy and then nothing.

R58, she was pretty, uh, memorable, I guess, in Hudson Hawk - but I see your point.

Films didn't seem to work for her brand of comedy.

She had an awesome couple of scenes in Dinner Rush, though.

R24 The Toy is a classic, fool. Yes

Courtney Love

Rosanna Arquette

OP I don't think Ted Danson or Frank Langella knew what to do with Whoopi either

There are a lot of superb black actors whom Hollywood did not know what to do with, like Giancarlo Esposito. but Whoopi Goldberg to me is absolutely not one of them. She had so many things especially tailored to her talents and what she wanted to do, including her talk show, her sitcom under her name, and her role on Star Trek, and she just wasn't good with any of them. Her talent is with her one-woman stage shows, and that's where she really excels, but it's hard to just do that on TV (Lily Tomlin had the same problem, but she's more versatile).

What Whoopi most wants to do is just stand up and tell you her opinions on politics, just like Rosie O'Donnell and Dennis Miller, and the problem is that no one really wants to hear them.

Whoopi is a moron. She can't read, never mind form a sentence.

.,.,

My pussy owns this thread.

Johnathan Tucker

Jonathan Tucker had a wonderful role in The Deep End as the blackmailed gay son of Tilda Swinton. But he decided to become so extremely muscular as to become musclebound after that, and I always thought that was a career mistake--he's a sensitive actor, and those two things work against each other.

Last night I watched the Moonlighting episode with Whoopi. She was such a good comedian. So fresh and new. She or her agent made terrible choices.

Not a fan of Whoopi’s comedies but I think she’s a very underrated dramatic actress.

A good comic is nearly always a good dramatic actor as well.

Shelly Hack - Woody Allen to Charlies Angels? WTF?

Rosanna Arquette was never any good.

Karen Lynn Gorney

R78 What ever happened to her? She was the best part of SNF.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. -- bad agent / bad choices. He could make a great comeback with the right script.

R65 in Whoopi’s defense she is dyslexic.