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Whatever happened to the celebrities that once dominated our every thought, forgotten celebrities that are lucky to be recognized now let alone be the star of a major movie. We’re not talking about the middle kid on Everybody Loves Raymond, we’re talking about someone that at one point was huge, who was the reason that we lined up for an hour to see a movie. These huge stars, now forgotten celebrities, whatever happened to them?
At one point, Dean Cain was top of the world. He became an overnight success with the role of Clark Kent “aka” Superman on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. It was a top ten show on ABC for 4 years and would have gone on for another few seasons if co-star Teri Hatcher hadn’t gotten pregnant and decided she needed to take essentially a whole season off for maternity leave, taking half of the Lois & Clark out of the equation. To see how popular this show was, when the show decided that they needed to wed the 2 characters on the show, it essentially forced DC comics to marry off the two characters in the comics after a more than 60 year courtship.
Since then, he’s mostly done B-movies (if he was lucky) or guest starred in some sitcom. Recently, he appeared on a game show called The Choice, which is essentially The Voice crossed over with The Bachelor, but less classy!
At one point, he was KING OF THE WORLD. He went from being a cameo on Happy Days as a “one-off” character called Mork from Ork to a Top-Ten rated spin-off Mork & Mindy and sold-out concert performances. He went from there to a string of critically-acclaimed and highly successful movies. At one point not only was he getting TOP BILLING in movies, but around $20 million/film as well. Just having him in your film was guaranteed box-office.
What happened?
He suffered Michael Caine Syndrome, essentially took any film that was offered him – took the money and ran. That’s perfectly ok to do when you’re making small films, but when you’re taking $20 million per film, your backers expect some ROI. Not only did he have a couple of financial bombs in a row, but stinkers as well. His on-stage act, also got a bit tired, as he kept on doing the same type of things over and over, the excitement kind of died.
My bet, is that he’ll eventually come back to TV – probably someplace like HBO and try to resurrect his career with.
With early success in a critically acclaimed cult hit like Heathers, we expected great things for him. He had a James Dean coolness with a Jack Nicholson look and sound. and for a while the world was his. He was cast in Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and was considered a draw as much as Costner was, despite being in a secondary role. In the end, what made him cool – being a poor man’s Jack Nicholson – was what killed him. Why hire him, when it’s just as easy to hire the real Jack Nicholson? Didn’t help that he wasn’t too fussy about the films he did and ended up being in a couple of stinkers. Add to that, a couple of arrests and drinking problem and he was lucky to end up on network TV in a bunch of shows that the network only gave a half a chance.
He’ll probably make a big comeback eventually, he’ll either find a TV show that the network does give a chance and keeps on the air – or somehow end up being in a Tarantino film in a small part and have his career go nuts like Travolta’s did a few years back.
We loved her on Grey’s Anatomy as Dr. Izzie Stevens, from her Emmy win for Best Supporting Actress, obviously so did a lot of other people! Even if you didn’t watch the show, you couldn’t help but know who she was just because she was so damn beautiful. She was a popular character on a highly successful show and even started doing some movie work, such as the highly successful comedy Knocked Up, which made her an even bigger star.
What happened?
Her head got too big and she thought she was a bigger star than she really was.
She started denouncing Knocked Up as being sexist and immature, despite signing up for the project and having no problem taking the money for doing it. When there was an incident on the set involving 2 of her fellow actors, instead of shutting up and let it die down, she picked sides and got very vocal about it, letting it grow to the point of where they ended up getting rid of one of the actors involved. When she refused to have her name submitted for Emmy consideration because she said that she felt that the writers didn’t give her enough material to “work” with, it was no surprise that within a year, they allowed her to walk out of her contract mid-season and essentially “disappearing” her character never to be mentioned again. Since then, instead of moving into the big movie career she seemed destined for, she made a string of horrible movies one after the other. Eventually,she asked if she could come back to Grey’s Anatomy for a few episodes to provide some closure for fans of her character and apparently loud laughter was heard coming from the Grey’s set.
Being that she’s no Meryll Streep in the acting department, it’s unlikely that her career will go anywhere but down from this point. Being known as “difficult” or “critical” and having “declining box-office appeal” is not something that gets you jobs. Don’t be surprised if she does a “spread” in Playboy soon in the hopes of resurrecting her career.
Whatever happened to Phil Collins? At one point this forgotten celebrity couldn’t do anything wrong. He was lead singer and drummer for progressive rock band Genesis, had an extremely successful solo career propelled into the stratosphere by the Pilot episode of Miami Vice and his song In The Air Tonight, who didn’t do that drum solo in the air every time it came up when the song played on the radio (Thanks Casey Kasem!). This was a man who made being a short, pasty English guy with a receding hairline and sweater vests somehow cool, giving all of us in our 40’s some hope again. Whether he performed as part of Genesis or solo, he sold out multiple shows. He also had a brief acting career, but as my mother always said – if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
So what happened?
In music, if everybody loves you, it’s because you’re going out of your way to make music that pleases everybody. Without meaning, you often become “middle of the road” without even realizing it. What people loved you for, they eventually get bored of. The Catch-22 being that if you try something different, they’ll reject you for not doing what you did before. Remember Elvis’ career slide? Phil’s music started slipping, reviews weren’t kind. He tried aping Rod Stewart’s desperate attempts to stay “with it” by first doing the “Big Band” thing, greatest hits compilations as well as a Motown covers album. By the time he ended up doing the soundtrack for Disney’s lackluste Tarzan animated feature, his Hitmaker status was pretty dead. Additionally, health problems have certainly slowed down things for him.
