10 Early Film Roles For Famous Actors You Totally Forgot
Even Celluloid Heroes must pay their due.
The cement plates that grace Hollywood Blvd. are paved with stories of struggle, compromise, sacrifice and even untimely death. As Ray Davies of The Kinks so immortalized them, however, the stars and cement handprints along the path will always be immortal.
But for every single star, there are countless others that never earn cause for ceremony. People push and suffer for fame, some succeed, some wind up as key grip #2 at the end credits. Throughout their rise, however, many a famous lead actor has taken a job just to keep their name in the guild or, worse, to pay rent on whatever $15,000 a month tiny rectangle they manage to cobble together.
Some such roles can be embarrassing when they make their name, others just go by unnoticed on an IMDB page. On rare occasions, they're fortuitous, highlighting particular trademarks an actor later becomes known for without realizing it.
Here are a few you may have missed.
10. Dana Carvey Took Orders From A Reporter In Halloween II
Dana Carvey's first comedic role pretty much set the rest of his career in stone when he appeared as a mime waiter in Rob Reiner's iconic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, taking direction from a bossy Billy Crystal. Two years later, he was a regular player on Saturday Night Live for over a decade, occasionally landing lead roles in romantic comedies in the '90s and performing stand-up.
Prior to taking orders from Billy Crystal, however, Carvey was just getting his face out there, and the orders he took came from a fictional news reporter.
Halloween II is one of the only sequels that still included director John Carpenter's hand on the script (he did have a hand in the story on the one-off Halloween III: Season of the Witch). It takes place minutes after the end of the first, with the masked killer Michael Myers still stalking the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, hunted by nemesis Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence).
Carvey can briefly be seen outside of the carnage of a murder scene from the first film, while the corpse of the Sheriff's daughter is being carried out on a stretcher. He reportedly had lines, but they were cut.
But if his work in horror or comedy didn't pay off, he always had that regular role on the short-lived spin-off of the Roy Scheider film Blue Thunder to fall back on. Remember Blue Thunder? We don't either.