10 Breakout Movie Performances That Ultimately Went Nowhere

So, you've finally made it. Maybe it's after years of plugging away in unglamorous supporting roles and direct to DVD trash. Maybe it's through being plucked from obscurity at stage school. Either way, you've just given the performance that is seeing you hailed as the year's great breakout star.

You're going to all the awards shows and you've got your pick of follow-up roles. Superhero blockbuster or serious dramatic turn for one of the directorial greats? The world lies at your feet. All your hard work has paid off and you're now on the fast track to the permanent A-list.

Except that isn't always how it works. Sometimes an actor can give a stellar performance that results in everyone thinking that they are one to watch, the next big thing, someone who's next role is sure to be something special. And then, for whatever reason, it just doesn't work out for them. Those great, juicy parts just don't keep coming.

Before you know it, you could be back doing TV movies and minor supporting roles, that youthful Oscar win long since forgotten. For all of the promise of that breakthrough performance, you might instead find yourself years later gracing "whatever happened to...?" lists. Lists like this one, in fact...

The Big Break:

A stage school kid with no previous screen acting credits, the teenage Blonsky beat 1100 other wannabes to land the lead role of Tracy Turnblad in the film of the Broadway musical of the 1980s John Waters cult classic Hairspray.

The film received glowing reviews and was a smash hit at the box office with Blonsky singled out for praise as the heart and soul of the movie amongst a starry cast that included John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer and Christopher Walken. She was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe and her bright future was seemingly confirmed by various Breakthrough Performance and Rising Star awards.

The movie was enough of a success to line up a sequel, Hairspray 2: White Lipstick with Blonsky returning to star.

But Then:

Waters penned a script for that sequel, set against the backdrop of 60s hippies and the Vietnam War, and the majority of the cast and crew agreed to return. But it got stuck in development hell around 2010 and the movie never went into production.

Blonsky got a TV lead, as the star of 2010 teen fat camp drama Huge, written by the creator of My So Called Life. But the show was cancelled after just ten episodes.

Since then, however, her career has been a mostly haphazard affair of minor supporting roles. In 2011 she was reported to have trained in cosmetology, the erstwhile Hairspray star now working part-time as a hair stylist in between acting gigs.

Blonsky's lack of enduring career success, though, probably says more about the lack of opportunities for larger women in Hollywood than it does about her.