10 Breakout Movie Performances That Ultimately Went Nowhere

The Big Break:

Robert Forster is just the kind of actor that Quentin Tarantino loves, indeed the kind that is the focus of his current movie, a jobbing "him from that thing" star of short-lived TV detective dramas, cheap Westerns and Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin B-picture actioners.

Forster waited through years of Walker, Texas Ranger guest slots for his mainstream movie big break and he got it with Tarantino's Jackie Brown. World-weary bail bondsman Max Cherry is one of the most nuanced and empathetic Tarantino characters that there is and Forster really makes him feel lived in.

Amongst Jackie Brown's A-list cast, Forster was singled out for particular praise with his Best Supporting Actor nod being Jackie Brown's only Oscar nomination. Finally, in his late 50s, he was set for real movie stardom.

But Then:

Jackie Brown's success did help Forster achieve small roles as authority figures in bigger movies than before, the likes of Me, Myself And Irene, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle or, more recently, the Olympus Has Fallen series. But the more interesting roles from bolder filmmaking voices were more troubled.

Writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry were undoubtedly an exciting up-and-coming creative team to work with in the late 90s, but Human Nature, the film that they made with Forster, is nothing like the classic of their second collaboration Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

Meanwhile, a part as a detective in the new David Lynch mystery series was cut short when the pilot was dropped. It was eventually reconfigured as the movie Mulholland Drive, a modern classic albeit with Forster's role pretty incidental. That one did at least lead to a handful of episodes as the new sheriff in the revived Twin Peaks a couple of decades later.