10 Breakout Movie Performances That Ultimately Went Nowhere

The Big Break:

It takes a special kind of talent to anchor a three-hour long French drama and make it an international hit, all while you're still just 18, but Adèle Exarchopoulos did just that as the lead in 2013's lesbian coming-of-age drama Blue Is The Warmest Colour.

Not only did the movie win the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, but the festival jury also took the unusual step of awarding the prize not just to director Abdellatif Keniche, but also to Exarchopoulos and her co-star Léa Seydoux, making Exarchopoulos the youngest ever Palme d'Or winner.

Huge amounts of other awards were also showered on Exarchopoulos, in both France (such as the César for Most Promising Actress) and internationally (multiple US film critics associations voted her Best Actress or Breakthrough Actress) and she was tapped up to cross over to Hollywood.

But Then:

While Seydoux has turned her Blue Is The Warmest Colour success to a Bond girl role in not only the hugely successful Spectre but also its upcoming sequel, Exarchopoulos has struggled to capitalise on her more prominent part in their breakthrough hit.

She was cast by Sean Penn for her Hollywood debut in The Last Face, opposite Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem. Penn's previous directorial effort, Into The Wild, had been a big awards success, so you can see why Exarchopoulos was attracted to this, but it was widely panned as tone-deaf "refugee porn" and a career low for all involved. Its Rotten Tomatoes score was 4% and it was released straight to TV streaming.

This year she featured in Ralph Fiennes's Rudolf Nuryev ballet biopic The White Crow, but the movie came and went without leaving much trace.

Exarchopoulos is still young, though, so there's a chance that a second breakthrough is yet to come.