1. Jay Leno
Known For: Collision Course Before he was America's top TV talk show host Jay Leno was just another jobbing comedian turned actor looking for work in Hollywood. Amazingly in 1989 some big shot thought it would make sense to cast him in the lead role of a genuine action movie. Yes you read that right Jay Leno was an action hero, for about 5 minutes. The idea behind Collision Course was to create a rival to the popular Beverly Hills Cop movies that starred Eddie Murphy before his magnificent career nosedive. So good (bad) was it that it took almost 3 years for the film to see the light of day in the US and was probably only released because Leno was a bigger star by that point. Surprisingly (not) Leno's future movie roles were either as himself or as parodies of himself such as Jay Limo in Disney's Cars. For some reason no one ever thought to cast him as an action lead ever again, maybe the time is now with Expendables need to hire bigger and bigger named talent with each passing movie. Leno's run as a top action star may have been a failure but at least the guy got to headline a couple of WCW PPV's, hu? Now that must have been good for business. Right?