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Actors you thought could have been bigger than they turned out to be


Here are a few of the actors I thought were destined for bigger things.

1) Claire Forlani - She costarred with Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black, and I thought she had amazing screen presence and would be the next big thing. Unfortunately, she seemed to stick with her B grade movie line up, and her next big movies were 'mystery men' and 'the medallion'. More or less flops.

2) Josh Harnett - He had a great start with Pearl Harbor, and was offered huge roles like Spiderman and even Batman. But he did the 'Leonardo DiCaprio' thing and turned down the blockbusters, choosing more drama-driven roles. For Leo, the post-Titanic strategy paid off in spades, for Josh however, it meant fading into obscurity with a string of bombs. It's kind of ironic that Ben Affleck, who did sign on to the big movies that came his way, got to have his cake and eat it too, directing a few critically acclaimed movies then landing Batman, the role that was offered to Josh.

3) Mischa Barton - She was the 'it girl' of the 2000s, with the success of The O.C., she was thought to be outgrowing her TV stardom as the bright lights of the Silver Screen beaconed. But Hollywood never worked out for her. I didn't think she was the next Julia Roberts, but I was actually surprised at how poorly her move to cinema paid off. She more or less did a Farrah Fawcett, who left her stardom on TV for an unsuccessful shot at the big screen.

Who do you feel were meant to have bigger careers?

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Amanda tapping.I liked her in sg1,in sanctuary was ok.

After that i didn't heard about her anymore.

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Lee Pace.

He's an incredible actor with a great deal of range. I don't think he's at all invested in the whole Hollywood thing and values his privacy, so he's unlikely to ever be recognised as he should be.

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Charlotte Rampling

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Vin Diesel and Jason Stathom spring to mind... Both small guys in real life, but supposedly play big guys on screen...

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This was pretty clever
Made me giggle

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Phoebe Cates

Freddie Prinze Jr.

Guy Pearce

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Freddie didn’t have much more than his looks to offer, and you actually need to have some acting skills to progress.

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Jesse Eisenberg, he is pretty famous I guess, but I think he only ever gave one performance I liked: The Squid and the Whale. When it came out I loved the movie and his performance so much, I thought, this guy is gonna be huge. Even though he has scored some pretty big roles, I haven't really enjoyed a single once since. He's never given me anything close to as good as The Squid and the Whale

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Ryan Phillipe - He started to rise in the late 90's and in some ways seemed like a sure thing, but then it all dropped off. He has resurrected the career a little bit with Shooter however.

Dolph Lundgren - He has made a good career for himself, but he never reached the action superstar status that seemed like a sure thing in the 80s. I wonder if The Punisher had been a slightly better film that came at a later time if that would have done it for him.

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I really like his Punisher, but that was definitely the beginning of his downfall. His life is very interesting, not like any other action star, highly educated and expert in several things, but didn't really translate to screen success in the longterm

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You know when they started making the the Jack Reacher films with Tom Cruise (lol) the first thing I thought of was Dolph Lundgren. If they had decided to adapt those books 20 years ago, he would have been a solid choice. His acting isn't as strong as you might like, but the books have such an emphasis on the character's strength and size I think you could have got him to a level that was good enough.

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He would have been a great Jack Reacher

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"Ryan Phillipe - He started to rise in the late 90's and in some ways seemed like a sure thing, but then it all dropped off. He has resurrected the career a little bit with Shooter however."

He didn't want to be a major movie star though, so he might have gotten a lot bigger if he had made some different choices in the early 2000s. After Cruel intentions, he turned off a lot of major offers and went after scripts he liked.

"I asked him why with all the offers he was fielding, did he want to be in this movie? He said, “Everyone wants me to be a movie star. I want to be an actor” Christopher Mcquarrie on when Phillippe showed interest for a role in " the way of the gun".

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Jason Patric
Edward Norton (still had a great career but not in the last 10 years except for birdman)
Alec Baldwin

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