Why was Peter Weller never a bigger star?

I may not know exactly why he didn't pursue more Hollywood roles consecutively and become very infused in the public eye. But from what I could gather, I feel that Weller is interested in both independent and commercial movies but with an appeal directed more towards independent movies. I don't think he ever wanted to be a Hollywood type of actor either. A lot of privacy gets taken away from you when you achieve that level of fame. RoboCop definitely got him there and opened more doors for him, but even he was still cautious about the journey into the Hollywood realm of acting.

Aside from pursuing his post-graduate degrees and being a teacher, I think that him working for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also got the better of him too. To me, it seemed that once Peter got that huge payday, he could do anything he wanted. Even if it meant not wanting to be a Hollywood commercialized actor. As for his looks, I think he held his own and brought more of a down to earth standard when it comes to leading man looks on the big screen. I would say, definitely good enough for Hollywood and more natural to behold on the big screen. I always thought he looked slightly younger than his age back then. When I saw RoboCop for the first time, I thought he was in his late 20's or early 30's. I didn't think he was pushing 40.

Damn, he would have had to have a hard life to look like that in his late 20's lol. I think he looks all of his age at that time, maybe a little older again.

He's a great actor, like previously said here perhaps he didn't want to become hollywood and appear in endless *beep* films. It was great to see him in a big film again though, in that star trek film (into darkness?), where he played the baddie, i thought he was fantastic. :-)

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I opened him in Sci-Fi movies and I think this genre is fitting him the best. "RoboCop 1 & 2", "Screamers", "Naked Lunch", "Of Unknown Origin", "Leviathan" plus TV series "Odyssey 5".

As for other genres, he had too many low budget action/thriller films. Personally I love most of them but you won't be a big star with this type of films

Was Peter Weller at the end of the day, a victim of severe typecasting? To this day, he's more associated with RoboCop than anything else...and its been 30 years since he last suited up for that.

That's a good question: I don't think it helped Peter Weller that RoboCop the cyborg was the star of the film and that Weller spent a good chunk of the film having his face covered (that's why Chuck Norris didn't want to play "American Ninja": the face covering, although Norris was already a star by then). Weller did "Shakedown" & "Leviathan" afterward, and although "Shakedown" was well-received by critics, it didn't move the needle for Weller, nor did "Leviathan". Then there was "Cat chaser" after that, which had all kind of shooting & editing difficulties. He did the second RoboCop after that and "Naked Lunch" (love it), but big-time stardom just didn't seem to be in the works for him. If Weller wasn't interested in fame aspect and more tuned in the the artistic value of the industry, than I think that's great.
I've loved a lot of his work, from his Stuart character in 2000's "Shadow hours" (I think his character's line "I've seen things in this city that make Dante's Inferno read like Winnie the Pooh" is quite memorable) and his role as Nelson in 2001's "Styx" alongside Bryan Brown (he has a line in that film which I like: when he catches his wife in bed with another man, and that man points a gun at him, he says something like, "The gun works best if you have the safety off, skippy"). Then there's his Stan Liddy from Season 5 of "Dexter": yeah, I think Peter Weller is pretty awesome:-).

This is not meant to diss the OP, but I constantly see posts wondering why so-and-so wasn't a bigger star?
Not very many people are able to become Really Big Stars.
Is Peter Weller less or better well-known than Jim whatzisname from Big Bang Theory?
Or Jim Broadbent, who's name I thought of when I couldn't think of Jim Parsons?
I don't know why people can't just happily dwell in the strata of their own fame and not be compared to the Biggest Names Ever. It's really not that unusual to have a couple memorable roles and that's it.
Why wasn't Anne Baxter a bigger star, since she's only known for All About Eve and The Ten Commandments?

Propably a variety of reasons but it seems like he was also hard to work with. They actually fired him from Robocop in the middle of the shooting because he was difficult but then hired him back.