Actors you think are great and expected to go far, but for some reason it never quite came together for them
measured however you want - more Oscar buzz, you thought they’d become a modern Scream Queen, you thought they’d get to lead their own sitcom etc.
Haley Lu Richardson is mine. She was great in The Edge of Seventeen and Split, then absolutely magnetic in Support the Girls - was sure she would blow up to be a superstar from that
she’s done cool films since, but fewer than I expected and doesn’t seem to have much buzz around her. Hopefully White Lotus will give her a deserved bump and we’ll see her in more stuff soon, seems severely underrated to me
thanks for playing
Gugu Mbatha-Raw should’ve become a megastar IMO
No idea where Ben Mendelsohn disappeared to, he should have a Best Supporting Actor Oscar by now based on talent and profile
The main issue these days of course is that we don’t have any notion of movie stars who protect their reputation with picking the right projects. They all get sucked into the fucking Marvel vortex for the paycheques and dilute any sense of excitement about seeing them on a poster for anything else as a result
Seeing Olivia Thirlby in Oppenheimer made me wonder why she’s not in more films, but I think she might be more of a TV actor.
Rebecca Hall
She’s really good in the excellent Columbus, too.
After Yang was already on my watch list, will add this too
Fuck yeah, when she popped up in that new Kong vs Godzilla trailer the other day (with wonderfully straight delivery of complete stupidity) I got a real pang of sadness
ah i really don’t mind it to the same extent if they’re not stuck in for a whole series - much worse when it’s a director since they have a smaller body of work, hate it when someone promising gets 2 films out then the next 3 are some megabudget slop
actors can pop into something stupid and Marvel-y and the pop right back into the cool shit they’re best at (hi Sydney Sweeney)
Thought that Stuart Townsend was going to be massive.
Remember going to see Shooting Fish while at uni in 1997 and thinking that he had instant star appeal (the female lead seemed decent as well but dunno what happened to her - Kate Beckinsale (?) IMDB informs me). Then he did Resurrection Man, which was grim but compelling. Turned up in Wonderland which was one of those every-Brit/Irish-actor you know affairs.
Then he gets the gig for the Interview With The Vampire sequel - this is obviously going to be HUGE. Oh, it’s shit. Nevermind, he’s now got one of the leads in the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen film - pre-Avengers, this was the biggest superhero ensemble event movie maybe ever 
Oh, it’s so bad that Sean Connery has been forced to retire from acting as a result. No matter, he’s got his own prestige ABC tv series which is itself a remake of a much loved 70s classic with Night Stalker - this literally cannot possibly fail. Ah - cancelled after six episodes.
And then? Dunno. Guess that maybe nearly making it so many times gets a bit draining. Anyone know what he’s up to these days?
The guy from gimme gimme gimme
Fenners should’ve been a Bond villain
I think part of this has to do with her being given the cold-shoulder by many in Hollywood after Sam Mendes had an affair with her while married to Kate Winslet.
Always felt Rupert Grint was a bit wasted in the Harry Potter franchise and had it in him to be a great character actor, but I think he chose landlordism instead
Little sub-thread of actors you thought would be more “successful” but have had better careers as a result of not making that leap to the absolute top-tier:
Sienna Miller - Definitely was being pushed as the next big thing and all of those projects were very bad, now, whenever she pops up in something in a supporting role she’s nearly always excellent (21 Bridges and The Lost City of Z both stand out)
Really little sub-thread actually it turns out
Too right, considering how it tanked Mendes’ career to- oh
I’ve enjoyed her career - think she’s consistently done good stuff 
dileep rao. not that i thought he would be a megastar or anything but like, he should be a consistently working character actor type. why isn’t he in things
mad filmography. assume jim cameron just has him locked in a box at the bottom of the sea or something
James Dreyfus? Think he’s an awful transphobe now, proper gl**ered off the deep-end
