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Brilliant But Cancelled Movie Stars

December 28, 2006

We now find ourselves in the second generation of homemade TV stars who went on to become big movie stars: An incomplete list would include John Travolta, Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Will Ferrell, Sascha Cohen, Mia Farrow, Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey, Jessicas Biel AND Alba, Adam Sandler, Michael J. Fox, Tim Allen, Greg Kinnear, George Clooney, Cher, Bruce Willis, and Jennifer Aniston.

But how about the other way around?--stars who were primarily featured exclusively in movies becoming television stars?

There are a few success stories of the movies to TV transition in this current Fall season--Sally Field is in a top 10 hit ABC's "Brothers and Sisters," Sanaa Lathan and Jacqueline Bisset are frontburner guest stars in this season's "Nip/Tuck" main storyline, James Woods is scoring nicely as the star of CBS' "Shark."

It is, of course, too soon to tell how Anne Heche will do on ABC's "Men in Trees," but Alec Baldwin in NBC's "30 Rock" and Amanda Peet on NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" seem to be doing okay.

On established hits, Kyra Sedwick is back for a third season of TNT's "Closer" and Bill Paxton will be back for a second season of HB0's "Big Love." In fact, let's go all the way here. Charlie Sheen ("Two and a Half Men"), Jennifer Beals ("The L Word"), Patricia Arquette ("Medium), Sam Waterston ("Law and Order"), Vincent D'nofrio and Kathryn Erbe ("Law and Order: Criminal Intent"), Gary Sinise ("CSI:NY"), James Spader ("Boston Legal"), Kiefer Sutherland ("24"), Chris O'Donnell, a recent semi-regular on "Grey's Anatomy" along with his co-star, more popular than ever, former 80s movie teen idol Patrick Dempsey.

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