Retroactive Recognition / S to Z

S

• Katee Sackhoff got beheaded in Halloween: Resurrection and was on one season of MTV's Undressed before she became Battlestar Galactica's Ace Pilot Starbuck. She also played Richard Dreyfuss' daughter in the short-lived college drama The Education of Max Bickford.
• There's people who know about how Pat Sajak was making his living as a weatherman in the 1970s - But some don't know that Wheel wasn't his first game show. Just two years before that, he hosted Puzzlers, a pilot for Goodson-Todman.
• Maaya Sakamoto's first role in a big-name anime, predating her Star-Making Role as Hitomi in Escaflowne by a year, was a small part (only three lines) in Ghost in the Shell, as the voice of Kusanagi's replacement body at the end of the film.
• Zoe Saldaña had a pretty varied career before she became famous, playing an uncredited bit character in an episode of Law & Order, a love interest in Drumline, one of Britney Spears' friends in Crossroads, and a female pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (a movie she heavily disliked making). She was also a major character in Center Stage (2000).
• Adam Sandler was one of Theo's buddies in The Cosby Show.
  • He also played Colin Quinn's "delinquent cousin Stickpin" and "The Stud Boy" in Remote Control.
• Peter Sarsgaard in The Man in the Iron Mask, playing a romantic rival to Leonardo DiCaprio and a doomed son to John Malkovich. Undoubtedly he was chosen because of his speaking voice, which uncannily matches Malkovich's, even though nobody else in the film bothers to match accents.
• Before he went on to direct and write for such shows as The Loud House, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Dexter's Laboratory, Chris Savino's first job was as a character designer for Garfield and Friends.
• Pablo Schreiber: Before taking up the role of Mad Sweeney, a Leprechaun, in American Gods, Schreiber played a bit part in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia as Ricky Falcone, whom had a Christmas present stolen from him in the past by a young Mac.
  • Before that, he played Nick Sobotka on The Wire. And before that, he appeared in Bubble Boy.
• Constance Schulman: Mayonnaise before Mayonnaise. (...and Yoga.)
• Nowadays, it's a bit hard to watch The Long Goodbye scene where Augustine's henchmen all strip without noticing that one of them is a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • There was also that time he was on The Dating Game in 1973, the then-Mr. Olympia. Find a couple key moments in the show's Funny page.
• David Schwimmer made minor appearances on The Wonder Years and Blossom before landing his most famous role as Ross Geller.
• Andrew Scott was the first boyfriend of the wife of James Joyce in Nora, before becoming rather better known as Jim Moriarty in Sherlock and the Sexy Priest in Fleabag.
• Ryan Seacrest was the host of a children's game show called Click before American Idol came calling. Click's main source of notoriety was its particularly dim contestant pool, even with the questions set to middle-school level. How dim? One contestant was asked who was tied down by the people of Lilliput, and came up with Superman.
• Tom Selleck is in the Charlie's Angels episode "Target: Angels" as Kelly's boyfriend of the week.
• Amanda Seyfried appeared as the girlfriend of a patient on an early House episode. (1x11 'Detox')
• Jeremy Shada is best known today as Finn on Adventure Time, but before that he voiced a one off character in Chowder named Porridge, and a young Dick Grayson (still Robin) in Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
• Kerry Shale, who played Sir Topham Hatt, also played Fuse in Space Channel 5 Part 2.
• Robert Shaw made his film debut in The Lavender Hill Mob as the chemist at the police exhibition. He also played one of the RAF pilots in The Dam Busters.
• Lin Shaye appeared in over 120 acting projects, mostly in bit parts or as supporting characters, before she starred in Insidious. This included a cameo as a teacher in A Nightmare on Elm Street (fun fact: New Line Cinema was founded by her brother), Mary Jensen's neighbor in There's Something About Mary, "Mrs. Noogieburger" in Dumb and Dumber, and a flight attendant in Snakes on a Plane. Her career began in The '70s, but she had her breakthrough role in The New '10s.
• Rondell Sheridan was Andre in Cousin Skeeter before becoming well known to kids as Victor Baxter. He also appeared as a celebrity panelist in the 1998 revival of Match Game.
• Bobby Sherman plays an obnoxious Teen Idol in The Monkees episode "Monkees at the Movies," some time before becoming a teen idol himself. He also has a small, uncredited role as an interviewer in Wild in the Streets.
  • Sherman also played a kidnapped rock singer in the Honey West episode "The Princess and the Paupers", about four years before his music career took off.
• A few years prior to her Star-Making Role in the Sister Street Fighter movies, Sue Shiomi played the human form of Bajinder, one of the recurring villains in Kikaider 01.
• Alumni of McMaster University's Social Work program recognize a very young, pre SCTV and Saturday Night Live Martin Short from their training films. He graduated in 1972.
• Susan Silo was lending her voice to music in the 1950s, long before the Pac-Man cartoon and Xiaolin Showdown.
• Sarah Silverman was on Monk as Loony Fan Marci Maven in the season 2 episode "Mr. Monk and the TV Star". By the time of Marci's second appearance, in the season 6 episode "Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan", Silverman's career had taken off to the point that the showrunners weren't sure if they could get her back because she was so busy.
  • In 1993, she voiced Melody "Woo-Woo-Woo" Stardust in the Droopy, Master Detective episode "The Case of the Snooty Star".
• John Simm was in Spaced and Human Traffic before Life On Mars.
• J. K. Simmons briefly appears as the commanding officer at Jessie's military school in The Ref, which was his first film role. That same year, he also had a small role in an episode of Law & Order, ironically portraying a completely different character than the one he would end up playing when he joined the cast several years later.
• Future pro running-back, actor and media favorite O. J. Simpson was one of a roomful of potential black police recruits in the Dragnet episode "DR-10: Community Relations". He had no lines or even a close-up. (This was in 1967, before he'd won the Heisman Trophy. Possibly he just showed up at a call for extras.)
• Jeremy Sisto's first film role was as the teenage son of Kevin Kline and Mary McDonnell in 1991's Grand Canyon, ten years before (arguably) his breakout role in Six Feet Under.
• Young Tom Sizemore was an unfortunate robber killed by Jamie Lee Curtis at the beginning of 1989 Kathryn Bigelow's film Blue Steel.
• Alexander Skarsgård appears as one of the male models in Zoolander, 7 years before his star-making role in True Blood. He's the one who can't get a joke.
• Jaclyn Smith played a small role in the Switch (1975) pilot, a year before being cast in Charlie's Angels. Before that, she appeared in the The Partridge Family episode "When Mother Gets Married" as the niece of Shirley's new boyfriend.
• Kurtwood Smith: Before his iconic role in RoboCop (1987) (and later going more mainstream in That '70s Show), he shows up in an episode of Soap, where he bullies Danny Campbell and his girlfriend in a laundromat. He also appeared as an instructor in Staying Alive.
• Matt Smith didn't exist in the public eye until Doctor Who. His IMDB page was practically empty up until his role as the Eleventh Doctor.
  • He shows up in a deleted scene of In Bruges as a younger, flashback version of Ralph Fiennes' character.
  • Matt Smith was in an episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which starred fellow Doctor Who alum Billie Piper.
  • He had a minor role in the Made-for-TV adaptation of Sally Lockhart. Coincidentally, Billie Piper was in that one as well.
• Yeardley Smith was Jane Rice-Burroughs, keeper of ape Grunt, in Square One TV Mathnet premiere episode "The Case of the Missing Monkey". Just as she was getting started with her best-known role via The Tracey Ullman Show.
  • Before this, there was also her roles in Maximum Overdrive and The Legend of Billie Jean.
• Wesley Snipes appeared in Michael Jackson's "Bad" video as the King of Pop's main rival.
  • He also appeared on Miami Vice.
• Years before How I Met Your Mother and The Avengers, Cobie Smulders was a Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of Lex Luthor on Smallville. "Lex go to the mall today!"
• Before starring in The Punisher (2017), Ripley Sobo was one of the children whom Team Umizoomi helped.
• Ian Somerhalder played a Recurring Character for half a season on Smallville, as The Mole whom Lana Lang dates. One of his episodes even features his future co-star Evangeline Lilly. They even appear together in the same shot.
  • He also was on Young Americans and in Tell Me You Love Me.
• Julie Sommars, best known as Julie March from Matlock, guest starred on Switch (1975) as an actress and blackmailing victim. She also guest starred in the Get Smart episode "The Reluctant Redhead."
• Arleen Sorkin was co-host of America's Funniest People a couple years before landing the voice role of Harley Quinn.
• Timothy Spall, Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew of the Harry Potter movies and Nathaniel in Enchanted, was a projectionist at the movie theater in Quadrophenia.
• Look who's in this 1993 commercial for Maull barbecue sauce... Britney Spears, of all people.
• Aaron Spelling has a minor, uncredited role as a beggar in the 1955 version of Kismet.
• 2-3 years before her Oscar-winning performance in The Help, Octavia Spencer played a professor who recognizes Echo as Caroline on Dollhouse. She also had a long career stretching back much further, including bit parts in TV shows and movies like A Time to Kill, The X-Files, Spider-Man and Malcolm in the Middle before she became famous.
  • Look for her as Ellen's nurse in the 1996 film A Time to Kill.
• Brent Spiner is probably best known for his role as Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but both before and after TNG, he's taken roles in shows such as Cheers, Hill Street Blues, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Night Court, and Tales from the Darkside, among many others.
• Cole Sprouse played Ben in Friends, and he and his twin Dylan Sprouse had a part in an episode of That '70s Show before both of them landed on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.
  • And together, they also played the part of Julian "Frankenstein" McGrath in Big Daddy.
  • As toddlers they played the youngest child in Grace Under Fire.
• Before her roles on Two and a Half Men and The Exes, Kelly Stables Darrin'd Daveigh Chase as Samara Morgan in The Ring Two (after having been Chase's stunt double in the original) and voiced Will Vandom in W.I.T.C.H.. She also played Rocky, a caveman boy in an episode of the short-lived Cavemen.
• Jewel Staite had quite a few roles before she became famous:
  • She had a regular role on Higher Ground.
  • She was on The X-Files in one episode.
  • She was rainbow-haired Catalina on Space Cases.
  • Way back in 1996 she was Becca, the best friend and neighbor of Ben Foster's Tucker on the Disney Channel show Flash Forward (1996).
  • As far back as 1993, she was the French-speaking Catherine Andrews in the VHS Game Party Mania.
• Sylvester Stallone's first film appearance (not counting his dabbling in porn) was a silent bit part as one of a pair of thugs who harass Woody Allen in Bananas.
• Don Stark, known as Bob Pinciotti, appeared as holographic gangster Nicky the Nose in Star Trek: First Contact.
  • He also had a role in Santa with Muscles.
• Before his role as Bucky in the MCU made him famous, Sebastian Stan appeared in a Law & Order episode that was based on the D.C. sniper incident, which also featured future Modern Family star Ty Burrell as his father. He was also one of the obnoxious ski patrol guys in Hot Tub Time Machine.
• Jon Stewart spent some time with MTV as host of You Wrote It, You Watch It and his self-titled show a few years before being taken in by The Daily Show.
  • That wasn't even his first job with Comedy Central; he was one of the hosts of Short Attention Span Theater.
  • He'd also had a small role on the Nickelodeon pilot/special Real Mature before that.
• Prior to his Star-Making Role as Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey, Dan Stevens had various supporting or bit parts in movies and TV shows such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Agatha Christie's Marple, Sense and Sensibility and The Turn of the Screw.
• Kristen Stewart in Panic Room. Weird to look back on it years later, since she was 10 when the movie was made.
  • She also shows up at the very end of Jumper, as the protagonist's half-sister.
  • And in Zathura as the sister.
  • Also in Catch That Kid, which also has Retroactive Recognition of Corbin Bleu and Max Thieriot.
  • Immediately pre-breakout, she played the underage love interest in Into the Wild.
  • She also stars in the 2004 movie Speak (based on the novel of the same name), being 13 years old at the time.
  • She was also a girl in a water fountain line in the DCOM The Thirteenth Year. At the time, she was 9.
• Patrick Stewart appeared in the BBC educational show Playing Shakespeare in the 1970s before becoming Captain Jean-Luc Picard. He appears in an episode of Kenneth Clark's Civilization, also reciting Shakespeare.
  • He was Leondegrance in Excalibur. Said film also had Liam Neeson (Gawain), Helen Mirren (Morgana), and Gabriel Byrne (Uther Pendragon).
  • He also played Gurney Halleck in Dune (1984).
  • And KGB mastermind Karla in the TV adaptation of John le Carré's George Smiley novels. (David Suchet was in the same.)
  • Stewart is one of the few good things (Henry Mancini's music is another one, as is Mathilda May) about the film Lifeforce (1985).
  • He also starred as a secondary character in 1980's adaption of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
  • Appeared (initially with hair) as Aelius Sejanus in I, Claudius.
  • He made his television debut in the The Avengers (1960s) episode "The Town of No Return" as Man walking in from the sea.
• David Ogden Stiers has one of his earliest roles in Drive, He Said as the owner of a pro basketball team.
• Whose Line fixture Ryan Stiles had some small roles in the Hot Shots! movies while he was coming into his own on the UK version of the former show.
• Dean Stockwell (Admiral Al Calavicci on Quantum Leap and Brother John Cavil in Battlestar Galactica (2003)) started his career as a child actor, playing Colin Craven in the 1949 film adaptation of The Secret Garden, Gregory Peck's son in the 1947 Best Picture Winner Gentlemens Agreement, and the title characters of The Boy With Green Hair and the 1950 film adaptation of Kim. He also played a bizarre, nebbishy Wilbur Whateley in the film adaptation of The Dunwich Horror.
• Corey Stoll appeared in an episode of Without a Trace and as Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris before he became known for playing Peter Russo in House of Cards (US) and Darren Cross in Ant-Man.
  • Also before House of Cards and Ant-Man, Stoll was one of the detectives in the Troubled Production Law & Order: LA.
• Madeleine Stowe guest-starred in the Barnaby Jones episode "School of Terror", which also featured Ed Harris, Sean Penn and John Witherspoon.
• Long before Chantal Strand was known for the roles of Cassie and Diamond Tiara, she played Holly, one of the children in Charlie Horse Music Pizza. She also played Nanami in Tico and Friends.
• David Strathairn appeared in the Miami Vice episode "Out Where the Buses Don't Run" as a federal employee.
• An actor named Woodrow Strode played the King of Ethiopia in The Ten Commandments. In a later scene, he doubled as a royal slave. Years later, as Woody Strode, he became a fairly well-known actor, appearing in Spartacus, The Professionals and several John Ford Westerns. This led viewers of Mr. DeMille's epic to conclude that Rameses enslaved the Ethiopian king.
• Mark Strong has made a name for himself playing charismatic villains like Prince Septimus, Nick and Lord Blackwood. Long before then, he popped up in Sharpe as charismatic villain Colonel Brand.
• A young Tara Strong made her voice acting debut as Hello Kitty in Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater. Also, before she moved out of Canada, she voiced Magik in the '90s X-Men cartoon, Hop in two Mario cartoons, Bertha and Claire on Beetlejuice, and the young Celeste in the first two seasons of Nelvana's Babar series.
• David Suchet played the rival Arab dictator in the first Iron Eagle movie.
• Prior to founding Grasshopper Manufacture, Goichi Suda was an employee of Human Entertainment, working on Fire Pro Wrestling and Twilight Syndrome before cementing his own style with the Canon Discontinuity sequel Moonlight Syndrome, which he carried on to the games he created under his own studio.
• Cree Summer (Francks)' first voice role was Penny in the first season of Inspector Gadget (heading off to Nelvana right after to do Ewoks, also a one-season job). If you don't quite recognize her when comparing to, say, Tiny Toon Adventures, Rugrats, or Codename: Kids Next Door, that's because she was fresh into her teens at the time.
• Marc Summers was putting in time with game shows not too long before Double Dare, as announcer of Bruce Forsyth's Hot Streak and the US Keynotes pilot.
• Patricia Summersett voiced a background character in The Smurfs 2, Hope Jensen in Assassin's Creed Rogue, and Galina Voronina in 2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate, before breaking into popularity two years later for playing Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
• Donald Sutherland made two guest appearances in The Saint, both times playing villains.
  • Sutherland also guest-starred in The Name Of The Game episode "The Suntan Mob".
  • He's also a villain in The Avengers (1960s) episode "The Superlative Seven".
• Before starring on Marumo no Okite, Fuku Suzuki starred as one of the babies during the "Guru Guru Dokkan!" segment of Inai Inai Baa! in 2006. Because of this, he was bought in to host one of the 25th anniversary specials, Wan Wan The World.
• Brad Swaile, before he became Light Yagami in Death Note, was Lan Hikari in MegaMan NT Warrior and Kicker Jones in Transformers: Energon. He doesn't speak too highly of either role nowadays since he became Light Yagami. He's a lot more fonder of his earlier roles of Quatre Raberba Winner and Amuro Ray, though. Oh, and don't forget Mousse or Ace.
• Hilary Swank guest starred in two episodes of Growing Pains, had a small role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then starred in the critical and commercial failure The Next Karate Kid. Some critics actually singled her out as a potential star in their otherwise negative reviews of the film, but it's unlikely anyone predicted she'd go on to win two Best Actress Oscars.
  • Swank also appeared as a supporting character named Carly on Beverly Hills, 90210, and was infamously fired after a half-season because Aaron Spelling hated her acting. Notably, this allowed her to free up time to star in Boys Don't Cry (which she won the lead role for four months later), netting her the first of two Oscars.
• One of Patrick Swayze's earliest roles was in an episode of M*A*S*H as a soldier who was turned down for donating blood only to discover he was terminally ill with cancer.

T

• Faran Tahir, prior to becoming Raza or Captain Robau, combined this with You Look Familiar by appearing as two separate characters on 24 — in the second season he was a mosque greeter, and in the fourth season he was a Turkish terrorist on the receiving end of the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique. He also played Mowgli's father in the 1994 live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book.
• Amber Tamblyn was one of Dawn's friends in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "All the Way".
  • Her first role was of Emily Quartermaine on General Hospital.
• Jeffrey Tambor's second-ever credited role was as a photographer in the Starsky & Hutch episode "Cover Girl."
• Amanda Tapping showed up in an episode of Due South a year before Stargate SG-1 aired, playing a scientist with a secret government program that was strongly implied to be tracking UFOs.
  • Before that, she appeared in the CBC TV movie Net Worth as Gordie Howe's wife Colleen. Nearly two decades later, her SG1 co-star Michael Shanks would play Gordie in the TV movie Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story.
• Catherine Tate shows up in an episode of Men Behaving Badly as a woman interested in buying Tony and Gary's flat.
• Channing Tatum appeared in an episode of CSI: Miami as small-time criminal Bob Davenport and had a minor role in Coach Carter as a Token White juvenile delinquent before his big acting break in Step Up.
• Jen Taylor, long before she became the voice of Princess Peach and Cortana, was the voice of Sunny Day, Luanne Lui, and Billyjean Blackwood in the Backyard Sports series.
• Before the Pokemon anime hit the American market, Veronica Taylor provided the English voice of Adult Kitty/Raiya for the dubbed version of the 1997 movie Kimba the White Lion (Jungle Emperor Leo) which was an adaptation of the original manga by Osamu Tezuka.
• Before reaching pop stardom with the Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant worked for Marvel Comics as editor for the Marvel UK line, including the launch of their first British superhero, Captain Britain.
• How about John Terry (Christian Shephard), who played Felix Leiter in The Living Daylights? Oh yeah, and his first-ever film role as Hawk the Slayer.
• Lauren Tewes plays a conniving lawyer in the Starsky & Hutch episode "Starsky and Hutch Are Guilty," which aired less than a month before The Love Boat debuted. In fact, Spelling decided to cast her in The Love Boat because of her performance on Starsky and Hutch.
• ACME Crimenet chief Lynne Thigpen was the DJ in 1979's The Warriors.
• Leon Thomas is well known as Andre on the Nickelodeon show Victorious. You might've seen the seventh episode of the second season of another Nick show, Just Jordan two years before that. Watch it present-day and you'll recognize Ronnie as a young Leon Thomas.
• Philip Michael Thomas appears in the Starsky & Hutch episode "Quadromania" as a taxi dispatcher and DJ.
  • He's also in the 1975 film Mr. Ricco as a man falsely accused of being an accessory to murder.
  • He plays a ranger in The Beasts Are on the Streets.
• Richard Thomas, later of The Waltons, appears in the Marcus Welby, M.D. episode "Echo of a Baby's Laugh" as a young expectant father.
• Before Kenan Thompson became a cast member of Saturday Night Live, he worked in the children's television industry (mainly for Nickelodeon), appearing on shows such as All That, Kenan & Kel and Clifford the Big Red Dog. In addition, his first acting role was Russ Tyler in The Mighty Ducks film series.
• Tessa Thompson's first onscreen role was as a cross-dressing Prohibition-era lesbian bootlegger in an episode of Cold Case. She also played Jackie in Veronica Mars, and one of the protagonist's friends in the 2006 remake of When a Stranger Calls.
• Woody Thompson, co-creator of the hit VH1 series Pop Up Video, was once in his youth the face of Honeycomb cereal.◊ This is even pointed out in the show's "Commercials" special, which featured one of his Honeycomb commercials at the end.
• Ulrich Thomsen was a sinister scientist before he was an ex-Amish crime lord.
• Justin Timberlake was one of the Mousketeers in the 80's revival of The Mickey Mouse Club.
• Before making it big as Maddie in The Suite Life or Sharpay in High School Musical Ashley Tisdale can be seen (with her natural brown hair to boot) getting attacked by a banshee in the Charmed episode "Look Who's Barking".
  • She is credited as "Lead Blueberry Scout" in A Bug's Life.
• Tinashe is now a successful R&B artist, but before her breakthrough, she did motion capture as the Hero Girl in The Polar Express and later played Jake's on-off girlfriend Celeste in Two and a Half Men.
  • She voiced one-shot character On-Ji in Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Headband".
• William Tokarsky, the killer from Too Many Cooks, had previously driven the cab in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
• Game show host Peter Tomarken was selling electric razors before he was giving away Flokati rugs.
• Before appearing as Demelza in the 2015 remake of Poldark, Eleanor Tomlinson played Isabelle in Jack the Giant Slayer.
• Sam Trammel plays the upstanding owner of a popular bar in True Blood, but way back when in the second episode of Dexter he played a drunk with a persistent hit-and-run problem. He didn't last long.
• Kelly Marie Tran appeared in several CollegeHumor sketches before being cast as Rose Tico in The Last Jedi.
• John Travolta's first role was in the 1972 Emergency! episode "Kids" as an injured hiker.
  • He's also in the 1975 horror movie The Devil's Rain. He yells "Blasphemer!" and falls down the stairs, and the protagonists see the flashback inside his eyes.
  • Many young people would be surprised to see him in reruns of Welcome Back, Kotter.
  • And after that, playing Billy, Chris' boyfriend in Carrie.
  • Many people remember his guest shot in an episode of The Rookies, entitled "Frozen Smoke", where he goes berserk and beats another kid to death for stealing his brother's bike. The rumor was that Travolta bought all the prints of the episode and destroyed them, but this was debunked as the episode was shown when the series ran on TV Land a while back.
• Danny Trejo played bit-parts and supporting roles in many action films and thrillers from Death Wish 4: The Crackdown to Marked for Death to Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects to Maniac Cop 2 to Heat. He even appeared on Baywatch.

U-V

• A young Keith Urban appears in the 1992 video for Alan Jackson's "Mercury Blues". Most Americans probably didn't recognize Urban's face until 1999.
• William Vanderpuye is best known as Recurring Element Patches in any number of FromSoftware games. His first appearance in one of their works, however, was as the pilot of No Count in Armored Core: For Answer.
• A pre-fame Luther Vandross sang backing vocals for a number of other well-known artists, including David Bowie, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Chic, and Utopia.
• Lee Van Cleef made his film debut in 1952's High Noon as one of Frank Miller's gang (the one with no lines). He didn't become a proper star until For a Few Dollars More in 1965, but would pop up in bit parts throughout the '50s and early '60s, leading to a lot of this trope.
  • He also played Ed Bailey in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (the guy who tries to kill Doc Holliday with a knife).
  • He also played one of Liberty Valance's gang in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
  • He played River Pirate in How the West Was Won.
  • At the end of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the Science Hero needs the army's finest sniper to shoot a special radioactive bullet into the neck of the giant monster. That unnamed sniper is played by a very young Lee.
• Denise Van Outen played the victim in the Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives PIF "Eyes" before becoming a TV presenter.
• Robert Vaughn made his film debut in The Ten Commandments as a spearman/Hebrew at the Golden Calf.
  • Vaughn was also an Oscar nominee prior to his TV success, nominated for his supporting role in The Young Philadelphians.
• In Rudy, Vince Vaughn has a minor part as Jamie O'Brien, the under-performing halfback who throws the TD pass in the final game to give Rudy a shot on the field.
• Jan-Michael Vincent of Airwolf fame got himself an acid burn in the Dragnet episode "The Grenade".
• Before she became Major Kira on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Nana Visitor drilled for oil in a season 1 episode of MacGyver.
  • She also played a publicist referred to Abby Perkins by Arnie Becker (in the same episode where Abby is forced to shoot a client about to kill her).

W

• Lindsay Wagner, aka The Bionic Woman, first appeared in the Adam-12 episode "Million Dollar Buff" whose ring is stolen.
• Before his career behind the camera as a director in What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Thor: Ragnarok led him to fame outside of his native New Zealand, Taika Waititi was in Green Lantern (2011) as Hal Jordan's best friend Thomas Kalmaku. The fact that he used an American accent and didn't have his trademark beard at the time probably makes him less recognizable to fans who got into his work after What We Do In The Shadows.
• 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace for Fluffo shortening.
• Long before he became internationally known through Inglorious Basterds, Christoph Waltz voiced the character Trader Bob in the German version of the video game Flight of the Amazon Queen.
• Michael Warren, later of Hill Street Blues, plays the basketball player Easly Jefferson in Drive, He Said.
• In Tank Girl, a lot of viewers have had this with Naomi Watts.
• Before playing Tony DiNozzo on NCIS Michael Weatherly was a one-episode character on Charmed.
  • Not to mention Logan "Eyes Only" Cale from Dark Angel — which makes his later Tony DiNozzo line stating that "he'd have a better chance getting a date with Jessica Alba" a sly call back. The two were together for three years and at one point engaged.
  • Weatherly actually had a very extensive film/tv career before striking gold on NCIS, beginning with a "blink and you'll miss it" part as one of Theo's roommates/classmates on The Cosby Show. His next and Star-Making Role was as Cooper Alden on the Soap Opera Loving.
• Carl Weathers can be seen in the beginning of Magnum Force as one of the demonstrators protesting the Palancio verdict in front of the court house.
  • He also turns up in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a soldier who Roy tries to talk his way past at the train station.
• Frank Welker does most work as an animal mimic, but long before he provided the voice of Megatron, Soundwave, and many other Decepticons, he provided the voice of Freddy Jones in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (a role he continues to reprise to this day).
• While attending college in Pittsburgh, Ming-Na Wen showed up in two episodes of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as part of a trio of royal trumpeters who performed for King Friday.
• Bob West did the voices of Jasper T. Jowls and Pasqually the Chef for Chuck E. Cheese and did work on some VIA San Antonio "Buppets" commercials before becoming "anonymously famous" as the original voice of Barney the Dinosaur.
• Game show announcer Randy West, despite not having a familiar face, was a contestant on several shows before his announcing career began. Among these were All-Star Blitz, Hit Man, and Press Your Luck.
• Kevin Whatley played the stolid Detective-Sergeant Fletcher in the frequently-repeated BBC adaptation of A Murder Is Announced, three years before becoming a household name as the stolid Detective-Sergeant Lewis in Inspector Morse.
• A young Wil Wheaton voiced Martin Brisby in The Secret of NIMH five years before his Star-Making Role as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Oscar winner Forest Whitaker was a teenage football star in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a school bully in an episode of Diff'rent Strokes, a high school wrestler in Vision Quest, and a CID officer in Bloodsport. Bloodsport actually came out the same year as the Charlie Parker biopic Bird, which ended up being Whitaker's first starring role.
• Jaleel White did plenty of kicking around in commercials before we knew him as Steve Urkel.
• Michael Jai White's first acting credit was playing an unnamed goon in The Toxic Avenger Part II (who memorably beats an old lady with a loaf of French bread).
• Vanna White was a contestant on The Price Is Right (and never got out of Contestant's Row) about three years before she became the co-host on Wheel of Fortune. When Price did an anniversary special, they included the clip of her "Come on down!" moment and Bob Barker said, playfully, "I wonder whatever happened to Vanna White?"
• Before her breakout job as a regular on Saturday Night Live, Kristen Wiig played "Dr. Pat" on the first season of The Joe Schmo Show.
• A pre-Brady Bunch Barry Williams plays Max Frost as a teenager in Wild in the Streets.
  • Williams made his debut in the 1967 Dragnet episode "The Christmas Story" (the only episode to be done for the original B&W series, the radio series and the color series). Jack Webb told Barry that he'd be reading his lines off a teleprompter, to which the young actor responded, "What's a teleprompter?", to the frustration of Webb. Despite that, Williams gave a good performance in his small role, getting praise from Webb, who asked how it was he was able to do such a good job. He replied that they did have a week to read the script.
  • Williams worked for Webb again on Adam-12, as a boy who calls the police on his mother's abusive boyfriend. They needed a young boy for the episode, and Webb said, "Hey, what about that geeky kid from the Christmas Story episode?"
  • He also appeared in the Here Come the Brides episode "A Kiss Just for So" as an Amish boy.
• Before Cindy Williams was on Laverne & Shirley, she appeared in Drive, He Said as the manager's girlfriend. She was also the protagonist's secretary in Mr. Ricco. She was also Ron Howard's girlfriend in American Graffiti.
• As a child actress, Michelle Williams had two small, unrelated roles in Baywatch, the second of which was uncredited.
• Mykelti Williamson's first credited role was as a juvenile delinquent in the Starsky & Hutch episode "Black and Blue."
• Before becoming a very popular voice actor in anime dubs and western cartoons, Travis Willingham appeared as one of the young thugs who gets a lesson in being a man in Secondhand Lions.
• Before his Star-Making Role in Moonlighting, Bruce Willis' first acting job was a "heavy-of-the-week" in a first-season episode of Miami Vice, and also guest-starred in an episode of The Twilight Zone (1985). He was also an extra in The Verdict (he's one of the jurors).
• Same-TV-show example: Before Michael Wisher was the first actor to play Davros on Doctor Who, he had a fairly minor role as a broadcaster in "The Ambassadors of Death", five years earlier, and then another role in "Terror of the Autons" the following year.
  • He also provided many Dalek voices before playing Davros.
• Way before Friday, The Boondocks, and Black Jesus, John Witherspoon had a small parts in a number of 70's shows like The Incredible Hulk (1977) and Good Times. Interestingly, his first TV gig was the episode of Barnaby Jones that also featured Sean Penn's acting debut.
• Speaking of Wheel of Fortune, Alicia Witt was a contestant on a teen week in 1989. (Incidentally, she later played a Celebrity Edition in 1997.) Her first acting role, at the age of nine, was Alia in David Lynch's Dune (1984).
• Annie Wood was the host of dating game show Bzzz! before she was the voice of Julia Chang in the Tekken games.
• Elijah Wood:
  • He was was one of the kids that Marty meets in an arcade in 2015◊ Back to the Future Part II. He even spoke.
  • He also had a part as a stressed-out child business man in the Paula Abdul video Forever Your Girl (he appears almost 2 minutes in.)
  • He played the child of Jamie Lee Curtis (a pretty big role, actually) in Forever Young, also starring Mel Gibson.
  • He's one of the main characters in Deep Impact, but he still wasn't recognizable to most people until a bit later.
  • He's the lead role in The Good Son. Again, this was before Lord of the Rings.
  • And he is the the titular protagonist of North.
• Evan Rachel Wood, who is known for playing as Dolores from Westworld, plays as Al Pacino's daughter in S1m0ne and as the girlfriend of her Real Life then-boyfriend, Jamie Bell, in Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" music video.
• Take a listen to Gene Wood's first game show announcing job on this episode of Password from 1965.
  • Listen for him in 1952's Without Warning! as well.
• Before his rise as a game show host, Chuck Woolery once belonged to a band called Avant Garde. The title of one of their songs, "Naturally Stoned", was the basis for that of his short-lived Game Show Network original series.
  • Right before Wheel of Fortune, there was also his appearances on Tattletales with then-wife Jo Ann Pflug—Alongside active hosts Allen Ludden and Bill Cullen.
• Sam Worthington played an Australian sailor in the '60s in the JAG episode "Boomerang: Part I".
• James Woods made a guest appearance in the Kojak episode "Death Is Not a Passing Grade" as the criminal of the week. He also appeared on The Rockford Files ("The Kirkoff Case"), Welcome Back, Kotter ("The Great Debate") and The Streets of San Francisco ("Trail of Terror").
• Before her Star-Making Role in Black Panther (2018), Letitia Wright had a number of under the radar roles on British TV shows. These included a teenage kidnap victim in the police procedural Chasing Shadows, a young lesbian in Banana and an apparent murder victim in the Doctor Who episode "Face the Raven." American audiences were most likely to recognize her from the "Black Museum" episode of Black Mirror.
• Kari Wuhrer:
  • She played the lead "singer" of the house band for Kelly's short-lived talk show on Married... with Children.
  • Before that, she was the hostess in the second and third seasons of MTV's 1980s game show, Remote Control.
• Adam Wylie of Picket Fences was the "Red Light" kid at the children's home in Child's Play 2, right before Chucky gets on the phone with them near the beginning.

Y-Z

• Qiu Yuen: Long before she was the Landlady in Kung Fu Hustle, she played a small, uncredited part as Hip's niece in The Man with the Golden Gun.
• Xiao Zhan played a supporting character in Oh! My Emperor a year before he became famous for starring in The Untamed.
• Xing Zhao Lin played a minor character in Princess Agents a few months before he became famous for starring in The Eternal Love.
• Xuan Lu played a minor character in Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace a year before she became famous for her role in The Untamed.
• Jackson Yee played a minor character in The Legend of Chusen. Three years later he became famous for starring in The Longest Day in Chang'an.
• Anton Yelchin:
  • He played a troubled teenager in the Criminal Minds episode "Sex, Birth, Death" several years before he played Chekov in the Star Trek (2009) Continuity Reboot.
  • He also plays the main child character in the film version of Hearts in Atlantis.
  • And the child of the Russian Ambassador Gary Soneji targets in the film version of Along Came a Spider. His Russian accent is much less comical.
  • Also the accusing witness in a child-molestation case that Bobby Donnell questions harshly on the stand in an episode of The Practice.
• Before she began starring in Hong Kong action movies, Michelle Yeoh (then primarily known as a beauty pageant winner) had her first onscreen appearance in a 1984 watch commercial with her future Super Cop co-star Jackie Chan.
• The Warehouse 13 episode "Don't Hate The Player" is remembered more nowadays for featuring a pre-The Walking Dead Steven Yeun (Glenn) as Gibson than being a crossover with Eureka. Yeun also appeared in an episode of The Big Bang Theory as Sheldon's former roommate.
• Billy Zane first came to prominence in a lead role in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, which led to other major roles in such films as The Phantom and Titanic. Before that, some of his appearance in major works include:
  • Match, one of Biff Tannen's Mooks in the first two Back to the Future movies.
  • He was the daughter's boyfriend who gets killed by the Crites in Critters.
  • He was the lead actor who gets murdered in Tombstone.
  • Millionaire playboy John Justice Wheeler in Twin Peaks.
  • Kenneth Bianchi, in the NBC Mini Series "The Case Of The Hillside Stranglers" .
• Kevin Zegers played an autistic child in The Silence of Adultery, two years before Air Bud.
• Zhang Zhe Han played the younger version of the protagonist in Nirvana in Fire. Six years later he became famous for starring in Word of Honor.
• Zhao Lu Si played a minor character in Cinderella Chef. She later became famous for playing the main characters in Love Better Than Immortality and The Romance of Tiger and Rose.
• Zhu Yi Long played the title character's son in The Legend of Mi Yue. Three years later he became famous for starring in Guardian.
• Zhu Zan Jin played a government official in Goodbye My Princess a few months before becoming famous for his role in The Untamed.

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