One Hit Wonder / Acting

One-Hit Wonder page for acting careers.

See also I Am Not Spock.

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• Maria Falconetti was a stage actress with only two very minor film roles before starring in The Passion of Joan of Arc. The film, and her performance, are ranked among the best in history, but her experience working on the film was so terrible that she returned to the stage and never took another film role again.
• Ellen Pompeo had some bit parts in some films and TV shows, but after she landed the lead role of Meredith Grey in Grey's Anatomy in 2005, she hasn't gotten a single other acting credit. Based on her statements in interviews and convention panels, this is by choice, and she has no desire to continue acting after Grey's finishes.
• Most of the main cast of the Nickelodeon show Hey Dude! had never acted anywhere prior to the show, and never did again after it ended. Only three of the main actors (one of them being Ben Stiller's wife Christine Taylor) went on to have acting careers beyond the ranch.
  • This is in fact true of most Nick shows of the 1990s—with rare exceptions (namely Melissa Joan Hart, Kenan Thompson and Blake Sennett) the vast majority of the channel's child actors dropped off the map after serving their time on Nick.
• While the cast of the original Saved by the Bell had careers long after the series ended (with varying successes), Dustin Diamond, Lark Voorhies, and Dennis Haskins are still known almost exclusively as Screech, Lisa, and Belding, respectively. However, the one-season actors (Ed Alonzo and Leanna Freel), the newcomers from The College Years and the majority of the actors from the The New Class were, for the most part, never heard from again. Even the ones who still acted afterwards didn't really do anything memorable (with the exceptions of Bianca Lawson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Sarah Lancaster (Chuck)). Isaac Lidskey, who played Screech-clone Weasel, didn't mind too much considering he graduated from Harvard law school at 19 and eventually worked with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at 28 despite becoming legally blind.
• A large chunk of the Degrassi Junior High/Degrassi High cast, like the aforementioned Hey Dude example, had never acted at all prior to the show (with some minor exceptions), and most of them would either be so typecast they were unable to get any meaningful further work, or they dropped out of the business entirely; while Pat Mastroianni and Stacie Mistysyn appeared in other TV shows or movies, they are still exclusively known as Joey Jeremiah and Caitlin Ryan, with their only other major gig reprising their roles for Degrassi: The Next Generation. Amanda Stepto, who played Spike, was also heavily typecast and left acting to study, and like above, her only othermajor gig was reprising the same role as an adult in the revival, and she has not appeared in anything since a Next Generation TV movie in 2010.
• Carrie Henn, who played Newt in Aliens, has never had another acting role. According to Entertainment Weekly's 2011 Reunion Issue, Henn was bullied by her schoolmates about her role and has since become a schoolteacher.
• Jeremy Black, who played the infant Hitler clones in The Boys from Brazil, has his only film credit with that movie - IMDB lists a TV appearance, but he really focused on theater.
• Another infant, 3 years old at the time, Oliwia Dąbrowska, was the girl in red in Schindler's List. Steven Spielberg asked Dąbrowska not to watch the film until she was eighteen, but she watched it when she was eleven and was horrified. Upon seeing the film again as an adult, she was proud of the role she played, although she never has acted again.
• Mary Badham's debut role as Scout Finch in the film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, for which she was nominated for an Oscar. She appeared in a few other roles before retiring from acting at 14. She went on to become an art restorer and a college testing coordinator, though she's taken the occasional small acting role in the last couple of decades, like the 2005 indie film Our Very Own and 2019 Lifetime Movie of the Week Erasing His Past.
• Danny Lloyd first appeared in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining as Danny Torrance. He played only one other small role in a TV film before quitting acting and becoming a teacher.
  • Also, the actresses who played the naked girl in the bathtub and the old hag she turns into never did anything else before or after.
• Lots of horror and slasher roles:
  • Nancy Kye's only significant role is Annie from Halloween. She did do other on-camera work (including other John Carpenter films), but nothing as popular.
    • Ellie Cornell, the Final Girl in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, has no other major film credits, with the exception of playing a cop in the two House of the Dead films, which she and her husband helped produce.
  • Adrienne King, who played the Final Girl in the original Friday the 13th has no other major film credits, although this was mostly because she quit acting the following year after being targeted by a stalker, and didn't come out of retirement until 2010.
  • Marilyn Burns, who played the Final Girl in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had no other major film roles outside that franchise before her death in 2014.
  • Heather Langenkamp is only known for playing Nancy in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street and two sequels. She had some other small roles, but nothing as notable.
    • Patricia Arquette (Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) would later become an Oscar-winning actress and is not a one-hit wonder. However, Tuesday Knight, who replaced her as Kristen in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master has no other major acting credits.
  • The entire cast of the original Night of the Living Dead, mostly made up of Pittsburgh locals. Duane Jones, New York-based and primarily a stage actor and drama coach, managed to sustain a bit of a film career afterwards, and Judith O'Dea has carved out a niche doing small roles in low-budget horror in recent years.
  • John Stockwell is famous for playing Dennis Guilder from the film adaption of Christine. Outside of a small role in Top Gun as Cougar, his acting career never took off, mainly due to starring in films that were Box Office Bombs and/or critical failures, such as Dangerously Close, which he unfortunately co-wrote. It's why he became a director.
• Nia Vardalos is an actress whose career initially consisted only of one-episode appearances on TV series (her only regular role being on the Knight Rider spin-off Team Knight Rider as the voice of one of the cars, but even that show lasted only one season) before coming out in 2002 with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which she wrote and starred in, and which subsequently became the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all-time. She fell as fast as she rose with a number of flops (the My Big Fat Greek Life television show, Connie and Carla, My Life In Ruins, Larry Crowne). In 2016, she returned with My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which did decently at the box office, but was thrashed by critics and quickly forgotten, and as a result didn't do very much to re-establish Vardalos as either an actress or writer.
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace featured British actor Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man, Lex Luthor's creation and the main villain of the film. It was Pillow's acting debut as well as being his only film to date, as his other credits are for TV shows, most notably Alaska Kid, which aired for 13 episodes in 1993. He has not acted since.
• All the child actors from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Peter Ostrum (Charlie Bucket) and Michael Bollner (Augustus Gloop) have no other credits; Paris Themmen's only other acting credit besides Mike Teavee was a small cameo in Star Trek: Voyager; Denise Nickerson appeared on Dark Shadows, The Brady Bunch, and The Electric Company, but is still best known as Violet Beauregarde; and while Julie Dawn Cole had a long, steady career on British television, Veruca Salt is her only notable character.
  • Happened again with the child actors in the 2005 adaptation. The only ones that have successful careers outside that film are Freddie Highmore (Charlie) and AnnaSophia Robb (Violet). Jordan Fry (Mike) had a voice role in Meet the Robinsons, but nothing else notable. Philip Wiegratz (Augustus) has no other credits outside some small films in his native Germany. Julia Winter (Veruca) has no other credits at all outside of the video game adaptation of the movie.
• Liam Aiken's only notable lead role is as Klaus Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004). His other credits include the human lead in the quickly forgotten dog comedy Good Boy!, Tom Hanks' son in Road to Perdition, and later one of the security system workers in The Emoji Movie. Other than that, he's perhaps best known for being almost cast as Harry Potter before being vetoed due to not being British.
• Several non-professional actors have been cast in a film that remains either their only role, or their only role of note:
  • Harold Russell's film debut in The Best Years of Our Lives netted him two Oscars, the only time two Oscars have ever been awarded for the same performance.^note The Academy's Board of Governors wanted to recognize Russell's performance in the film but thought that as a non-professional in his first role he would never win a competitive award. So, they gave him an honorary Oscar for "bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans." Then he won Best Supporting Actor. It would be 34 years before he had another film credit; his two remaining credits were very minor roles in since-forgotten movies.
  • Haing S. Ngor, a Cambodian gynecologist, won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his only major film role, The Killing Fields, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide like him. Along with Harold Russell, he is one of only two non-professional actors to win an Academy Award. Ngor had a handful of credits in mostly smaller films (mainly movies about The Vietnam War) in the years after, with Heaven & Earth as probably the most prominent one, up until his tragic murder during a bungled robbery in 1996.
  • Wrestler Stanislaus Zbyszko was cast in the 1950 noir Night and the City because the director, Jules Dassin, wanted to coach a wrestler to act rather than teach an actor to wrestle. He had seen Zbyszko when he was young and wanted someone like him, without knowing Zbyszko was still alive. It turned out Zbyszko even lamented the transformation of wrestling into showmanship the same way his character in the movie, Gregorius, did.
    • For similar reasons, light-heavyweight boxing champion Antonio Tarver was cast as Mason "The Line" Dixon in Rocky Balboa, which remains his only professional acting role to date - Sylvester Stallone thought it would be easier to teach a boxer to act rather than train an actor to box convincingly. He might have come to this conclusion after casting boxer Tommy Morrison in Rocky V.
    • In the film Miracle, about the 1980 gold-medal winning US Olympic hockey team, many of the actors who portrayed members of the team were real-life hockey players; Billy Schneider played his father, Buzz Schneider, for instance. (For that matter, coach Herb Brooks is played by proven actor Kurt Russell, who was briefly a real-life pro baseball player before becoming a full-time actor.)
  • Zekeria Ebrahimi and Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada, the Afghan child actors who played young Amir and young Hassan respectively in The Kite Runner, have no other roles. In fact, acting in the movie caused major problems after the shooting finished, because many questioned sending them back to Kabul, where their families feared attacks because of the homosexual themes in the movie. They were relocated to the United Arab Emirates.
  • Leonard Harris, a journalist, culture critic and novelist, played the prominent role of Sen. Charles Palantine in Taxi Driver, and only had one other acting credit to his name when he died in 2011.
  • Round Midnight stars legendary jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon as down-on-his-luck jazz saxophonist. For his only major acting role, Gordon was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in 1986, losing to Paul Newman.
  • On Nashville, singing sisters Lennon and Maisie Stella were cast as Rayna's daughters Maddie and Daphne. Neither has acted again since the series ended as both have focused more on music.
  • While all four members of Big Time Rush could be considered One-Hit Wonders, Logan Henderson is the only one without any other acting roles outside of a few bit parts.
• Rochelle Davis, who played Sarah in The Crow, decided to retire from acting shortly afterwards because she was a close friend of Brandon Lee who died during filming. She now works as a massage therapist. She would later act again in a minor role in an independent film Hell House 16 years later.
• Karen Lynn Gorney had a handful of roles in smaller films dating back to 1962, and was a regular on All My Children when she hit it big as John Travolta's love interest in Saturday Night Fever, but that's still her only major claim to fame. She didn't even act again until 1991, as a nameless character in the Michael J. Fox movie The Hard Way, though she once again began appearing in smaller films in the 21st century.
• Outside his native Australia, where he has enjoyed lasting success as a comedian, Paul Hogan is only known for his role as "Crocodile" Dundee.
• Star Wars:
  • Mark Hamill is a successful voice actor (the Joker), but Luke Skywalker is his only major live-action character (at most another DC villain, the Trickster). He does have a following among retro gamers for his role as Christopher Blair in the Wing Commander series, though.
  • Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, and Peter Mayhew remain known to the public exclusively as C-3PO, R2-D2, and Chewbacca, respectively.
• Although he has acted in other films and TV shows, Scott Fuller from From Dusk Till Dawn is Ernest Liu's only significant role to date.
• Nikki Blonsky whose most famous role was Hairspray. It doesn't help that her other roles tried to play up her weight which is an extremely challenging thing to build a career around.
• Most actors from Power Rangers have not had any success with any other projects. Exceptions are Amy Jo Johnson, Johnny Yong Bosch (who's now better known as an anime voice actor; Power Rangers is still his only major live-action role), Bryan Cranston (who voiced two monsters), Eka Darville, Emma Lahana, Cerina Vincent, Rose McIver, Brandon Jay McLaren and Adelaide Kane.
• Game of Thrones: According to various speeches he's made, Jack Gleeson planned to quit acting as soon as his Star-Making Role as Joffrey Baratheon on the show wrapped up, due to his dislike of celebrity culture. Judging by the lack of any news about him since that time, it seems that he did exactly as he said he would.
• Quinton Aaron, best known for playing Michael Oher in The Blind Side, has acted in other movies, but nothing of note.
• No matter what Steve Burns does, he will always be known as Steve from Blue's Clues. Donovan Patton, who played Joe, went on to voice act in Team Umizoomi and Clarence, but he hasn't had any other successful live action roles.
• Michael Richards will always be known as Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld.
• The only role Alicia Silverstone is remembered for today is Cher Horowitz from Clueless. Well, that and her Star-Derailing Role in Batman & Robin...
• Of the nine main cast members of Arrested Development, only few have gone on to superstardom on their own. But the only one who is considered a one-hit wonder is Alia Shawkat, who played Maeby.
• British expat model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's only lead role is as Carly Spencer in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the Suspiciously Similar Substitute love interest for Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) after Mikaela broke up with him between films (i.e. Megan Fox was fired). For the longest time, it was her only acting credit period until Mad Max: Fury Road (but even then, she isn't the lead heroine). Fortunately, it doesn't take away from her fame as a model. The fact that she's dating action movie star Jason Statham also helps.
• It's a mixed bag for the actors who have played Superman, to the point that there's a whole Urban Legend in Hollywood positing that playing the character is a curse for an actor's career (read the "Superman Curse" on The Other Wiki). Specifically:
  • Kirk Alyn and George Reeves were both so closely tied to the role of Superman that they had trouble finding serious work after their respective tenures ended. Alyn was relegated to bit roles, commercials, and voiceovers, with his only other major role of note being a Remake Cameo in the 1978 Superman film as Lois Lane's father. Reeves, meanwhile, became just as infamous for his tragic early death and the mysterious circumstances surrounding it.
  • Christopher Reeve was similarly so closely associated with the role of Superman that he was barely able to escape the Man of Steel's shadow, even when he got lead roles in other films such as Deathtrap and the 1985 Anna Karenina adaptation. He only became more firmly entrenched into it following his tragic horseback riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down, and even though he continued to work in Hollywood both in front of and behind the camera (as well as gaining postive attention for his activism work), Reeve is still considered the definitive Superman actor.
  • While Dean Cain has continued to have a moderately successful career in film and TV after Lois & Clark wrapped up, he's never had any other big leading roles. He's also become more infamous in later years for his associations with right-wing politics and acting in movies like God's Not Dead.
  • Tom Welling has not really found much success in other roles following the end of Smallville, with his other most notable role being Cain on Lucifer (2016).
  • Voice actors Tim Daly (already a known TV actor, specifically for his works in Wings, Private Practice, and Madam Secretary) and George Newbern (another established actor beforehand, though his voice-acting career was this until he became the official voice of Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII) have generally gotten off easier.
  • Brandon Routh has been able to establish a decently successful career beyond playing Superman, with roles in Chuck, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and playing Ray Palmer/The Atom, another DC Comics hero, on Arrow.
  • Averted for Henry Cavill, who is largely considered to be the only Superman actor thus far to beat the Superman curse and not have his whole career be entirely eclipsed by the role, gaining popular acclaim for his performances in other projects such as The Witcher (2019), Enola Holmes, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
  • Tyler Hoechlin was already known for Road to Perdition, 7th Heaven, and Teen Wolf before being cast as Superman. How the rest of his career will fare after his tenure as the character ends remains to be seen.
• Some of Tom Welling's fellow Smallville alumni haven't fared much better either.
  • Aside from a brief stint as a side character on Wilfred, Allison Mack's only role of note is as Chloe Sullivan on the series. What little chances she had of furthering her acting career evaporated after she was discovered to have been a high-ranking member of the notorious NXIVM cult (as detailed in The Vow (2020)) in 2018, leading her to plead guilty to racketeering charges and be sentenced to three years in prison in 2021.
  • Michael Rosenbaum averted this through his voice acting career, but Lex Luthor is still his only real claim to fame in live action.
  • Kristin Kreuk did manage to gain success with Beauty and the Beast (2012) after leaving the show during its eighth season. She also was discovered to have been a member of NXIVM with Mack, but left early on and has taken great pains to distance herself from the scandal.
• Tatum O'Neal had a moderately successful career as a child actor in the 1970s but today, most people only remember her for her role in Paper Moon due to winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar at the age of 10.
• Unlike other J. J. Abrams leading ladies such as Jennifer Garner and Evangeline Lilly, Anna Torv of Fringe hasn't really found further success outside the show.
• Kimberly J. Brown is mostly remembered for starring in the first 3 Halloweentown movies. She had some other roles, such as a regular stint on Guiding Light for a couple of years, and the lead in Quints (another Disney Channel movie), but nothing else.
• Rainn Wilson has sustained a long acting career, but he will forever be known as Dwight Schrute from The Office (US). His attempts to front projects outside of the show (The Rocker, Backstrom) weren't successful.
• Party of Five was a big hit back in The '90s, but is today remembered for most of its cast landing better-known roles after the series' conclusion (such as Matthew Fox, Neve Campbell, Lacey Chabert, and even Jennifer Love Hewitt, who wasn't part of the main cast)... that is, except for Scott Wolf, who completely vanished from public consciousness after the show's conclusion until 2019 when he took the role of Carson Drew on Nancy Drew.
• Jason Mewes isn't really known for any other role besides Jay. Kevin Smith, who played Silent Bob, fortunately, avoids this by his non-acting work, but Mewes wasn't so lucky.
• Jon Heder's only memorable role was as the title character of Napoleon Dynamite. He followed it up with The Benchwarmers and Blades of Glory, which did gain some praise, but not nearly as much as Napoleon Dynamite.
• So strongly associated is Daniel Radcliffe with Harry Potter that it ultimately proved detrimental to his post-Potter career. He's primarily stuck to indie fare and live theatre, where he's had considerable success, but none of the productions he's been in have been a hit anywhere close to Potter's scale (The Lost City is his only other film to make $100 million domestically). In fact, aside from Emma Watson, Harry Melling and Robert Pattinson, the other child actors from the film have fared even worse. Rupert Grint hasn't made even a million dollars combined with his non-Potter work; Tom Felton's only other notable roles were in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Flash; and other stars like Matthew Lewis, Bonnie Wright, Evanna Lynch, and the Phelps twin have done next to nothing of note otherwise.
• New Zealand actress Keisha Castle-Hughes is only known for her role in Whale Rider, which made her the youngest actress at the time to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. She had a minor role in Revenge of the Sith, and her career took a nosedive after The Nativity Story proved to be a critical and commercial disaster. Around the same time she also got pregnant at just 16 years of age, something not really that big of a deal in her native New Zealand, but in the U.S., it produced such a backlash from Moral Guardians that it ensured no studio would go near her for any mainstream family-friendly projects. She tried to make a comeback with Game of Thrones, but her performance was considered underwhelming, especially by the show's standards (not helped by the fact that her character was one of the much fan-reviled Sand Snakes) and today is one of the very few Game of Thrones actors whose part on the show has not become their most famous role.
• Gloria Swanson was one of the biggest stars of the silent film era who managed a comeback in 1950 with Sunset Boulevard. That being said, today she is commonly considered a one-hit wonder for her role in the latter, as it's the only movie people remember her by, while her silent film work is long forgotten.
• Despite being a superstar throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Al Jolson is known by modern-day audiences only as Jack Rubin in The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length motion picture with vocal sound.
• Anthony Perkins played Norman Bates in Psycho. He became so strongly associated with the Bates character that his career got destroyed due to chronic typecasting. Interesting before Psycho, Perkins had a short career as a singer, where he also became a one-hit wonder.
• Mira Sorvino is known for her Oscar-winning role in Mighty Aphrodite and not much else, except maybe Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and being the daughter of Paul Sorvino.^note She's claimed that Harvey Weinstein managed to get her covertly blacklisted by A-list Hollywood after she spurned his sexual advances.
• Linda Blair played Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist and went straight to low-profile made-for-TV feature films afterwards.
• The Mickey Mouse Club: Very few Mouseketeers have been successful; Annette Funicello was by far the biggest star to come from the 1950s version, although a few others like Johnny Crawford and Paul Petersen have had minor success. For The '90s version, you had Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, J.C. Chasez, Tony Lucca, Matt Morris, and Deedee Magno. The latter five are almost never brought up when talking about the show's famous alumni, and it's common for Gosling to be ignored in favor of the show's musical breakouts.
• Nearly all of the child actors on Barney & Friends disappeared from the spotlight afterwards, as they were for the most part natives of the DFW Metroplex, which is hardly a breeding ground for major entertainment stars. The only ones who went on to any success were Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Madison Pettis, and Debby Ryan. In the public consciousness, it's only widely known that the former two are ex-Barney stars and the fact that they met on the show and became best friends afterwards. The latter two, although popular, were never nearly as big a star as Gomez or Lovato and few people remember they were on the show, as their parts were merely minor background roles whereas Gomez and Lovato were part of the main kids cast. Of the dinosaur actors, the only one who ever did anything else notable was Michaela Dietz, who voiced the Riff; even then, she is known for only one other role — Amethyst in Steven Universe.
  • From the feature film, Kyla Pratt was quite popular thanks to her role in the Doctor Dolittle movies and The Proud Family, and Trevor Morgan has had a reasonably prolific child acting career afterwards. Diana Rice, however, never appeared in another major production again.
• Most of the actors in American Pie didn't go on to do much afterwards, with Shannon Elizabeth seen in the eyes of the public as the most triumphant example. Jason Biggs was previously the franchise's most notorious laughingstock until he landed a memorable role on Orange Is the New Black.
• Mean Girls: Jonathan Bennett is best remembered for his role as Aaron Samuels in the teen comedy and not much else.
• Ariana Grande's only successful role as an actress was as Cat Valentine in Nickelodeon's Victorious (which she wasn't even the star of). She had a few bit roles and starred in the quickly canceled spin-off Sam & Cat, but nothing major. However, she has transitioned into a pop superstar with numerous hits and certified albums under her belt and has never looked back since. As a musician, she is most certainly not a one-hit-wonder. In fact, she's easily the most successful music act ever produced by Nickelodeon.
• Taylor Lautner started out as a moderately successful child/teen actor and voice actor (The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl being his most notable credit), but he was far from celebrity status until he was cast as Jacob in the Twilight saga, which established him as a teen heartthrob in the early 2010s. Since then, however, he's gotten no other major roles, and is still best known as Jacob in Twilight.
• Taylor Dooley's only significant role is playing the titular Lavagirl in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl and nothing else.
• Despite her three-decade-long career and being a tabloid fixture, Tori Spelling's only notable role is as Donna Martin on Beverly Hills, 90210 (though her starring role in the Made-for-TV Movie Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? has some notoriety since it's become a Cult Classic, as one of the early prototypes of the Lifetime Movie of the Week genre).
• Most of the actors on One Tree Hill barring Sophia Bush, Shantel VanSanten, Robert Buckley, Lee Norris and Chad Michael Murray are known exclusively for their roles on the show. While Jana Kramer is nowadays better known as a singer, Alex Dupre remains her only notable acting role.
• While most actors on The O.C. have broken into other roles (or were famous beforehand in the case of Tate Donovan), Mischa Barton is mostly known for playing Marissa Cooper. The same goes for Autumn Reaser and Taylor Townsend.
• Adam Copeland may have had a long wrestling career, but he's known for one acting role: Haven. For a while, Batista was in the same situation with Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), but he's now also known for his role in Spectre.
• Aside from Judy Garland, the entire main cast of The Wizard of Oz is known exclusively for that one movie:
  • Ray Bolger was primarily a Broadway actor when he landed the role of the Scarecrow. Because he got caught up doing USO shows overseas, he worked very sporadically in Hollywood throughout the 1940s, only making five films. After that, he hardly got any roles at all, focusing more on TV.
  • Jack Haley, the Tin Man, was a well-known actor not only on film but also on radio and vaudeville. He primarily worked for RKO, so his switch to MGM was an anomaly. While he got more frequent work than Bolger post-Oz, he quit acting after refusing to participate in a version of Seven Keys to Baldpate.
  • Bert Lahr played the Cowardly Lion. Aside from that, his work in Hollywood was scarce and unsuccessful. Like Bolger, he focused primarily on stage acting afterwards.
  • Frank Morgan, who played the title role, was a contracted character actor for MGM, and thus his roles were rarely, if ever, leads. Sadly, Morgan died only ten years after Oz at the early age of fifty-nine.
  • Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, had a far more successful acting career than most of her co-stars, but she was never quite able to shake off her "Wicked Witch" image. She self-parodied her role during the last decade before her death.
  • Billie Burke was probably the most successful, as she had been in the acting industry since the 1910s. Burke was a major Ziegfield Follies star and also appeared in other classics like the Topper series; she even grabbed an Oscar nomination for Merrily We Live. But she'll always be best known as Glinda the Good Witch.
• Hallie Kate Eisenberg appeared in a few movies, but is today only remembered for being the "Pepsi Girl" in the company's late-'90s/early 2000s ad campaign. Other than that, she's best known for being Jesse's sister.
• Although he had a number of supporting roles before (mostly in Westerns), James Arness remains remembered largely as Marshall Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke, with his filmography after being cast as Dillon being quite limited. He also had a lead role in the TV series of How The West Was Won, which garnered a cult following in Europe but failed to make much of an impact in the US.
• While her Charmed co-stars have continued to find success afterward, Rose McGowan is still known mostly as Paige Matthews. Other than that, she's more known for being one of the most visible accusers against Harvey Weinstein for sexual abuse.
• Ilan Mitchell-Smith will always solely be known for playing the "other" kid in Weird Science (Wyatt), though a few might also recognize him as the lead in the film adaptation of The Chocolate War. He's now a professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Houston and a major tabletop gamer.
• The kids in Roseanne. Lecy Goranson will forever be known as the original Becky, although she did have a small role in Boys Don't Cry; all her other roles are in indie films and shorts. Sara Gilbert has had it a little bit better, with recurring roles on ER and The Big Bang Theory, along with co-hosting The Talk on CBS, she's still best known as Darlene. DJ is Michael Fishman's only major credit. Averted with Sarah Chalke (Becky in later seasons), who's better known these days for her work on Scrubs.
• Ahney Her, the Chinese girl of Hmong ethnicity who appeared in Gran Torino alongside Clint Eastwood, impressed several critics with her performance. She later appeared in Night Club, a 2011 low budget film that nobody saw despite the presence of Ernest Borgnine and Mickey Rooney, and then nothing else so far.
• Patrick Renna is best known for his role as Ham in The Sandlot or better yet the "You're killing me Smalls" guy.
• Just like with music, several actors have died before being able to take new roles leading them to this status.
  • Heather O’Rourke had just completed the Poltergeist trilogy when she was misdiagnosed and died at the age of 12.
  • Cory Monteith died of a drug overdose before production of Glee’s fifth season.
    • Also from Glee, Mark Salling committed suicide after he had been convicted of possession of child pornography.
• Although he made over forty movies, the only film from Audie Murphy's acting career most people remember today is To Hell and Back, which is based on his autobiography. Of course, what he's most famous for is being Audie Murphy, the awesome war hero.
• Chiaki Kuriyama can be considered from a Western perspective. She will be forever known as homicidal schoolgirl Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill. Her only other Hollywood movie was a small part in a direct-to-DVD flick starring Steven Seagal, then she went back to Japan and had a decent career that goes on to this day. She also had a brief singing career which however didn't leave much of an impression.
• Actor Michael Gough had a long career, but he is remembered today almost exclusively as the first actor to play Alfred the Butler in the Batman movies.
• Briana Evigan, the daughter of television actor Greg Evigan, is mostly known only for her leading role in Step Up 2: The Streets.
  • Sharni Varnson, who played female lead Natalie in the third film is also known solely for appearing in the movie.
  • Adam Sevani is known for playing Series Mascot Moose, appearing in all 4 of the sequel films.
• Creed Bratton had huge musical success with ‘60s folk-rock group The Grass Roots, but his only notable acting role is his Adam Westing role on The Office (which was basically a fluke. He'd mostly been doing bit parts and working as an extra when he was cast in the Office pilot as a background character, and his role gradually got expanded as the series went on).
• Richard Belzer is only known as Detective John Munch, though said role technically also make him a Two-Hit Wonder as said character was a cast member on two iconic Police Procedurals: Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and appeared in cameos on countless others. Otherwise, Belzer is also known for his stand-up comedy - his most famous role was initially a case of Playing Against Type - but he has never found success with comedic roles.
• Dann Florek is best known as Captain Donald Cragen from the Law & Order franchise. It could be argued that he is also a technical Two-Hit Wonder like Belzer above since he was part of both the mothership and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
• Mariska Hargitay made a handful of appearances in TV shows and movies throughout The '80s and The '90s, though her main calling card was still being Jayne Mansfield's daughter. Now she's known exclusively as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
• Child actors Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice played Michael and Jane, the Banks children, in the 1964 film version of Mary Poppins. They appeared in two other films together, neither of which came close to that success. While Dotrice has continued to occasionally appear in bit parts, Garber never acted again and died of pancreatitis in 1977.
• Almost Famous: Patrick Fugit played the male protagonist in this film. He has continued to act since then but has not had another significant role (aside from a supporting gig in Gone Girl).
• Sherry Stringfield is recognized for her role as Dr. Susan Lewis in ER and not a lot else.
• Dana Carvey has had supporting roles in successful films, but Garth Algar in Wayne's World was his only starring role of note.
• David Naughton starred in the very successful An American Werewolf in London and then got nothing but B Movies and guest spots on lots of TV shows. He’s also an interesting example in that he is also a Musical One Hit Wonder for his 1979 Disco hit “Makin’ it” and was also the lead in Dr. Pepper’s very successful "I'm a Pepper" ad campaign.
• Louise Fletcher getting the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a bit of Darkhorse Casting, since she was in her 40s and had only recently returned to acting after a break of over a decade. She managed to turn in an iconic performance and won the Best Actress Oscar. However even though she’s continued to work steadily for decades that’s still her only notable role, thanks to Typecasting and/or Tough Act to Follow.
• James Bond:
  • George Lazenby will always be remembered solely for his brief tenure as Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; however, he kept acting and voice acting mostly on TV. He has run successful business ventures otherwise.
  • Q was the only major role of note for Desmond Llewelyn.
  • It often happens with the Bond Girls, it's even referred to as "The Curse of the Bond Girls" sometimes.
    • Lana Wood is best remembered as the gambler groupie Plenty O'Toole in Diamonds Are Forever. Contrast her older sister Natalie, who's had a prolific career in Hollywood with several Academy Awards nominations and is well remembered for several major roles.
    • Maryam d'Abo is still best remembered for The Living Daylights — her acting career went low profile since the mid-1990s, ranging from roles in B-Movies to minor supporting roles, some of which in the films of her husband, director Hugh Hudson.
    • Bérénice Marlohe hasn't had a major role since Skyfall.
  • The Moneypenny actresses too. Try to remember another role for Lois Maxwell and Caroline Bliss. The only ones who have escaped this are Samantha Bond (thanks to Downton Abbey) and Naomie Harris.
• While the majority of the cast of the mega-hit Melrose Place have have noteworthy careers since the show ended in 1999 to varying degrees, a few still call that their biggest (or simply only) hit:
  • Andrew Shue, one of the longest-running cast members, is mostly known for playing Billy Campbell and being Elisabeth's brother. This may be justified, as Shue is more of a renowned soccer player, which he did before and after the soap ended.
  • Amy Locane's other claim to fame acting-wise is the 1990 film Cry-Baby, but she is far more known nowadays for a drunk driving accident that killed a woman.
  • Brooke Langton briefly appeared in the TV version of Sandra Bullock's minor hit The Net (1995).
  • While David Charvet had also done Baywatch prior to Melrose Place, those are his only notable roles.
  • John Haymes Newton role as Ryan McBride remains his biggest acting job to date.
• Devon Werkheiser played the titular role on Nickelodeon's hit sitcom Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide and never did anything else of note afterwards.
  • Likewise, Nicholas Purcell is only known for his role on The Troop to which point he's the only member of the cast without a Wikipedia page.
• Comedian Hari Kondabolu created and starred in the controversial 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu, and hasn't done anything noteworthy since.
• Though he had supporting roles in major films such as Black Hawk Down and The Incredible Hulk (2008) and has done voice-over roles in cartoons, Ty Burrell's only major acting role to achieve critical and commercial success was as Phil Dunphy on Modern Family. He decided to retire from acting to focus on producing once the show ended, so it is unlikely that he will have another similarly popular role. It has yet to be seen whether his co-stars (with the exception of Ed O'Neill and Julie Bowen, who already had prominent roles in major works before the show) will have the same fate.
  • Ariel Winter, who played Alex, has played minor roles on other shows and has done voice-over work, yet Modern Family was her only prominent live-action role to date, and during her tenure on the show, she voiced the title character on Sofia the First, her only notable voice acting role (though things may change over time).
  • Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who played Mitchell, has been a successful stage actor and has played bit parts in other shows, but the role on Modern Family was his only major film or television role, as he has turned his attention to other pursuits.
• Tami Stronach is only known for being the Childlike Empress/Moonchild in The Neverending Story. Her main occupation is ballet, both as dancer and producer.
• Despite a very extensive filmography, Genie Francis is famous for only one role, that of General Hospital's Laura Spencer. The same basically goes for the other two sides of the show's signature Love Triangle: Anthony Geary will always first and foremost be Luke Spencer, though his Playing Against Type turn as Philo in UHF has gained him some additional recognition, while Kin Shriner (Scott Baldwin) left the show twice to front newly-launched soaps (Texas and Rituals), only to return to GH after they got canceled (he's had some separate success as a voice actor, though).
  • Another Soap Opera case is Maura West, who memorably played Carly Tenney on As the World Turns from 1995 until it went off the air in 2010. West's only other screen acting credits are later stints on The Young and the Restless and General Hospital and one obscure Horror movie (2014's Come Back to Me).
• The majority of the cast of Glee with exceptions going to Jessalyn Gilsig, Jayma Mays, Jane Lynch, Lea Michele, Naya Rivera, Darren Criss, Blake Jenner, Alex Newell, Melissa Benoist and Harry Shum Jr.
• Dominique Swain has had a prolific B-movie career, but she will always be best-known for playing the title role in Adrian Lyne's version of Lolita, which, while not a hit, was one of the most famously controversial films of its era.
• The Australian-born British actor M.E. Clifton James is an interesting example. His only film credit of note is the lead role in the 1958 war film I Was Monty's Double which tells the true story of a junior British officer who'd been an actor in peacetime and who bore a close resemblance to General Bernard Montgomery. As such, he was used by the Army to impersonate Monty as part of a pre-D-Day disinformation operation. M.E. Clifton Jones was that officer — so in his only major role, he's playing himself.
• Child actor Cary Guffey is only known for being the kid abducted by aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, his debut role. After that one he played the part of Human Alien H7-25 in two Italian films with Bud Spencer, then a few roles in unremarkable movies and miniseries until he quit acting in 1985, took a degree in Marketing and became a financial planner.
• Aside from some commercial work, Houston Tumlin's only acting credit was as Walker Bobby in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. He later joined the Army and tragically committed suicide at the age of 28, having developed post traumatic stress disorder from his experience.
• The role of Bob in various Sesame Street projects was literally Bob McGrath's only onscreen acting job. He freely admitted that his background was as a singer, and he'd only had some slight acting training when he was hired for the show.
• Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova in GoldenEye. Natalya is one of the most popular Bond Girls in the series, but Izabella Scorupco has been happy to avoid chasing stardom in the following years. Her roles since have focused more on small supporting roles and independent films, often locally in Sweden.
• Bug Hall is mostly only known for playing Alfalfa in the The Little Rascals movie. His only other major role was being Stanley Stupid's young son in The Stupids, then he had a series of small parts in small-budgeted films, TV shows and direct-to-DVD films until he left the industry in 2020 and turned into a traditionalist Catholic.
• Charles Fleischer has had a long, busy career in both voice and screen acting, but voicing Roger Rabbit has always been his chief accomplishment.
• Freddie Boath's only notable role, outside of a few minor appearances in TV shows, was playing Alex O'Connell in The Mummy Returns, and now works in marketing.
• The entire main cast of Big Time Rush is known pretty much exclusively for their work on the show. The recurring cast faired a little bit better.
• William Zabka has had a long career as an actor but no role he's played has ever reached the notoriety of his breakout role, Johnny Lawrence in the The Karate Kid franchise, a role he reprised for its Sequel Series Cobra Kai.
• Ariane Koizumi, also known mononymously as Ariane, is a fashion model who had her film debut in Michael Cimino's Year of the Dragon alongside Mickey Rourke. Her performance wasn't well received; after a small part in Abel Ferrara's box office bomb King of New York and a few bit parts in low.budget movies and TV movies, she went back to modeling.
• Nora Ariffin (also known as Norhana Ariffin) is a fashion model whose only major acting credit is Leslie in Italian thriller Too Beautiful to Die a.k.a. Sotto il vestito niente II. She's now a real estate broker. Interestingly one of her other very few credits is for the film Skin Art, where Ariane from the previous example also starred.
• Bud Cort has built a prolific career as a character actor, but playing Harold in Harold and Maude is what everyone will always know him for.
• Sean "Diddy" Combs is a well-known, rapper, producer and media mogul but his only major acting role is Sergio Roma in the movie Get Him to the Greek.

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