01.19.10 | Gary Cahall | Staff NotesPrint this Post
In the spirit of the new year, let's take a moment to think about actors and their first film roles. While it is certainly an accomplishment to win over an audience right out of the gate--the way that, say, Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, Burt Lancaster in The Killers, Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, or Cameron Diaz in The Mask did--it's an even more impressive feat to have a notable Hollywood career when your "big break" came with a, shall we say, not well-received turn. This is not to suggest that any of the ten performances that follow were necessarily bad (but, let's face it, some of them were), just that any filmgoer might have had a hard time imagining the mighty oaks that eventually grew from these cinematic acorns.
(NOTE: It's also true that a lot of today's popular stars got their starts in '80s and '90s horror/sci-fi films. So many--Jennifer Aniston, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Holly Hunter and Julianne Moore, among others--in fact that I'm skipping over them for this list to concentrate mostly on other genres.)
Benicio Del Toro, Big Top Pee-wee- Think next month's remake of The Wolf Man marks Oscar-winner Del Toro's first crack at playing hairy man-beasts? If so, check out the 1998 follow-up to Pee-wee's Big Adventure, in which a very hirsute Benicio graces the sideshow of Kris Kristofferson's traveling circus as Duke the Dog-Faced Boy!
Clint Eastwood, Revenge Of The Creature- So, in what role did Hollywood's toughest maverick cop and Italy's roughest no-name cowboy first appear to audiences? How about as a white-coated lab assistant who absent-mindedly places a mouse in his coat pocket in 1955's Creature from the Black Lagoon sequel. Oh, and Clint didn't fare much better with his second movie, the "Francis the Talking Mule" comedy Francis in the Navy.
Harrison Ford, Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round - In a 30-second-or-so turn as a hotel bellhop paging a guest in this convoluted 1966 caper thriller starring James Coburn, the future Indiana Jones comes off as slightly less stiff than Pee-wee Herman playing himself playing a bellhop in the aforementioned Pee-wee's Big Adventure...but not much less.
Jessica Lange, King Kong- Much has already been written about producer Dino DeLaurentiis' laughable 1976 remake of the '30s classic, so let's just say that the only thing two-time Academy Award-winning actress Lange's turn as the model who catches Kong's eye is missing is a juggling exhibition like Naomi Watts in the Peter Jackson version. Luckily, it does include the timeless line "You goddamn male chauvinist pig ape!"
Steve Martin, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band- True, comedy legend Steve Martin's actual screen debut was in the hilarious short The Absent-Minded Waiter. But even fans of his hosting stints on Saturday Night Live couldn't bring themselves to watch him hamming it up as demented plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Edison in his first feature, this campy and unfunny 1978 Beatles tunes smash-up starring--believe it or not--The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton.
Paul Newman, The Silver Chalice - How bad was this 1955 pseudo-Biblical saga, in which a young Newman played a Greek sculptor named Basil who is hired to craft the title chalice that will hold the Holy Grail? Bad enough that the actor would later take out ads in Hollywood trade papers apologizing for it! Paul's performance wasn't necessarily that awful, but it must have taken a lot of salad dressing to get the taste of this less-than-epic epic out of his mouth.
Gwyneth Paltrow, Shout - As the daughter of noted actress Blythe Danner and producer/director Bruce Paltrow, you might think that future Oscar-winner Gwyneth would have gotten a more prestigious and popular film for her first role than this 1991 Dead Poets Society rehash, in which she plays a townsgirl smitten with one of the charges of a boy's reform school in 1955 Texas, where music teacher John Travolta uses the dangerous new sound of rock and roll to reach out to the students. You might think so, but history proves otherwise.
Julia Roberts, Satisfaction- What's that, you say? The tiresome 1988 road movie about an girl-led rock band, designed as a vehicle for then-much-hotter lead Justine Bateman, was actually Julia's second film appearance? Granted, but I decided to cut her a break and not list Roberts' uncredited, blink-and-she's-gone turn as "Babs" in the 1987 Police Academy-like raunchfest Firehouse. There, see what you made me do? Sorry, Julia.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hercules In New York- By 1970 the Hercules/Samson/Atlas fantasy films had pretty much run their course, but someone decided to make a fish-out-of-water comedy with Herc in the modern-day Big Apple. An exhaustive talent search led the producers to a 22-year-old bodybuilder with no thespian experience, and whose Austrian accent was so thick they had to dub over his voice. That actor, billed in the credits as "Arnold Strong," is rumored to now be working at a high-level position in the California state government.
Tom Selleck, Myra Breckinridge- What happens when a future sex symbol of the 1980s, in his first feature, meets a faded sex symbol of the 1930s, in her penultimate screen performance? Well, in the infamous 1970 filming of Gore Vidal's controversial novel, a clean-shaven Selleck (billed as "stud") gets to "audition" for horny talent agent Mae West and utters a few choice lines, including "I never did see a bed in an office before!"
I personally laugh when I realize that Johnny Depp made his debut in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Then there's Kevin Bacon's debut as Chip in Animal House.