A few actors who were momentarily hot in the '80s and early '90s who I used to forget which was which were
Michael Nouri,
John Shea and
Michael Ontkean. But I think it was laregly because they were just kind of non-descript looking guys with dark hair.
As they've aged they became very distinct in my mind, but back when all three were first on the scene they were completely interchangeable in my mind's eye.
Michael Nouri got his break when
Flashdance (1983) became such a surprise hit, though he had been acting for years. But that success didn't translate into much, though he did get to star in one Sci-Fi cult classic in
The Hidden (1987). These days he's pretty much exclusively a TV guest star and he has a recurring role on
"The OC". Golly.
John Shea's big break was in Costa-Gravas' terrific
Missing (1982) with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. He starred as RFK in the
"Kennedy" TV mini-series in 1983. His career kind of petered out after that hot start, and it was a mostly forgettable line of TV movies and guest appearances. I really liked the TV show he starred in for CBS in 1990,
"WIOU" that hoped to be a sort of weekly cross between
Broadcast News and
Network for the
"L.A. Law" set. But it was cancelled after only one season. He did crop up as Lex Luthor to Dean Cain's Superman on
"Lois & Clark" and he'll still show up as a guest star here and there, but safe to say the promise of
Missing was never delivered.
Michael Ontkean was in the '70s cop show
"The Rookies" for a couple of years and co-starred with Paul Newman in the crass hockey comedy
Slap Shot (1977), but then he pretty much disappeared from anything of quality for a dozen years or so. He reemerged in 1990 as Sheriff Harry S. Truman patroling David Lynch's
"Twin Peaks", but right after that momentary blip of fame he disappeared again, relegated to TV movies of the week. He barely works at all these days.
They all kinda had the same look and dark hair back then, two of them worked with Kyle MacLachlan, two of them are named Michael, they all spent lots of time on various short-lived TV shows and cropping up as guest stars every damn place on the dial...eh. I'm sure when I saw the first episode of
"Twin Peaks" I thought to myself, 'Hey, the Sheriff and MacLachlan are teaming up again like they did in
The Hidden. I wonder if this means Jennifer Beals will be along shortly from his
Flashdance days?'
You can't mistake them anymore, as Nouri has let his hair grow white and Ontkean doesn't show up anywhere, but back in like 1988 if you had shown me their three mug shots and had me place them at the scene of a crime, I would have probably gotten an innocent man thrown in the slammer or told the pigs to round up these triplets. Now they trade time as one-shot murderers and creeps on the various
"Law & Order" franchises.
