Hummm, ok, let me think. Im not talking about has-beens but stars who never fulfilled their promise. Maybe they are one-hit wonders.

Matthew MacConaghey
Val Kilmer
Alec Baldwin
Sean Penn- a really great actor but has sort of disapeared. Maybe he doesnt quite belong here though.

Juliet Lewis - Cant remember what shes done lately.
Sharon Stone
Winona Rider
madeline Stowe

I dunno, Stone and Baldwin make a lot of money. I consider them to have "made it big."

I mean big as in BIG! Like they get good parts in good movies consistently.

Stones only been in one memorable movie & I cant even remember the title! Its the one with the ice pick! hahaha.
But Sphere sucked BIG TIME and the MUSE just died.

Alec Baldwin, maybe youre right. Hes become more of a character actor. Still I dont know what he wuz doin in that toy train movie. Weird.

The bigger question here is why were you watchin the toy train movie??? ;)

AHHHH, BUSTED!!! Hahaha! I wuz babysittin, heehee.

That was Thomas the Steam Engine...and the Stone movie you're thinking of is Basic Instinct.

sandra bullock

Daniel Day Lewis

Stone? Bullock? I don't think so. And definitely not Penn. Or Val Kilmer. He's in lots of things. And Alec Baldwin is in tons of stuff - whether it's good or not is a better question (see PEARL HARBOR and THE JUROR).

McConaughey, surely. Who else??

Chris O'Donnell comes to mind. I thought he'd be bigger than he is.

Alicia Silverstone. She was fantastic in CLUELESS, then she kinda dropped off the face of the earth [save her few weight debacles].

Or Kate Winslet.

Oprah. Danny Glover, sort of. Carl Weathers. Dolph Lundgren - definitely Dolph. You can either see a first-rate action movie, or you can see a Dolph flick.

Bill Pullman. Joseph Fiennes (although he can change with one fell swoop). Maura Tierney. Billy Crudup. Jennifer Conelly.

I could go on...

How can we all forget Anthony Michael Hall and that chick (I forget her name) from the Hugh movies like Pretty in Pink and the Breakfast Club. They are gone and nobody knows where to. Sure Hall was in Pirates of Silicon Valley buts that's it.

Why not Stone? All she seems to want to do is Basic ice pick 2. When was Val Kilmers last hit? Tombstone? I thought both these dudes would be much bigger than they are.

Some more I thought would be BIG BIG STARS!!:

Ethan Hawke & Uma Thurmon
Holly hunter
Kim basinger
Wesley Snipes
Liam neeson (ok, maybe not) :)

Yah, who was that chick in PRETTY in PINK? She had red hair & freckles. COME ON, its drivin me nuts!! I cant go to bed until I know!!!

Molly Ringwald. Now go to bed.

Here's the thing, though. Just because someone isn't a big star now doesn't mean that they weren't huge at one time. By that standard, Cary Grant was nothing. He hasn't had a hit since the '50s.

You couldn't get much bigger than Molly Ringwald in the mid-80s. She ended up choosing to get away from all of that by moving to France and purposely disappearing. The fact that she wasn't able to make a comeback doesn't diminish how big she was in her teens. It's impossible to say that she never made it big. She was huge. She's just not big anymore.

Oh then she is a has-been. Nitey nite.

BUT before I get under the covers I would just like to say that retired actors should not be included here. Only young overhyped ones. :)
[Edited by PigsnieLite on 08-16-2001]

How about Kiefer Sutherland? Does he fit the description? I thought he was great in Flatliners, and haven't really seen much of him since.

Hahahahaha. That was hilarious.

This thread, though, is a bit flawed: a lot of people seem to be thinking/saying "Well, I thought so-and-so would be bigger" -- but that, obviously, doesn't mean that most other people agreed. Maybe you all thought Alicia Silverstone had become a superstar thanks to Clueless -- but plenty of people didn't. :)

I can think of one person most of us will likely agree on: Macaulay Culkin. I'm sure a lot of people thought he would slow down a bit after those two huge movies...but I don't think most expected him to fall flat on his face. He totally failed the child-actor to adult-actor transition...something Kirsten Dunst and Elijah Wood seem to have pulled off nicely. :)

I was looking at it as sort of the people who were being touted as the next big thing but who, for whatever reason, never achieved the level of success necessary to make them household names. Personally, I wouldn't could Culkin because he achieved tremendous fame. He just wasn't able to continue it. But there aren't too many people in the world who don't know who he is. Again, you don't get much bigger than what Culkin was during his time.

Ethan Hawke would be an example that I would consider to be more apt. He was poised to be a huge breakout star, but it never happened (so far), and most people don't really know who he is (or that he's from Texas). He never achieved what was expected of him when he first came to the attention of the hype machine.

Hank Macy. He's starting to hit the big time (Jurassic Park III now but he's such a good actor he should have been at the top years ago.

Hank? That a nickname for William, or are you going by the "H" he uses as a middle initial? :)