My favorite is Bryant Haliday, who was in Devil Doll and The Projected Man. He co-founded Janus films, the distributor of films by Kurosawa, Truffaut, Bergman, Fellini and many others.
Janus is also the parent company of Criterion, which puts out the Criterion Collection discs.
People sometimes bring up riffed films in the Criterion Collection, but every Criterion title was brought to you by a riffed actor.
Lisa Kudrow
John Williams made the music for Daddy-O.
So, his first movie wasn’t his last after all.
Dean Devlin from City Limits worked with Roland Emmerich on their earlier films like ID4.
They did. I just saw Nineteen Eighty-Four (the 1953 British TV production) that starred Peter Cushing and had Donald Pleasance playing the role of Syme.
Demi Moore did pretty well after Master Ninja! Johnathan Demme did Silence of the Lambs after The Incredible Melting Man.
And also has done a bunch of TV series, including The Outpost!
Funny you should mention Murder, She Wrote, but for the sheriff in Laserblast going on to be the sheriff of Cabot Cove was probably the peak of his career. Unless you count appearing as a cab driver in an episode of Columbo.
Didn’t Dame Angela cast a bunch of people in that show just so they would keep their SAG cards and associated health insurance?
AND James Horner gave us that great Wizards of the Lost Kingdom I sound!
(Yeah, I know it was the recycled bit from Battle Beyond the Stars, but STILL.)
James Earl Jones was in City Limits.
What ever happened to that guy?
He had his professional feuds here and there…
Already famous at that point though.
I would still argue that he went on to have the best career after that role.
I saw that Burr DeBenning (DOCTOR! TED! NELSON! from The Incredible Melting Man) played a character in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, so… upgrade? I guess?
Is that really an upgrade?
Okay, maybe a lateral move.
Since Kim Cattrall got mentioned, Robby Benson, also from City Limits, mainly because of his role as the Beast in Disney’s Beauty & The Beast, as he then went on to voice the character in pretty much every follow-up and spin-off that got made, including the Kingdom Hearts franchise, which was fun. That’s job security, right there.
And, strange as it is to say, Bill “Dropo” McCutcheon from Santa Claus Conquers The Martians.
Carla Herd/Sands (Deathstalker & the Warriors from Hell) went on to be US ambassador to Denmark.
And she’s kind of nuts.