Stars you spot in things done before they were stars

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Pamela Anderson in "Home Improvement."

 

No, they're back together. I went to a taping of Two and a Half Men in December (actually, the episode that aired this week), and Denise was walking around with Charlie, even though she didn't appear on the show at all.


If you watch much late night tv, you've probably seen Evangeline Lilly's "Live Links" commercial... http://www.livelinks.com/whatis/commercial/index.html



With regards to the Desperate Housewives on Seinfeld, not only was Teri Hatcher "real and spectacular"; and Brenda Strong was the braless Oh Henry heiress; but Marcia Cross was also the dermatologist who liked to talk about saving lives.

 

My wife's been watching 1st Season reruns of Judging Amy... who showed up as a doctor but Jay Karnes (Dutch Waggenbach on The Shield). In the same episode was a much-thinner Paul Linke (Grossman from CHiPs). It was a character actor fun-fest!

Greg

 

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Law and Order, which has had a bit part for almost everyone in TV today before they were better known. The one episode that sticks out in my mind had Jennifer Garner in a small role before the nose job, but there are dozens of others.

 

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She also played one of Cybil Shepard's daughter in "Cybil" and was one of the witches in the "Missing Ingredient" portion of "Four Rooms".

If you tune in to Gunsmoke or Bondanza on TVLand, you will see a good number of 70's stars. A couple days ago I happened to see the beginning of an episode and there was The Skipper, Alan Hale as a calvary officer.

 

Twilight Zone (The original early 60s incarnation), had a lot of "before they were stars" come through. Two I recall off hand were Jack Klugman and William Shatner (in the famous airplane episode).

 

Yeah, S. Epatha Merkerson (Lt. Van Buren) had a bit part as a cleaning lady whose child was killed (IIRC) back in the first season. I didn't watch the show back then, so it was strange seeing that one on TNT a couple years ago.

 

One of my favorite "Before They Were Stars" movies was Jim Carrey in Once Bitten (1985).

Carrey was a complete unknown when he made that movie, and his rubber-faced lunatic persona was still clearly in development, but threads of it are apparent. It's a pretty entertaining movie!

 

How about George Clooney in several episodes of 'Roseanne'?

 

Evangeline Lilly (Lost) did some party/chat line commercials before she got big. Now they are replaying them a fair amount on some of the basic cable channels. Funny stuff.

Chandra Wilson (Dr Bailey, Grey's Anatomy) was an FBI agent in an episode of L&O:SVU... small part, doesn't even show up on IMDB.

 

George Clooney was a series regular on The Facts of Life a few years before he did Roseanne and he even had a short-lived sitcom (coincidentally called E/R) before Facts of Life. (And after Roseanne, he was on Sisters before finally making it big on ER.)

I'm not sure many people watched or remember E/R the sitcom but FoL was a long-running hit. I had a crush on him even back when he was hanging out with Tootie, but he's just gotten better with age.

 

This is one of my favorites of these.

Can anyone else guess who that is playing Jesus (from Godspell) in the middle of the picture? I'll give you 47 guesses.......

 

Victor Garber. According to imdb, that was his first movie.

(and yes, I knew the answer without going to imdb! )

 

I just saw this one recently and wanted to post it. Luckily I read through before smeeking.

 

Yes it is. I am just now getting into WW and watching the second season and saw "Mike the Plumber" from Desperate Housewives.

 

Just the other night I caught Bob Patterson star Jason Alexander on a rerun of some old show called Seinfeld.

 

One more for now.

I was watching Young Guns 2 the other day and and heard Pat Garrett's voice and looked up... William Peterson(Grissom on CSI) was playing him!!!

 

Even better is Sports Night, which came out the same season, was written by Aaron Sorkin, and has seen a great number of the actors from that show show up on West Wing. Just off the top of my head:

--Rob Lowe's hooker from season 1 played a fill-in host on Sports Night
--The actress who plays Donna on West Wing showed up as a wardrobe consultant on Sports Night who took Peter Krause to task
--Joshua Malina (I believe that's his name), who plays Will on The West Wing, was a regular on Sports Night (and also appeared in The American President, another Sorkin script)
--Felicity Huffman did a couple of episodes of The West Wing (she was a regular on Sports Night)
--Terry Pluto, who's now playing the wife of Matt Santos on The West Wing, was a love interest of one of the anchors on Sports Night.

 

I caught a very young Jonathan Frakes on one of the last episodes of Voyager! with Meeno Peluce.

I also like catching distinctive Canadian actors as they bounce around shows filmed in Vancouver. Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, Sentinel, Dead Like Me and a slew of others are really good for this.

 

Rob Lowe's hooker is also known as Lisa Edelstein, who is currently playing Cuddy on House. (She has a long list of credits and was also one of George's girlfriends on Seinfeld - the girl who got orgasmic when eating risotto).

That would be Teri Polo, who's probably best known from Meet the Parents. I think Aaron Sorkin wanted to help out everyone from Sports Night after it was canceled and offered all of them jobs on TWW if they wanted it. You're certainly right there was a lot of crossover between the two shows.

Speaking of Sports Night, I just saw Peter Krause in a rerun of Seinfeld - he played the white supremacist going to the rally in "The Limo" episode. (I know he was a regular on Cybill also, but I'm not sure if that was before or after he did Seinfeld.)

Is there anyone working in TV now who didn't guest star on Seinfeld? The list of (now) prominent guest stars is so long and most of them weren't well known at the time they did the show.