Over the years, science fiction movies have launched
more than a few budding actors into superstardom and nowadays,
being cast in a tentpole sci-fi flick is almost guaranteed to launch your Hollywood career.
Sadly, however, things don't always turn out so well. Just ask these guys.
Though she had no prior acting experience,
Carrie Henn beat out hundreds of other candidates for the role of Newt in Aliens.
"We better get back cause it'll be dark soon. They mostly come at night. Mostly."
Henn entered the production a complete unknown but,
before long, the whole world knew who she was. As Aliens grossed over $130 million worldwide,
the film, and characters like Newt, were pretty much everywhere.
It was the perfect launchpad for Henn to pursue a long and successful career as an actor.
But to this day, Aliens remains Henn's only acting credit.
Henn's sparse filmography was a deliberate choice on her part:
After finishing principal photography on Aliens, she decided to opt out of Hollywood altogether,
and ended up pursuing a career as an educator. In 2000, she earned her degree in liberal
studies and child development, and today she teaches fourth-graders in Northern California.
While Henn has made a conscious decision to forgo an acting career, she still appears on
panels at fan conventions, and frequently keeps in touch with her Aliens co-star Sigourney Weaver.
Speaking about her friendship with Weaver, Henn told Wired:
"She took me under her wings when we were filming,
because I was so inexperienced. I can't describe my relationship with her, because
she's more than just a friend what you see on screen is genuinely how we feel about each other."
Henn may have left the world of film, but her enduring friendship with Weaver
proves Aliens has had a lasting impact on her life, one that still affects her to this day.
Linda Hamilton never intended for her career to be defined by her
work as Sarah Connor in the Terminator movies. As she told the New York Times:
"Did I think I was going to become an action-adventure star? Not once! I was
going to be a Shakespearean actress, and with Terminator, it all took a left turn."
Nonetheless, both Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day
cemented Hamilton's reputation as an action movie star. Unfortunately, Hamilton wasn't
enamored with the roles she was offered in the wake of Terminator 2's success. She recalled:
"Nobody looked at it like, 'She can do anything.'
Instead it was, 'She's going to eat us alive!' People really did not know what to do with me."
Since her lead role in Dante's Peak in 1997, Hamilton has primarily kept a low
profile as an actor, preferring instead to enjoy a kind of semi-retirement from acting.
That retirement was briefly broken by Hamilton in 2019,
however, when she reprised her role as Sarah Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate.
Though intended to spawn a number of sequels, Fate's $261.1 million
worldwide box office haul put those follow-up plans on ice. Hamilton, for one,
isn't interested in returning again to play Sarah Connor. Speaking to People magazine, she said:
"I would be quite happy to never return. [...] I would really love to be done."
Hayden Christensen is most famous for taking on the role of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars:
Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
While he earned considerable praise for his dramatic performances in films such as Shattered
Glass, his turns in the Star Wars prequels were widely reviled. He even ended up winning the
Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actor twice for his portrayal of the Jedi-turned-Sith lord.
"I don't like sand. It's coarse, rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere."
The high-profile status of the Star Wars movies eventually led to Christensen taking
a break from Hollywood. He later told The Los Angeles Times:
"I guess I felt like I had this great thing in Star Wars that provided all these opportunities
and gave me a career. But it all kind of felt a little too handed
to me. I didn't want to go through life feeling like I was just riding a wave."
Since the Star Wars prequels wrapped up, Christensen has only appeared in a handful
of movies, such as 90 Minutes in Heaven and Jumper. And, perhaps surprisingly,
Christensen's main focus has been on running his own farm. He tells the Toronto Star:
"It's a hobby, but I want to have the appearance of being a proper farmer.
I'm trying to figure it out. It's all new to me, but I would eventually like
it to be a fully operational farm with livestock and different crops."
Natasha Henstridge
When he sat down with Variety to discuss his latest film Species,
producer Frank Mancuso Jr. said:
"It's not a movie that calls for stars. We're going to try and put as much money as we can
below the line and allow the effects and the creature to be the highlights of the film."
This approach led to newcomer Natasha Henstridge securing the role of the alien/human hybrid Sil
in Species. The movie even ended up grossing a respectable $113 million worldwide.
Sadly, Henstridge struggled to escape the shadow of Sil in her future work.
Speaking with Review Graveyard, the actor said:
"There are things involved in being remembered for a particular role that people have a hard
time letting go of. And when it comes to making other projects that can be tough."
This challenge was reflected in her first post-Species endeavors, such as Maximum Risk
and Species 2, neither of which garnered much in the way of box office or critical success.
Since 2008, Henstridge has only appeared in a handful of independent movies and a few
TV shows. But, as it turns out, typecasting may not have been the only reason she's
kept out of the spotlight: In November 2017, she was one of six women in a Los
Angeles Times story to accuse filmmaker Brett Ratner of sexual harassment and misconduct.
Alex Pettyfer's career as a leading man kicked off with a pair of 2011 sci-fi films.
The first was I Am Number Four, a cosmic take on the Twilight formula
of a fantastical being falling in love with a mortal human.
He received at least some praise for his work in the role, with the Guardian noting that:
"The pretty, glowering Alex Pettyfer plays a good extraterrestrial."
Unfortunately, Number Four never became the next Twilight. It was released to theaters in February
2011 to a worldwide box office total of just under $150 million. Pettyfer's other 2011 sci-fi movie,
In Time, fared only slightly better at the box office. These commercial struggles led to
Pettyfer's career as a sci-fi leading man being short-lived. Save for the Netflix series The
I-Land and the upcoming thriller Warning, Pettyfer has avoided the genre entirely since 2011,
focusing on independent fare ever since the release of Endless Love in February 2014.
Pettyfer's shift away from sci-fi fare and major Hollywood productions was a
conscious choice, too. In an interview with VMan, he said:
"I was disillusioned by Hollywood at the time, but now I've come to accept
that's just the way things are: it's called show business, not show art."
Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers was always going to need the right leading
man to pull off its biting satirical tone. As Verhoeven told the A.V. Club:
"[It will be] playing with fascism or fascist imagery to point out certain aspects of American
society... of course, the movie is about 'Let's all go to war and let's all die."
That meant the lead character, Johnny Rico, would need to be played by
somebody who looked like they had walked right out of an army recruitment poster.
So who better for the part than Casper Van Dien,
a man who once recalled to People Magazine that his high school classmates called him "Ken Doll"?
Van Dien fit the intended aesthetic of Starship Troopers like a glove. Unfortunately,
it proved far more challenging for Van Dien to fit into other successful leading man roles.
After Troopers, he headlined box office duds like The Omega Code and Sanctimony; by 2006, he was
starring in projects as low-key as the Hallmark Channel movie The Curse of King Tut's Tomb.
In recent years, Van Dien has shifted his focus from leading man roles to directing,
helming a number of movies, including Sleeping Beauty and The Last Bid. He told Anthem Magazine:
"I would love to direct more. I hope I get to do that again in the future.
I would love to direct something that's a little more personal to me or an action movie."
Saffron Burrows' initial foray into sci-fi was less than ideal:
She played the co-lead opposite Freddie Prinze Jr. in Wing Commander,
which received scathing reviews — even from its own stars. Prinze himself told Movieline:
"I can't stand Wing Commander. I can't watch one scene of that movie."
But Burrows would make another stab at headlining sci-fi movies with the
lead role of Dr. Susan McAlester in Deep Blue Sea,
a shark thriller that was significantly better-received than Wing Commander.
In the wake of Deep Blue Sea, Burrows rarely returned to sci-fi storytelling,
save for the occasional guest role such as the recurring part she took on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
In recent years, Burrows has balanced recurring TV roles with her lifelong
commitment to activism and progressive politics. She tells The Guardian:
"I do have a penchant for the bureaucracy of union conferences, motions, and speeches. Certainly
there's a huge amount of nitty-gritty that some people would find tedious but I might enjoy."
Between The Terminator, Aliens, and The Abyss,
Michael Biehn was a prominent face in sci-fi movies during the 1980s.
"It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop. Ever."
To hear Biehn tell it, however, he was never really a movie star.
As he explained to The Hollywood Reporter:
"People always talk about me being an '80s star. I was not an '80s star. Bruce Willis was
an '80s star. Tom Cruise was an '80s star. [...] Those guys were making $20 million [a picture].
I never even got $1 million. I kind of liked it that way."
In the wake of those big hits, Biehn opted to slow things down,
rather than pursue Hollywood A-list status. Over the last 30 years, he's only appeared in
a handful of major films, such as Tombstone and Planet Terror. Rather than headline an endless
succession of star vehicles, he's consciously chosen to put his family life first. Biehn says:
"The amount of movies Bruce Willis makes. I don't see how you can live
a normal life where you see your kids all the time, you're taking them to school and
baseball practice and you're coaching their teams. You're in their lives."
While Biehn kept out of the spotlight in recent years,
his role in the second season of The Mandalorian sees him finally returning to the world of sci-fi,
the genre that first helped him kick off his big-screen career.
T.J. Miller is as surprised to have become a movie star as anybody else.
As he once told The Hollywood Reporter:
"I'm not an actor; I'm a comedian [...] I hoodwinked
Hollywood into giving me a career in this."
That career began with Miller playing mostly unseen camera operator Hud in the sci-fi/horror
film Cloverfield, and in the years following, he was a common sight in sci-fi fare: He played the
role of Weasel in the two Deadpool movies, Fred in Big Hero 6, and i-R0k in Ready Player One.
Miller's various sci-fi roles frequently see the actor taking on the role of comic relief.
For example, on his casting in Deadpool, Miller told USA Today:
"[The producers] all asked if there was anyone out there who looks like his superhero power
is spilling mustard on his shirt... And each of them, each at once, said 'T.J. Miller.'"
But Miller's film career has been derailed by a number of real-world scandals.
These have included allegedly sending a transphobic email to a film critic,
as well as allegations of sexual assault and workplace misconduct. On top of all that, Miller
was arrested in April 2018 for allegedly calling in a fake bomb threat. These events have led
to his career opportunities dwindling, including losing out on a role in a potential X-Force movie.
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