Hollywood is an ever-changing landscape, and nobody knows that better than action stars
of years gone by.
From world karate champions to kung fu prodigies, these actors were born to be action heroes,
but for one reason or another, they all wore out their welcome in the movie business.
Michael Dudikoff spent years feeding off bit parts before he won the role of Private Joe
T. Armstrong in 1985's American Ninja, which marked the beginning of his time as the golden
boy of Cannon Films.
In the years that followed, Cannon’s owners managed to keep him at the B-film studio by
promising him all kinds of meaty roles.
Dudikoff told Coming Soon,
“There were so many things I was told I was going to be.
I was going to be Superman; I was going to be Spider-Man…
That never did happen, but they were working on it.”
Instead of playing superheroes, he fronted such schlock classics as Avenging Force and
Platoon Leader in the years following American Ninja.
Cannon bought the rights to Superman at a steal, but they managed to convince Christopher
Reeve to reprise the role in the critically panned: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
Dudikoff went on to make more American Ninja movies, which he remains best known for today.
In his own words,
"I'd like to work a little more, but I'm here."
When Danish model Brigitte Nielsen was offered the chance to transition into movies, she
had a tough decision to make.
Her first marriage was over and she had a young child to look after, but the part was
too big to decline.
She told The Guardian,
"I let my parents bring up my son Julian to pursue my Hollywood dream…
I got the opportunity to appear in a movie called Red Sonja with Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Soon after portraying the sword-wielding Marvel heroine, Nielsen appeared in Rocky IV with
Schwarzenegger's rival, Sylvester Stallone.
Sly became her second husband and they starred alongside each other in 1986's Cobra before
calling it quits.
The statuesque blonde went on to appear in 1987's Beverly Hills Cop II and fronted a
number of largely forgettable action movies throughout the '90s, but the A-list status
she coveted in those early days slowly slipped away.
Today, Nielsen is best known for her stints on various reality TV shows and recently made
headlines in June 2018, when she gave birth to her fifth child at the age of 54.
"And I am the happiest mother.
I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been."
She might not be getting the biggest roles anymore, but she remains a superwoman in real
life.
Blade certainly wasn't perfect, but Wesley Snipes' charisma and physical prowess turned
the Marvel vampire movie into a cult classic that would spawn two sequels, one that was
relatively enjoyable, and one that was downright awful.
Snipes' behavior on the set of Blade: Trinity is now a thing of legend.
Speaking to AV Club, Patton Oswalt revealed how the leading man fell out with director
David S. Goyer big time.
"The fact that that movie exists, puts it above Citizen Kane."
According to Oswalt, things got so bad that Snipes would apparently only communicate with
the director through Post-It notes, signing off each one with "From Blade."
On-set feuds turned out to be the least of Snipes' worries.
He wound up serving two years behind bars after he was found guilty of tax evasion,
bringing his time as an A-list action star to an end.
He had a stint as a linebacker for the Oakland Raiders in the early '70s, but Carl Weathers
retired from football after catching the acting bug.
He paid his dues in small roles for film and television until Rocky came along.
His character, flamboyant boxer Apollo Creed continued to pop up in the franchise until
his death in the ring in 1985's Rocky IV.
The death of Apollo Creed didn't mark the end for Weathers, however.
He went on to appear alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987's Predator.
He led his very own action outing the following year with Action Jackson, but the movie was
torn to shreds by the critics.
Weathers defended the film in a 2009 interview with Bullz-Eye, saying interview with
"I still maintain today that it could've been a better movie had we taken a little bit longer
to develop the screenplay.
A lot of people liked it.
In Germany, it was huge!"
Success in Europe wasn't enough to convince the studio to make a sequel, however, and
a planned Action Jackson franchise was canned.
Weathers still makes a living as a character actor today,
"His name is Carl Weathers, and he’s my new acting teacher."
...but his time as an action hero is well and truly over.
Jet Li was just 11 years old when a producer stumbled across him giving a kung fu demonstration
in Hong Kong.
Impressed with Li's skills, the producer came back to visit him every year to check his
progress.
He was 17 when the exec decided he was old enough to start making movies, and before
long, he was a star in his native China.
Li's first American movie was 1998's Lethal Weapon 4.
He played a villain, but he didn't have to wait long for his first hero role.
In 2000, Romeo Must Die was a modest hit for Li.
The tragic death of Li's co-star Aaliyah put the idea of a proposed sequel to bed.
Li remained a hot property in Hollywood for a while, and was even offered a role in the
Matrix franchise, but the actor and his family were almost killed in the Boxing Day tsunami
of 2004.
Seeing the destruction first hand made him want to dedicate more time to philanthropy
rather than filmmaking.
After struggling through school with undiagnosed dyslexia, Billy Blanks turned away from the
books and started to focus on martial arts.
If he couldn't succeed academically he wanted to excel at karate instead.
He told CNN,
"Sooner or later, I started to see myself progress.
The next thing you know, I got my black belt before everybody in the class."
He went on to become a seven-time world karate champion and attained black belts in several
other martial arts before he decided he needed a new challenge: Hollywood.
Blanks had the fighting skills to make it as an action star, but his trouble with reading
proved problematic.
Luckily, his wife helped him memorize scripts and soon enough, Blanks was rubbing shoulders
with some of action’s biggest stars, appearing in Jet Li's The Master, Jean-Claude Van Damme's
A.W.O.L, and the Bruce Willis-led action comedy The Last Boy Scout.
In 1992 he was finally rewarded with his first lead part, though Talons of the Eagle wasn't
exactly star-maker material.
Hollywood forgot about Blanks over the years that followed, and today he's best-known as
the inventor of Tae Bo, a total body fitness system that he apparently came up with while
listening to the Rocky soundtrack.
He could have been a household name today, but Kenpō expert Jeff Speakman failed to
capitalize on his "strong and entertaining" debut in 1991's The Perfect Weapon.
Speakman had a three-picture deal with Paramount, but changes were afoot within the studio,
and the project that was being developed as his follow-up vehicle was accidentally sold
to Fox, who refused to sell it back.
Speakman told The Action Elite,
"They made that movie, which was supposed to be my second movie at Paramount, and the
name of that movie was Speed.
It was the movie that made Keanu Reeves a star...We lost it.
And consequently, there went my career."
The movie that Speakman wound up doing instead two years later was Street Knight.
Two years might not seem like a significant absence, but countless similar movies came
out in that time.
Street Knight got lost in the noise, and so did Speakman, who stopped acting in 2006.
He was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2013, but he did what he does best and fought it:
by 2014, he'd been given the all clear.