Martini barely speaks in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and that was Danny DeVito's entry point into film at 30 years old. He'd already played the role on stage in a 1971 off-Broadway revival before the movie came calling. The 1975 film swept all five major Oscars, a feat only two other movies have matched. DeVito's name sat far down the cast list, well below Nicholson's and Fletcher's. | © United Artists
Gary Oldman's first credited film role came in 1982's Remembrance, a low-budget British drama about Navy recruits set in Plymouth. He played Daniel, one of several young men killing time before deployment. The movie barely surfaced outside the UK and has stayed obscure enough that most retrospectives skip it entirely. Three years later Oldman was playing Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy, a jump few actors manage that fast. | © Movienet Film
Before three of her twenty-one Oscar nominations, Meryl Streep took a small television role in The Deadliest Season, a 1977 CBS movie about a hockey player charged with murder. She played Anne Marie, the wife watching her husband's career curdle into violence. Michael Moriarty led the film, and Streep's part was modest next to his. It aired the same year she made her feature debut in Julia. | ©
Wendell "Tex" Cobb doesn't sound like a role built for a future character-actor legend, and in 1986's Parting Glances, Steve Buscemi treated it like one anyway. The film followed a day in the life of a gay couple in New York, shot for barely a few hundred thousand dollars. Buscemi played a musician dying of AIDS, a performance that got singled out even in an otherwise unnoticed release. It was his first film role, four years before Reservoir Dogs existed as a script. | ©
Gawain is easy to miss in Excalibur, buried under a cast that includes Helen Mirren and Patrick Stewart. Liam Neeson was 29 when John Boorman cast him in the 1981 Arthurian epic, his first significant film credit. The shoot took place in Ireland, and Neeson has said the mud and cold were as real as the swordplay looked. He wouldn't land a role people actually remember him for until Schindler's List arrived twelve years later. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Kevin Costner's part in Night Shift got cut down to almost nothing, and if you blink during his scene as John Logan you'll miss it entirely. Ron Howard directed the film in 1982, three years before Costner had a role with actual lines worth counting. Reportedly most of his dialogue ended up on the cutting room floor. He wouldn't get a real showcase until Silverado came along in 1985. | ©
Sean Connery gets top billing in The Anderson Tapes, but the 1971 heist film also marks Christopher Walken's first screen credit as a small-time crook named Chris. Sidney Lumet directed it, working from Lawrence Sanders' novel of the same name. Walken barely registers next to Connery's star wattage here. Within a decade he'd have an Oscar for The Deer Hunter. | © Columbia Pictures
Frank Sinatra plays the lead detective in The First Deadly Sin, hunting a killer through 1980 New York City. Bruce Willis shows up unbilled as a background patron in a bar scene, credited only as Tony. The film was Sinatra's final theatrical starring role. Willis wouldn't be a household name until Moonlighting premiered on ABC five years later. | © Filmways Pictures
Death Wish gave Jeff Goldblum his first film credit in 1974, billed simply as Freak #1. Charles Bronson stars as a vigilante gunning down muggers across New York, and Goldblum plays one of the attackers early in the film. Michael Winner directed the picture on a budget under three million dollars. Goldblum's entire scene runs a few minutes at most. | © Paramount Pictures
Perry King and Henry Winkler carry most of The Lords of Flatbush, a 1974 drama about a Brooklyn street gang in the 1950s. Sylvester Stallone plays Stanley Rosiello, one of the gang members, and even helped rewrite parts of the script uncredited. The film was shot on a shoestring budget in Brooklyn locations. Two years later, Stallone would write and star in Rocky. | © Columbia Pictures
Tom Hanks made his film debut as Elliot in He Knows You're Alone, a 1980 slasher about a killer targeting brides. He's on screen for a handful of scenes and doesn't survive to the end. The budget ran under a million dollars, and nobody involved expected it to matter later. Hanks got paid scale and moved on to television work almost immediately. | © MGM
Samuel L. Jackson appears in Coming to America in one scene, credited simply as Hold-Up Man. He robs the McDowell's restaurant at gunpoint before Eddie Murphy's father talks him down. The film came out in 1988, and Jackson was already 39 years old with a career full of small parts behind him. He wouldn't get real recognition until Quentin Tarantino cast him in Pulp Fiction six years later. | © Paramount Pictures
Ask someone to name Morgan Freeman's first screen credit, and almost nobody gets it right. It's a 1968 television movie called Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, and he's billed as Man on the Street. The role has no name and maybe a few seconds of footage. Freeman was 31 at the time, still years from any part that stuck. | © Columbia Pictures
Colonel Lucas is barely a character, just a name Harrison Ford attaches to a suit and a briefcase in The Conversation. Francis Ford Coppola cast him in this small role in 1974, three years before Star Wars existed. Ford has almost no dialogue and functions mostly as a corporate threat lurking in the background. He was still working as a carpenter on the side to pay the bills. | © Paramount Pictures
Jack Nicholson's first leading role came in a movie so obscure that even film buffs mix up the title: The Cry Baby Killer, released in 1958. He plays Jimmy Wallace, a teenager who takes hostages after a fight spirals out of control. Roger Corman produced it for next to nothing, and Nicholson took the part because nobody else wanted it. It's the kind of movie that exists mainly because his name is attached to it now. | © Allied Artists Pictures
Before the fame, plenty of A-listers cut their teeth on forgettable bit parts and background roles nobody remembers. Here are 15 famous actors who started out playing characters no one recalls.
