30 Times Actors Made Waves While Starting Their Careers Only To Fizzle Out Soon After

Let's start with the fact that everything is known in comparison. And you can’t call a person a loser just because you expected multimillion-dollar contracts per role, and they now receive “only” a couple of hundred thousand bucks for a movie. And almost all the people on this list continue acting in movies, remain in demand on the market, and, in general, have achieved a decent place in the profession. And the fact that once someone expected them to become "The Next Big Thing" - well, sorry, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what's inside.

Let's take, for example, Dane DeHaan, who is also in this compilation. Yes, in the first half of the last decade, he was perceived as a rising star, with critics admiring his acting both in Hollywood and on Broadway. It seemed that the next stop for him would be the Oscar... But it wasn't - in 2017 it was Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets which nearly failed, and after that, for six years, the actor did not get a single starring role in movies, and mostly acted in serials.

At the same time, his acting hasn't gotten worse - for example, in Oppenheimer, Dane looks completely decent against the background of his superstar colleagues. It's just the way things were. On the other hand, DeHaan is 37 years old - by Hollywood actors' standards, that's almost youth, so another breakthrough may well happen... Who knows?

"This list mostly features actors who have starred in iconic teen movies or TV series, and a lot of the charm of their young characters has been transferred to the performers," says Dmytro Kosygin, a film director and cameraman from Ukraine, to whom Bored Panda reached out for a comment. “It happens, and it has been the whole history of cinema - literally in any decade there were actors and actresses who were predicted to have a superstar future, and they turned out to be 'just' big professionals. Nothing more. In the end, only four acting Oscars are given out a year - you can’t get enough of everyone."

“On the other hand, the history of cinema has confirmed many times that miracles happen here. For example, John Travolta, who was almost forgotten in the eighties, regained his superstar status thanks to filming in Pulp Fiction, and Robert Downey Jr., who would definitely have ended up on a list like this somewhere in the mid-'90s, over time, not only managed to triumphantly come back, but also became what he was seen as in his youth - one of the main stars of Hollywood. Therefore, who knows - maybe one of the people listed here will get the Oscar in ten years or so?" Dmytro presumes.

However, this is another reason to scroll this selection to the very end - because then, many years later, if one of the people listed here achieves stunning success, you can always proudly say: “Yeah, I remember how everyone doubted them!" So just read this list, add more names in the comments, in case you remember any more, and maybe go rewatch Twilight or The Hunger Games - but not before you've read this post to the end, okay?