If many wondered how some hollywood stars got there start in movie acting here are some examples of some you probably know the movies by now when you watched them..
Jennifer Connelly (Phenomena, 1985)
Role: Jennifer Corvino
Long before she won an Oscar for her role in the overrated melodrama
A Beautiful Mind, Connelly made her starring debut in Dario Argento’s 1985 horror/mystery
Phenomena, playing a teenage girl able to communicate with insects.
When she goes to live at a Swiss boarding school, she becomes caught up in the search for a vicious serial killer. Interesting bit of IMDB trivia: after going on to star in studio films like
Labyrinth,
Career Opportunities, and
The Rocketeer, she would next return to horror in her role as…an extra in
Witchcraft V? I guess everybody suffers from low points in their career.
Related Quote: [talking about the films she did in the beginning of her career]: “You don't want to get rid of your experiences, because they're your experiences - good or bad - and you need them, but it would be great if they weren't on the video shelf!”
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC0Zsre7p00&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Phenomena[/ame]
Johnny Depp (A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984)
Role: Glen Lantz
He commands $20 million a picture and is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but horror fans will always remember Depp for playing Heather Langenkamp’s boyfriend in Wes Craven’s ’84 classic
A Nightmare on Elm Street. Interestingly, the friend he rode to the audition with was none other than Jackie Earle Haley, the new Freddy in Warner Bros.’ upcoming remake. Hey, I don’t know if it’s true, but it makes for a damn good story.
Related Quote: [about a scene in
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)] “I love this stuff. The kid falls asleep and it's all over, he's sucked right into the bed and spit out as blood. His bloody body rises straight out and then topples over, too. I heard somebody talk about having a dummy shot out of the bed, but I said, ‘Hey, I want to do this! It'll be fun! Lemme do it!’"
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QmgrX7ZVJw&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - A nightmare on elm street - johnny depp bed scene[/ame]
Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire, 1994)
Role: Claudia
Ok, so this adaptation of the 1976 Anne Rice novel isn’t exactly a small little horror movie, but nevertheless it was Dunst’s first major role, in a pretty great performance as Claudia, a 30-something-year-old vampire stuck in the body of a child. Arguably it’s still her best performance in a career that’s seen her transform from eerily mature child actor to object of fanboy ridicule, but regardless she’s gone on to have an illustrious career – and
Interview served as a pretty colossal launching pad.
Related Quote: (On kissing Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) ): "It was horrible, I hated it. Brad and Tom were like my big brothers on the set, so it was like kissing your big brother - totally gross."
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEY6taM15iE&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Interview With The Vampire[/ame]
John Travolta (Carrie, 1976)
Role: Billy Nolan
Although in his early career he’s most closely associated with his role as Tony Manero in
Saturday Night Fever, Travolta made his big debut (after a bit part in another horror film,
The Devil’s Rain) in director Brian de Palma’s
Carrie at age 22. In the film he plays Billy Nolan, the dumb boyfriend of teen-queen Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen) who helps orchestrate the climactic prank on telekinetic loner Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), leading to famously disastrous results. It’s merely a footnote in his megastar career, but a memorable one.
Related Quote: “I wanted to work with Brian De Palma. I knew the film would be interesting and attract a lot of attention.”
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oihhi6CavmQ&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Carrie (1976) Amy Irving notices suspicious activity at prom[/ame]
Paul Walker (Monster in the Closet, 1986)
Role: ‘Professor’ Bennett
Some things never change: Paul Walker was making crap movies then, and he’s making crap movies now. Although to be fair,
Monster in the Closet is a low-budget Troma production that at least has a sense of humor about itself, which instantly raises it a notch or two above those retarded
Fast and the Furious movies. In the film Walker has a small role as ‘Professor’ Bennett, a nerdy kid tormented by – what else? – the monster in the closet. Oh yeah, Fergie is in it too – before she got all that face work and joined some stupid hip-hop group.
Related Quote: “It's not about working anymore, its about doing work I can be proud of.” (You mean like
Snow Dogs?)
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZtGOef5aCg&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - MONSTER IN THE CLOSET[/ame]
Sharon Stone (Deadly Blessing, 1981)
Role: Lana Marcus
She had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it part in Woody Allen’s
Stardust Memories the previous year, but Stone didn’t enjoy her first starring role until Wes Craven’s little-seen 1981 horror flick
Deadly Blessing, about three women caught up in a series of murders perpetrated by an Amish cult known as the Hittites.
Stone plays Lana, one of the three women forced to fight off the religious fanatics in a battle to the death that includes a dream sequence where Stone’s character has a spider dropped into her mouth. Unfortunately for the actress it was one of Craven’s lesser efforts, and after toiling in relative obscurity for years, she finally broke through 11 years later as the femme fatale in Paul Verhoeven’s
Basic Instinct.
Related Quote: [from a 1990 interview]“I was this cute young girl with a nice butt who was a terrible actress. But I've worked real hard to become a good actress and now I think I'm starting to reap the benefits of that hard work.”
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0WIy40lHGk&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Deadly Blessing(1981)[/ame]
Tom Hanks (He Knows You’re Alone, 1980)
Role: Elliot
Hanks’ role in this
Halloween-influenced slasher directed by Armando Mastroianni is relatively small, but large enough for the purposes of this article. The double Oscar winner here appears as Elliot, a college student who goes all meta, Jamie Kennedy in
Scream style, when he explains to his costars the reasons why people are afraid of horror movies.
As for the plot, it’s about a bride-murdering psychopath stalking a soon-to-be-married young woman and her two friends. Apparently, Hanks proved so charismatic on-screen that the director rewrote the script to keep his character alive. Far from the astronomical salaries he would later command, according to IMDB he was paid $800 for his work on the movie.
Related Quote: [from earlier in his career] “I've made over 20 movies, and 5 of them are good.” (Let’s just assume
He Knows You’re Alone wasn’t one of the five he was talking about.)
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnI8Lv9NjRE&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Tom Hanks in a horror movie[/ame]
Eva Mendes (Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, 1999
Role: Kir
She may be a glamorous sexpot and leading lady now, but in 1998 Eva Mendes was “Kir”, a beautiful teenager who falls in with the titular deranged kiddie cult in
Children of the Corn V after getting stranded with her friends. Later on in the film, her character sacrifices herself by jumping off a silo into a raging fire lit by the little delinquents. (No, crybaby, that did not merit a “spoiler alert”. It’s
Children of the Corn V.)
Related Quote: “I love horror movies.
The Shining is my favorite.”
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPd0YZkyhwA&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Children Of The Corn 5: Fields Of Terror (199
Trailer[/ame]
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