I have some relatives who are child actors; very good ones, by all accounts, starring in big budget movies and Emmy-winning TV shows. They say they want to be actors when they grow up, which is nice but let’s see how marketable they are after their voices break. I suppose I should be encouraging (as if their success isn't encouragement enough) but I have on occasion said that one of the things I know about success in Hollywood is this: looks aren't enough; talent isn't enough; luck isn't enough; heck, looks, talent and luck aren't enough.
The career of almost every successful actor or actress begins the same way, finding the right agent who got them to the right casting person who put them in the right role. Even then Hollywood is full of dead ends, one hit wonders who had a big role and then had no second act. Remember the guy who played Urkel? I've seen him on TV, but not playing a character I remember by name. I thought Emma Caulfield was going to be the breakout star from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer; she had looks, she had comic timing, so she’ll find a role requiring both those things and take off. I forgot one small detail—because there are so few actresses who are gorgeous and can do comedy, there are very few roles requiring actresses who are gorgeous and can do comedy.
One actor who’s had success but I felt should have been a bigger star is Brice Campbell. He had rugged good looks, with a distinctive lantern jaw separating him from the standard Hollywood hunk. He had talent, great comedic timing combined with a palpable intelligence. And he had luck—in college he was buddies with Sam Raimi, who became a notable director in Hollywood, from his low-budget, Evil Dead origins to big-budget blockbusters like the Spiderman series. Few neophyte actors have as good a debut as Campbell did playing horror icon Ash in The Evil Dead trilogy.
His big shot at the brass ring was playing the lead in the TV series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. on the then-developing FOX network in 1993. It was a rare case of hard-to-cast role meeting the perfect actor. Brisco County utilized Campbell’s rugged visage, self-deprecating sense of humor, and physical skills perfectly as he played a bounty hunter in the late 1800’s tracking down bad guys and occasionally crossing paths with a mysterious “orb” that was ultimately revealed to be from the future. The show developed a cult following, but FOX cancelled it after one season even though they made the unusual decision to order five additional episodes after the original standard order of 22. (I've written more on Brisco County elsewhere; it was a brilliantly conceived show undone by the fact that few writers in Hollywood knew how to write westerns in the 1990's).
Campbell had some success working in New Zealand on Hercules, Xena, and Jack of All Trades, took surprisingly small roles (cameos, really) in Raimi’s Spiderman movies, and eventually achieved some steady success in Burn Notice as the main character’s best friend, a washed up, boozy ex-Marine. He survived to have a long career, but he never had the breakout success he deserved.
Compare Campbell to an actor with very similar gifts, Nathan Fillion. Fillion is also handsome but not gorgeous by Hollywood standards, with a gift for light comedy. Fillion early on fell in with a horror auteur with a future, Joss Whedon, appearing in Season Seven of Buffy as an evil priest. And he was perfectly cast in a TV series, Firefly, that was quickly cancelled despite the devoted following of millions of fans.
Where their careers diverged was that Fillion got a second bite at the apple. He was cast in Castle, an ABC light mystery series. Castle, about a best-selling crime novelist who consulted with the NYPD, was initially dismissed by critics as “Murder, He Wrote,” a pale imitation of Murder, She Wrote, the long running CBS mystery show about a crime writer who solved murders. But Castle allowed Fillion to do his light banter shtick with his gorgeous cop partner, played by Stana Katic. Their chemistry, combined with eccentric plot lines and an engaging supporting cast, turned the show into an inexplicably long running hit.
From everything I've heard, Fillion’s success is well-deserved. He is invariably described as one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, and he is a full member of the Whedon-verse (his Dogberry is one of the highlights of Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing) and Joss Whedon, another of the nicest guys in Hollywood, does not work with jerks (at least not more than once).
Bruce Campbell has had a great career, but he was capable of more. He just never got the chance. There was a recent tongue in cheek feature at The Nerdist where he jokes that he was up for the leads in Iron Man, The Matrix, and Oliver Stone’s JFK. I can’t imagine him going “Whoa!” better than Keanu Reeves, but it is interesting to imagine.
Casting is one of the biggest mysteries in Hollywood. No one can predict when two actors will have “chemistry.” How can a small budget film like American Graffiti feature future stars like Harrison Ford and Suzanne Somers in microscopically small roles? Luck doesn't even begin to explain it.
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