Actors who only appeared in one movie

Checking IMDb even the most minor character actor will have dozens of credits, but sometimes you get the odd one where they appear in one movie and that's it. Something fascinating about it, what happened to put them off? Bad experience with the director, got stiffed in the credits, looked too fat on the big screen? Whatever the reason, list them here.

Start with Emmanuel Schotte who not only was the lead in Bruno Dumont's 1999 bleak crime 'thriller' 'Humanite', even won best actor at Cannes.

http://sensesofcinema.com/assets/uploads/2016/09/4.-Emmanuel-Schotte-in-L-humanite.jpg

Maria Callas in Pasolini's Medea

(her 3 other credited shorts are all opera-perf-related i believe)

Dumont's got form as pretty much all of the cast of 'La vie de Jesus' never appeared in anything else.

Eleonora Duse in Cenere.

Duse initially had hopes for Cenere to open a new career in film acting. But upon seeing the finished film, she was disappointed in both the production and her performance. "I made the same mistake that nearly everyone has made," she said after viewing herself on screen. "But something quite different is needed. I am too old for it. Isn't it a pity?"[1] Duse would later write to the French singer Yvette Guilbert with the request not to see “that stupid thing, because you’ll find nothing, or almost nothing, of me in that film.”[3]

https://assets.mubi.com/images/film/37656/image-w856.jpg

... tho it turns out he was in an episode of Mannix, playing, er, Neil Diamond.

... but maybe that belongs in another thread, Musicians who only appeared in one movie

along similar lines, Pavarotti in Yes, Giorgio, cept there was a film of Rigoletto

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/40/Who_Are_You_Polly_Magoo_poster.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Are_You,_Polly_Maggoo%3F

This guy I work with was in Omen 2 as a kid, hated it, never acted again: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0232191/

nadine nortier, and several other bresson actors i assume

other kids too, like Charlie in Willy Wonka

The young gunman who kills Keith Carradine on the bridge in McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a mysterious person named Manfred Schulz who has never appeared in anything else

Yes, a lot of child actors decided they didn't want to act after all. (xp)

Not quite only one movie but Harold Russell won an Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives then was in nothing else until the 80s.

Upon completion of the film, Wyler told Russell to return to school since there "weren't many roles for actors without hands."

Stefan Güttler

http://images3.cinema.de/imedia/0890/5310890,Izl068PjSE8jbcaBkv6RFSaO5rkQiKrrMPyRyycqUv7+rb7uv2tsKyQsxSaYJctRZ5rJIEytDbP_o8xedKHyuA==.jpg

Herzog uses a lot of non-actors (or did), so no doubt there are others.

The classic:

'Woman who urinates on herself' from Threads. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of other actors from that film that have no other credits, but none shall be remembered like Anne Sellors.

John Sweet was a US Army sergeant serving in the UK in WWII. He wasn't a professional actor but was spotted by Michael Powell in a touring production of "Our Town" and was just what Powell was looking for to represent an American serviceman discovering the joys and hidden treasures of the English countryside. His only film appearance was in A Canterbury Tale (1944) and he returned to teaching in America after the war.

nominally the lead in one of the greatest (British) movies ever made.

carrie henn never acted again after aliens iirc

The titular and somewhat iconic Man From Planet X:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/14/80/f6/1480f69afa1e983b498ffedf4dbe1fda.jpg

Actor Pat Goldin and dwarf actor Billy Curtis have both been rumored to be the unknown actor who played the role of the alien space visitor in the film.[7][8] However, Robert Clarke, who is frequently named as the source of the Pat Goldin rumour, never actually knew the name of the actor who played the role of the alien, nor did the other cast members, including Margaret Field and William Schallert.[9][10] Furthermore, the unknown actor who played the role was noticeably taller than Billy Curtis. Cast member Robert Clarke recalls only that the actor who played the part of the alien in the film was of Jewish origin, stood about five feet tall, and was once part of an acrobatic vaudeville act.[9] Margaret Field and producer Jack Pollexfen later recalled only that he had complained about his uncomfortable costume and his low pay,[7][8][11] while William Schallert remembered him only as a very small, interesting-looking middle-aged man who wasn't much of an actor.[10]

TV, not film, but when I started following the soap opera One Life To Live in 1976, the role of Karen Wolek was played by Kathryn Breech, her only listing on imdb. She was replaced after about a year by Julia Duffy (who went on to co-star on Newhart, followed by Judith Light, who eventually went on to Who's the Boss? No idea what happened to Kathryn.

Dennis wilson

Eliseo Boschi & Natalia Ginzburg have 1 credit each for their parts in Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew - i figure there'll be more than just them, even in the named roles, if i could be bothered to check them all

Francois Leterrier, who put in a good shift in Bresson's A Man Escaped.

oh yeah, dennis wilson's a good one

looking up two-lane blacktop on imdb to see if james taylor has acted in much else led me to the horrifying realisation that there's a remake due next year :(

With James Taylor!

was gonna nominate two lane blacktop for both wilson and taylor (who apparently never even watched the finished movie) but, as mentioned upthread, rock stars appearing in a movie is maybe a separate thing.

xps john sweet in a canterbury tale is a really good one.

Jaye Davidson comes close.

His dislike of the attention that he received after The Crying Game (1992) made him reluctant to take the role of Ra in Stargate (1994). He didn't want to just turn the offer down so made what he expected to be an unacceptable demand of $1 million. This was accepted and he appeared.

Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man in Superman IV.

https://awculture.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/playtime-eiffel.jpg

also lee miller in cocteau's blood of a poet

Florrie Dugger as Blousie in Bugsy Malone

Mary Morris as Victoria Van Brett in Double Door (1934) (she had played the role in the play on which the movie was based, as part of a long stage career).

Katie Jarvis from Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank

(Non-professional) actors who did one memorable role in a movie or TV series, and not much else.

Adriana Caselotti did the voice of Snow White in the Disney animated film. They made her sign a contract never to star in another film again. Her only other parts were one line in The Wizard of Oz and as an extra in It's a Wonderful Life, which is still an impressive resume.

Having just finished Freaks And Geeks, I naturally had to see what the actor of Harris had gotten up to. Turns out that Stephen Lea Sheppard was in The Royal Tenenbaums and nothing else ever!

Really worth a read: http://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/saved-by-hollywood/

Did Ray Grange (Rude Boy, ft The Clash) ever appear in another film?

Hah, he has a cameo in "Absolute Beginners" and three films dated 2016 or later!

iirc john sweet also donated his salary from the movie to the NAACP

one thing about 'jade' i remember is there's the not insignificant role of this wise-cracking older cop who was played by an actor who literally never appeared in anything before or since, which i thought was strange.

― omar little, Monday, November 7, 2011 6:52 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ken king, a real SFPD detective
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1821494/?ref_=tt_cl_t7

https://twitter.com/ScarredForLife2/status/829072920496451584

Oh, did anyone mention Bjork?

One very well received movie, but she hated the making of it so much she's never done one since.

http://i.imgur.com/8LJVUlq.jpg

Roger Kirby as "Man at Bar" in Whit Stillman's Metropolitan. I looked for a clip on YT to no avail. Love that scene. It felt like he'd slipped in from an alternate Whit Stillman universe where he'd had his own movie.

Apparently he was a lawyer at the time and may have gone on to be a playwright.

I was certain the male lead in that movie, Edward Clements, hadn't done anything else but according to imdb he was "Young Crewman" in Star Trek 6. He's a minister in Toronto now.

XPS Bjork had a substantive role in Mathew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 about 5 years after DITD--although I imagine 'acting' in the former film was a way different experience.

Also this from 1990

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTg2NjgwNjY4Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNDc2OTkxMQ@@._V1_.jpg

Bjork also did a couple movies before DITD, including this one, which I caught on VHS as a kid:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138545/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_9

And don'tt forget she was in "The Juniper Tree" too.

zorro david in reflections in a golden eye

http://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/8046463/870full-zorro-david.jpg

Honey, one of the leads in Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames.

Rod Brasfield, a Grand Ole Opry comedian born in the next town over from my podunk town, was Andy Griffith's sidekick in A Face in the Crowd and only one other film.

Tommy Wiseau

and literally everyone else in that movie

Tommy and Greg both have parts in The Disaster Artist.

Hiroko Ôshima in A Scene at the Sea, Takeshi Kitano's third film.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/30780/A-Scene-at-the-Sea_1636028262_crop_550x292.jpeg

florence kahn in hitchcock's secret agent

i'd always thought iris tree's only screen appearance had been in la dolce vita, didn't know about her turn in huston's moby dick, so a couple of other writers:

hilda doolittle in borderline

evelyn waugh as the dean of balliol

Dore Mann, the lead actor in Frownland, the film that is basically the blueprint for every Safdie brothers movie.

Piccola Pupa, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini
Mary Morris, Double Door

Kristen Riter, who played the lead - and was actually good - in the surprisingly funny slasher parody Student Bodies from 1981. Was also in the J. Geils Band's "Centerfold" video, but that was it apparently.

one more... maureen o'hara's sister in a not bad eric ambler adaptation i saw once a couple of decades ago: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0357792/?ref_=tt_cl_i_7

Musicians who starred in one movie, then never tried it again

I would have said Alex Weisendanger, the child star of Bertolucci's Little Buddha, and Leo Braudy in Ice. It turns out they both have one other minor credit apiece - The Nutcracker and Polyester.