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TV stars on the big screen

Zach Braff in Garden State
  • Posted at 3:02pm
  • 01 August 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

Although the award-winning American medical sitcom Scrubs is due to return for an eighth season, pin-up star Zach Braff has already started to feather his nest in the movies, writing, directing and starring in offbeat homecoming comedy drama Garden State.

Whether he'll make the transition really count remains to be seen.

There is always fun to be had scrolling down to the bottom of a successful movie actor's CV, wherein lurk those appearances in single episodes of The Love Boat, Charles in Charge, even Red Shoe Diaries.

Movie careers generally begin in television, playing walk-on parts listed only by first name. But the promotion from small to silver screen is anything but automatic, and TV stardom is often a handicap.

Ask Frasier's Kelsey Grammer. Or the cast of Friends. The era-defining "young adults in a coffee shop" sitcom made six unknowns internationally famous – Hollywood-ready, you might say.

But the dread phrase "varied success" is always wheeled out when discussing their movie careers. Courteney Cox peaked early with a decent role in the horror-mocking Scream series, including Scream 2 – which, incidentally, gave an early movie role to Sarah Michelle Gellar, of TV's Buffy.

Jennifer Aniston, whose Friends character launched a hairstyle ("The Rachel"), has coasted in so-so romantic comedies. Even Matthew Perry, Friends' great white hope, has faltered at the movies, finding his best parts back on TV in The West Wing and Studio 60.

No shame in that, of course, but the bright lights and red carpet still beckon.

Perry starred in comedy The Whole Nine Yards and its sequel opposite Bruce Willis. Now there's an actor who managed the transition with aplomb, taking the wisecracking of his character David Addison in TV's popular Moonlighting series and adapting it to a vest-wearing police action hero in Die Hard, recently revisiting the franchise with Die Hard 4.0.

Clint Eastwood achieved fame on TV as hothead drover Rowdy Yates in 1960s western series Rawhide; he eclipsed that family-friendly popularity by becoming The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's grown-up spaghetti western series and never looked back, becoming a true Hollywood icon, who nowadays directs himself, as in Million Dollar Baby.

George Clooney was the nation's number one medical heart-throb in ER and encountered potholes on the path to the big screen – most people forget he played Batman in Batman and Robin, and for good reason.

But by concentrating on smaller, independent films, often pet projects like Good Night, and Good Luck., the former Dr Doug Ross has established a rather different bedside manner.

So it can be done. If not, it's back to The Love Boat.

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