Actor

For me, it is Nathan Fillion. He had the potential for so much, but has been relegated to cameos, voice acting and crime procedural dramas. He could have done more seasons of Firefly, a green lantern live action film, or been the lead in an Uncharted or Halo ODST series, or an episode of a World War Z miniseries.

Edit: wasted potential does not necessarily mean unsuccessful.

I understand Nathan Fillion has a very successful career, and is likely very happy with it. There is just so much I would have rather seen him in that I feel like I missed out on. And no, I don't think that it is his decision to make more seasons of Firefly or any other show, they didn't happen for a large variety of reasons, I just think that he had the potential to a very good job in those theoretical roles.

Shia LeBeouf's most iconic and memorable role is Sam Witwicky in Michael Bay's Transformers Trilogy, Whether you like him in that film or not.

And like, He wasn't bad in them I supposed? It's just that there is not much thing that's really memorable about him nor his character, It's just a generic protagonist 101 that people didn't really cared that much about since they're there for the robots.

Recently I just watched Peanut Butter Falcon(Amazing film BTW, Everyone should watch it) and his performance in that film was phenomenon.

Then I also remembered his performances in films like Fury and Lawless, He was actually great in all of them.

It's just baffling to me that he has so many good performances under his belt, Yet his most iconic role that everyone known him for is "Sam Witwicky from Transformers" of all thing. That's just unfortunate.

I'm not wording this well sorry lol. But basically, is there an actor/actress that you can't help but see them as "them" throughout the film no matter what character they're playing? For instance, I can only see The Rock as The Rock no matter what he does. Same with Leo Dicaprio, even though he's a fantastic actor I'm very aware that it's Leo Dicaprio throughout the movie lol. Know what I mean? Perhaps it's specific actors who have been just too over exposed.

Edit: just wanna say how satisfying it is to discuss this shit with yall as its been on my mind since forever lol.

I ALSO think this phenomenon falls into 4 categories:

1. The actor stands out in a distracting way because they're SO renowned, so good at what they do, and have been in so many iconic films. So it's not even a bad thing truly, it's that they're that good at their jobs that their screen presence is just extremely domineering.

2. They stand out in a distracting way because they've been continuously, horrifically miscast.

3. They may have found their niche and are good at it, but regardless, they have been fully type-casted into the exact same role/character/persona no matter what.

4. Whether they're strong or weak performers, they've just been far too overly marketed by their PR team, too many talk shows in one go, and just too "overly exposed" as a public persona if anything, so when you do see them on screen, that over exposure of their personal lives or "personalities" is now too distracting (Jennifer Lawrence, Tom Holland, Zendaya etc)

Rooney Mara!

Going all the way back to The Social Network, she was very incredible for a character who only appears in a few scenes and really stands out in the moments she confronts Mark Zuckerberg. Then she went on to star in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which earned her an Oscar nod, and then made other appearances in movies like Her, Carol, etc. I really thought she was on her way to becoming one of Hollywood’s A-listers, but I haven’t seen her in anything mainstream for a long time.

EDIT: Based on the comments I’ve been getting, I’m glad to hear that she’s still getting work. I personally haven’t come across those other movies or heard of them so I’ll definitely have to check them out. Also I didn’t realize she came from a filthy rich family, you learn something new every day I guess.

For me its gotta be The Rock. Not even the fact that he is one of the top paid actors in Hollywood, but the fact that his run has lasted as long as it has.

His first leading role was in 2002, and to this day he can headline box office hits. 16 years is an incredible run for a guy who started in movies as a gimmick like OJ Simpson or Hulk Hogan.

IMO he has had a more successful run than even guys like Schwarzenegger and Stallone. He doesn't yet have to dip into the nostalgia well or take roles ironically and he has yet to produce a string of bombs.