CREDIT: MGM TELEVISION
From Hollywood to TV land wasn't exactly a step up in the '60s.

The power of celebrity carries the strange duality of being both incredibly potent and incredibly flaky. Overnight, a star can go from picking up the tab for his entire ten-person entourage to doing bit parts and cameos in B-movies in a sad, strange, “Hey, remember me?” charade. A couple of such actors who – through ego or sheer poor luck – fell under this unfortunate curse of former glory include:

Matthew Modine

Matthew Modine wasn’t exactly a household name, but his up-andcoming status was definite. Hot on his heels after portraying Private “Joker” Davis in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, Modine was ready for his next big feature after several well-received dramatic features, which turned out to be the infamous 1995 box office bomb, Cutthroat Island. The movie bankrupted Carloco Pictures and made pirate swashbucklers an untouched film genre until nearly eight years later with Pirates of the Carribean.

Klinton Spilsbury

Here’s a strange case of starlight being snuffed out before it even had the chance to shine. There’s a reason why this name is unfamiliar to you. Remember The Lone Ranger? No, not the $225-million box office disaster starring Johnny Depp. The other, $18-million box office disaster, The Legend of the Lone Ranger starring young, unknown Klinton Spilsbury. Athletic and good-looking Spilsbury never acted in more than a few minor roles in daytime soaps before being offered to take on the legendary TV dogooder, the Lone Ranger, a part that would surely thrust him into stardom. Of course, the film itself turned out to be a train wreck bigger than any steam engine destroyed in an old western. It was largely because of the negative buzz created from the Universal Pictures’ poor treatment of the original Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore, suing him for making public appearances with the trademark Lone Ranger mask. The fact that Spilsbury couldn’t act to save his life, having received the parts solely based on his chiseled looks, didn’t help matters either. Unsurprisingly, The Legend of the Lone Ranger remains Spilsbury’s first and last Hollywood feature.

Jackie Coogan

Child actors with troubles futures seems to be a sad constant in the Hollywood system, but Jackie Coogan’s story truly defines frustrating tragedy. Famously starring alongside Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (1921), Coogan became one of the highest earning child actors in films, earning up to $4 million per project, a dime of which he never saw. One of the first victims of hustling parents in Hollywood, Coogan ended up broke and, an unsuccessful lawsuit later, resorting to television as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family (1963). The controversy of Coogan’s stolen earnings, however, didn’t go unheard with the introduction of the California Child Actor’s Bill – nicknamed the Coogan Act – designed to legally protect young actors’ financial assets from prying hands.