It’s been a long-standing belief among people who overthink it that movies and television are fundamentally different mediums and have fundamentally different ways of telling stories. It condenses the story to its best parts, emphasizing economy over detail. The episodic nature of the other has much more room for building complex plotlines and character relationships over the years (if updated often enough).
This does not mean that actors working in these two different mediums cannot transition from one to the other. Ever since we’ve been producing movies and TV shows at the same time, there have been stories of actors jumping from careers in small movies to even bigger careers in big movies, and vice versa. In some cases, that can work. Other times, actors spend decades making the switch.
This list features 10 actors who have made it big on TV and will continue to make it big in the future, regardless of how many feature films they’ve made. It should be mentioned that before the advent of prestige television, things were very different. , which somewhat blurred the line between film and television, drawing some of Hollywood’s biggest stars to the small screen. And you also have to consider the simple fact that many TV actors don’t necessarily want to give up a steady paycheck to survive the risks of the film industry. Still, it’s interesting to look at the careers of these actors and imagine what might have been if things had gone a little differently.
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