I didn't realize he/she was in that

Thomas Middleditch. He's one of the most hilarious people on the planet.

 

Duh. He's Canadian. We're funny funny people.

 

He is great on Comedy Bang Bang.

 

I've been doing a re-watch of ER episodes on Hulu and you can't go more than two or three without running into someone who guest-starred there and then became significantly more famous.

Some of the most prominent ones: Octavia Spencer, Flo from Progressive, the guy who voices all the Granger ads, Gabrielle Union, Aaron Paul, Taraji P. Henson, Shia LeBoeuf, J.K. Simmons and Christina Hendricks, to name a few.

 

Kirsten Dunst, William H. Macy are two more.

 

On the three major Law & Order shows (original, SVU and Criminal Intent) there were a several actors that first appeared as guests and later were picked up as a different regular character. A couple were guests on the original before they were cast as regulars on the spinoffs. I believe this to be the definitive list.


Jerry Orbach
S. Epatha Merkerson
Annie Parisse
Michael Imperioli
Milena Govich
Jeremy Sisto
Diane Neal
Kelli Giddish
Raúl Esparza
Peter Scanavino
Eric Bogosian
Courtney B. Vance

 

The franchise is pushing 30 years now, so it stands to reason the cast would turn over.

 

I was trying to make a more selective point. If you numbered the actors in those three franchises that played different roles over the years I am sure it would be in the dozens, easy. Yet when I stumble across Lt. Van Buren portraying a ghetto single parent or Lenny playing a slick lawyer, I'm like, "let me go to IMDb to look this up".

 

My favorite "Holy Crap!" was seeing Phillip Seymour Hoffman p;ay some slug that the detectives talk to before finding the bad guy.

 

This doesn't count as SEEING the person, but when the credits rolled on an episode of Maverick I saw last week on the Showtime Western channel, one read "Written and Directed by Robert Altman."

 

Just watched the end of "A League of Their Own" on MLB Network. Tea Leoni plays 1B for Racine. Her second credited movie, after "Switch." Never noticed her before but she's prominent in one of the photos on the wall in the closing scenes at the AAGPBL exhibit in the HOF.

 

NYPD Blue did the same thing. Richard Schiff played two different characters, though those were only one-episode appearances. Currie Graham played a minor role early in the series before returning as a lieutenant who took over the squad seven years later.

The most glaring example was Charlotte Ross, who played the abused wife of a dirty cop in 1998, then returned three years later as a detective in the precinct who ended up marrying Sipowicz. (Gotta love television. They piled misery after misery upon that character, but his wives kept getting more and more beautiful as things progressed.)