November 3, 2022 3.1K votes 746 voters 33.1K views
Over 700 Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of Actors Who Nailed Their First Big TV Role After Years Of Bit Parts
Voting Rules
Vote up the actors who totally nailed it once they landed a leading role on TV.
It's tough to break into acting, but it's even tougher to break out. Getting any job is a milestone for an up-and-coming performer, and supporting roles and co-star gigs are just as important to stories as the main characters. Instant stardom is rare; most actors do great work in minor roles before eventually getting recognized and cast in a leading role that brings much more attention to their name.
In fact, many actors that we consider big television stars today began with small roles before one big break, leading to lots of retroactive recognition when watching older shows and spotting such A-listers as a waiter with two lines. There are even legendary actors who we consider unquestionable stars who often didn't achieve any fame until very late into their careers!
Honoring their work before they became household names, here's a list that highlights TV actors who nailed big roles after doing bit parts.
It's no surprise that the network was skeptical when Vince Gilligan first suggested Bryan Cranston to play an egotistical antihero in Breaking Bad, since Cranston's most notable role before that was bumbling sitcom dad Hal on Malcolm in the Middle.
But even before that, Cranston had a small role in The X-Files in the episode “Drive.” Though he portrayed a single-episode villain who kidnaps Mulder at gunpoint, he was able to infuse the character with humanity, which is what caught Vince Gilligan's eye, and led to Cranston's highly-acclaimed turn as Walter White. Though he took some other stops along the way, this connection is a great example of even the small, early roles having a profound effect on an actor's career.
It's hard to find an actor more strongly associated with one famous TV role than James Gandolfini in The Sopranos. His ability to showcase the complexity of Tony Soprano's vulnerability, anxiety, and pressure to provide for his family, while also projecting a tough mafioso exterior, earned him three Emmys, five SAG awards, and a Golden Globe.
Before he was the mob boss, he played a mob henchman in True Romance: Virgil, who meets a truly brutal death at the hands of protagonist Alabama Whitman. He also played mob roles in Terminal Velocity and The Juror. Just as someone like Tony Soprano might've worked his way up in the mafia over the years - from henchman to enforcer to boss - so did Gandolfini work his way up through the ranks of mafia acting roles.
Steve Carell excelled at playing the "well-intentioned, but socially inept" type long before he got to do it as a main character on The Office. He appeared as an ensemble member on comedy and variety shows like The Daily Show, as well as a recurring bit on Saturday Night Live that is so under-the-radar that many fans might not be aware: he voiced Gary, one-half of the “Ambiguously Gay Duo,” an animated sketch that moved to SNL from The Dana Carvey Show.
Though none of these roles made Carell very recognizable, they set him up for booking Michael Scott, which led to the fame the has today, with numerous other TV and movie roles allowing him to showcase his dramatic range as well as his humor. Though Carell has gained notoriety, he hasn't lost any of the weird, organic energy that he had in those early sketch shows.
Bob Odenkirk also worked as a television writer before gaining success in acting, writing on Saturday Night Live and The Ben Stiller Show. An experienced comedian, he appeared on many comedy and variety shows, as well as doing small parts on Seinfeld, Weeds, and a recurring stint on How I Met Your Mother as Arthur Hobbs, Marshall's boss at his law firm (perhaps setting up the precedent to play lawyers).
Saul Goodman, Walter White's sleazy lawyer and money launderer on Breaking Bad, became his largest role to date, appearing in 36 episodes. He wasn't a lead then, but it earned him his own spinoff, Better Call Saul, which in turn led to huge praise for his skills as a dramatic actor. Though he worked constantly since the '80s, it took until 2015 for him to become a star. The success of Better Call Saul even landed him a leading movie role in the 2021 action-comedy Nobody.
Though everyone loves his goofy energy now, Ty Burrell took a while before he landed recognition. He spent years stuck in supporting one-episode roles like Law & Order (he guest starred on the original series twice, and spin-off Law & Order:SVU once). Eventually, he earned his way up to recurring roles on shows like Out of Practice, as a womanizing plastic surgeon, and Back To You as an awkward field reporter. This kept him busy until 2010, when he hit fame as Phil Dunphy on Modern Family.
Early roles let him show his ability to play the victim in hilarious fashion, like getting Tasered in a field demonstration on Back To You, which set up his scene-stealing physical comedy on Modern Family, earning him 8 consecutive nominations and 2 wins at the Emmys. If his "type" is playing an oaf who gets beat up for laughs, it's nice that he at least gets more recognition for it now.
Before he became instantly recognizable as the lead on the detective show Monk, and won Emmys for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Tony Shalhoub appeared on many other shows. He had a guest role as a waiter on the second season of Wings, but then landed a recurring role as a cab driver, with the writers choosing to retain his character's name, Antonio Scarpacci, from his first appearance.
It shows how much Shalhoub impressed in his first small appearance, which led to him getting other jobs on shows like Ally McBeal, The X-Files, and Frasier, before he earned the lead role in Monk in 2002. Shalhoub's ability to embody all sorts of people, whether the Italian-accented Scarpacci or the brilliant yet compulsive Adrian Monk has kept him consistently employed and acclaimed in big and small roles over the years.
