Darkhorse Casting

"Despite rumors that had everyone from Shia LaBeouf to Josh Hartnett being cast in Kenneth Branagh’s version of Thor, two virtual unknowns will instead be handed the keys to the Marvel franchise. Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, whom you might recall from the opening scene of Star Trek, will play the Norse superhero, and Tom Hiddleston has been cast as his nemesis, Loki. Let’s hope they follow the J. J. Abrams route and put the money they saved in casting straight to special effects."

— Will Graham, Vulture, May 19, 2009 — "Marvel Rolls Dice, Casts No-names for Thor"

Sometimes, a director doesn't just want big stars in their movie. Maybe it's to avoid a bias from the viewers, maybe they just want a challenge, or maybe they just want to help struggling actors and actresses in the brutal world of show biz. Usually, these lesser-known actors and actresses will be teamed up with their big-name counterparts.

If the casting is successful enough, this can result in a Star-Making Role for the darkhorse, or at least prompt Retroactive Recognition if they become famous later in their career. Compare Amateur Cast, when a work is predominantly comprised of unknown actors, and Non-Actor Vehicle, when someone who's famous in a field outside of acting is given a lead role in a work (those tropes occasionally overlap with this one). Contrast All-Star Cast, when the cast is primarily made up of A-listers, and Ascended Fancast, when a (usually famous) actor fans wanted in the role is actually hired. Look at Ensemble Dark Horse for a definition of darkhorse.

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Examples

Anime

• The Love Live! series has a history of casting voice actresses who (at the time) have very little exposure and almost no major roles to their names. Love Live! being such a well-known multimedia franchise in its home country, the result is that their role in Love Live! ends up becoming their Star-Making Role. The fourth series Superstar!! even goes into full-blown Amateur Cast mode.
• Funimation's English dub for One Piece was not originally like this but trended toward it as the series went on. Due to the series having a huge cast, it also requires a huge cast of actors in an attempt to avert Acting for Two as much as possible. To this extent, the casting directors for One Piece have hired from local improv groups, local stage performers, podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, broadcast news, vlogs, and any other source they can think of where people enunciate well. Except for Franky, this also applies to the core members later on: Robin is voiced by Stephanie Young, who at the time of casting was an opera singer and not a voice actor; and Brook is voiced by Ian Sinclair, who was lesser known at the time, having just done his breakout role as the lead of Space☆Dandy.

Films — Live-Action

• Robert Redford was, in his own words, an "unknown" when he was cast in Inside Daisy Clover, with just two feature films to his credit at that point (a small role in the Anthony Perkins comedy Tall Story and one of the lead roles in the low-budget drama War Hunt). He credited Natalie Wood with taking a gamble on him for what would be his first major film role.
• What George Lucas was trying to do, and almost succeeded in doing, when casting for the original Star Wars trilogy. Harrison Ford read the part of Han Solo while they were casting for Leia, and did so well in the role that Lucas finally relented.
  • And again in the sequel trilogy. Besides some of the original cast, most actors and actresses in the main leads were unknowns, such as Daisy Ridley.
• The Chronicles of Narnia manages to almost pull it off, Liam Neeson as Aslan and Tilda Swinton as Jadis being two of the only mainstream actors in the films.
• Exaggerated in Boy Meets Girl, where Michelle Hendley was cast from Missouri on the basis of her YouTube channel. She had never acted prior to playing the lead in that film.
• The Harry Potter film series had a lot of famous British actors for the adult characters such as Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman, Richard Harris etc. The child actors playing the younger characters such as the main trio started their careers in this franchise.
• Pacific Rim pushed Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi and Idris Elba into the main roles. Elba was already famous thanks to his roles in other movies while Kikuchi is only known for her Oscar-nominated role in Babel and is not very famous in her home country. Unless one watches Sons of Anarchy, a lot of people don't even know who Hunnam is. Aside from Elba, Ron Perlman and Charlie Day seemed to be the only other recognized names in the movie.
• While The Matrix was in pre-production, the suits wanted a big name actress to play Trinity. The Wachowskis fought hard to get their choice, a then-unknown Carrie-Anne Moss.
• Watchmen: Except for Patrick Wilson, none of the actors who played the main characters were huge, A-list stars at the time of the film's release. Arguably the two biggest names (Jackie Earle Haley and Jeffrey Dean Morgan) had primarily gotten work as a child star and in parts on TV, respectively.
• It: Chapter Two: Zigzagged. While James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, and Bill Hader are all certainly established Hollywood stars, the other main cast members are much less well known. James Ransone is best known for his work in The Wire and Sinister. Andy Bean and Jay Ryan are both best known for their television work as Greg in Power and Vincent in Beauty and the Beast (2012), respectively (though Ryan also has/had significant roles in other TV shows). In fact, It: Chapter Two will be both Ransone's and Ryan's first time as leading men in a major theatrical film. Likewise, Isaiah Mustafa is most famed for being The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, which is a viral commercial, and, to a lesser extent, his role in the show Shadowhunters.
  • Likewise, the supporting cast aren't the major Hollywood stars many fans were expecting the sequel to such a smash hit to get. It's mostly people who have acting experience from lesser known films and TV shows, such as Jess Weixler, who’s mainly known for her lead role in the independent horror movie Teeth.
• The Kid Who Would Be King: With the exceptions of Patrick Stewart and Rebecca Ferguson, no one in the cast is particularly well known. Though given the majority of the characters are preteens, this was a probably given.
• Terminator:
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day:
    • Edward Furlong was approached by casting agent Mali Finn at a youth club.
    • Robert Patrick was also relatively unknown, with only a few B-movies and a minor role in Die Hard 2 prior to T2. He was cast as the T-1000 with the advantage of being unknown to the public, contributing to the surprise of the terrifying nature of his character.
  • Terminator: Dark Fate utilizes this a lot. Other than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton reprising their roles and Mackenzie Davis joining the cast, the rest of the cast is much less known. Natalia Reyes, who plays one of the main characters, has had only two film roles prior to this and both of them were indie films released within a year from each other (one of them being the critically acclaimed Birds of Passage). Most of her other screen credits were telenovas that have never aired outside of Latin America. Gabriel Luna is primarily known for playing Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and nothing else. Diego Boneta has had roles in Scream Queens (2015) and Rock of Ages, but that's about it. Jude Collie, who replaces Edward Furlong as John Connor, doesn't even have an IMDB page yet. This could likely be a homage to the original film, as most of the cast was unknown at the time, though that was mainly due to the fact it was a low-budget production (a little over 6 million) whereas Dark Fate has a whopping 160-200 million budget.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Gal Gadot's only work of note outside her native Israel was a supporting role in The Fast and the Furious franchise before she was cast as Wonder Woman. She even said she was considering quitting acting for good because the roles were so thin and thanked Zack Snyder for giving her career such a boost.
  • Victor Stone/Cyborg is Ray Fisher's very first movie role. He was previously better known for his stage roles on Broadway.
  • For the voice and motion capture of Darkseid in Zack Snyder's Justice League, Snyder chose to cast Ray Porter, a little-known thespian, audiobook narrator, and Bit Character actor who appeared in the likes of Almost Famous and Argo.
    • For the latter film, Snyder chose an unknown stage actor, Wayne T. Carr, to play John Stewart and even filmed his scene in his backyard, but the studio vetoed the use of that scene.
  • The mothers of several DCEU superheroes were played by "Household Names" (by Hollywood standards anyway) such as Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, and Nicole Kidman. A British TV and stage actress with a much lower profile (though she got a MBE for Services to Drama), Karen Bryson, was cast for Elinore Stone.
  • Ella Jay Basco as Cassandra Cain in Birds of Prey. She only had small roles in TV series before.
  • For the role of Ratcatcher 2 in The Suicide Squad, James Gunn chose Daniela Melchior, an actress who was unknown outside of her native Portugal.
  • Sasha Calle was chosen by Andrés Muschietti to play Supergirl in The Flash. Her only role of note up to that point was in The Young and the Restless.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • To an extent. For the most part, Marvel Studios prefers to cast more obscure or up-and-coming actors and have them Playing Against Type as the film leads while relegating more famous actors to side characters. As a result, the films tend to be a Star-Making Role for them. A good example is Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, who were virtually unknown when they were cast as Thor and Loki respectively, but were acting alongside the likes of Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, and Stellan Skarsgård when they debuted in Thor. They even lampshaded an article in Vulture highlighting this trope (complete with a snarky quip about "put[ting] the money they saved in casting straight to special effects") ten years after the release of Thor.
  • They're also developing this with the directors they've hired in recent years, bringing in indie directors and/or people who've only directed smaller films that wouldn't suggest they'd ever direct action-heavy superhero movies. Like the actors above, this tends to get them some more attention. Even before, they tended to bring in directors who may not have been expected even when the franchise was still establishing itself, due to working in other genres or working more in television.
• Crazy Rich Asians: Michelle Yeoh and Ken Jeong are the only actors who are recognized internationally. Constance Wu, Jimmy O. Yang, and Harry Shum Jr. may be recognizable to TV audiences (for their roles in Fresh Off the Boat, Silicon Valley, and Glee and Shadowhunters, respectively). Sonoya Mizuno and Gemma Chan's filmography are composed of supporting roles while most of the cast are from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. The casting though was so successful that the cast of Crazy Rich Asians was awarded the Hollywood Breakout Ensemble Award at the 22nd annual Hollywood Film Awards.
• Superman: The Movie: Christopher Reeve was cast partly because he was a complete unknown. The idea was to have a fresh face as Superman so they wouldn't see a star, but rather the character.
• No one in the cast of Diary of a Wimpy Kid was particularly well-known at the time of the film's release, with the most notable name in the cast being Steve Zahn. Justified, given that most of the characters are tweens.
• The Rocketeer: Billy Campbell's casting caused a stir among Disney execs, who wanted a more A-list lead. Likewise, Jennifer Connelly was on the rise but still mostly known for her Ms. Fanservice roles (she wouldn't get a proper breakout until Requiem for a Dream nine years later). Alan Arkin and Timothy Dalton were the biggest names in the cast overall, the latter of whom was playing the villain.
• Prior to Withnail and I, both Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann had acted on stage and McGann had some success on television, but neither of them had done a film before and were complete unknowns.
• James Bond:
  • George Lazenby was a former car salesman turned male model whose sole acting experience was in adverts for Fry's chocolate. And he was chosen to star in On Her Majesty's Secret Service^note Though admittedly Lazenby, by his own admission, lied throughout the whole audition process about having extensive acting experience. By the time he confessed to director Peter Hunt, the latter thought that the fact that he had made it this far proved he was an actor.
  • Daniel Craig being cast as Bond was highly controversial as he didn't resemble the popular image of the character, causing the press and public to derisively nickname him "James Blond". When Casino Royale (2006) premiered the critics were silenced and his performance was unanimously praised.
• Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston were complete unknowns prior to Shallow Grave. In fact, Kerry Fox's presence actually got the film green-lit, as she was the only name actor in the main cast.
• Prior to Alien, Sigourney Weaver had only minor parts in a couple of films and mostly acted on the stage.
• Errol Flynn had only a couple of minor parts in films before his Star-Making Role in Captain Blood.
• Prior to Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O'Toole had an impressive career on the English stage, but only in minor film roles. In fact, David Lean cast him after seeing his small role in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England.
• Sam J. Jones was cast in Flash Gordon (1980) after Dino De Laurentiis' mother-in-law saw him on an episode of The Dating Game. The filmmakers were banking on casting an unknown, following Christopher Reeve's success as Superman.
• Katie Jarvis had never acted before Fish Tank. A casting director spotted her having a fight with her boyfriend at a train station and offered her the role.
• At the time of the making of RoboCop (1987), Peter Weller was a barely known method actor whose notable credit includes the title role of Buckaroo Banzai from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. However, after this movie, Weller became a well-known name for this role.
• For Raging Bull, Robert De Niro helped Martin Scorsese track down unfamiliar names to play Joey and Vikki.
  • De Niro cast Joe Pesci after seeing him in a low-budget television thriller The Death Collector. For one thing, Pesci had a remarkable resemblance to the real Joey. Prior to being cast, Pesci had not worked in film for four years and was running an Italian restaurant in New Jersey. Frank Vincent, who'd been part of a nightclub comedy team with Pesci, was also in The Death Collector and got cast as Salvy.
  • Pesci suggested Cathy Moriarty from a picture he once saw at a New Jersey disco. The fact that she looked a lot like Vikki LaMotta was a major consideration (for proof, see this pic of Moriarty and LaMotta together around the time of the film's release). She was working as a waitress when she got cast, and it was her first film.
• Denis Villeneuve deliberately chose actresses for the main female roles in Blade Runner 2049 (Luv, Joi, Ana, and Mariette) who weren't well known in the United States or had only recently experienced a Career Resurrection (Robin Wright).
• For Fantastic Four (2015), Josh Trank wanted to go for rising stars as opposed to safe bets in order to make the Younger and Hipper aspect of the film more believable.
• Jason and the Argonauts: Nigel Green is certainly not what the popular image of Hercules was at the time, lacking the stereotypical Heroic Build and muscleman physique.
• Montgomery Clift made his film debut in Red River after Howard Hawks saw him on Broadway.
• Prior to Shaft, Richard Roundtree was a model whose acting experience was limited to commercials.
• Prior to To Have And Have Not, Lauren Bacall was an 18-year-old model. She appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, and was noticed by Howard Hawks' wife, Nancy "Slim" Keith, who showed the cover photo to her husband. Hawks sought Bacall out in April 1943 and signed her for the role, her first movie appearance.
• Warren Beatty made his film debut in Splendor in the Grass, and at that point was mainly known as the title character's Sitcom Archnemesis on TV's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
• Prior to East of Eden, James Dean's acting career was limited to television and extra work.
• Prior to his big break in if.... (1968), Malcolm McDowell had small roles on the stage. His only prior film role was in Ken Loach's Poor Cow, where he ended up on the cutting room floor.
• There's a story that Steven Seagal was given the starring role in Above the Law (1988) due to a bet made by a studio executive that he could make anyone a star and cast his martial arts instructor.
• After Dougray Scott dropped out of X-Men, Bryan Singer would cast then-unknown Australian actor Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. At the time, Jackman's only other film credit to his name was Paperback Hero.
• Dustin Hoffman was a complete unknown prior to The Graduate, having acted mainly in theatre and had one small film credit to his name.
• While Gary Oldman, Jean Reno, and Danny Aiello were fairly recognizable to moviegoing audiences in The Professional, Natalie Portman was a relative newcomer when she was cast as Mathilda and her only experience beforehand was serving as an understudy to Laura Bell Bundy in the off-Broadway musical Ruthless! None of the other actors in the film were particularly well known, though Michael Badalucco (who played Mathilda's father) would carve out a career playing supporting or bit characters in movies and TV shows. Willie One Blood who plays one of Stansfield's goons was a minor reggae singer.
• Die Hard was Alan Rickman's first film role. He was cast after Joel Silver saw him in Les Liaisons Dangereuses on Broadway.
• Prior to Body Heat, Kathleen Turner's career was mainly in theatre, with occasional television work.
• The two leading men, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raúl Juliá of Street Fighter were already big names (with the latter deciding upon the film so he could go out with a bang), and a few of the supporting cast (most notably Kylie Minogue) were known for reasons other than acting, but most of the actors were played by relative unknowns, for example, Byron Mann as none other than Series Mascot Ryu.
• In an interview, one of the casting directors for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) commented, "We didn't go for major stars, because the stars of the film are the turtles."
• Steven Spielberg tried to invoke this when he cast an unknown Matt Damon as Private James F. Ryan in Saving Private Ryan. By the time the film came out, however, Damon had won an Oscar for his Star-Making Role in Good Will Hunting. As a result, the twist where Miller's men initially find the wrong Private Ryan has a muted impact now because audiences will see that that's not Damon (and that's before you get into those who do recognize the actor as a young Nathan Fillion).
• When Alfred Hitchcock cast her as the female lead in The Birds, Tippi Hedren was a model who'd done some commercials as well (Hitchcock discovered her in a commercial), but her film experience was limited to a single bit part.
• When Brian De Palma cast her as the drug kingpin's trophy wife in Scarface, Michelle Pfeiffer was a relatively unknown player with a few television and film credits to her name, aside from starring in the much-maligned Grease 2.
• Miramax suggested a well-known name for the role of Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino fought hard to find his choice and cast a relatively unknown Uma Thurman as Mia.
• The casting directors of The Princess Bride auditioned "a whole slew of actresses and models" for Buttercup. When Robin Wright was hired for the role, her only role of note was that of Kelly Capwell in the daytime Soap Opera Santa Barbara.
• When Jodie Foster was hired to play Iris in Taxi Driver, she was a relatively unknown player with a few notable credits. However, Taxi Driver became a critical and commercial success that was not only a turning point for Martin Scorsese, but also for the film's cast and crew.
• Jean Simmons was not yet a familiar face when she was cast to play the young Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations. Producers wanted a star that would be familiar to moviegoers, but Simmons' performance impressed Lean.
• Prior to being cast in Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn had a few roles in European movies.
• Prior to Niagara, Marilyn Monroe's body of work was made up of supporting roles.
• Prior to being cast in The Fly, Geena Davis' body of work was mostly made up of supporting roles, and she even auditioned for a spot on Saturday Night Live in 1982, losing out to Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
• When she was cast in Urban Cowboy, Debra Winger was a relative newcomer with a few credits to her name. She was a last-minute replacement for Sissy Spacek, but Urban Cowboy became an instant hit that launched her acting career.
• Mckenna Grace was not yet famous when she was cast as the younger Tonya Harding in I, Tonya.
• Ingrid Bergman was not yet a household name in Hollywood when she was cast as the female lead in Casablanca.
• Most of the child/teenage actors in the Netflix adaptation of 13 have little to no past experience in acting, with the exception of JD McCrary (who voiced Young Simba in The Lion King (2019)), and Ramon Reed (who starred in Disney Channel's Just Roll With It). Averted with the adult cast members.
• Babylon cast Diego Calva, a complete unknown starring in his first Hollywood production and who had only one acting credit in his native country of Mexico, as the lead (the studio had originally wanted Diego Luna to play Manny, but Damien Chazelle fiercely advocated for Calva). The rest of the main cast are either well-known stars (Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt), character actors (Jean Smart), or other relative unknowns (Jovan Adepo and Li Jun Li).
• Christopher Atkins was working as a sailing instructor when director Randall Kleiser discovered him. He only had some modelling gigs under his belt before Kleiser cast him as the male lead in The Blue Lagoon (1980).

Live-Action TV

• Angels in America: While Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Emma Thompson are very well-known, the rest of the cast were mostly stage actors who had yet to get their big break (and, in many cases, this series was their big break): Justin Kirk, Jeffrey Wright, Mary-Louise Parker, Patrick Wilson, and Ben Shenkman.
• At least four of the leads of Arrested Development (Michael Cera, Will Arnett, Tony Hale, and Alia Shawkat) were completely unknown when the show began. Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, David Cross, and Jeffrey Tambor were all fairly well-known at the time; Jessica Walter was somewhere in the middle.
• Band of Brothers: David Schwimmer was the most famous actor among the cast at the time due to his popularity in Friends and he only had a small role as Captain Herbert Sobel. The rest of Easy Company characters were played by actors who were unknown at that time or, in Donnie Wahlberg's case, famous for their non-acting careers.
• Community had very obscure actors casted for its ensemble, with Joel McHale only known for his comedic talk show The Soup, Alison Brie only known for her supporting role on the still fairly new Mad Men, Danny Pudi having very small roles in various TV shows, Yvette Nicole Brown only known for Drake & Josh, and Donald Glover being an up-and-coming rapper who was writing for 30 Rock. Chevy Chase was the only notable member, and even he was taking the role long after his heyday had ended.
• Every Disney Channel and Nickelodeon live-action series is given an almost entirely unknown child cast (as most of them are just starting their careers). The adults could be people who rose up the Kidcom ranks (i.e. Jerry Trainor, Beth Littleford, Brian Stepanek), D-list actors from obscure adult shows (i.e. Rosa Blasi, Steve Valentine, Hal Sparks), Black sitcom parents (i.e. Kadeem Hardison, Chico Benymon), people more known for voice acting (i.e. Daran Norris, Jack DeSena), or comedians (i.e. Chris Tallman, Stephen Glickman).
• Most of the actors to star in Doctor Who have had varying degrees of experience and recognition. Probably the least well-known at the time of casting was Matt Smith, who didn't even have an IMDB page prior to the series, despite some television roles.^note This is largely due to the website's recurring difficulty in tracking different people with the same name. Colin Baker was primarily well-known for acting in theatre, Sylvester McCoy was better known for performance art and presenting than acting and David Tennant was little-known at the time of his casting.
• Most of the main cast of Fate: The Winx Saga are pretty new. Abigail Cowen is the lead, and her only notable credit was in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in a very small supporting role and two episodes of Stranger Things. The only name is Robert James Collier (of Downton Abbey and Ackley Bridge fame), although Eve Best (Farah) is an acclaimed character actress who's appeared in the likes of The King's Speech and later in House of the Dragon.
• Game of Thrones had a lot of unknown actors and actresses at that time and one of the only mainstream actors in the cast at the start was Sean Bean.
  • House of the Dragon:
    • Milly Alcock was an up-and-coming actress in some Australian series before being cast as the prominent role of young Rhaenyra Targaryen. She worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant when she got the part.
    • Emma D'Arcy (adult Rhaenyra) wasn't prominently known prior to House of the Dragon due to mostly being a stage actor in the UK.
• Goodbye My Princess: Neither Peng Xiao Ran nor Chen Xing Xu was famous before the series. Ironically, the director wanted both lead roles to be played by popular actors. The series lacked the budget to hire better-known actors, however, so they had to cast unknowns.
• Among the How I Met Your Father cast, Hilary Duff is the most recognizable name due to her Disney teen idol career. Chris Lowell has an extensive career in television while Suraj Sharma is only known for his Star-Making Role in the critically-acclaimed movie, Life of Pi. Francia Raisa is mostly known in minor and supporting roles with The Secret Life of the American Teenager as her only major role. The other two (Tom Ainsley and Tien Tran are) aren't known much.
• How I Met Your Mother: Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan (and maybe Jason Segel) are the only mainstream actors in the main cast back then. In fact, the actress who played the Mother is unknown.
  • Even then, NPH had left TV for stage work and had been doing mostly guest spots if anything for almost 10 years, Hannigan coming off of Buffy into a sitcom was hardly a lock... and Segal was just starting to attention, most of it still 'cultish' due to Freaks and Geeks.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Unlike the 1994 movie, the TV adaptation doesn't feature any Hollywood superstars. Before the series premiere, the only Season 1 cast member who had their own Creator page on TV Tropes was Eric Bogosian (while a respected veteran actor, he's not a household name like Tom Cruise is).
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The "biggest" names in the cast are up-and-coming actors — Cynthia Addai-Robinson (of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Arrow fame), Morfydd Clark (The Personal History of David Copperfield, Dracula and His Dark Materials) and Robert Aramayo (a younger Ned Stark in one episode of Game of Thrones and as motorcycling pioneer Bill Harley in Harley and the Davidsons). And perhaps Lenny Henry (Chef! (1993)) for British viewers.
• The Office (US) had its iconic ensemble cast filled with mostly unknowns. Steve Carell was well-known due to his work on The Daily Show, and Rainn Wilson had done a few films, but most everyone else was a newcomer, with some who weren't even experienced in show business. It served to be the big break for most of the cast members.
• Of the four main actors in Our Friends in the North, Christopher Eccleston was the only established name. While Daniel Craig and Mark Strong had television credits, they weren't big names.
• Quantum Leap (2022):
  • The leaper and lead character, Ben Song, is played by Raymond Lee, known for Kevin Can F**k Himself and Top Gun: Maverick; supporting character "Magic" Williams is played by Ernie Hudson, known for Ghostbusters; and supporting character Ian Wright is played by Mason Alexander Park, known for Cowboy Bebop (2021) and The Sandman (2022). By contrast, the holographic observer (and co-lead character) Addison Augustine is not only Caitlin Bassett's first lead role, it's one of her first onscreen roles ever; as of the first season, Bassett's only other acting role listed on IMDB is for an eight minute short film from 2020. It's a stark reversal to the original series' observer Al, who had been played by seasoned onscreen actor Dean Stockwell.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub deserves a special mention: In stark contrast with the dub of the prequel series, which was dubbed by many well-known voice actors at the time, with the sole, partial exception of Sam Beckett's voice actor, the dub of this show is mostly filled by either voice actors with less than 20 to 15 years of experience under their belts, like Alan Prieto, Ben's voice actor, others are voiced by amateur voice actors doing their debuts in the industry, like Mireya Durán, Addison's voice actress. So far, there's basically no older voice actors from the 1990s or older participating in this show, not even dubbing extras or one-shot characters.
• Pennyworth has the first major screen roles for Jack Bannon and Emma Paetz, in iconic roles of the Batman mythos no less — Alfred Pennyworth and Martha Kane (future Mrs. Wayne), respectively.
• For Sex Education, Emma Mackey had barely any experience when she was cast as Maeve. In fact, at the time of her audition, she didn't even have headshots. She was also cast in a prominent role by Kenneth Branagh in Death on the Nile the year Sex Education premiered.
• Prior to Star Trek: The Original Series, DeForest Kelley had appeared in many films and television shows, but mostly in smaller roles that showcased him as a villain. Leonard Nimoy also had previous television and film experience but was not well known either. William Shatner was well known in the trade, having appeared in several notable films, played Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway, and even turned down the part of Dr. Kildare. However, when roles became sparse he took the regular job after Jeffrey Hunter's contract was not renewed.
• Succession has a fairly big star in Brian Cox, with the rest of the cast comprised either of character actors (Alan Ruck), indie movie actors (Hiam Abbass, Kieran Culkin) or virtual unknowns (Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Nicholas Braun).
• Titans (2018) mainly consists of lesser-known actors who were chosen specifically for their talent. The best known so far are Brenton Thwaites, Ryan Potter, Alan Ritchson, Minka Kelly and Conor Leslie, but even they aren't exactly A-list. One notable example is Teagan Croft, an Australian child actress that was completely unknown outside her home country and still very obscure in it, as Raven herself.
• In general, it applies to Toku as a genre, as shows like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai serve as a Star-Making Role for new actors.
• The Witcher has Henry Cavill as the star, who's definitely well-known, but virtually everyone else is lesser-known to completely obscure, with a standout being the newcomer Freya Allan as Ciri.

Video Games

• The Dark Souls series, along with its spiritual siblings Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring fills most of its cast with low profile British stage and TV actors, leading to much of the dialogue having an off-kilter feel. The biggest names to appear in the series are likely Ruth Negga, Con O'Neill, and Peter Serafinowicz in Dark Souls II, all of whom are veteran character actors.
• Final Fantasy VII Remake had Briana White (Aerith), who didn't have any major acting role prior to being cast, especially when compared to her costars Cody Christian (Cloud) and Britt Baron (Tifa), both famous screen actors, and John Eric Bentley (Barret), a veteran voice actor.
• The original releases of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, like most horror games of that era, had a voice cast of low profile and even non-professional actors, with by far the biggest name among them being Donna Burke. Guy Cihi, the voice of James Sunderland, didn't even audition for the role at first; he was accompanying his daughter to audition for the role of Laura and the devs liked how he looked. The HD rereleases had new dubs starring heavy hitters like Troy Baker and Laura Bailey, but consensus among the fans was that it lacked the off-kilter, creepy feel of the original releases.
• While the sixth generation Grand Theft Auto titles featured major roles from big name actors like Michael Madsen, Kyle Maclachlan, Samuel L. Jackson, and James Woods, Rockstar Games started going for this approach with Grand Theft Auto IV. With the exceptions of a few moderately known character actors like Karel Roden, most characters, including the main protagonists of the games, are voiced by near unknown stage and TV actors. This extends to the Red Dead Redemption games and Bully as well. Rockstar's shift in approach for casting stemmed from the prohibitive costs of having an All-Star Cast as the games got more technically advanced and expensive, as well as the difficult, diva-like behavior of certain stars like Ray Liotta and especially Burt Reynolds.

Western Animation

• Justified for Molly of Denali, as the show wants to have authentic Indigenous voice actors on board, resulting in many lesser known or new faces in the cast. These fresh talents are cast alongside relatively well-known/experienced voice actors such as Lorne Cardinal (Nat), Vienna Leacock (Trini), Rebecca Shoichet (Dr. Antigone Howell), Luc Roderique (Daniel), Katrina Salisbury (Nina), Samuel Vincent (Mac McFadden), Bethany Brown (Joy), Cathy Weseluck (Charlotte, one of the Sassy Ladies of Saskatoon), and Ellen Kennedy (Connie).
• Happens In-Universe in The Simpsons episode "Brother From Another Series", where it's revealed that Sideshow Bob's brother Cecil originally auditioned as Krusty the Clown's sidekick, and after Krusty wasn't impressed with Cecil's audition, he hired Bob based upon how he handled the Pie in the Face gag from him, and Cecil never forgave Bob for that.

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