One Book Author / Actors

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• There existed a trend in the Philippines back in the 80s to 2000s where ad agencies hire foreign talent to appear in commercials (as foreign actors especially those who speak Filipino were seen as more appealing to audiences). One such foreign actor was Greg Traupmann who starred in a commercial for SC Johnson's Wax as "Super KJ". His stint with SCJ was his sole on-screen appearance and has never acted since then.

Anime and Manga

• Tenchi Muyo!:
  • Jay Hopper voiced Tenchi's father, grandfather, and the GP Grand Marshal. These are his only anime roles.
  • In addition, Mihoshi is the only anime character Ellen Gerstell ever voiced.
• Ranma ½:
  • Sarah Strange was a one-hit-wonder as the title character in Ranma One Half. She did do some other voice roles in other cartoons, and moved on to mainstream live-action work, but that was the only anime she was ever in. She left the show after Season 3 and was replaced with Richard Ian Cox, who has had a lot of anime roles.
  • Angela Costain also had a short-lived voiceover career, with Nabiki Tendo being her only anime role (or major role, period). Her sister, Elena Wotten-Costain filled in during Season 6, and also never did any other voicework.
• Currently, Kagome from Inuyasha: The Final Act is Kira Tozer's only anime role. Subverted in 2020, when she reprised the role in Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon.
  • Same with Pam Hyatt as Lady Kaede... and her replacement for The Final Act, Linda Darlow.
• While Liza Balkan has done a lot of work on stage, Sailor Mercury (well, the second one) was her only voice role.
  • In addition, Naz Edwards' only voice role is Queen Beryl, but like Liza Balkan, her acting is mostly on the stage. Lots of Sailor Moon voice actors didn't do other anime, simply because the talent pool used mostly does western animation.
• Rieka Yazawa was the voice of Kon in And Yet the Town Moves, followed that up with two other minor roles, and then announced that she was leaving the voice acting business to focus on her studies.
• Mayo Suzukaze has done plenty of work in Japanese theater and television, but has done very little voicework outside of her role as Kenshin Himura.
  • Also in Rurouni Kenshin, in the Brazilian dub, the role of Makoto Shishio is the only known work of Paulo Wolf in anime.^note he is also listed on Anime News Network as a minor role on the 1994 Mega Man animated series, but it's actually a co-production, not exactly an anime. It's hard to find further information about him on internet, as he had a short voice acting career, but it's known that he died in the early 2000s.
• The only thing Kendra Benham did was provide the dubbed voice for Maya Ibuki. She would later be replaced by Monica Rial in some future redubbed episodes, along with Amy Seeley for The End of Evangelion and Caitlin Glass for the Rebuild of Evangelion movies.
• The only role Atori Shigematsu had in anime was voicing Piyomon's evolution line in various Digimon media and replacing the late Yuko Mizutani as Yuko Yagami in Digimon Adventure tri.
• Mikko's only voice acting role was Pinto from PaRappa the Rapper.
• J-Pop queen Ayumi Hamasaki's only voice acting credit ever was Yuri Sakazaki in the ill-regarded OVA based on Art of Fighting.
• Michelle Fitzgerald's only voice acting role was Black Maiden/Panther Zora in the dubbed version of New Cutie Honey. She's currently a producer for international TV/Film projects.
• Actress Lanelle Markgraf's only anime role was Urd in the Ah! My Goddess OVA series.
• While Yasuko Sawaguchi is primarily a film/television actress and singer, Yūko Ogino from Spirited Away was her only voice-over role.
• Dancer Satoshi Haga had the leading role of Ichise in Texhnolyze and never did anything else of note.
• Drama actor Murasaki Wakaba's only major voice-over role was Akito Sohma in the 2001 anime adaptation of Fruits Basket.
• Most of the cast of the Tamagotchi anime's English dub only acted in that production, possibly because most of the cast was comprised of children.
• The Toronto dub of Sailor Moon was Canadian actor Robert Bockstael's only anime series.
• The 1965 English dub of Osamu Tezuka's The Amazing 3/Wonder 3 (known as W3 in Japan) is the only voice acting roles for Bobbie Byers (Bokko/Bonnie), Neil Patrick (Ronnie) , Paul Brown (Zero) , Kurt Nagel (Kenny), and Jerry Burke (the opening narrator). According to an article on "Absolute Anime", Andy Shepherd revealed that the voice actors were college students and local actors from Miami's little theater. Unlike early English dub actors Billie Lou Watt (known as voicing the titular characters Astro Boy and Kimba/Leo) and Sonia Owens (Kitty/Laiya) who went on to dub other anime between the 1970s and 1980s. With the exception of Bobbie Byers, the English voice cast for "The Amazing 3" never returned to voice acting or did anything else.
• The titular character of Super Milk Chan was the only voice role for Haruka Nakamura. Meanwhile, Hanage was voiced by a seiyuu using the pseudonym Brad Pyutt, who's real identity is a mystery.
• With the sole exception of Emlyn Morenelli who also went onto voice Zoey in Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl and a few other roles? None of the voice actors from the Singaporean or "Odex" dub of One Piece have done anything else.
• Despite a few minor anime roles here and there, Kanichi Kurita is a comedian who's primarily known as the voice for Lupin III, inheriting the role after Yasuo Yamada's death in 1995. Yamada himself requested Kurita take over the role in his will.
• Martha MacIsaac's only anime role was Haruko Akagi in Kaleidoscope Entertainment's English dub of Slam Dunk.

Film

• The World of Henry Orient is Merrie Spaeth's only film role.
• Katharine Cornell was one of the most famous stage actresses of her day, called "the First Lady of the American theater", starring in many major Broadway productions in The '30s, The '40s, and The '50s. She made exactly one film appearance, a cameo in the 1943 all-star revue Stage Door Canteen, in which she performs a short excerpt from Romeo and Juliet.
• Fernando Ramos da Silva was a young street urchin who starred in the Brazilian crime classic Pixote in 1981. Da Silva, who played the title role, couldn't break out as an actor due to his illiteracy. He later returned to a life of crime before being killed in a shootout with police at the age of 17.
• Alien: The man inside the alien costume is Bolaji Badejo, a Nigerian art student found by the crew in a bar. He never did anything else and simply returned to a quiet and normal life in Lagos, running an art gallery and raising a family until passing away from sickle cell anemia complications in 1992.
• Carrie Henn won a Saturn Award for playing Newt in Aliens and retired from acting after being bullied by her schoolmates.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has roles played by two one-work actors:
  • Child actor Peter Ostrum was offered a lucrative multi-picture film deal after playing Charlie Bucket but found film acting to be too much hard work, and took the option to go to college instead and work as a livestock veterinarian in upstate New York, which he is to this day. He only returns to the public eye to do local school assemblies on his life and career, or on rare occasions for Wonka-related events (such as the commentary for the 25th anniversary DVD). Thus, this was his only film role.
  • Michael Bollner, who played Augustus Gloop, never acted again after this movie. He was cast because he was a native of Munich, where the movie was shot and where he still lives to this day, and had to be taught his lines phonetically. Like Ostrum, he went to school and became a professional (he runs a tax accounting firm) and has only been seen in Willy Wonka-related material since.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (and its video game) is to date, Julia Winter's (Veruca Salt) only acting credit. Much like Peter Ostrum, she elected not to continue acting and is now training to be a doctor.
• Kelly Reno, the star of The Black Stallion, was set to make a good transition into adult acting when he was badly disfigured in a car accident. By the time he was out of recovery, all his offers had dried up and he never got any others.
• Paperhouse was the only major film role of lead actress Charlotte Burke.
• Cassie Barasch, who played evil Thelma in Little Sweetheart, never acted again (which is strange for a lead actor). Her only other credit was as a post-production intern for Steve Buscemi's film Trees Lounge. Ellie Raab, the other child actress in the film alongside her, fared only a little better before disappearing.
• Charmian Carr's first (and largest) acting role was as Liesl von Trapp in the film adaptation of The Sound of Music. She then starred in the one-time television production of Evening Primrose, but left the business to raise her children.
• 1981's The Legend of the Lone Ranger proved to be not only a Franchise Killer, but also destroyed the career of its star, Klinton Spilsbury, who was making his film debut. He hasn't done another film since.
• John Adames won the first Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor for the 1980 film Gloria. It was his only acting credit, and by 2004 he became the owner of a pool hall.
• Although he'd appeared in various commercials (and was the voice of Rolly in the Russian dub of 101 Dalmatians: the series), Russian actor Vladimir Garin died in a diving accident after shooting had completed for his first feature film, The Return (2003)
• Maria Falconetti was a theatrical actress who had appeared in supporting roles in two short films, but had no feature-length film credits when cast as the lead in The Passion of Joan of Arc. The experience was so traumatic that she quit film work forever, though her performance is widely considered to be one of the greatest of all time.
• Serbian film The Wounds was Dušan Pekić's first and only film credit. Like the character he plays in the film, he was shot at a young age, most likely due to gang violence, making the film even Harsher in Hindsight.
• Milos Milos's only significant film role was as the title character in Incubus, the Esperanto language horror film starring William Shatner. Shortly after filming the role, he murdered Barbara Ann Thomason - Mickey Rooney's fourth wife - and committed suicide. His only other credit is a bit part in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.
• Mark Pillow, who played Nuclear Man in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace doesn't have any other film credits and only appeared in a few TV series before apparently quitting acting.
• Eric Freeman, the actor who played Ricky, the Villain Protagonist of the legendary Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, has a few other minor and non-noteworthy credits to his name from around the same time, but this is the one movie where he had a starring role. He disappeared completely after 1992, and no one saw or heard anything about him for over two decades. The most notable thing about his performance was how over the top it was, which makes it unfortunate that he's played by a different actor, Bill Moseley, in the third film, who doesn't even come close to copying Freeman's style (primarily since he only has a couple of lines). The filmmakers were unable to even track him down for the 2003 DVD Commentary. Thanks to the hilarity of Freeman's performance, it's been the Cinema Snob's lifelong ambition to one day find Freeman and pull him out of retirement. He finally made an appearance at a December 2013 screening of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.
• The cast of 1776, with few exceptions, were all made up from either the original Broadway cast or other productions. While most of them had or would go on to do work in film or TV, this is the only time Ralston Hill (Charles Thomson) and Charles Rule (Joseph Hewes) are seen on screen.
• Fhi Fan is a Taiwanese male model whose only acting credit is Shuichi in the Live-Action Adaptation of Junji Ito's Uzumaki.
• Le Parkour exponents David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli are best known in the cinema world as the guys who starred in District 13 and its sequel. While they had have many other works as choreographers and minor actors, they have never played a starring role again (except Belle, who precisely starred in the District 13's American remake Brick Mansions).
• Toby Radloff's only movie role was in the 1991 Troma horror movie Killer Nerd, but he's appeared As Himself in several forms of media both before and afterward.
• Pure Country (1992) was the only acting credit ever for Country Music singer George Strait.
• Gordy (1995) was the only starring role for Country Music singer Doug Stone.
• Hatty Jones' first and only feature film role to date was the titular character in the 1998 adaptation of Madeline, though she later dabbled into directing and acting in short independent productions.
• Giorgio Cantarini had the part of the protagonist's young son in two major productions and then only did a few bit parts in small-budgeted Italian movies and TV series. But, since these two productions were Life Is Beautiful and Gladiator, almost everyone has seen his face.
• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior was the only major acting credit for both Kjell Nilsson (Lord Humungus) and Emil Minty (the Feral Kid), who only landed a couple of bit parts afterwards. The latter one became a jeweller. Similarly, Max's dog "Dog" never appeared again on the big screen.
• The Gate: Stephen Dorff has appeared in several films, but his on-screen partners Christa Denton (who played his older sister) and Louis Tripp (his nerdy metalhead best friend Terry) have this as their first and last major film credit. Denton retired from acting; Tripp returned for the sequel, and that's pretty much it.
• The only acting credit to date for Elvis Presley impersonator Blake Rayne is playing Drexel Hemsley in The Identical.
• Maureen Elisabeth Shay's only acting credit is in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, where she replaced Angela Goethals as Linnie McCallister.
• An extreme example is sign-language expert Barbie Reade; her sole acting credit is a single but memorable scene as, yes, a sign-language translator in Airplane II: The Sequel.
• Italian linguistics professor Carlo Battisti appeared in exactly one movie, when he was 70 years old. It happened to be all-time classic Umberto D, directed by Vittorio De Sica, in which Battisti plays the lead role.
• Survivor contestant Colleen Haskell's only feature acting role to date was Rianna in the Rob Schneider comedy The Animal.
• Of the four girls forming the band in Linda Linda Linda, Bae Doona went on to be an international film and TV star, Aki Maeda and Yu Kashii became relatively popular in their home country of Japan, but Shiori Sekine has no other IMDb credits whatsoever. However, she's a bassist in real life too, and still plays with her band to this day.
• John Reynolds had his sole acting credit as Torgo in Manos: The Hands of Fate and then committed suicide shortly before the film was released.
• Selena was Rebecca Lee Mesa's first and only acting role as the 9-year-old version of the title character.
• Love Field was the only acting role for Stephanie McFadden.
• This blog post details how Japanese actress Aya Takanashi only appeared as Tom Selleck's love interest in Mr. Baseball. Her only other acting role was in a two-part direct-to-video Japanese film; then, according to the blog's comments, she retired and became the co-owner of a bar.
• Andy Kaufman only ventured to the big-screen once. The resulting product, the abysmal Heartbeeps, completely tanked. Combined with the miserable time he had filming it, he never tried films again before his death.
• Subverted with The Shining, which was one of only Danny Lloyd's ventures in acting, his only other movie was a Made-for-TV Movie Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy, he later became a teacher.
• Most of the actors in the Japanese psychedelic cult classic Hausu only appeared in commercials before (the director also started his career in advertisements) or had no other credits whatsoever, and either had only a few bit parts or never acted again after it. Being amateurs added to the surreal quality of the film.
• Outside of a few guest appearances on television shows and independent films, Tami Erin's only starring role was the titular character in The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking.
• Carrie Lorraine's only major film role is little Judy in Dolls (1987), not counting a bit part in Poltergeist II: The Other Side before. She's now a lawyer.
• Former child actress Miranda Paige Walls voiced Lilo's rival Mertle Edmonds in Lilo & Stitch,^note plus one of its tie-in games Lilo & Stitch: Trouble in Paradise but decided not to further pursue acting after that, making the Disney movie her only role. Liliana Mumy would take over the role of Mertle for the rest of the franchise.
• Jimmy Workman has Pugsley Addams from The Addams Family as his only major acting role. He was about to quit acting several times, with only a few bit parts in the meantime, before retiring for good. The role of Pugsley seems to "doom" its performers; see also the Live-Action TV entry for The Addams Family below.
  • Twins Kaitlyn and Kristen Hooper, who played baby Pubert in Addams Family Values, never acted in another film again and only appeared in a single episode of Home Improvement afterwards.
• Mouchette is Nadine Nortier's only film role.
• This was the case for sisters Mimi and Meghan Broadhead, who played Ren McCormick's cousins in the 1984 version of Footloose, reportely due to constant attention and bullying from classmates.
• Pop singer Christina Grimmie's only acting role was in the indie rom-com The Matchbreaker, released a few months after her 2016 assassination.
• Actress Georgia Weeks' only role was the Walt Disney Presents movie Ruby Bridges, wherein she played Jimmy's Large Ham of a racist mother.
• Because the role of Mami in Japanese Branded to Kill required the actress to be naked for nearly her entire time onscreen, none of the actresses at the studio (Nikkatsu) would do it. So burlesque performer Mariko Ogawa was hired for what turned out to be her only film role.
• Groucho Marx became a big star with the Marx Brothers, and continued his career in film and television for some 30 years. He never wrote a script for one of his own films, but he did co-write the screenplay for 1937 comedy The King and the Chorus Girl. It was the only screenplay of his career.
• Joshua Zuehlke only ever played Chuck Murdock in Amazing Grace and Chuck. He was 13 at the time.
• Jan Schweiterman's only major acting role was Kurt Bozwell, the main antagonist of the 1997 Nickelodeon comedy Good Burger. He retired shortly after that film's release.
• Tania Mallet, a model and Helen Mirren's cousin, appeared in Goldfinger as Tilly Masterson. Afterwards, she became dissatisfied with the rigorous schedule and the pay (she said she made more in a day as a model than she did in a week as an actress), so she went back to modelling. Twelve years after Goldfinger, she appeared uncredited in The New Avengers episode "The Midas Touch" as Sara, and that was it.
• Charlie Potter's only acting role is Bruno Jenkins in The Witches (1990). He became a barrister.
• Edward Clements, who has the lead role in Whit Stillman's Metropolitan as a Socialist college student who falls in with a group of rich New Yorkers, has only one other film credit, a bit part in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. After that he gave up acting for religion and is currently a pastor.
• Olympic skater Carol Heiss' only starring role was in Snow White and the Three Stooges, clearly made to capitalise on the success of fellow ice skater Sonja Henie's film career.
• Thanks to his uncanny resemblance to John Travolta, Giuseppe Spezia was chosen to star in John Travolto... da un insolito destino, an Italian tongue-in-cheek homage to Saturday Night Fever (also known with other titles such as John's Fever and Travoltomania) where he plays the part of a Travolta/Tony Manero imitator. Besides a bit part a few years later, that was Spezia's first and only role.
• Almost the whole cast of Student Bodies, including the leads, was composed of unknown actors who never acted again after this film.
• Freddie Popplewell's sole acting credit was playing Michael Darling in the 2003 Peter Pan film.
• Australian TV actor and politician Ted Hamilton produced and played the Pirate King in The Pirate Movie, his only film role. Hamilton was nominated for the Razzie award for Worst Supporting Actor, and the film did poorly at the box office.
• Brandon Merrill is a model and rodeo champion who only ever played Jackie Chan's Native American wife in Shanghai Noon.
• Paige Moore's only role is Cindy, an actress who becomes Mike Jittlov's love interest in The Wizard of Speed and Time.
• Madeleine Reynal only played the titular role in Dr. Caligari (only vaguely related to the similarly-named more famous film), not counting a small part in Space Mutiny the year before.
• The only acting credit for the late Kevin Alexander Clark was Freddy Jones in School of Rock.
• Jamie Brett Gabel's only acting credit remains the title role of Ben Sheets from the infamous Ben and Arthur.
• Shooter Jennings is a popular Alternative Country singer, but his only on-camera role to date is playing his father Waylon Jennings in Walk the Line.
• Singer Nina Persson of The Cardigans made her film debut starring in the 2006 Swedish-language drama Om Gud vill ("God Willing"), but didn't enjoy the job very much and hasn't returned to acting since.
• According to this post, Robin Williams' older brother Robert Todd Williams only played a small part in Mrs. Doubtfire under a stage name, and then went back to his job as a vintner, without ever acting again.
• Becky Lam is the second winner of the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actress, as well as being the youngest nominee and recipient to boot — she was 17 years old at the time — but she never acted again after starring in the 1982 film Lonely Fifteen. She disappeared from the public eye after news of her unwed pregnancy came out and later married Fred Carpio (brother of famous Cantopop singer, Teresa Carpio), with whom she has two daughters. This also gives her the distinction of being an award-winning Hong Kong actress with the shortest filmography (one film).
• The only film credit for Trish Everly was as Julia Sullivan in the 1981 horror film There Was a Little Girl.
• Judith Ridley's entire acting career consists of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and George A. Romero's more obscure second film There's Always Vanilla. Her other film credits are either documentaries or archive footage from NOTLD. She later worked in advertising (as a "food stylist" for TV commercial shoots).
• Anthony Gounaris's only film credit was in The Godfather, to which his character was given the name Anthony Corleone as the then-four year old Gounaris responded better by his real name. His brother James portrayed Anthony Corleone in The Godfather Part II, and it too marked James's sole acting role.
• Aside from his As Himself roles in his biopic Private Parts, a 2012 indie film and a 1993 episode of The Larry Sanders Show, the resume of Howard Stern only boasts a bit part in a forgotten 1986 kung-fu comedy & an uncredited cameo in Men in Black 3.
• Houston Tumlin’s only acting credit was as Walker Bobby in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and aside from appearing in a few commercials, he would never act again. He later joined the army, became a soldier and took his life after suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
• Linda Hamilton's twin sister Leslie Hamilton only appeared as Sarah Connors in some scenes of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (the atomic explosion nightmare and the finale with the T-1000 replicating Sarah). She just went back to her job as a nurse and passed away in 2020.
• Although she did have a supporting credit in the Disney movie Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Saige Paints the Sky remains to be Sidney Fullmer's sole starring role. Fullmer has since retired from acting and is now working as a financial analyst.
• Adelina Poerio is only known for being the dwarfish serial killer in Don't Look Now. Apparently she used to be a singer.
• The protagonist of Pink Narcissus was a young man only known as Bobby Kendall. He was a street hustler who met director James Bidgood in 1962; Bidgood was the one to give him the name "Bobby Kendall" as a pseudonym in the first place. Bobby became the subject of several of Bidgood's photographs and eventually starred in his movie, which was also the only film James directed. Bobby never starred in anything else other than in Pink Narcissus 's aborted sequel, of which only a sequence known as Baghdad survives.
• In a particularly bizarre case, Iranian-Canadian activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam had a minor acting role as the body (but not the head) of "Shaggy Chick" from Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed. Said role was likely a result of her competing in the 2003 Miss World Canada beauty pageant the year before the movie came out, and "Shaggy Chick" remains her only movie role to date.
• Lina Wertmüller was a very popular Italian director, mostly known for her satirical films with an Overly Long Title. Her only acting part was in the 2013 film Welcome Mr. President (Benvenuto Presidente!), and she never acted again until her passing in 2021.
• Man on Fire (1987): Child actress Jade Malle gets an "And Introducing" credit for her Damsel in Distress role, but her only other credit is a single episode of Millennium (1996), filmed many years later.
• Sebastian Rice-Edwards' sole acting credit was as the lead role in Hope and Glory, filmed when he was only eight years old. He would disappear from the industry for a couple decades, only to resurface as an adult and since then, he's kept a relatively successful career as a music video and advertising director.

Live-Action TV

• Most members of The Addams Family are remembered mostly for those (admittedly iconic) roles. But Ken Weatherwax (Pugsley) is the most fitting example of this trope: before the series he only had a small part in one episode of a Western TV series, then he was typecast as Pugsley well into his teens until he quit acting and became a movie grip and studio builder.
• The New Addams Family: Brody Smith (Pugsley) had a small list of credits, but Nicole Fugere is credited pretty much only for Wednesday on her IMDb bio.
• Most of the cast of Almost Live! hasn't acted in anything since, especially Darrell Suto (Billy Quan), who was just one of the show's cameramen.
• Dean Wendt's only major acting role was the fourth voice actor of Barney the Dinosaur in Barney & Friends. This is mainly because he was a DJ for Radio Disney who got roped into the role.
• Maureen Deiseach's only acting role was Heather Farrell in Degrassi High and its' spinoff.
• Doctor Who: "Fear Her" is the only acting credit for Abisola Agbaje, who played Creepy Child Chloe Webber.
• The 1991 version of Land of the Lost (1974) is the only acting credit for Jennifer Drugan, who played daughter Annie Porter.
• The Noddy Shop:
  • Unlike how most people on the show constantly re-appeared in other Canadian works, Albert Rosos, who played Jake in the episode "Following Directions", only appeared in two other TV shows (Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and My Hometown), as well as the documentary film A Day In A Life.
  • Gregory Cross' role as Ed Caruso was one of two recurring TV roles he had (the other being Tugboat in The Line) as well as his only role in a children's work, with his other roles on TV shows being one-shot characters. This is likely because Cross mainly acted on stage.
• Because Power Rangers casts mostly young, up-and-coming (and, in the Saban era, non-union) actors, there is usually one of these in each series for one reason or another.
  • Rocky DeSantos was Steve Cardenas' only major acting role, outside of Reunion Show appearances such as the Once & Always special.
  • After a few stints as a background extra, Tracy Lynn Cruz finally got her big break on Power Rangers Turbo and then disappeared into obscurity.
  • Danny Slavin never acted again after playing Leo in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, with the exception of brief Reunion Show appearances in Power Rangers Wild Force and Power Rangers Super Megaforce. He only took the role of Leo in the first place to pay for law school.
  • Caitlin Murphy, who played Ronny in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, also never acted again after playing her character, and since leaving the show, pursued a job as a schoolteacher and is now married.
  • Amy Jo Johnson, who played Kimberly Hart in Mighty Morphin', is one of the few aversions to this, as she later went on to have a major role as Julie Emrick in Felicity and later had success playing Jules Callaghan in Flashpoint after moving to Canada.
• In The Rat Patrol episode "The Field of Death Raid", real life brothers Christopher and Nick George play fictional brothers Sam and David Troy. The episode is Nick George's only acting credit.
• Saturday Night Live: Yvonne Hudson appeared as a background extra in a few episodes in 1978 before becoming the show's first black, female cast member in the infamous 1980 season. When all of the 1980 cast members were fired except for Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, she returned to appearing as a background extra until 1984. SNL is her only acting credit, and no one seems to know what happened to her.
• The Television Ghost is the only thing its star George Kelting even appeared in.
• Apart from supplying additional voices in Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran, Lynsey McLeod's only major acting credit was in Sing Me A Story With Belle, later reprising her role as Belle in the live-action segment of Belle's Tales of Friendship which was made to promote the former series.
• Maine school student-turned-peace activist Samantha Smith, known for her anti-war outreach between the US and Soviet Union during the later half of the Cold War, also pursued an acting career. In 1985, she took a major role as eldest daughter Elizabeth Culver in the TV series Lime Street. Midway through production, however, she was tragically killed in the crash of Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 on August 25 of that year. The show was cancelled afterwards and dedicated to her memory. Apart from a guest appearance on Charles in Charge, Lime Street is Smith's only major acting role.

Video Games

• Yoshiki Kurin has only one role in her voice actor credits: Yumi Saotome, one of the main heroines of the wildly successful (in Japan) Dating Sim Tokimeki Memorial. She now works as a fashion designer.
• Kanako Okada, the odd-woman-out of the All-Star Cast of Mitsumete Knight (a Spiritual Successor of Tokimeki Memorial), has voiced Hanna Shawski, one of the main heroines of that franchise, and no other role afterwards.
• Many of the Japanese VAs of the Kingdom Hearts series (especially, those from the Japanese Disney dubs) have never worked in other works (anime, games and otherwise) besides those games or they only did foreign dubs but not anime or anything locally created: some of the more egregious examples are Riko Hanamura (Japanese VA for Nala) who only does foreign dubs, but not anime or Japanese games. Takashi Aoyagi (Mickey Mouse), Risa Uchida (Kairi), Iku Nakahara (Namine) and Mayumi Suzuki (Mulan) are practicaly typecasted as those characters, and in the case of Ms. Suzuki, she is typecasted as the eternal Japanese voice of Disney heroines, and nothing else.
• Back in The '90s, Sierra was one of the first studios to experiment with adding voice acting to games. As they didn't have the budget for professional actors (nor were games treated as a serious medium at that point), they roped in many of their programmers and staff as pinch-hit voice talent. Some of them were pretty amateurish, but writer/designer Josh Mandel became known as the definite voice for King Graham.
• John Chacon voiced Gabe in the first three Syphon Filter games...and by all accounts, hasn't done anything since. Likewise, Ava Fang only voiced Lian Xing in the first game before disappearing for good.
• Lora Cain voiced Trudy, Red Lucy, and a few background characters in Fallout: New Vegas, but did not do any other video games. Bizarrely, her only other credit of note was filling in as announcer on Wheel of Fortune for two weeks in 2011.
• Peter Cormican is only known as the voice of Erazor Djinn in Sonic and the Secret Rings and has done barely any voice acting since, only appearing in some live-action work afterwards.
• The English localization of Final Fantasy XII utilized actors whose primary experience is in theatre for the main cast; as such, their performance in the game is often their sole credit (with the exception of a few, including Michael E. Rodgers, who had other roles outside of this, but had very little voice roles).
• Alex Williamson's only known acting role is the voice of Sarah in Alone in the Dark (2008).
• Tatsuya Tokutake only had one major role in a franchise, as THE iDOLM@STER: SideM's Kazuki Tsukumo, and some very minor roles afterwards. By the time he retired from voice acting at the end of 2019, Tsukumo remained his only well known role.
• Joe Assante, who voiced lead character Jake Conway in the rather infamous Ride to Hell: Retribution. He apparently has a background in talk radio, but Ride To Hell is his only known voice acting role.
• Both Peter Farley and Warren Green have the three Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective games on their IMDB profile, as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson respectively.
• Alex Dobrenko is an actor and writer whose only voice acting credit is Hoji in Shadow Warrior (2013).
• As a voice actor, the only works Rick Hunter is credited for are the Postal games^* More specifically, POSTAL, Postal 2, POSTAL 2: Apocalypse Weekend, POSTAL 2: Paradise Lost, and POSTAL Redux. Rick did some VO during Postal III's Troubled Development, but he tapped out due to some personal issues he was going through (some of the lines that were recorded ended up being reused for the Steam release of Postal 2). He also recorded some lines for Postal 4: No Regerts, but had to tap out again due to scheduling conflicts with his radio job, though he would later return as a voice option for version 1.0., where he voices The Postal Dude. Hunter himself prefers to stay anonymous and uncredited when it comes to voice-acting.
• Scott Hill's sole acting credit was Johnny Klebitz in Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, though he reprised the role of Johnny as a cameo in Grand Theft Auto V.
• Ditto with British-American reggae singer Coolie Ranx, whose sole acting credit was Niko Bellic's close friend and accomplice "Little" Jacob Hughes in Grand Theft Auto IV (barring minor appearances in the The Lost and Damned and in The Ballad of Gay Tony), as well as the late reggae singer Seeborn (birth name Terry Marshall) who voiced Jacob's mentor Teafore "Real Badman" Maxwell-Davies.
• Ronnie Shahmoon's only composing credit is for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (SNES).
• Tracey Rooney is best known as the original voice of Chie Satonaka from Persona 4, but hasn't done any voice work since and was Darrin-ed by Erin Fitzgerald for Chie's later appearances.
• Paula Angel's only role was Phacia in the English version of Lunar: Silver Star Story.
• King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! is infamously known for its Amateur Cast (granted, it was during a time when fully voice-acted games were a new thing), largely comprised of untrained staffers around Sierra. The odd exception to this is Art Lewicki, whose sole voice actor credit is being that of the game's narrator, which is strange considering he wasn't a Sierra employee.
• Rob Wiethoff had a few bit parts in some movies and commercials before Rockstar picked him to voice and do the motion capture for John Marston in Red Dead Redemption. His performance was extremely well received and he was even nominated for a few awards, but he stepped out of the business to focus on raising his family, and his only role since was to reprise Marston in Red Dead Redemption 2.
• Kody Robinson's only known credit was as Roo in Ready for Math with Pooh.
• Pink Panther's Passport to Peril and Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink. Except for Michael Sinterniklaas, Jerry Lobozzo and a couple other names, none of the New York voice actors have any notable credits.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends remains the only acting credit for everyone on the show, as they were mainly animators or crew members.

Western Animation

• With the exception of Chris Diamantopoulos, Mickey Mouse has always been voiced by non-professional voice actors, making him the only consistent role for most of them. Walt Disney was his creator, Wayne Allwine was a sound effects artist trained under Jimmy MacDonald who did manage to avert this, and Bret Iwan is a former Hallmark Cards illustrator.
  • Takashi Aoyagi, Mickey's Japanese voice actor from 1991-2018, is a scholar of Japanese literature who hasn't voiced a single other character in any other medium.
• In relation to Mickey, Donald Duck and occasionally Huey, Dewey, and Louie are about Tony Anselmo's only roles since he's otherwise an animator.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dubs, Donald Duck is notable for having been dubbed by many actors who never voiced a single other character in their careers for a variety of reasons (Jaime Iranzo was an otorhinolaryngologist, Ruy Cuevas is an aircraft pilot, etc.), with the only exceptions being Clarence Nash and current VA Erick Salinas.
• Thom Huge voiced Jon Arbuckle in all animated adaptations of Garfield from Garfield on the Town (the second animated special) onward through the end of Garfield and Friends, where he also voiced Binky the Clown, Bobby Buddy Bear, Roy the rooster, Gort, and various background characters. To this day, those are his only credits in any medium, likely because Huge was an associate of Garfield creator Jim Davis's.
• Dee Dee from Dexter's Laboratory is the only voice role for Allison Moore, who was a college friend of series creator, Genndy Tartakovsky. She only voiced the character in the first season, but briefly came back several seasons later when her replacement Kathryn Cressida (who has done some other voice work) was unavailable.
• Several actors from Daria have never done other acting, due to actually being people working behind the scenes who got roped into voice-acting, as opposed to professional voice-actors. For instance, Tracy Grandstaff, who voiced the main character on Daria as well as on Beavis And Butthead, was a writer for various MTV programs.
• Michael Wallis' only voice acting role (or acting credit of any kind for that matter) is as the Sheriff of Radiator Springs in the Cars series, including spinoff media. Wallis is a renowned journalist and historian who was cast for the role because of his expertise on the film's primary settings: The American Southwest and Route 66, which he has written several books about.
• Aside from a handful of brief cameos on a couple television shows, Sarah Vowell's only acting role is as Violet in Pixar's The Incredibles and its sequel Incredibles 2. Like Wallis, she's better known as a writer and essayist (most famous for her appearances on This American Life) instead of a professional actress.
• Stage actor Larry Roberts' only feature film role was as the voice of the Tramp in Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp. Shortly after the film's release in 1955, he retired from show business altogether and became a fashion designer.
• Disney's The Aristocats is the only voice acting roles for former child actors Liz "Louise" English and Dean Clark. After the film's release, Liz English (Marie) became a regular on The Benny Hill Show between 1978-1986 and one of the original members of Hill's Angels. Nowadays she's more active in plays, theaterical shows, and nationally-touring musical-theatre productions in the UK. Her most recent apperance on television was in a UK commerical for "Key Advice Release" from 2018 as one of the characters. Occasionally she would sign autographs featuring Marie such as animations cells from the film and various Marie merchandise. However, The Aristocats is the only acting role for Dean Clark (Berlioz), who hasn't reappeared in anything since then.
• Jim Jordan had been one of the big stars of The Golden Age Of Radio in America, headlining the popular Fibber McGee and Molly series with his wife Marian, but his feature film work had been limited to playing Fibber McGee in a few films, with his only substantial film role coming decades later as the voice of Orville the albatross in Disney's 1977 film The Rescuers. Like Roberts he retired after the film was released, though in his case due to old age rather than a change in profession.
• Most of the voice actors on KaBlam! haven't done any acting/voice acting since the show ended, save for a few cameos in other shows or minor voice acting roles (June's voice actress, Julia McIlvaine was in a few episodes of MAD). Some of the few voice actors still doing work after the show are Danielle Judovits, who voiced Loopy, and Ashley Tisdale (Credited as "Ashley Michelle"), who voiced Jetcat.
• Mary Gibbs' only voice role was Boo AKA Mary in Monsters, Inc., before retreating from show business in favor of a normal childhood. ^note Fun Fact: Mary Gibbs is the daughter of Monsters, Inc. animator Rob Gibbs.
• Similar to the case of Daria, some of the actors behind Superjail! were friends of the staff or the staff members themselves. Most notably, Teddy Cohn (voice of Jared) was hired due to being a friend of Stephen Warbrick, and otherwise had never done voice acting before. David Wain, Dana Snyder, and Chris McCulloch, however, are more known outside of the show for their other roles in animation and acting. Christy Karacas and Stephen Warbrick have never acted outside of the series, and Sally Donovan (voice of most female characters) was an otherwise obscure actress who had voiced in MTV interstitials and shorts before being cast. Alice's initial voice actress was even an old college acquaintance of Karacas' who was roped in to do the role, until the Adult Swim executives ordered the role recast.
• Minty Lewis' only voice-acting role for a full series has been Eileen on Regular Show. She's one of the show's staff—originally a storyboard editor, then a full storyboard artist—and her one other voice role was for her own pilot, Bottom's Butte. However, she did have a major role as Kez in Book 4 of Infinity Train.
• MGM Animation's 2000 Funny Animal-based adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, titled just Tom Sawyer, cast several Country Music singers in their only voice-acting roles to date: Rhett Akins, Mark Wills, Lee Ann Womack, Alecia Elliott, Hank Williams Jr., Waylon Jennings, and Marty Stuart.
• Late actor Samuel E. Wright, best known as the voice of Sebastian the crab has very few other credits on his IMDb profile, like Kron from Disney's Dinosaur or Dizzy Gillespie in Clint Eastwood's Bird.
  Samuel E. Wright: I'm not a voiceover actor. I do Sebastian because Sebastian is a part of me. But I can't sit there and do a voice for you. I can't just come up with like Jiminy Cricket, or something. So, I don't think in terms of them hiring me again for another thing, because my voice is so iconically Sebastian now.
• Nicky Jones' only noteworthy voice-acting role was the title character of Chowder (aside from the pilot for The Amazing World of Gumball, where he voices that series' title character).
• Johnny Hardwick only's acting role is as Dale Gribble in King of the Hill, and hasn't done any others after the show ended in 2010. He was mainly the show's co-writer, story editor, and episode producer. He, however, has a YouTube channel wherein he has uploaded comical videos with himself (including several where he does his Dale Gribble voice). Sadly, Hardwick died on August 8, 2023.
• Harriet Owen's only major acting role was Jane in the Disney theatrical sequel Return To Never Land. She then left acting to become a teacher of Religious Education at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford, Surrey.
• Tyler Mullen has only two known credits: Mowgli in the VHS scenes of Jungle Cubs, and an unknown character in the Pixar compilation "Tiny Toy Stories".
• Matthew Herried's only acting role was the voice of Pudge the Penguin in Cats Don't Dance.
• The only major acting role to date for Daniel Studi — son of the legendary actor, producer and activist Wes Studi — was feisty Lakota native Little Creek in DreamWorks Animation's Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
• Outside of a few commercials as a child, Christopher Stephen Welch's only acting role was voicing Tails on Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. He retired from acting at the age of 13 and now works as a sales representative for a food distributor in Vancouver, and later got confused with Christopher Evan Welch when he died.
• Steven Universe has a largely Amateur Cast, several of which haven't done any other voice work:
  • Estelle, apart from a fictionalized version of herself in an episode of We Bare Bears, has only voiced Garnet. She works primarily as a singer and, while not really a "mainstream star", has a cult following that included members of the show's production crew (specifically its composers), which is partially how she get the role in the first place.
  • Joel Hodgson, the voice of Mayor Bill Dewey, has had no other voice roles. He works primarily as a comedian, an actor in several live-action productions, and is best known as the creator and original host of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  • Kathy Fisher voiced Fluorite and only Fluorite, and mainly works as a singer-songwriter.
  • Storyboard artist Lamar Abrams voiced Buck Dewey, as well as several other minor roles throughout the show, and that's all he's done as an actor.
  • Tom Scharpling hasn't done that much in the realms of voice acting (or acting in general) beyond some bit roles here and there such as Willie Nelson with Greg Universe being his biggest role. He primarily does stand-up comedy, writing, producing and hosts his own radio show.
• Animation director Adrien Beard's only notable acting role is voicing Token Black on South Park.
• Susanne Pollatschek's only credit was as Olivia in The Great Mouse Detective. After completing her studies in Scotland, she moved to Switzerland.
• Andy Berman's sole voice credits are as the voice of Dib Membrane and several minor characters from Invader Zim. While he has voiced Dib in other media appearances such as the Nicktoons Unite! series and the TV movie Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, he's never done anything not Zim-related.
• There's a variant of this trope where a well-known celebrity plays a voice role in a show or movie, and it remains the only animated work they've ever starred in. Some examples of this are a good amount of guest voices on The Simpsons ^note  though in some cases, like Luke Perry, they will land a second role in a Disney-related project, Robert Downey Jr. playing The Fat Guy Strangler on Family Guy, Billy Joel playing Dodger in Oliver & Company, Ice Cube providing the voice for The Candlemaker in The Book of Life and Céline Dion providing the Non-Singing Voice for Juliana in Quest for Camelot.
  • Speaking of The Simpsons guest stars, there's a very interesting case with Judy Blume's guest spot in "D'oh Canada": not only is it her only role in an animated work to date, but it's her only role as a character actor, as her other acting credit, a film adaptation of her book Tiger Eyes, was a Creator Cameo.
  • Thomas Pynchon's two Simpsons appearances are a particularly extreme example, as they're close to the only voice recordings that exist of him at all, with the only other one being a promo he recorded for Inherent Vice.
• In many works that have child voice actors, they will only be cast for the work they are a part of. One famous example would be the cast of the Peanuts specials, which generally cast professional child actors in the main roles (like Stacey Ferguson playing Sally in the 80's), but everyone else was played by kids with little to no acting experience, who largely dropped out of acting after they aged out of the roles. In the modern day, there are still cases where child actors only provide voice work on one animated show, but those are few and far between and now only done with Nickelodeon programming like Bubble Guppies and The Loud House. Nowadays, it's more common to have the same set of child voice actors being used for different shows, like how many of the child characters in PAW Patrol share voice actors with those on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.
• Liberty's Kids; Reo Jones played British subject-turned patriot Sarah Phillips for the entire duration of the series, but has virtually no other voice acting credits to her name.
• Adriana Caselotti's only major role was playing Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She had a few cameos like in The Wizard of Oz as Juliet in the song "If I Only Had A Heart" and It's a Wonderful Life as a singer in Martini's Bar, but then she retired and only appeared in a few talk shows before her death. This is because she was under contract by Disney, she wasn't permitted to act in any other film or make public appearances to preserve the illusion of Snow White as a real character.
• Not only was Undergrads the only show created by Pete Williams, it was also the only show he acted in, having voiced the four main characters. This is also the case with Jene Yeo, as Jesse remains her only acting credit.
• PAW Patrol:
  • This show provides Deann Degruijter's only acting role as a major character (Mayor Goodway), as her only other roles were all minor characters, not counting a recurring role in Franklin and Friends.
  • This show is the only animated work Hiromi Okuyama, the voice of Farmer Yumi, has worked on, as she more frequently appears in short films.
  • Owen Mason's only major role on a TV show was Ryder in Season 1.
  • Haruka Sugita, the voice of Everest in the Japanese dub, has done no other TV roles, instead starring in video games and TV ads.
• Most of the voice cast of The Dreamstone, especially Nancy Hendry (the voice of Amberely), barely did anything else afterwards.
• Holly Larocque's only voice role was Leota on The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin.
• Yuko Takeuchi's only voice-acting role in an animated work was Joy in the Japanese dub of Inside Out.
• A majority of the Children Voicing Children in Nick Jr.'s Animated Adaptation of Lalaloopsy were based out of Calgary, Alberta and had barely voice acted (or acted in general) before and/or after the show. The show is notable for being one of the few Western cartoons to be casted by Blue Water Studios (The Ocean Group's budget sister studio).
• Lari Friedman's only voice-acting credit was The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Cup in Eight Crazy Nights during the "Intervention Song" sequence.
• Tawny Kitaen's only voice-acting credit was Annabelle on Eek! The Cat.
• Thea White only played Muriel in Courage the Cowardly Dog and several works related to that franchise.
  • Tim Chi Ly, the voice of Di Lung, has had no other voice roles. He mostly works as a character designer and background artist.
• Ward Perry's only Western Animation role was Brad Wright/Soar Loser in Skysurfer Strike Force. Even then, he was a staff member at The Ocean Group and not a proper actor. It's unknown what happened to him after his career unceremoniously ended somewhere in the late 2000s.
• In Fudêncio e Seus Amigos, all of the cast features then-workers of the Brazilian MTV (which was discontinued in 2013 and was where the series aired). Most of them were animators, writers or producers whose only other voice roles are in different MTV Brazil cartoons. There was only one professional voice actor, who mostly did narrations for commercials in the network, though he eventually left the series. The main character Conrado also was temporarily voiced by Celebrity Voice Actor Felipe Solari, a VJ who was also an actor, though this was his only voice role.
• Canadian opera singer Janis Orenstein only had a few screen roles in the early 1960s, the most famous of which being the voice of Clarice in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). The rest of her career was spent performing opera before her death of cancer at the age of 62 in 2010.
• Sarah Heinke's only major acting role was voicing the titular character in Strawberry Shortcake. She then left show business behind and became a hairdresser.
• Steven Rattazzi's only major voice work role is Dr. Byron Orpheus on The Venture Bros..
• Sydney Patrick's only acting role was being the American voice of Peppa Pig.
• Nina and Anni, two of the three main characters in Pixel Pinkie, are voiced by Magdalena Grubski and Anica Boulanger-Mashberg, respectively, none of whom have done any acting since the show ended.
• Michael Fremer's only noteworthy acting role was being one of the four voice actors voicing multiple roles in Animalympics, voicing characters like Henry Hummel, René Fromage and Kit Mambo. He's more known as a figurehead in the vinyl collecting community nowadays.
• The 1949 Looney Tunes short Long-Haired Hare is the only known film role of singer Nicolai Shutorev, who provided Giovanni Jones' singing voice.
• Beauty and the Beast is the only major acting role for Paige O'Hara in a film, though she has had supporting roles in a few other series and Broadway credits to her name.
• Most of the child actors in PB&J Otter fall under this trope:
  • Adam Rose (not to be confused with the pro wrestler of the same name), who voiced Peanut, has mostly done minor roles. He's now very active on TikTok, with over 4 million followers.
  • Jenell Brook Slack, who voiced Jelly, has mostly worked on Broadway and as a singer.
  • Gina Marie Tortorici, who voiced Baby Butter, has no other credits.
  • Cody Pennes, who voiced Pinch Raccoon and her brother Scootch, has virtually no other credits to her name.
• Todd Waterman's only acting role to date is Khalil in The VeggieTales Show. He mostly works as a storyboard artist and animator.
• Batman: The Animated Series is Ingrid Oliu's only notable voice role providing the first voice of Officer Renee Montoya in the first season since all of her other credits were on-camera roles. She was replaced by Liane Schirmer for the rest of the series.
• The only acting role to date for Joshua Isen — son of veteran VA Tajja Isen — was voicing one of the Chicks in Franklin and the Turtle Lake Treasure.
• Nicole St. John's only notable voice-acting work is Futurama, voicing minor characters such as Sally and the Greeting Card from the episode "Mother's Day", but has no other credits under her name.
• Derin Basden's only voice-acting credits were voicing minor characters on Blue's Clues and The Powerpuff Girls. Basden has since retired from acting and is now working as the vice president of Global Technology at NBCUniversal.
• Dean Smith’s only voice-acting credit was voicing Captain Parker in Finley the Fire Engine.
• Brother Bear marks the only theatrical film appearance of Jason Raize, as the voice of Denahi, before his suicide just a few months after the movie's release.
• Captain Flamingo is the only voice credit for Debra Felstead, voicing Owen-Only's Mom, Avi's Mom and other minor characters in a few episodes, as she mostly works as an on-camera actor and writer.

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