Since I catered to the Treksters last night, tonight we'll check out two actors from the original trilogy, Star Wars as we count down eight more days to finish your costumes and get your pumpkins carved. Both the Star Trek and Star Wars universes are licensing titans which make money with or without new on-screen material via toys, comics, novels, games, and you guessed it, costumes. ...and if you have time to read this, you have time for the ultimate showdown and your web-junk fix of the day as well...
Alec Guinness (left) was actually nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars film. Guinness was one of the few involved in the film who felt confident the film would turn a profit and secured a percentage of the gross into his contract. This move made the actor a very rich man later in life.
Billy Dee Williams (right) has a couple of neat cult film connections I find interesting. For Star Wars, he initially auditioned for the role of Han Solo (ironic for many reasons if you're familiar with the storyline). He ended up with the role of Lando Calrissian, for which he is most widely known nevertheless. Williams also got the shaft with his role in the Batman franchise. He played Harvey Dent in the first Tim Burton Batman movie but got dropped for Tommy Lee Jones in the sequel to reprise the role and turn into Two-Face.
Williams and Guinness are the only two actors other than Harrison Ford from the original Star Wars trilogy with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Mr. Ford didn't make my shortlist for the zombies. You can't keep a good man down forever, Billy Dee. Daps baby... you're on the Zombie Walk of Fame.
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you brought two cents, leave them here...
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.