Action Stars From The '80s Who Disappeared

Vernon Wells

Vernon Wells personified a very specific type of 1980s villain: the guy who always seemed to have his wardrobe on loan from a sex club. It started with his role in the post-apocalyptic chaps 'n' chains extravaganza Mad Max: Road Warrior, in which he played shoulder-padded, Mohawked madman Wez—a role he'd tip a hat to again a couple years later as "Lord General" in Weird Science and then again as "Ransik" in the Power Rangers movie Time Force. His other prominent role was as the over-the-top villain Bennett in Commando. These days, Wells looks more like a dad than a leather daddy, and he has a sense of humor about his characters being seen as gay icons, but to this day still swears there was no sexual subtext intended.

Wells has been keeping himself busy with bit parts and voice acting, but mostly can be found focusing his career behind the camera, directing and producing. He also works with Wolf Connection, a nature preserve to domesticate wolves and allow bonding with visitors and campers.

Jenette Goldstein

This one also became a gay icon, but of a different gender. Jenette Goldstein made a name for herself as an actress by playing the tough no-nonsense Vasquez from Aliens, a Space Marine who completely broke stereotypes. The moment we're introduced to her character, she's doing pullups as Bill Paxton's character Hudson walks up and asks if she's ever been mistaken for a man. Without missing a beat, she drops the withering reply, "No. Have you?". She also had roles as Meagan Shapiro in Lethal Weapon 2 and Janelle Voight, the foster mother of John Connor (as well as her T-1000 impersonation) in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Goldstein remains extremely proud of her genre-and-gender-defying role, for good reason. Director James Cameron found her so perfect for the role that he gave the character her first name. Now she owns a company, Jenette Bras, that also carries the same moniker. She founded the company when she realized department store lingerie departments were rarely accommodating for women with smaller band-sizes combined with larger cup sizes. Under the catchy slogan "The Alphabet Starts With D," the company caters exclusively to the needs of larger-endowed ladies—which is heroic itself, if you ask us.

Christopher Lambert

Christopher Lambert brought to life the immortal (see what we did there?) swordsman character Connor MacLeod in the Highlander series. In the '90s, he branched out to other sci-fi and action properties (Fortress, Mean Guns, Knight Moves, Mortal Kombat) but continued to return to the role that defined his career. After decades of straight-to-video action roles, in the early 2000s he made the surprising move to pursue roles in more artistic films in France. However as the saying goes, you have to dance with the one that brought you, and in between critically acclaimed art film cinema projects, he continued to make appearances on shows like NCIS and films like Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance. Rencently, he's confirmed that he's working on the new Mortal Kombat movie, reprising his role as Raiden, so it seems he hasn't let his newfound snooty arthouse reputation go to his head.

Sonny Landham

Sonny Landham played Billy Sole, the tracker from the mercenary team slaughtered in the first Predator movie. He also made appearances in The Warriors, 48 Hrs, Firewalker, Action Jackson, and Lock Up. His acting career dwindled in the mid-'90s as he devoted more time to his political career—but it came to a screeching halt in 2008 after a bafflingly deranged and racist appearance on a college radio show while he was campaigning for a Kentucky Senate position on the Libertarian ticket.

Reciting increasingly vitriolic slurs for Middle Eastern people, the nadir of the show came when Landham told a Arab-American caller that her opinions didn't matter and he only cared about Americans—and then publicly expressed doubts of her citizenship when she stated that she was an American citizen. The Libertarian Party withdrew their support for his candidacy and he was proved unable to transfer the signatures that put him on the ticket to run again as an independent. Since then, he's mostly fallen off the map except for a couple roles in the low-budget horror films Disintegration and Mental Scars, the latter of which features him in a Party City pigtail wig playing a Native American caricature called "Chief Bear." Karma is rough, dude.

Jesse Ventura

Jesse Ventura is probably still best known for his wrestling career as "The Body," but he's also remembered for roles in the Arnold Schwarzenegger films Predator and The Running Man. Ventura also pursued a career in politics, ultimately becoming the first and only candidate in the Reform Party to achieve a major government position, winning elections for the Mayor of Brooklyn Park and then later the Governor of Minnesota. While an economic conservative, Ventura's political career has been notable for his staunch support for gay rights, abortion rights, and the legalization of marijuana. He even floated the possibility of a presidential run on the Libertarian Party ticket in 2016, but withdrew and offered his support to nominated candidate Gary Johnson instead.

Peter Weller

Peter Weller is best known for taking on the title roles in the gory existential dystopian explode-a-thon Robocop and the so-self-aware-it-hurts deliberately campy genre-smashing action satire Buckaroo Banzai, as well as his award-winning work in the grotesque author-trapped-in-his-own-work sort of biopic Naked Lunch. (Whew, that was a lot of adjectives.) Acting-wise, these days Weller tends to play eclectic television parts, appearing at various times on shows as diverse as 24, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, and Fringe. He also acquired a Ph.D. in Art History, and now most of his time is spent as a teacher. The rest is spent either with his family or playing trumpet in a jazz ensemble, his dream since childhood.

Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson was a no-nonsense tough guy even before he started his acting career way back in the 1950s. Born to Lithuanian immigrants, he fought in World War II in order to escape the grueling conditions at the mine his family worked for, during which he received a Purple Heart. After taking theater classes while supporting himself with odd jobs, Bronson moved to Hollywood, where he took on television roles, changing his distinctly Lithuanian birth name to evade the scrutiny of the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee.

In the '70s, Bronson finally made his breakthrough as vigilante Paul Kersey in the Death Wish films. That role served him well through three sequels in the '80s, earning him a rough-and-tumble reputation he embellished with tales of his arrests and violent hobbies—all of which he completely made up. Bronson's gritty archetype grew archaic in the "everyone needs a gritty backstory and also needs to blow everything up" '90s, but what ultimately ended his career was hip surgery in 1998. He struggled with health problems afterwards, eventually passing away in 2003 at the age of 81.

Rutger Hauer

Rutger Hauer debuted in the US with the action-drama Nighthawks, but is best known as the replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner and Captain Navarre in Ladyhawke. Like many on this list, his career quickly descended into straight-to-video and low-budget action and thriller films, including the title role in the recent Hobo With A Shotgun, but he also started cultivating a more artistic side back home in the Netherlands. He has a film school there, the Rutger Hauer Film Factory, and also serves on the board of the I've Seen Films festival in Milan, Italy.

Timothy Dalton

Timothy Dalton played James Bond twice, in The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill, giving him the distinction of having the second-fewest appearances in the role. This wasn't always going to be the case—technically, he was still considered the go-to Bond actor right up until his replacement by Pierce Brosnan for 1995's Goldeneye (a part originally developed for Dalton). Unfortunately, years of contractual conflicts negated both that role and a potential early-'90s Bond outing that never made it out of development. Since then, Dalton's been seen mostly in television roles, most recently the Showtime drama Penny Dreadful.

Burt Reynolds

Burt Reynolds became famous in a lot of fast car action movies your dad probably loved. Or at least somebody's dad loved, because he did really well in the Smokey and the Bandit series, Cannonball Run, and Stroker Ace. Like many on this list, the cynical '90s laid low the unironic macho swagger Reynolds' roles depended on, and by that decade and beyond he was paying the bills by taking roles that bordered on self-parody or made nostalgic references to his former self. The '90s also brought the end of his celebrity relationship with Loni Anderson, a divorce he's still struggling to recover from financially. These days, most of his efforts seem to be devoted to refuting the idea that he's broke…while discreetly auctioning off every piece of his inventory that isn't bolted down.

Michael Biehn

Michael Biehn has three memorable James Cameron roles under his belt: Hicks from Aliens, Kyle Reese from Terminator, and Lt. Coffey in The Abyss. His acting career has been eclectic since the '90s, with a handful of appearances in big-budget films, cult classics and video game voice-overs. One of those cult-classic roles came in the film Grindhouse, which apparently sparked a fascination with the genre. These days he runs a production company with his wife that produces grindhouse-style movies and focuses on work by female filmmakers.

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