The Fame Monster (But not the Lady Gaga one)

Noop Gingrich: TooFourGrace! Is there an actor and/or actress or/and actors /andor actresses that you feel deserve to be more famous? (For example, and we can discuss the merits later on, I feel that Karl Urban is underused by Hollywood and criminally under appreciated by the masses.)

Two Four Grace: My immediate gut response to your question was "the dude who played Eomer in The Lord of the Rings," and then I realized that that's Karl Urban. I guess that goes to show you that he's unjustly not famous enough considering I should know his name by now. But for the sake of being different I'll pick someone else. Nathan Fillian seems like a natural choice for this one, but I think I will go with Sam Rockwell. After his performance in Moon it leaves me downhearted that when he comes up in a conversation I usually have to explain who he is. Usually having to resort to "the douchey business man in Iron Man 2 that isn't Tony Stark" (although, he was excellent in that role), I would much rather say "you know, Zaphod Beeblebrox" and have other people actually know what I am talking about.

Noop: OOF, good choice. As great as he was in Iron Man 2, like a cheese cake in a campus gym, they wasted Rockwell on that role. He'd have made a great actual hero who could legitimately lead a film. If I could go back in time (and have executive powers for Marvel), I'd put Zach Braff as Justin Hammer and hold off on Rockwell for, I don't know, Doctor Strange. Although, I know very little about Doctor Strange other than off beat actors who are rather great are rumored to be cast as him and his first name is Stephen. My favorite Rockwell film is also Moon, but his star quality dawned on me with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind aka that movie that led us to believe Clooney was a better director than he actually is. Having to explain who Sam Rockwell is to people is worse than having to eat a regular stuffed Oreo when there's a pack of double stuffed sitting near by. It's funny how the cast of Hitchhiker's Guide slowly became the most impressive cast ever put together.

How about any lady thespians? I'd like o give a little appreciation to Eliza Coupe. She's was in that one season of Scrubs that we pretend never happened and the three seasons of Happy Endings which few people saw. She has top notch comedic timing that not even Zooey Deschanel could touch. Mindy Kaling is probably the only one who is on TV right now and is funnier.

DA PROOF!
 

TFG: Coupe was in more than one season of Scrubs, to be fair. She just became main cast in that season that never happened. Also an episode of Community, playing an Abed love interest that I always hoped we'd see again. But for my part, that's a tough question. Mainly because I want to say Anna Friel, whom I fell in love with on Pushing Daisies and, well, I desperately miss Pushing Daisies (by the way I didn't literally fall in love with her ON Pushing Daisies- I'm not Lee Pace). The only problem is that I really haven't seen her other work, so I can't truly say whether or not she was any good elsewhere meriting the underrated status. But I'll be damned if that wasn't a great show. You know what? Yeah. Anna Friel. She needs to be in more things I watch. Then people need to know who she is.

Noop: I need to rewatch Scrubs. I need to rewatch Pushing Daisies, too. And lets not forget the obligatory Lee Pace should be in everything...oh wait he is! Lee Pace is at the appropriate level of fame now. That's a victory for us all.  

TFG: It's like for a while he was PACING himself, and now it's paying off. Nah, I regret that one. If you had asked me this same series of questions in 2008-2009 I would have put Lee Pace as my choice for most not-famous-enough actor, as I would have very recently seen "The Fall."

Noop: As always, a friendly reminder  to all, if you haven't seen The Fall, what the hell are you doing with your pathetic life?!

Let's end with a quick mention of the actor who is supremely under appreciated. Karl Urban. He's gritty. He's got style, he's got grace. He's the acting equivalent of Nair but instead of being ideal for short shorts, he's ideal for everything. He's constantly cast in stuff and is very prominently featured in those things so this is a failure of the American people. How dare they refuse to watch his gorgeous body...of work.