A-List Actresses' Early Career TV Guest Spots
By Michael Jones | October 11, 2021
If you watched the Emmys last month, your jaw may have dropped when half-way through the opening rap by LL Cool J and Cedric the Entertainer, actress Rita Wilson popped up on stage singing her heart out.
But as surprising as that was, we were equally surprised to learn that one of Rita Wilson’s first ever acting gigs was as a cheerleader in a 1972 episode of The Brady Bunch.
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha? Try Rita, Rita, Rita! (Also we need to tap into all the secrets of her genetics, because somehow nearly 50 years later Rita Wilson looks the exact same.)
Seeing Rita Wilson shaking her pom-poms on The Brady Bunch got us thinking: what other famous actresses got their early starts on some beloved TV shows of the 70s, 80s and early 90s? (Fun science fact: Asking these kinds of questions is how YouTube rabbit holes are born.) Take a look at these beloved movie stars and the early roles they portrayed on TV.
Sharon Stone on Silver Spoons
We’ve called out before that one of Sharon Stone’s first roles was in the best diet soda commercial ever made—a late 1980s spot for Diet Sprite. But years before she rode the diet soda train (literally), she played a ditzy meter maid on a 1982 episode of Silver Spoons called “A Little Magic.” Frankly the magic part must be how Sharon kept up the voice she had to use for this role, which is like a cross between Jennifer Tilly and Victoria Jackson.
Michelle Pfeiffer on CHiPs and Fantasy Island
Long before she was throwing Butterfinger candy bars to high school students, sewing leather catsuits, or finding the ghost of her husband’s mistress at the bottom of a lake in Vermont, Michelle Pfeiffer was picnicking it up with Erik Estrada and Larry Cox in 1979 on season 3 of CHiPs, episode 56’s “The Watch Commander.” No YouTube video clips of this appearance yet (…internet, get to work!), but never fear, the 70s gave us one other Pfeiffer cameo: her acting debut in season 2 of Fantasy Island. She plays “Athena” on an episode titled "The Island of Lost Women/The Flight of Great Yellow Bird." How’s that for the start of one’s acting career?!
Angela Bassett on Spenser: For Hire
A former boxer who turns private investigator in Boston made Spenser: For Hire peak crime TV in the mid 1980s. It premiered in 1985, and in the series’ fourth episode ever, “The Choice,” we get legend Angela Bassett in one of her first ever roles. Eight years before she’d win a Golden Globe and get an Oscar nomination for playing Tina Turner in What’s Love Got To Do With It, a 17-year-old Angela has a few quick emotional scenes in a hospital for an episode where two “thrill-seekers” try to take down Spenser (Robert Urich).
Kim Basinger on Charlie’s Angels
The episode is “Angels in Chains” from the show’s first season, and it’s the most famous episodes in the entire Charlie’s Angels library. Kim Basinger plays Linda Oliver, imprisoned on a small country prison farm/brothel by a corrupt local sheriff where she’s forced to pick potatoes. I truly don’t know how that sentence makes any sense, but yet somehow, this plot works. After the Angels rescue her, Basinger’s Oliver becomes a secretary for the Townsend Agency, never to be seen again. Interesting tidbit: Basinger herself said she could have been cast full-time on the show but turned it down, in an interview she gave with MovieLine in the 1990s. Some folks see that as spin, but it is definitely true that after Farrah Fawcett left Angels at the end of its first season, Basinger was at least looked at as a possible replacement.
Salma Hayek on Dream On
Before they created one of the biggest shows in television history (Friends), Marta Kauffmann and David Crane launched the early 90s HBO staple Dream On. And in season 3 we get Salma Hayek’s first-ever U.S. television role in the episode “Domestic Bliss.” Hayek plays a maid named Carmela who meets Dream On’s protagonist, Brian Benben’s Martin Tupper, in an elevator ride before having a romantic tryst. But turns out Carmela is the maid for Martin’s ex-wife Judith (played deliciously by Wendie Malick), so prepare to get awkward.
Annette Bening AND Julia Roberts on Miami Vice
It’s already bonkers that Miami Vice’s instrumental theme song went to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and won two Grammy Awards. But this show churned out countless famous faces in its 5-year run, including two women who would go on to become Hollywood superstars. First up is Annette Bening, who in 1987 had her second TV role ever in Vice’s season 3 episode “Red Tide.” This episode is bursting with guest stars already, with Viggo Mortensen and Lou Diamond Phillips playing cops who get killed. But it’s Bening who gets to steal a bit of the show in her role as Vicky, a Justice Department employee and girlfriend of a crooked cop who helps leak files on police officers to drug lords.
Then there’s Julia Roberts, who not only starred in the cult classic movie Mystic Pizza in 1988 but also had a guest role as Polly Wheeler in episode 22, “Mirror Image,” of Miami Vice’s fourth season. And how’s this: Polly Wheeler wasn’t your quintessential 80s/90s Julia Roberts role. Nope, Polly was an assistant to dealer Miguel Manolo, head of a massive Miami drug cartel.
Jada Pinkett Smith on Doogie Howser, MD
Next year the fourth installment of The Matrix will drop starring (among many others) Jada Pinkett Smith and Neil Patrick Harris. But guess what? This isn’t the first time those two have appeared on a set together. In a January 1991 episode from season two of Doogie Howser, MD called “Air Doogie,” we get a baby Jada Pinkett cameo as she goes into the hospital for leg surgery. She spends most of the episode in a wheelchair or in a hospital bed, but we’re here for Jada giving the business to one of the hospital’s staff members who comes on a little too strong with his flirting.
Sissy Spacek on The Waltons
We’re going back almost 50 years for this one! At 23 years old Oscar winner Sissy Spacek got one of her first roles in a multi-episode arc of The Waltons. Turns out being friends with John Boy can help propel you into a decades-long award-winning career in Hollywood. Spacek played Sarah Jane Edmonds, and damn does this role require work. In her first episode she tries to marry John Boy Walton, only to be rebuffed and get tangled up with a townie (hence the episode's name, “The Townie”) who tries to steal her away to Maryland before almost killing her in a car accident. Yikes. But then she gets a second episode the following season where John Boy finds her alone in a mountain cabin and nine months pregnant (what really is time on a TV drama?), and she needs John Boy’s help to deliver her baby. Hope the royalty checks came pouring in for this work, Sissy.
Hilary Swank on Growing Pains
Before she was in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie and starred as The Next Karate Kid, Hilary Swank had the swanky name Sasha Serotsky on two episodes of Growing Pains. And not just any era of Growing Pains, but the Leonardo DiCaprio years. Living for these 1991 fashions! Show us that smile, Hilary (oh show us that smile…).
Geena Davis on Knight Rider
Geena Davis is the only one on this list who gets to say that her TV debut—in a November 1983 episode of Knight Rider—came playing the role of a cat burglar. Season two’s seventh episode, “K.I.T.T. the Cat,” sees Davis playing Grace Fallen, the daughter of a cat burglar who has learned a thing or two about stealing jewels. She teams up with the Hoff’s Michael to help track down another mysterious jewel thief, all while rocking the most quintessential 1980s garments: the headband. No wonder by the end of this decade, Davis would have an Oscar and be one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.
Got another big screen actress who made an appearance in a beloved TV show of the 70s, 80s, or 90s? Sound off in the comments. Meanwhile we’ll leave you with one bonus entry: Monica Geller herself, Courteney Cox, creating havoc in a 1986 episode of The Love Boat. You can even watch a clip of her scene in German, and even if you can’t understand a word they’re saying, it’s still going to be possibly the most enjoyable 30 seconds of your day.
Michael Jones is a Brooklyn-based writer and unabashed 80s & 90s pop culture junkie.
Follow him on Twitter: @michaelajones