Hollywood A-Listers Who Got Their Big Break in Horror Films

Matthew McConaughey

In Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995), Renée Zellweger wasn't the only rising star. McConaughey had already dived into Hollywood headfirst with Dazed and Confused two years earlier, but his acting chops were cemented with the unsettling role of Vilmer Slaughter in this sequel to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Although McConaughey deviated from the genre to become a '90s and early '00s heartthrob, his roots will never be forgotten.

Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams broke into the scene with a relatively small role in Species, a 1995 sci-fi horror film that follows a motley crew of scientists and government agents on a mission to track down Sil, an alien-human hybrid, before she mates with a human male. Williams plays a younger version of Sil in the film. Only a few years later, Williams took on a larger part in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) alongside none other than Jamie Lee Curtis.

Advertisement

Next Page →

The More You Know

  • The names of the taxi driver and the policeman in everybody’s favourite Yuletide outing, It’s A Wonderful Life, are Bert and Ernie. The writers working on Sesame Street at the time claim it’s merely a coincidence.
  • Keanu Reeves used his profit from The Matrix to buy a motorcycle for all of the movie's stuntmen.
  • The Hulk made his debut in 1962.
  • In Home Alone, Buzz's girlfriend is actually a boy in a wig. The director thought it would be too mean to ask a girl to be in the film this way.
Next Page →

Post originally appeared on Upbeat News.