Casper Van Dien

1997 was as good as it got, and it was very good. Paul Verhoeven cast Van Dien as Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers precisely because he looked like a recruitment poster, and the film's satire only works if its lead plays the poster completely straight, with no wink available to the audience. He did exactly that, and it remains one of the smartest uses anyone has made of an actor's face. Before it he had been an uncredited student on Saved by the Bell, and he has walk-ons in two Casper films, which is funny in a way nobody planned.

The follow-up should have built something. He played Brom Van Brunt for Tim Burton in Sleepy Hollow and took the title role in Tarzan and the Lost City, and then the studio phone gradually stopped ringing. What came next is a very long run of direct-to-video genre pictures, Dracula 3000, Python, 500 MPH Storm, Fire Twister, Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf, Avengers Grimm, and two more turns as Rico, in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and the animated Traitor of Mars.

It would be easy to be snide about that stretch, and it would also miss the point. He kept working, constantly, for three decades, which is a skill of its own, and when a real script has turned up he has been noticeably better than his filmography predicts. The Pact in 2012 is the evidence. Alita: Battle Angel is the recent credit with a real budget behind it, and the Swiss splatter comedy Mad Heidi is the recent one with a personality.