12 TV Stars Who Returned To Television After A Failed Movie Career

These days, the line between “movie star” and “television actor” can look pretty blurry — major Hollywood figures like Zendaya, Pedro Pascal, Amanda Seyfried, and Ethan Hawke do prominent work in both film and television on a routine basis. But it didn’t always used to be this way. Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, George Clooney, and Will Smith — who all came to prominence on primetime in the ’80s and ’90s — pretty much abandoned television completely once their cinema careers took off.

Movie stars still generally enjoy more respectability and financial opportunities than their small-screen counterparts, but for TV actors, the…