Embarrassing Early Roles Of Big Time Actors

He's now the world's biggest movie star, but his beginnings were humble. In the cheesy 1987 T&A movie Hunk, Brad Pitt played "Guy at Beach with Drink."

She kind of came out of nowhere to win the Best Actress Oscar for Room, but Larson is no overnight sensation. Prior to a film career and being a regular on The United States of Tara, nine-year-old Larson acted in a sketch on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1998. She played a Girl Scout demonstrating a fake product called the "Roadkill Easy Bake Oven."

At the start of his career, the
current Dark Knight was in something way darker than a Batman movie or even Gigli.Well, at least the title is dark. Affleck's first screen
credit came back in 1981, in an independent movie called The
Dark End of the Streetthat was shot in his native Boston and directed
by a friend of his parents. It's about two teens that frame an innocent man for
murder. Affleck, only seven at the time, played a little boy named Tommy.

Paltrow's first film
was an uncredited, non-speaking part in an anti-drug made-for-TV movie starring Dana
Barron (one of the Audreys from the Vacation
movies) and directed by her father, Bruce Paltrow. It also marks the screen debut of future Scrubs star Zach Braff.

Not every Afterschool
Special back in the day was about drunk driving or teen pregnancy. Some were frivolous
fluff, like Magical Make-Over from
1994. It's about a teenage girl who is magically given the ability to change
her looks every day. Kerry Washington appears in a supporting role as Heather, a friend of the main character.

We've all got to start somewhere, especially when we're young and hungry. Here are some examples of major stars whose careers have come a long way since these embarrassing early roles they'd probably rather you didn't seek out.

Before he was Rocky, or Rambo, and then Rocky again, and then Rambo again, and then Rocky again, Sylvester Stallone was Stud, a character in the 1970 softcore porno movie The Party at Kitty and Stud's. A pretty generic skin flick about a party that turns into an orgy, it went unnoticed until after Stallone struck it big with Rocky in 1976. At that point, it was re-released to adult movie theaters under the title Italian Stallion.

Mac & Me, a 1988 movie about a boy befriended by an alien, is known for two things: being a pretty shameless ripoff of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and having some of the most shameless product placement in history. There's an extremely long dance sequence that takes place in a McDonald's, for example, and right before that scene, a bunch of people are so happy just to be near a McDonald's that they start dancing. One of those dancers: Jennifer Aniston in her first role.

Jared Leto was on Camp Wilder, a 1992-93 entry in ABC's "TGIF" lineup. The show was about a bunch of teens (one of whom was played by Leto) who hang out at a cool older sister's house. The cast also included Hilary Swank, meaning this forgettable family sitcom produced two Oscar winners.

In 1955, 25-year-old Eastwood had a bit part as a lab assistant named Jennings in a sci-fi B-movie called Revenge of the Creature,a sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon.(More people probably saw it when it was mocked on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.)

After a recurring role on an '80s Lassie revival called, appropriately enough, The New Lassie, and as Luke, the requisite "New Kid to Shake Things Up on Aging '80s Sitcom" on Growing Pains, DiCaprio landed his first film role: the cheesy horror flick Critters 3.

Amy Adams has been nominated for multiple Academy Awards. But roughly five years before her first, for Junebug, she got her first major role in 2000's Cruel Intensions 2, a sequel to the salacious teen movie starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. Actually, it's not even a sequel; it's a prequel. And actually, it's not even a movie. It began life as pilot called Manchester Prep, a TV version of Cruel Intentions that Fox rejected, so it was stretched out into a direct-to-DVD movie.

In 1954, a young, super-handsome Paul Newman starred in an ancient Greek-set "swords-and-sandals" epic called The Silver Chalice. He hated it so much that when a Los Angeles TV station bought the rights to air it every night for a week in 1963, Newman spent $1,200 on ads in local newspapers to trash the film and urge people not to watch. (Of course, that only made people want to watch it more; ratings were very high for that local L.A. station.)

Lawrence was Oscar-nominated the first time she ever starred in a movie (Winter's Bone in 2009). She paid her dues on TV, but she certainly didn't pay them for long. From 2007 to 2009 she played the generic teen daughter on the generic TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show. It starred that redneck comedy guy. No, not the "you might be a redneck if" comedian. No, not the "git-r-done" one. The "here's your sign" guy.

In 1977, a straight outta drama school Robin Williams starred in a few bits for Can I Do It 'Till I Need Glasses?, a sex-theme sketch comedy movie. (In other words, it was a lesser Kentucky Fried Movie.) But as the film was put together, Williams' sketches were cut. That was all well and good, until he became a huge star virtually overnight on Mork and Mindy the following year. His scenes were re-inserted (sex pun intended), and Can I Do It was re-released to theaters. Also released: a trailer prominently featuring Williams.

Dignified British actress Emilia Clarke just can't get away from temperamental lizard beasts. If it's not dragons on Game of Thrones, it's accidentally enchanted dinosaur bones. In 2010's Triassic Attack (because the more familiar dinosaur word "jurassic" was already taken) some fossils in a museum come to life and try to kill everybody, including the future Khaleesi.

America's sweetheart landed her second-ever role in a 1989 made-for-TV movie called Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman. A revival of the two titular '70s series about cyborg Lee Majors and cyborg Lindsay Wagner, the movie was a failed attempt to launch a new weekly series about a new, younger "Bionic Girl" named Kate Mason. In the role of Kate Mason: Bullock.

It's a fun bit of Hollywood trivia that Kevin Costner played the role of the dead friend in The Big Chill, only to see his first "big break" slip away when all his scenes were cut prior to the movie's release. But that wasn't Costner's first film—that dubious distinction goes to Sizzle Beach U.S.A., a low-budget indie he starred in years before. The movie, about the occasionally salacious adventures of three women who rent a house in Malibu (one of whom saddles up with a ranch hand played by Costner), collected dust in the studio vault for years, until Costner's sudden celebrity in the '80s prompted a quickie reissue. Which do you think is more embarrassing for him, this or The Postman?