Actors With The Longest Gaps Between Movie Appearances

According to the Guinness World Records, the actress with the longest career in films was Dercy Gonçalves, who made her screen debut in the 1943 Brazilian film "Samba in Berlin" and continued to appear in features and on television for the next 86 years until her final movie role in 2008. Not far behind her in terms of screen longevity was American actor Norman Lloyd, whose 73-year career began with Alfred Hitchcock's "Saboteur" in 1942 and continued until 2015's "Trainwreck" with Amy Schumer. It's important to note that for both actors, there were also substantial time gaps between movie roles (up to a decade, in Gonçalves' case).

Lengths of time between film roles are not uncommon for actors, whose stardom can be impacted by any number of factors, from age and health to movie trends and off-screen issues. However, some performers experienced unusually long stretches between screen roles, disappearing from audiences' view for years and in some cases, multiple decades. These performers include Golden Age stars, Hollywood legends, and even an amateur.  

El Paso, Texas-based insurance and fertilizer salesman Harold "Hal" Warren roped in a number of friends to help him realize his homemade horror project, the 1966 film "Manos: The Hands of Fate." Among those recruited by Warren was Tom Neyman, whose work as an artist led to him providing the sets, props, and costumes for them, all on his own dime. Neyman also played the film's beetle-browed cult leader, "The Master," while his daughter Jackey played the doomed little girl Debbie. The family's dog was even cast as the master's hellhound.

Warren's technical aptitude couldn't match his enthusiasm, and "Manos"—now widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made—was laughed into obscurity until 1992, when the film was featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." The newfound exposure led to revival screenings and convention appearances for its surviving cast, which spurred Jackey Neyman (now Neyman-Jones) to launch a Kickstarter campaign for a sequel, "Manos Returns," with her father reprising his role as the Master. Both "Manos" movies represented Tom Neyman's entire film career, and the gap between appearances—52 years—represented what may have been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, gaps between films in movie history. Neyman died at the age of 80 on November 23, 2016.

Though relatively unknown in the United States outside of cult movie fandom circles, Italian-German actor Terence Hill was among the most popular actors in European cinema and television from the late 1960s to the present. Born Mario Girotti, he was perhaps best known as the star of several spaghetti Westerns, including the comic "They Call Me Trinity," which teamed his work-averse gunfighter with a burly brawler played by Italian actor Bud Spencer (real name: Carlo Pedersoli). The pair subsequently co-starred in countless Westerns, crime films, and action comedies for more than three decades, all following the "Trinity" template of Hill getting the pair into trouble and Spencer solving it with his fists.

Hill added television to his long list of credits in the early 1990s but remained active in low-budget features until 1997's "Virtual Weapon," which paired him with American ex-boxer "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler. Three years later, he took on the title role in the well-loved Italian series "Don Matteo," and remained with the role for an impressive 22 years until leaving the show in 2022. His work on "Don Matteo" and other series took up much of his time in the 2000s, but in 2018, he returned to feature films for the first time in 21 years for "My Name Is Thomas." Hill starred in the gentle comedy-drama about a lone motorcyclist whose journey of self-discovery in the Spanish desert is interrupted by a free-spirited young woman (played by Veronica Bitto). Hill also served as director of the film, which he dedicated to Bud Spencer, who died in 2010.

Poised for movie stardom after an Oscar nomination for only her second film role, actress Nancy Olson instead turned her back on Hollywood in the mid-1950s to raise a family, though she continued to make sporadic appearances in features and on television for the next half-century. Olson enjoyed overnight fame as Betty Schaefer, a script reader and aspiring writer who fell for William Holden's doomed Joe Gillis in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Blvd." Olson netted one of the film's 11 nominations, but lost to Josephine Hull in "Harvey"; she continued to act in features, often opposite Holden but also John Wayne and Bing Crosby, but left the business to raise two daughters with her first husband, Oscar-winning lyricist Alan Jay Lerner.

The couple divorced in 1957, and Olson returned to acting with roles in several Disney features, including "The Absent-Minded Professor." But she continued to keep the film industry at arm's length. Olson appeared in just four films between 1974 and 1997, though she was busy on TV while raising a son with her second husband, Capitol Records executive Alan W. Livingston. She retired from acting in the mid-1980s but returned to Disney for a brief appearance in "Flubber," a 1997 remake of "Absent-Minded Professor." Her son, Christopher, managed to lure her back to the screen after a 17-year absence for a minor role in the raunchy 2014 comedy "Dumbbells," which he directed.

A beloved entertainer as well as a well-respected civil and humanitarian rights activist, Harry Belafonte's abundant charisma and popularity as a singer led to film and television roles beginning in the early 1950s. Though not as prolific a film actor as a recording artist or live performer, Belafonte's screen roles included the powerful 1959 noir thriller "Odds Against Tomorrow", Robert Altman's 1996 drama "Kansas City," and Emilio Estevez's "Bobby," about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, from 2006. The latter marked his last feature film role for more than a decade.

However, in 2018, Spike Lee tapped the 91-year-old Belafonte to essentially play himself—a civil rights activist—in his Oscar-winning drama "BlacKkKlansman." Two years later, he was the focus of a documentary, "The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show," which examined his week-long stint on the talk show in 1968, during which he featured Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as guests. An EGOT winner with three Grammys, an Emmy, a Tony, and an honorary Oscar among his many laurels and achievements, Belafonte died of congestive heart failure at the age of 96 on April 25, 2023.

Audrey Hepburn epitomized class, charm, and style in a string of memorable Hollywood features, from her 1953 debut in "Roman Holiday" to "Sabrina," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," and "My Fair Lady." But after completing work on the 1967 thriller "Wait Until Dark"—a grueling shoot thanks both to the film's dark story and Hepburn's crumbling marriage to its producer, actor Mel Ferrer—Hepburn retired from acting to focus on her family.

Nine years would pass before Hepburn returned to moviemaking with 1976's "Robin and Marian." The adventure-romance, directed by "Superman II" helmer Richard Lester, paired her with Sean Connery as an older Robin Hood and Maid Marian who reunited after decades of separation. It netted positive reviews for the considerable chemistry between the two leads. Hepburn only made three more films and a TV movie in the ensuing decades, preferring instead to focus on her new role as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Hepburn, who died of cancer at the age of 63 on January 20, 1993, was posthumously honored for her humanitarian work that same year with the Jean Hersholt Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Oscar winner Faye Dunaway was among the busiest and most acclaimed leading actresses of the 1970s, amassing appearances in some of the decade's best films, including "Chinatown," "Network," and "Three Days of the Condor," as well as crowd-pleasing titles like "The Towering Inferno" and "The Three Musketeers." But an over-amped turn as actress Joan Crawford in 1981's "Mommie Dearest" and a slew of ill-advised flops ("Supergirl") as well as the unfortunate industry bias against actresses of a certain age torpedoed Dunaway's film work for much of the '80s and '90s. Dunaway found more rewarding work on television, including Emmy and Golden Globe wins for an episode of "Columbo" and the 1999 TV movie "Gia," but her film appearances were reduced to rarely seen features in the 2010s.

Dunaway made four films in 2009 alone, including two films in Poland and two obscure low-budget features, before taking a lengthy hiatus from big-screen appearances. Though she appeared in a 2010 TV movie, "A Family Thanksgiving," Dunaway would not return to moviemaking until 2017, when she appeared in three films. The most widely seen of these was "The Bye Bye Man," a "Candyman"-styled chiller with Doug Jones as the titular supernatural force and Dunaway in a glorified cameo as a woman who knows about his secret. Though largely panned, "Bye Bye Man" got a wide release and turned a profit, which is more than can be said for Dunaway's other 2017 films: the faith-based drama "The Case for Christ" and "Inconceivable," a limp thriller with Nicolas Cage and Gina Gershon. Both drifted out of circulation shortly after release.

After capturing Grammy Awards and a Tony nomination for her storied career as a singer and Broadway star, Barbra Streisand set her sights on the motion picture industry. She enjoyed immediate success with her feature film debut in 1969's "Funny Girl," which earned her an Oscar and Golden Globe (yes, she's an EGOT award holder, having earned Emmys in 1965 and a special Tony in 1970). The glory years of Streisand's acting career came in the 1970s with hits like "What's Up, Doc?" and "The Way We Were"; '80s efforts like "The Main Event" and "Yentl," which marked her directorial debut, generated mixed results from audiences and critics.

By the 1990s, Streisand's screen efforts were often years in the making: "The Prince of Tides" and "The Mirror Has Two Faces" were released a half-decade apart, and the latter was her last motion picture appearance for 7 years. However, she returned to comedy and box office gold with 2004's "Meet the Fockers," for which she partnered with Dustin Hoffman to play Ben Stiller's overbearing parents. Though critically panned, the film made over $500 million worldwide and was followed by a third film, "Little Fockers," again with Streisand as Roz Focker. She made one additional comedy, "The Guilt Trip," which underperformed upon its release in 2012, and has since focused largely on her music, though rumors of acting and directing roles have surfaced in the ensuing decade.