Celeb Siblings Who Just Couldn't Make It In Hollywood

There are lots of successful celebrity siblings in Hollywood, like Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Luke and Owen Wilson, and Ben and Casey Affleck, just to name a few. But it's hard to make it in the entertainment biz even if you have a famous big bro or sis to give you a leg up on the competition. So for every star sibling who did manage to carve out their own career, there are plenty more still toiling away in the shadows of their more famous kin. These are some celebrity siblings who just couldn't make it in Hollywood.

While older brother, Joey, has navigated his way from being a child star on Gimme a Break! to huge hits with Blossom and Melissa & Joey, his younger brothers, Andrew and Matthew, didn't have quite the same luck.

Andrew and Matthew both played younger versions of Joey on Blossom, then went on to star alongside Joey in Brotherly Love, the sitcom where they really had to flex their acting muscles since their characters were only half-brothers. Matthew, who had already starred in Mrs. Doubtfire at this point, went on to a pretty decent run on Boy Meets World. Then he was in The Hot Chick with Rob Schneider, and things understandably cooled off after that. Andrew went to voice work on the Disney series, Recess, then a steady string of one-off appearances on network procedural shows like CSI: NY, Bones, CSI: Cyber, and NCIS: Los Angeles. Both of the younger Lawrence boys also ended up back on Joey's coattails for small parts on Melissa & Joey as well. And look, we're not trying to say that Joey Lawrence is some megawatt personality compared to his brothers — the guy did star in something called Arlo: The Burping Pig in 2016 — but he's certainly maintained a higher profile than his less famous brothers.

Back in 2004, 20/20 interviewed the Duff sisters and asked them point blank if Hilary's success caused any tension in the relationship. Haylie's reply was, "We never really thought about it before!" Hilary said, "It's just a matter of timing," in her prediction for her sister's showbiz future.

Fast forward thirteen years and Haylie, who is also an actress and singer/songwriter, has released her own albums, written songs for Hilary, and starred in her own long list of movies and TV shows, including 7th Heaven. Except if you asked the majority of people what they know her from, they'd probably say "She's the girl from Napoleon Dynamite." So, presumably knowing the world only has an appetite for one Duff family superstar, Haylie pursued a third passion: cooking.

She started her blog, The Real Girl's Kitchen, where she shares her favorite recipes and stories from her life. She eventually turned that into a cookbook and a series for The Cooking Channel in 2014. The new culinary direction seems to be Haylie's lane now since she's been a guest on many more food-related shows, like Chopped Junior, Food Network Star, and Beat Bobby Flay. She also landed a second Cooking Channel series of her own, called Haylie's America, where "she travels all over the country to hit local foodie havens," according to EW. So, she turned herself into the female Guy Fieri, which wow, now that we put it that way does not sound great at all.

Steve Buscemi is a veteran character actor who was able to make the leap into a leading man role on HBO's Boardwalk Empire. That's a significant accomplishment for any actor, let alone one who most people would say "has a face for radio." And though his infamous mug seems like it's one-of-a-kind, there is another Buscemi, Steve's younger brother Michael, and they're practically twins. Michael is also an actor, although his recognizable credits are mostly from movies that Steve was also in, like I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, Interview, and Blended.

The Buscemi boys now star together on Steve's AOL series, Park Bench, which is a short-format interview show in the style of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, according to Observer. They even use their doppelganger-ness for a gag on the show here Michael hosts a fictional rival show called Bench Talk in which which he steals guests from Steve. The exposure must be working out for Michael, who's IMDb page is showing three 2017 credits in the bag, as well as three more projects in some phase of production as of this writing, which is a dramatic increase in his output over the years.

When asked how he feels about working in the shadow of his brother all these years, Michael once told Fast Company, "Imagine you're a good plumber and your brother is a good plumber as well and is getting a lot of business. They're talking about him, you know, and you say, 'Well, I'm a plumber. I can fix your toilet.' But instead, they're saying, 'Well, I know this great, great plumber ..." Steve's response to that was, "You know, he's a pretty great plumber himself."

Like the Lawrence brothers, Brett Harrelson got his big break in 1996 when he basically played himself after getting cast as Larry Flynt's brother, Jimmy, alongside Woody (who played Larry) in The People vs. Larry Flynt. Brett considered this the start of his own acting career, telling The Cincinnati Enquirer that following the breakout role, he "buckled down, went back to acting class and took any reasonable job he could get."

Unfortunately, that would only ever amount to five more credits for his entire career, including Strangeland, the Dee Snider-directed horror flop of which Brett said, "The less said the better." He then did Dante's View, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, a bit part in a Jean Claude Van Damme movie, and then Back Home Again in 2004 which is apparently when his Hollywood career ended. According to The Daily Mail, as of 2012 Brett was back on the Hollywood scene, sort of, working as Woody's assistant.

Joe Estevez is by far the busiest actor out of all of the lesser-known siblings on this list. With an astonishing 277 credits on his IMDb page, Joe has seemingly earned his self-appointed title of "independent film's most prolific actor." The man is an absolute machine, having logged 18 credits in 2010 alone, but he did get his start on one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time, Apocalypse Now. That's because Joe is, of course, the uncle of Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen, which makes him Martin Sheen's (whose real name is Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez) younger brother. According to an interview with The Epoch Times, Joe was called in to the production of the Vietnam War epic to stand in for scenes while Martin recovered from a "medical emergency." He also says that he "took over narration for his [Martin] character Captain Willard," although he was never credited with the role.

Joe then returned to his budding B-movie legacy and never looked back. A former factory worker, Joe brought his blue collar work ethic right onto the set with him. "I liked getting up in the morning, going to work, and coming home in the evening. That kind of carried over into my acting. I don't like to sit by the phone and wait for this call or that call. I like to keep busy; to get up in the morning and have some positive work to do," he told Christian Cinema. Which is why he was happy to take gigs like Gator King, Beach Babes from Beyond, and Max Hell Frog Warrior. Also, if we're being totally honest, based on looks alone, Joe's most likely prospects in mainstream Hollywood would have been playing Martin Sheen's evil twin, but CGI and fake mustaches ruined that gig for him a long time ago.

Being the third most famous Jackson isn't too shabby, considering there were nine of them. La Toya is the fifth child of the bunch, and she was the first female sibling to attempt a solo music career, according to Biography. Janet would eventually bypass her as the dominant female Jackson, and of course, Michael who outshined them all. But that didn't stop La Toya from putting out nine albums over the course of her career. She even managed to crack the Top 40 four times, albeit at #22 with "Bet'cha Gonna Need My Lovin'". That was in 1983.

In 1989, Jackson posed naked with a snake for Playboy, debuting a controversial new, sexy image, and also cementing a very public falling out with her family, all of which she would later blame on an allegedly abusive and controlling relationship with her manager/husband, Jack Gordon. After they split, she attempted to revive her music career with an album and memoir both titled Starting Over, which again failed to launch her musical superstardom. Eventually, La Toya found her way to reality TV as a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother in 2009. She would go on to star on The Apprentice (2011-2013) as well as her own series, Life With La Toya in 2013, in which she attempted to clear up misconceptions about her "crazy family," according to The Huffington Post. But the debut episode addressed the now infamous kidnapping scandal involving La Toya's mother, Katherine, and also how the siblings fought each other in court over Michael's will, so we'd say she didn't exactly succeed in that endeavor either.

Any of the Baldwins other than Alec could probably make this list, but Stephen and Billy both had the briefest flings with mainstream success, so for the sake of argument, we're going to focus on Daniel. The peak of his fame was in the early 90's with his stint on Homicide: Life on the Street. By that time he'd already become a self-admitted "diehard coke head," according to a 2007 Primetime interview. "I thought, 'My God, I'm gonna make $15,000 a week for 13 weeks.' What would I do with that kind of money? You know, I had never seen anything like that before in my life," he said, before recounting the story of his his initial success led almost immediately to a crack-cocaine addiction.

Though he continued to work steadily in B-movies and TV bit parts, his career was constantly interrupted by arrests for wild behavior related to his drug use. The most famous incident was his "nude drug-fueled rampage in a Plaza hotel suite" in 1998 which got him arrested and slapped with drug possession charges. He continued the cycle of getting clean then relapsing for years, most notably during his meltdown while appearing on Celebrity Fit Club in 2005. By 2016, Baldwin had been to rehab 10 times before it finally worked and he was able to stay sober, according to The Fix. And while it's great that Baldwin has finally got his addiction under control, that has yet to translate to a return to mainstream stardom, considering one of his upcoming projects on his IMDb is The 420 Movie: Mary & Jane, in which his co-star Verne Troyer plays Tito the Terrible, "a three foot tall Mexican Drug Lord." We can't know for sure until we see the film, but we're confident that one's not winning any Oscars.

You wouldn't think anyone would consider it a good idea to try to break into Hollywood by spoofing their wildly successful brother's most popular character, but that's exactly how Neil Connery, yes, Sean's younger brother, attempted to do it in 1967 with Operation Kid Brother. In the film, he stars as Dr. Neil Connery (how'd they ever come up with that?), a surgeon who gets wrapped up in some kind of evil plot by a group of supervillains who plan to hijack nuclear weapons. In the end, he has an archery battle with the main villain, because at that point they weren't even trying to make any kind of sense anymore. The movie also didn't even try to pretend it wasn't a James Bond ripoff, right down to its casting of people who'd actually starred in previous Bond films.

Needless to say, Operation Kid Brother did not sent Neil Connery to the top of the A-List, or even the D-List for that matter. With a total of 10 acting credits to his name, Connery mostly worked as a "plasterer" until an accident in 1983 also derailed that career. But according to The Scotsman, the good news is Sean doesn't seem to care one bit that his brother tried to cash in on his fame, as evidenced by the fact that they regularly appear at public events together. Is it too much to ask for there to be an unknown Daniel Radcliffe sibling out there, just waiting for someone to greenlight a Harry Potter spoof, called Kid Wizard: Do My Parents Even Care I'm Alive?