TV stars shine brightly on the big screen
BDY Body: This year's crop of Oscar nominees contains several stars who first made their marks on TV, such as Steve Carell ("The Daily Show," "The Office"), Patricia Arquette ("Medium") and J.K. Simmons ("Oz," "The Closer"). But these five other nominees we consider 100 percent movie stars also have TV in their early resumes — though you may have to think really hard to remember them:
BDY Body: MICHAEL KEATON (Best actor, "Birdman"): He co-starred with Jim Belushi as a couple of janitors with greater ambitions in the CBS sitcom "Working Stiffs," which lasted but a month in the fall of 1979.
JULIANNE MOORE (Best actress, "Still Alice"): This four-time Oscar nominee got her start on daytime soaps, playing Carmen Engler on "The Edge of Night" in 1984 and the roles of half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes from 1984 to '85 on "As the World Turns."
MARK RUFFALO (Supporting actor, "Foxcatcher"): He played a young NYPD officer in UPN's "The Beat," which, despite being from the same producers as "Homicide: Life on the Street," aired for only for a month in 2000.
EMMA STONE (Supporting actress, "Birdman"): In 2004, Stone won a role on "The New Partridge Family," a reality show VH1 was planning that would update the 1970s family sitcom. Maybe she should get an asterisk: The show was never picked up.
REESE WITHERSPOON (Best actress, "Wild"): In the 1993 miniseries "Return to Lonesome Dove" (the sequel to the acclaimed 1989 mini), Witherspoon played Ferris Dunnigan, a young wife of one of the drama's main characters, a powerful rancher played by Oliver Reed.
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