Throwback: Olympic Medalists With Significant Acting Careers
by jalapenoman | created - 14 Aug 2015 | updated - 04 Aug 2016 | PublicWhich Olympic medalist that went on to have a significant acting career (at least thirty films) is your favorite?
Discuss here: http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000088/flat/247253385
Note 1: A career as a sports announcer, a reality show star, or a show host does not count as an acting career.
Note 2: Sonja Henie has only 14 acting credits. Bruce Jenner also has 14. Mary Lou Retton and Mark Spitz have 4 each.
1. Johnny Weissmuller
Actor | Tarzan the Ape Man
Johnny Weissmuller was born as Peter Johann Weißmüller in Freidorf, today a district of the city of Timisoara in Romania, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Weissmuller would later claim to have been born in Windber, Pennsylvania, probably to ensure his eligibility to compete as part of ...
34 movie credits (many playing Tarzan), 2 shorts, and 26 episodes of the Jungle Jim television series for this winner of five Olympic Gold Medals.
2. Buster Crabbe
Actor | Nabonga
Buster Crabbe graduated from the University of Southern California. In 1931, while working on That's My Boy (1932) for Columbia Pictures, he was tested by MGM for Tarzan and rejected. Paramount Pictures put him in King of the Jungle (1933) as Kaspa, the Lion Man (after a book of that title but ...
115 total acting credits for this winner of an Olympic Gold Medal, including starring in the television series "Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion" and playing the roles of Flash Gordon and Billy the Kid in several films.
3. Nat Pendleton
Actor | The Thin Man
Brawn won out over brain as well when it came to wrestler athlete Nat Pendleton's professional movie career. For two decades, this massively-built, dark-haired, good-looking lug played a number of kind-hearted lunkheads, goons, henchmen and Joe Palooka-like buffoons.
Nathaniel Greene Pendleton was ...
This Silver Medalist had a 32 year acting career with 113 film and television appearances in such movies as "The Thin Man."
4. Bruce Bennett
Actor | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Herman Brix was a star shot-putter in the 1928 Olympics. After losing the lead in MGM's Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) due to a shoulder injury, he was contracted by Ashton Dearholt for his independent production of The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935), a serial and the only Tarzan film between the ...
This Olympic Silver Medalist has 147 different film and television credits (more than any other on this list), also playing the role of Tarzan and starring in films such as "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
5. Jim Thorpe
Actor | Trailin' West
Jim Thorpe is an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. Thorpe became the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, and played American ...
Jim Thorpe won gold in both the Pentathlon and Decathlon in the 1912 Olympics. He went on to a professional sports career and appearances in over 70 films (often uncredited).
6. Dean Smith
Stunts | The Quick and the Dead
Dean Smith was raised in Eliasville, Texas, and later lived in Breckenridge, Texas, where he raised horses and longhorn cattle. He attended the University of Texas at Austin where he competed in track and football. He won an Olympic gold medal for the 400-meter relay in the 1952 Helsinki games and ...
Dean won gold in the 1952 Olympics in Track and Field. His IMDb posting gives him 91 stunt and 59 acting credits.
7. Harold Sakata
Actor | Goldfinger
The most famous henchman of the entire James Bond series of spy thrillers, Harold Sakata will forever be remembered as the villainous "Odd Job" in the ultimate Bond film, Goldfinger (1964), with his lethal martial arts and steel-brimmed bowler hat. He was born Toshiyuki Sakata in Hawaii, of ...
Won a silver medal in weightlifting at the 1948 games. He went on to having 31 career acting roles, with the most famous (and his first) as "Odd Job" in "Goldfinger."
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