TVSquad

Movie actors are a unique bunch of characters in Hollywood. Adept at script memorization, method acting, and being snobby little princesses (the males included), they are somewhat limited in their performance venues. They can switch pretty easily and thrive in theater productions because most of them began their acting lives on the stage in front of adoring audiences. Decades ago they could also do radio pretty easily; most likely because they could read right from the script and no one listening would know any different.

Television? Well, that's a whole different loaf a bread! For some reason, big-named movie stars with their Oscars and Golden Globes just tank when they decide to jump to the small screen. Their failures could be due to the show they've decided to star in, who they play on the show, or the fact that they are catering to a different audience than film-goers. Whatever the reason, some of Hollywood's most famous film stars had some famously big television flops. Here are but a few of them to digest.

Once upon a time, Hollywood made movies like Lifetime's Coco Chanel all the time. They were called women's pictures and gave the biggest stars of the times amazing roles, Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver, Rosiland Russell in Sister Kenny. Watching this excellent TV movie starring Shirley MacLaine as the older Coco and newcomer Barbora Bobulova as young Coco, I was enthralled and entertained.

You won't find a better TV movie on HBO or CBS or Hallmark Channel or anywhere else on the dial -- Lifetime set the bar high with this expansive biopic and then delivered the goods. Forget your idea of what a Lifetime movie is -- Coco Chanel is no victim of the week. If the intent was re-branding Lifetime movies with this effort, the cable net has hit it out of the park.