The life of a professional actor can be a difficult one. There’s the numerous auditions that go nowhere. Many famous actors have their own horror stories. Kevin Costner played a dead man whose face wasn’t seen in what was supposed to be his big break in The Big Chill. George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen all appeared in Grizzly II that didn’t get released for almost 40 years.
I, myself, went to an interview at the Tulsa campus of Oklahoma State University to be a patient actor. You know, it was like that Seinfeld episode. Well, I didn’t get it. They even told me they needed someone specific for prostate exams. So, when you can’t get a job where someone puts their finger in your bum, that’s pretty bad.
Many child actors realize it’s not for them. All three of the child actors on Home Improvement quit acting and Jonathan Taylor Thomas was a rising star. With news of a Malcolm in the Middle revival, Erik Per Sullivan is the only actor not returning. He played Dewey but hasn’t acted since 2010. Even his social media is hardly active.
However, it’s difficult in this day and age to just disappear especially after you spent a long time in the spotlight. But some actors do it. Eric Freeman had played the lead in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 but according to imdb.com, he did some TV work in the late 1980s and early 1990s before retiring. That was until a scene from the movie became an Internet meme and Freeman became the subject of online chatter of whatever happened to him. He’s had a few acting jobs since the late 2010s but that’s all.
Bambi Woods appeared in the porn classic Debbie Does Dallas. But by the mid-1980s, she had reportedly disappeared and rumors spread she had died of a cocaine overdose. But in the 2000s, it was determined she left the public eye and was living in the Des Moines, Iowa area wanting a private life. It’s reported she only did the movie to pay off a debt. Her real name isn’t even Bambi Woods and she has made it that way not too many people know her real name.
But every now and again, an actor seems to be rising high and then they’re no longer in any movies or TV shows. Before the Internet became popular it was hard to find them. If you do a search for Emily Longstreth, you won’t even find a Wikipedia page. She does have a page on imdb.com but you won’t find anything recent.
As a matter of fact, Longstreth hasn’t appeared in anything since 1995. Her first film appearance was as an extra in the sex comedy Hardbodies. She got a bigger role in Private Resort with then-unknown actors Johnny Depp and Rob Morrow. She played Morrow’s love interest. Also in the movie is Andrew “Dice” Clay, Hector Elizondo, Michael Bowen and Leslie Easterbrook.
She was 18 when Private Resort and in 1986, she appeared in Pretty in Pink and then The Deliberate Stranger, a miniseries about Ted Bundy with Mark Harmon as Bundy. In 1989, she would play he love interest of Kevin Bacon’s character in the Hollywood comedy The Big Picture. The movie is directed by Christopher Guest and co-stars Michael McKean, Jennifer Jason Leigh, J.T. Walsh, Martin Short and Teri Hatcher. But the movie was buried by Columbia Pictures despite it getting good reviews. It bombed at the box office but got a lot of play on premium cable TV in the early 1990s.
She would begin the 1990s appearing in the TV movie Too Young to Die? which is notable for being one of the first roles for Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis and the two would go on to start a relationship for years. But the roles for Longstreth dried up and her last credit is the 1994 low-budget movie Confessions of a Hitman. Then, there is nothing.
And by nothing, I mean nothing. There’s no record of what she did after leaving the movie and TV business. There’s no social media and no indication of any job or career she went into. It’s not always easy when the roles dry up for actors and many of them go on to teaching, real estate, selling insurance, etc.
Former child actor Charlie Korsmo (Hook, What About Bob) is now a lawyer. Michael Schoeffling, who played Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles, opened a woodcarving shop and produces hand-carved furniture. It’s a strange case because there’s no information for Longstreth.
As a matter of fact, there’s confliction reports of whether she is living or deceased. Most of what exists is just on-line chatter from people who claim they’ve known her or interacted with her. People have said that she was suffering from mental issues and has bipolar disorder but it wasn’t properly treated. Longstreth became homeless living in shelters and half-way houses, according to many questionable posts on Quora and Reddit.
Yet, it’s hard to believe anything anyone has to written on a message board. With AI, there are numerous inaccuracies listed as “true stories” on cases. Remember the story that Mel Gibson made The Man Without a Face because of a facial disfigurement he received from a bar fight earlier in his life? I mean when I was in high school, Marilyn Manson became popular and people were saying Josh Saviano who played Pau Pfeiffer on The Wonder Years was Manson. Actually in fact, Saviano was just going to Yale law school.
Another rumor was Rob Stone, who had played on Mrs. Belvedere, was Manson behind the make-up. I remember there were even rumors that Mark-Paul Gosselaar of Saved by the Bell had died in the mid-1990s. However, I attributed this to a mistake as Elizabeth Glaser, the wife of actor/director Paul Michael Glaser, had died in 1994 from HIV/AIDS complications after getting blood transfusion before they were checking for the disease.
That’s why it’s hard to believe anyone. Longstreth isn’t a common surname like Smith, Jones or even mine, Thomas. But people do have the last name. And in a country of about 340 million people, it’s the law of probability.
Do you know that even before Longstreth went into acting, there was another Emily Longstreth who went missing from Oregon when she was only 15 in 1982, which would’ve been around the same age the actress Longstreth was too. Maybe that’s why because someone confessed to abduction and murder of the Oregon Emily. Or at least that’s what I’ve read. It could be totally wrong.
Longstreth was born in Orange County, California in early January 1967. If she is still alive, she’d be 58 today. I don’t want to speculate anymore to add more to this rabbit hole. People in this country are allowed to live a nice, quiet private life in the suburbs or on some farm somewhere, just like the actress who went by the name Bambi Woods. For all we know she could’ve left the country and lived overseas since then. Maybe she won the lottery and decided to keep it a secret from people constantly hounding her for money.
For a while people suspected that Diane Luckey, aka Q Lazarus, whose song “Goodbye Horses” was used in Married to the Mob and most notably The Silence of the Lamb had died. It just happened she didn’t have much success, turned to substance abuse and even prostitution before she got clean and sober. She became a bus driver and lived a mostly private life.
And some people may not want to look back on early years that weren’t the best. Denise Katrina Matthews became popular in the 1980s as Vanity. She performed with Prince who she also dated, then dated Nikki Sixx of Motley Crew, appeared in many movies and had hit songs. But she also did a lot of substance abuse, so much that she was near death and said she had an epiphany where she decided to turn her life over to Christ and neglected everything from her days as Vanity. She reportedly burned priceless items and refused royalties and residuals as she became an evangelist.
Maybe that’s what happened here. Sometimes too often, fame does have its ugly side and many people just want to make a clean sweep. Hopefully, she’s alive and well. But she’s not the first celebrity or actor to hear they had died. Jerry Mathers who rose to to fame as the Beaver on Leave it to Beaver, actually appeared on Saturday Night Live with Tony Dow to dispel the rumors he was killed while serving in the Vietnam War. Apparently, there was another Jerry Mathers who had died.
Gary Riley, who also appeared in numerous 1980s movies like Summer School and Stand by Me also found himself fighting off rumors he had died when a man with the same name died. It happens. Growing up, my brother had the same name as a juvenile delinquent who was always in trouble with the law. So when people would see his name in the police blotter, we were asked if it was my brother or the other guy?
My ex had a similar experience where she was seeing the same doctor as a person with her same name. They also had the same birth date. It’s strange but it happens. Two women I went to school with were fraternal twins. They both got pregnant around the same time and had their babies at the same hospital at the same time. And the fathers of the babies had the same name and their sons’ names were similar, Caden and Camden.
Just like the Internet meme of Abraham Lincoln where he’s quoted saying, “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet,” always take things with a grain of salt.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 