The Hollywood Forgotten: Micheal Biehn

Becoming a movie star seems like a near impossible task to achieve and sure enough that first big break only presents itself to a very small percentage of actors and actresses. If you are lucky enough to catch that break and choose the right follow up movies it seems like a lifelong career of big budget leading roles are inevitable. While this holds true for many there are some actors who held all of the right ingredients but for some unknown reason never became the household name that their early careers should have guaranteed.


If you are going to single out the most obvious example of an actor who should have had a guaranteed spot at the top it's got to be Micheal Biehn. Between 1984 and 1993 this guy had a ton of roles that, at a minimum, should have made him an action star the level of Stallone or Willis. He starred in movies that would become icons of the film world but for some reason he slowly faded into obscurity. Biehn's initial breakout role came in '84 playing Kyle Reese in The Terminator, it amazes me that Ahhnold was the one to blow up after that flick. Seriously go back and re-watch that movie, I guarantee that you'll question why you remembered it as an awesome movie, the only explanation is that T2 was so awesome it altered what you remembered about the first movie. Biehn is not only the best thing about this movie but more than that he's the only reason it's watchable, think about a quarterback that makes his whole team better...that's Biehn here. Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzeneggar pale in comparison to what they later put out in T2. Hell...even the trademark line of the series "Come with me if you want to live" was said by Biehn.

In 1986 Biehn again lands a leading role in a landmark movie playing Corporal Dwayne Hicks in James Cameron's Aliens. I know, I know, the Alien series is Sigourney Weaver's claim to fame...that might be true of the series but Biehn owns this installment. "So what, there were like 47 Alien movies", true...but to fans of action this was the best even surpassing the original which relied strictly on suspense and in terms of action could even be called boring. Now that I think of it his role here was very similar to what he did in The Terminator, both characters served to turn the female leads into the self-reliant bad-asses they would become in later films while at the same time delivering the most memorable lines in each series. I should probably clarify that with a "In my opinion' since most of you are probably thinking "What the hell are you talking about? Terminator had "I'll be back' and Aliens most famous line was 'Stay away from her you bitch!'", cool lines no doubt but "Come with me if you want to live" and Hick's catchphrase "Stay Frosty" beat the more popular lines any day of the week. The last similarity to Terminator may be the most revealing as to why this dude never hit the stratosphere and that's the death of his character. I guess it's hard to stay hot in a franchise when you're dead.

From here Biehn took on a number of popular roles in movies including the Sci-Fi semi-classic The Abyss and the completely under-rated action flick Navy Seals. In '93 he flirted with legendary again in Tombstone, my personal favorite western, where he played a bad guy for the first time as Johnny Ringo. Sadly I can see why this didn't add to his superstar status, not only was it hard for the audience to recognize him as a bad guy but visually he was hard to recognize with the signature cowboy mustache. I honestly didn't know it was him until about 5 years ago.

As surprising as it is that was pretty much the last we saw of Micheal Biehn the megastar. From that point out it was smaller and smaller roles in less and less movies. With the exception of one more quick flash as the SEAL team leader in The Rock most people never saw him on-screen again. He seems to be having a run of better luck in the last five years or so starting with roles in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's love 'em or hate 'em Grindhouse flicks and there is a TON of buzz about his performance in the upcoming flick The Divide, a movie about the survivors of a nuclear attack. So I guess this story ends with a glimmer of hope, for the first time in a long time the future looks promising for Micheal Biehn....but I'd bet he's heard that before.