Some of our favorite actors fade away…and with others we’re not so lucky.

Hollywood’s celebrity actors enjoy fame, piles of money, truckloads of scripts for underlings to read, and regular infusions of narcotics legal, psychological or otherwise that feed particular narcissistic addictions. They keep the showbiz hype machine greased up and moving along with flack-placed stories about personal exploits, wacky political opinions, daftly-named offspring and more.

But what happens when a celebrity actor fades from the public view? And as movie fans, how much do we feel their absence?

I miss seeing Sean Connery in the movies. Gene Hackman. Holly Hunter can be found pretty much around the clock on TNT, but you’d have to travel back eight years to see her last notable film on the big screen. Schwarzenegger’s done. Gina Davis. Danny Glover’s barely seen. Anthony Hopkins. Redford & Newman. Where’s Kurt Russell these days? Ray Liotta? Tim Robbins? And despite all of the personal issues of the last handful of years, don’t you miss seeing Mel Gibson on the big screen?

And because I miss the quality work of those above, it really sours my butter when I read that Billy Crystal and Val Kilmer are still getting work.

With numerous and breathless reports of his attachment to the upcoming “Dwayne Johnson headliner” (a phrase thought to be a statistical impossibility by scientists as recently as 2001) Tooth Fairy, Crystal comes across as anxiously jockeying for cinematic relevancy again. That is, if you can so classify a non-specific, non-starring role in support of a former WWF wrestler. Add in that the script is a wacky comedy about Johnson’s hockey player character being compelled to fill the titular fairy’s shoes for a week, and one guesses that Crystal will play a manic role as Johnson’s sports agent, a fast-talking, shyster-type prone to zany double-takes and wry one-liners. I can imagine Crystal’s character perhaps taking a pie to the face in the third act, having a dog piddle on his pant leg, or maybe comically tripping over an ottoman.

And what of Kilmer, with a filmography even spottier than Crystal’s, now relegated to voiceover work – on television! – on the much-hyped yet critically beyawned Knight Rider reboot? Kilmer’s work on the series, variously described as having “shared a vocal coach with Hal 9000” or “none of the prickly personality [of] the old car’s voice…a know-it-all bore“, doesn’t sound like it’ll signify a return to celebrity hotness for the actor any time soon, unless one counts the inevitability of “Look who’s back in shape!”-type pieces in People magazine.

Actors fade for a lot of reasons, many of which have to do with the effects of aging and our tendency – fairly or not – to relegate older celebrities to the Wal-Mart Bargain Bin of the collective consciousness. What’s powerful about being a movie audience, however, is when we do get to determine, with our precious dollars, who retains their celebrity authority and who doesn’t. Kilmer has been widely reported to be something of a pain to work with; and despite the strong promise of his work in the early roles of his career, that public perception may have helped snuffed the flame of his burning career. Crystal had a decent run of hits, but somewhere along the line faded as well. Maybe we tired of his comic style, or perhaps we simply became impatient if he wasn’t costarring with Meg Ryan or pet cows – it’s really anyone’s guess.

Because the success of a actor’s comeback or career reboot is never a given, how would you apply your power as a movie consumer? Which careers would you gladly welcome back – and which ones would you squash with the hob-nailed boot of box office apathy?