When you're everywhere on TV and, suddenly, nowhere - no Dancing with the Stars, not even a Surreal Life to speak of - it's easier for the average viewer to believe you've dropped off the face of the earth. And that's a mighty long fall considering that White's character on Family Matters, a scene-stealing supergeek with trousers pulled up to his chin, was at one time the tube's most recognizable commodity, pulling in well over $100,000 per episode for much of the show's nine-season run on ABC and later CBS.

"Cursed" is what we call actors who can't get jobs after having played in wildly popular shows or invented characters so unique and lovable they are never able to shake off those on-screen personas. Question is, do you give it a few years for the character's impact to whittle away? Or is striking quickly best?

That's the quandary faced by television actors who hit pay dirt with distinct characters, from Don Knotts on The Andy Griffith Show to Jimmie Walker on Good Times to Jason Alexander on Seinfeld, whose George Costanza has stuck to him like superglue. Some are able to reinvent themselves; most, like Walker, could not. Others, such as Knotts, simply don't fight it. He made a career of playing the inept, hypertense Barney Fife, with slight variations, in shows like Three's Company. No wonder Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Elaine on Seinfeld during its eight-year run, celebrated her Emmy win last year as an insecure divorcee in The New Adventures of Old Christine by thrusting the statue into the air and yelping "Take this!" to the curse.