Since 1927, when Clara Bow became known as “the It girl” for her star turn in the silent film It, Hollywood has been hyping young talents. Sometimes these silver screen hopefuls make good on their promise (see: Audrey, Julia), but more often they don’t (don’t see: Edie, Molly). On the brink of a new decade, we look back at the past 20 years of actors who didn’t quite live up to their billing.

1992: Edward Furlong -- The star of Terminator 2: Judgment Day was only 14 when he and Arnold fought the machines to a standstill. For the next few years, the preternaturally cool rebel flirted with legitimacy, appearing in John Waters’ Pecker and American History X. But Furlong was dogged by the ick-factor of a long-term relationship he began, at 15, with his 29-year-old tutor, Jacqueline Domac. Maybe it’s not too late: Furlong will soon appear with Seth Rogen in Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet.

1994: Julia Ormond -- Legends of the Fall established Brad Pitt as a box office draw. It looked like it might do the same for his British leading lady, until the release of First Knight, the ill-conceived Arthurian adventure in which Ormond played a much younger Guinevere to Richard Gere’s Lancelot and Sean Connery’s King Arthur. Then came an even more ill-advised remake of the Billy Wilder classic Sabrina, with Ormond assuming Audrey Hepburn’s part. The two actresses do look alike, but that’s where audiences decided the similarities ended.

1995: Alicia Silverstone -- Well, if an actress is going to stagnate after one hit, she could do worse than Clueless, one of filmdom’s great teen comedies. Still, more was expected of Silverstone, especially by the suits at Columbia pictures, who gave the 19-year-old star a $10 million, three-picture deal and the chance to produce—based entirely on the success of Amy Heckerling’s Emma remake. Excess Baggage followed, as did a Batgirl cameo, ensuring that Silverstone will be best remembered as Cher Horowitz and the hot girl in those Aerosmith videos.

1998: Freddie Prinze, Jr. -- After the success of gore porno I Know What You Did Last Summer and teen romance She’s All That, Prinze was a frontrunner to play Spider-Man, a part that ultimately went to Tobey Maguire. Having missed out on Peter Parker, Prinze slung his web on one too many lame teen confections (Down to You, Head Over Heels, Summer Catch), frittering away his fledgling cachet. Today, he’s best known as Mr. Sarah Michelle Gellar.

1998: Gretchen Mol -- Although the failure of Matt Damon’s first big post-Good Will Hunting film, Rounders, didn’t hurt his career, it wrecked his co-star Mol’s, one of the most striking casualties of hype in recent memory. The then-26-year-old blonde bombshell, a virtual unknown, landed on the cover of the September 1998 issue of Vanity Fair because of the poker film, which turned out to be a Godzilla-sized flop that grossed a measly $22 million (even though it’s had a healthy DVD afterlife). Mol has gone on to do decent work (Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page ), but unlike Stella, she never really got her groove back.

1999: Wes Bentley -- This is a disappearing act of extreme proportions: to much acclaim, Bentley played the plastic bag-appreciating outsider in the Oscar-winning tale of twisted suburbia, American Beauty. And then… nothing. His only credit of note is the old-fashioned epic Four Feathers, co-starring Heath Ledger and Kate Hudson, which was released to muted fanfare in 2002. His co-stars in American Beauty—Thora Birch, Mena Suvari and, by some reckoning, Kevin Spacey—haven’t fared much better.

2001: Jason Biggs -- The cast of American Pie and unmet expectations fit together like dessert and Jason Biggs’ penis. Joining the pie Lothario in both the original and its sequel were Tara Reid (pre-irrelevance), Chris Klein, hot off Election, and the aforementioned Suvari. Biggs followed up his performance in Pie with a Woody Allen film, to no avail: the franchise’s most successful graduates are still How I Met Your Mother’s Alyson Hannigan and Stifler.

2003: Lindsay Lohan -- The freckled phenomenon first encountered celebrity as a child starring in Disney’s The Parent Trap remake. She followed up with Freaky Friday and by the time she dabbled with the burn book in 2004’s smash Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan was a star. Sure, her résumé has had some other peaks (Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, last year’s straight-to-video masterpiece Labor Pains), but her credibility has been wholly eclipsed by addictions, Twitter terrorism, tabloid goings-on, fashion projects, family feuds, tabloid goings-on and the amount of time she spends mooning for the tabloids. She’s in the tabloids a lot.

[PHOTOS COURTESY OF PATRICK MCMULLAN COMPANY.]