Milo Ventimiglia's name has been on the tips of many TV fans' tongues lately thanks to
his heartbreaking work in NBC's hit drama, This Is Us.
But the actor has been steadily working for two decades.
So even though Jack Pearson has definitely become his star-making role, he might look
a little familiar to some fans who've seen his prior work.
Here's where you may have seen Milo Ventimiglia on-screen before.
Gilmore Girls
Diehard fans of Gilmore Girls will best remember Ventimiglia for his role as Jess Mariano,
the erstwhile love interest of Rory Gilmore.
Despite some questionable character moves, Jess was brainy and sweet and well-liked enough
to earn a pilot for his own spin-off series.
That show, of course, was never picked up.
However, Ventimiglia still found time to appear in Netflix's Gilmore Girls revival in 2016.
Now, with rumors that a second revival may be in the works at Netflix, could we see Ventimiglia
step into the role one more time?
According to what he told USA Today, he might not be down for a second return visit to Stars
Hollow anytime soon.
He said, "There are more stories to tell with a lot of these characters, but at the same
time some of these characters for some of us actors are more than a decade in the past.
It was exciting going back to Gilmore Girls for the four Netflix movies, but I'm satisfied
with it.
I think the stories were told.
I think it was great for the audience and fans to get just one small taste of that world
again.
But, at the same time, I think people should not get so greedy."
Pour one out for anyone on Team Jess with that news.
"I could've been a contender."
"You're still a contender."
American Dreams
Ventimiglia also had a Gilmore Girls-esque part on NBC's 1960s drama American Dreams,
on which he played Chris Pierce, a high school student who dated lead actress Brittany Snow's
character, Meg Pryor.
Chris was the resident bad boy on the show.
At one point, he convinced Meg to take part in a breaking and entering scheme.
In 2013, the show held a reunion of sorts at the ATX Television Festival in Austin,
Texas.
It was during that reunion fans were able to see an unaired epilogue to the series finale.
The original third and final season finale had Meg and Ventimiglia's character run away
with each other, but in the screened epilogue, she's welcomed home just before the moon landing.
The Bedford Diaries
Following American Dreams, Ventimiglia's next big role was Richard Thorne III on the WB's
The Bedford Diaries.
Canceled after just eight episodes, the show chronicled the lives of six New York City
college students.
Ventimiglia's role received a mixed response.
The New York Times called Ventimiglia's role "the most compelling character, a cynical
rich kid and reformed alcoholic who becomes editor of the college newspaper and has most
of the best lines."
The Washington Post, meanwhile, wasn't quite as kind and called his character "smug," adding
that the show's characters seemed "weak and inauthentic."
With such a quick cancellation, though, it's hard to know what the character might've become
over time.
"The irony is I don't know what I did."
Heroes
After the short-lived Bedford Diaries, Ventimiglia went on to star in NBC's much-hyped sci-fi
thriller series Heroes, about a group of ordinary people with extraordinary powers.
Ventimiglia's character, Peter Petrelli, could take and mimic other people's powers.
Ventimiglia later recalled to IGN, "Heroes was such a lightning bolt hitting television
and really did make an impact around the world.
It was good storytelling and it was a great concept."
Although the show premiered to insanely high ratings in 2006, Heroes eventually fizzled
out.
NBC unceremoniously canceled the show in 2010 and tried to reboot the series a few years
later with no success.
Mob City
On Frank Darabont's Chicago-set Mob City, Ventimiglia played mob fixer Ned Stax, a role
that often came with complicated dialogue.
He told Collider, "It was tough.
The first really long scene that I had, it took a minute to get the cadence of that,
as Frank wrote it.
So, it took me a minute, but then, right when that switch happened, and I was sitting there
in the clothes and in the moment with a cigarette in my hand, talking about things of the era,
it just all made sense and it became so easy."
Ventimiglia helped shape his character by thinking back on stories from his dad, who
grew up in Chicago.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Ventimiglia grew up listening to his father's stories
from Chicago's extensive mob history.
Chosen
During the same year as Mob City, Ventimiglia landed the lead role of Ian Mitchell on the
Crackle series Chosen.
The character was a husband, father and lawyer who wakes up one day and finds a box at his
door with a gun and a photo of a stranger.
The box explains he has to kill the stranger in three days.
And if he doesn't, he risks the life of his daughter and himself.
Chosen was a very physical, violent show and Ventimiglia spent time perfecting the reactions
of his character.
Ventimiglia told Collider of the role, "I almost had to unlearn my natural response,
which was a challenge, and a good challenge.
I didn't want Ian Mitchell to look like a guy who was reactionary and knew what to do
in a situation….
I had to turn off Milo for a minute and understand what Ian was doing, in his daily life, and
how he would react to everything."
The Whispers
Before This Is Us and the Gilmore Girls revival would make Ventimiglia a household name, he
went on to play Sean Bennigan in the ABC sci-fi show The Whispers, about a group of children
in Washington, D.C. who start chatting with an imaginary friend who gets them to do dangerous
things.
Despite having Steven Spielberg as an executive producer and one of the strongest summer premieres,
The Whispers only lasted 13 episodes.
The silver lining, of course, was that the show's cancellation freed him up to hop over
to NBC's new drama, and the rest is small screen history in the making.
"It's like that whole bell curve, I just screwed it all up."
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