Size doesn't matter anymore now that actors realise that the small screen can be as good for their careers as the movies.

One of actress Teri Hatcher's first thoughts on collecting her Golden Globe for best actress was to thank US television network ABC for giving her "a second chance at a career when I couldn't have been a bigger has-been".

The star of Desperate Housewives is one of a growing list of movie stars who check into a small screen series to revive their careers just as drug or booze befuddled performers check into rehab.

Actors have always yearned to make the transition from the small to the big screen, seeing a hit TV show as the passport to fame and fortune in movies. These days it's two-way traffic. Movie stars who can't get roles they want in movies - or simply can't get any roles because they're no longer bankable - are turning to TV.

Hatcher, having made her name as Lois Lane in TV's Superman series, tried her luck in pictures. She had some success, including a role in the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, but then took time out to raise her daughter. Her starring role in US hit Desperate Housewives, shown on C4 over here, has raised her profile higher than ever. And when the series ends, she'll be in a good position to be a movie star again.

Persuading big names to do TV has helped raise the standard of US drama series and, in return, the big names get a career boost.

Martin Sheen, who starred in Apocalypse Now, has temporarily abandoned movies to play the President in award-winning US series The West Wing. Brit Joely Richardson had a respectable, if not exactly earth-shattering film career, before moving across the Atlantic to join another hot new US drama Nip/Tuck.

British performer Ian McShane has hit the comeback trail in the TV western series Deadwood, a bigger hit in the US than on Sky One over here. No matter, he collected a Golden Globe award as best actor for his portrayal of foul-mouthed brothel keeper Al Swearengen. After playing Lovejoy for the BBC, he'd did a stint in glossy soap Dallas which, along with Dynasty and The Colbys, provided work for movie veterans like Joan Collins, Charlton Heston and Barbara Stanwyck.

Stanwyck was one of the biggest names in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s and one of the first to embrace the possibilities of TV, moving to the small screen as the matriarch of the family in the western series The Big Valley in 1965.

Twenty years later she joined several other big film names in the Dynasty spin-off The Colbys. They included Charlton Heston, Katherine Ross from The Graduate and Ricardo Montalban.

No-one could have imagined that Mr Epic, the man who played Moses in The Ten Commandments and Michelangelo in The Agony And The Ecstacy, would appear among the shoulder pads and over-the-top melodrama of a TV soap. But these sudsy dramas couldn't get enough of old Hollywood stars. Jane Wyman, an Oscar winner and former Mrs Ronald Reagan, starred in the wine industry drama Falcon Crest and welcomed a succession of familiar film faces including Mel Ferrer, Kim Novak, Gina Lollobrigida, Lana Turner, Cesar Romero and Rod Taylor.

Whatever next - Robert De Niro in Footballers' Wives or Meryl Streep in Bad Girls? You may laugh and say, "Don't be so ridiculous" but award-winning film and theatre actress Glenn Close is the latest Hollywood star to commit to a TV series.

She's signed up not just a guest role but an entire run of 13 episodes of the police drama The Shield. It's a far cry from playing the scorned mistress in Fatal Attraction or Cruella de Vil in the live action film of 101 Dalmatians, or even playing faded star Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Sunset Boulevard on Broadway.

The five times Oscar nominated actress will play a police captain in her first regular role on a primetime TV show. The fourth series of The Shield will find Captain Monica Rawling (Close) trying to enforce her controversial community policies with the aid of regular character, maverick detective Vic Mackey.

"Glenn is flat-out, hands-down one of the very best actresses on the planet," says Shield creator and executive producer Shawn Ryan. "We think this is an extremely unique, dynamic character that shakes our Shield world upside-down over the course of the entire season."

The president of the company that makes The Shield adds that, as a great admirer of Close's work, he was thrilled "she will be bringing her prodigious talents to The Shield".

That's the thing - if you have a big movie star in the cast, you need to flatter them and make a big deal out of it. They don't want anyone to think they're slumming it by doing telly. The acclaim heaped on series such as Nip/Tuck, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos and now Desperate Housewives means that a good TV series is every bit as prestigious a thing to have on your CV as a blockbuster movie.

Younger performers, too, find that once young leading man or woman roles fade along with their looks, they can make a decent living on TV. Kiefer Sutherland's movie career was going nowhere - apart from straight-to-video films - until 24 resurrected his career. Rob Lowe found success in The West Wing and Charlie Sheen has taken a leaf out of dad Martin's book by starring in Spin City and now another sit-com Two And A Half Men.

Sex And The City kept Sarah Jessica Parker gainfully employed for a number of years when good movie roles would probably have been few and far between. Co-star Kim Cattrall's profile was raised higher as Samantha than roles in her previous film comedies, Porky's and Police Academy.

And if movie stars don't want to commit to long-running series, they're always available to guest in the most fashionable series. Ricky Gervais is hot on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to The Office and is having no trouble attracting A-list movie stars to appear in his new sitcom Extras.

The former David Brent plays a struggling actor who bitches about the stars. So what could be more authentic than having real movie stars to appear? Samuel L Jackson, Meet The Fockers star Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet and Jude Law have already agreed to star. They know that size doesn't always matter. Small screen can be just as good as big screen.

Published: 29/01/2005