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There’s only a couple of days left, but even if it’s not a movie, the event of the weekend for most people won’t be the opening of new films such as Shrek Forever After (or Shrek: The Final Chapter, or Shrek: Willing to Try the KFC Double Down For Money, or whatever they’re calling it these days) and MacGruber. No, the big event of the weekend is the series finale of one of the most ambitious, frustrating, exciting, maddening, brilliant television shows ever: Lost. Yes, after six seasons and 120 episodes, this ABC cult science-fiction series is calling it quits with an extravaganza weekend, including a re-airing of the two-hour series pilot and a two-hour recap episode, all culminating in the 150-minute finale. For those of you who couldn’t care less about Lost, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this week’s A-List will be honoring the show, too.

In some way, though, as much as I love Lost, and as much as the performers are almost uniformly excellent, it may be very hard for some of the bigger actors to find work that doesn’t require them to be typecast as characters similar to those they played on Lost. Typecasting happens all throughout Hollywood, but with five actors in particular, I’m sincerely hoping that the curse is avoided. Again, with only a few exceptions (I’m looking at you, overly earnest young actress who played Ben Linus’s daughter, Alex), the cast was great, but some are more deserving of future stardom than others, either because they’ve got a long future ahead of them, or because their performances on Lost were too great to be ignored. It’s almost time to say a final good-bye to this great show, so let’s take a look at five folks from the mysterious Island who should get big careers post-show, shall we?

Josh Holloway

This week in New York City, the broadcast networks announced their fall 2010 schedules to advertisers. Many pilots are ordered, but not all are picked up. One of the potentially unsuccessful pilots was from NBC, a remake of The Rockford Files starring Dermot Mulroney. Though NBC wants to retool the show, the actor that the people behind the program should have gotten already has a great performance under his belt, and that’s Josh Holloway. The ladies may love him for his willingness to not wear a shirt and be something close to the ultimate bad boy, but Holloway’s also an incredibly talented performer. In the early days, his character, James “Sawyer” Ford, was best known for his cruel, pop-culture-infused nicknames, referencing anything from Star Wars to Ghostbusters to John Steinbeck. The last two years have put his role in a new light.

Holloway, in the past two seasons of Lost, has brought a soulful take to the character, who started out Season 5 mourning the presumed loss of his closest friends, ended it in love with something else (and not just in lust, as he may have been with Kate Austen) and losing them. This year, Sawyer’s been in a brooding mode, but in the flash-sideways world, he’s a cop, partnering up with Miles Straume (who we’ll get to in a minute). These two are about the best cop duo since Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon; they could have their own show and it’d be great. Holloway would be a perfect Rockford; hunky, smart, roguish, charming, selfish, yet caring enough to not be a complete jerk. In essence, Holloway has brought the aura of Han Solo to the small screen. If not Rockford, I’m more than okay with watching him on the big screen. This guy, above all else, deserves to be a huge star. Fingers crossed.

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