If anyone has a more polar opposite filmography in their debut year than Dominique Swain, please let me know because this one is WILD. With a rapid rise onto the acting scene after an early start to her career, Dominique took Hollywood by storm in the late 90s and is still making films today. Whether that’s a good thing isn’t for me to say.
Dominique was born in August of 1980 to middle-class parents, and while she would dream of acting from a young age and even audition for some roles, she would work mostly as a stunt/body double for the first few years of her career before being chosen for the lead role in Lolita, a remake of Kubrick’s film of the same name with Jeremy Iron’s taking the lead as the obviously not creepy Humbert Humbert.
Seriously, who names someone that and DOESN’T expect them to be a predator?
CAGE RAGE
To juxtapose her role as the victim of a predator, she also played the rebellious daughter of Nicolas Cage in the classic Face/Off that year. Her career would take off after appearing in one of the greatest films of all time… except it didn’t.
She was cast in a few roles off the bat that were racier, capitalizing on the critical success of Lolita (What the f*ck, Hollywood?) before finally finding a small niche in the horror genre in the mid-2000s.
Not that that’s necessarily a good thing, as the best film she’s been in horror-wise is probably Devour, and that goes a long way on Jensen Ackles’ shoulders.
She would take on a guest role in an episode of JAG before things went completely off the rails. When your last marginally mixed review movies have featured Danny Masterson and Kevin Sorbo it’s kind of hard to say you’re doing alright.
Child Star Grows Up
Her career since 2005 has been dicey, to say the least, with the occasional decent indie rom-com coming out but otherwise Dominique Swain has become heavily roped into mockbusters and the lowest of the low-budget horror movies.
Some of these films are just…not acceptable from a quality standpoint. They’re cash grabs, rip-offs, and just generally lazy writing that makes David Zucker look like Aaron Sorkin. You’ll understand when you hear the titles.
Considering she’s done nothing but these films since around 2008, with not much of her personal life on display and no known public relationships until recently with her attempt at transitioning into a travel influencer, we’re just going to go through some of her more… questionable efforts of the past decade or so.
It’s not like it was a gradual fall either, she went full tilt into terrible roles starting around 2007 with the film Dead Mary, which ended up on late-night Cinemax despite being neither scary nor scandalous but instead being boring as hell and a complete waste of time.
Although it’s still better than Prairie Fever, seeing her team up with the Herculean dickhead, Kevin Sorbo for an old-west revenge movie that I would still rather watch than anything Sorbo’s made since then.
What’s a Sharknado?
Of course, we’re not just here to roast Kevin Sorbo but to talk about Dominique Swain’s greatest hits, and those hits keep coming hard with the mid-2010s putting the actress on lockdown.
Not really, but she was the lead alongside Traci Lords in the “I’ll have what they’re having” title Sharkansas Womens Prison Massacre. Oh, this is about three years after she had a lead role in Nazis at the Center of the Earth too, which was VASTLY inferior to Iron Sky which was released that same year.
Where is Dominique Swain now?
Nevertheless, she persisted for some reason. It’s unknown if she was possibly facing the same issues as Nicolas Cage around that time, being next to broke and owing the IRS money, or maybe she just wanted quick paychecks without anything else.
Maybe she was one of the numerous child stars who were groomed and abused by the Hollywood system (wow, it’s like she was in a movie that did exactly that!). Who can say?
Not to say Dominique didn’t give her all in these roles either, because we all know why movies like these are churned out en masse by small studios set up by rich people to do some fun Hollywood accounting with. Who’s to blame her for taking the roles and paycheck? That said, everything else about these films is absolutely fair game and will be treated as such.
Rapid fire list- The Fast and the Fierce, Nazi Overlord, Rottentail, Moon Meteor, and A Doggone Adventure are just a few of the almost eight dozen films Dominique has taken part in over the last decade, not to mention hitting the Hallmark sweet spot of A Husband For Christmas (no more subtlety). Good on her though, and hopefully her future projects and step into travel blogging/influencing work out.
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