I watch a lot of films. This isn't something I just started doing and I would imagine that you didn't either. We all admire actors and actresses and sometimes wish we could have their lives of opulence and high pay to do what is something that most of us don't truly understand but oh so many aspire to.
Some people make it to the point where they are being paid big bucks to be in films but have the acting capacity of a piece of toast, and these are the people that I feel belong in that. I'll start with "Duff" who was just awful in every capacity for her very short and well-deserved short career as an actress.
src
Karen Duffy, otherwise known as "Duff" got to be semi-famous because of MTV. Some of you might not know this but MTV stands for "Music Television" and at one point in time they actually featured music on that channel. Whether or not it still exists as a channel I honestly don't know or care.
She is no spring chicken by today's standards but there was a time, as they say.
src
When "Duff" wad popular it had everything with MTV being popular. She was an attractive girl that was attractive enough to make you watch but not so attractive to be something that a regular person could not aspire to. She had her own show on MTV and honestly, she was famous in a rather B or maybe C type way.
We all liked her back in the 90s and she had her place but unfortunately for her and everyone else that witnessed it (which was a lot of people) she pursued an acting career which was just so beyond horrible that it didn't last long for a very good reason.
src
MTV was very important in 1994 and Karen Duffey made an appearance in Dumb and Dumber as an assassin type person as "Shay" that honestly, was so forgettable that the only thing we remember about her character is the fact that the person portraying "Shay" could not act at all. If it had not been for MTV's prominence at the time I am confident that she would have been rejected right from the start because while she might be a competent VJ at the time, she is totally incapable of acting in any sort of professional capacity.
src
Despite being a major character in what is one of my personal favorite films of all time in Dumb and Dumber there are almost no bits available with her in it online available at all. There is a really good reason for this and that is because she was (and is) completely out of her league in regards to acting.
I think that Karen Duffy was selected and a VJ for MTV because she was hot but not so hot that her looks appeared unobtainable by the people that were watching - which was everyone back in the mid 90's. Her attempt to transition into film is understandable because let's think about how we would try to use these opportunities on our own if we were in the same situation...
I'm not saying that Karen Duffy is talentless but it took only one film for me and the rest of the world to realize very quickly that she is not, in fact, an actress.
After 1994 she did continue to attempt to act but mostly it was a steady decline because she is a a terrible actress. The last thing she did that anyone actually cared about what some voice acting work in Fantastic Mr. Fox and well, that was a long time ago.
The days of MTV influencing lives is long behind us and I will admit that I was a fan of "Duff" when she was doing whatever she did on MTV. However, her attempt to enter the acting world was ill-conceived and well, she was just terrible at it and I would say that she definitely gets nominated for one of the worst actresses of all time..... and we wouldn't have ever heard of her in films if it weren't for the prominence that MTV had at that particular point in time.